Mid Pleasures and Palaces Though We May Roam

by zetasquadron94

Rating: mature
Tags: Other, Adventure, Science Fiction, Human, Main 6, Drama, Gore, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 239314

USMC Corporal Melissa Foster has been mysteriously stranded in Equestria. She is determined to survive in a world she once thought fiction, using her wits and training, along with the help of a certain group of locals and another castaway from Earth.

Corporal Melissa Foster, a combat engineer of the United States Marine Corps, has been stolen from her home, her family, her civilization, everything she’s ever known. She has been hurled into a land ruled by anthropomorphic ponies a hundred years behind in technology. Nuclear energy, powered flight, spacecraft, telecommunications, all lost in an instant. Steam engines, flapping wings, hot-air balloons and semaphore are now the norm.
Now, with the help of a certain group of locals and another fellow human castaway, Melissa must use her training, wits, and equipment to survive on a world filled with monsters and wonders alike. She is determined to persevere, to thrive, and to introduce the locals to the human race, both the good and the bad. And maybe, just maybe, she’ll be able to find a way home.

For despite the wonders of Equestria, Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.

Includes elements and characters from Hands, by Andrew Joshua Talon. https://www.fimfiction.net/story/14407/hands
Open to Beta-readers.

You can find a full version of the cover art here:
https://hectorbolomk33ftw.deviantart.com/art/Mid-Pleasures-and-Palaces-Though-we-may-Roam-Cover-743065721

Published 2017-10-30 20:50:11 UTC
Last updated 2018-06-27 18:10:41 UTC

Chapter 2

Out of the darkness of a very strange dream there was a rapid, insistent electronic beeping. Melissa moaned, holding her head as she looked at her watch. About 7:30 AM.

Sitting up, she winced with pain again. “Holy shit, was I drinking?” Melissa wondered aloud, a habit she had when she was alone, “I never go to parties...Never.”

She noticed that she wasn’t in bed, but was instead lying in Oscar's trunk. Her fire department emergency blanket lay on top of her, and both rows of seats were down to form a bed. Her holster for Glamdring was casually tossed atop her N7 jacket, which was splayed out against one of the doors. The trunk door was open as well, letting in a mild cold draft from the outside. It was kind of dark, and the sun was barely up.
Outside, she noticed some buildings in the early morning light. I must’ve gone to a party, and someone spiked the punch. I’m not even 21 yet…

Melissa also noticed her popular science magazine placed carefully near the open doorway, under a weight...A wooden cup. No plastic or modern materials. A classic fantasy wooden cup.
What the hell? Did I go to the Pennsic War? Wait, that’s in Pennsylvania…

Her head throbbed for a third time, and she winced. Reaching into the glove compartment, she retrieved a bottle of ibuprofen. With some water, she swallowed one of the pills, “No, I went to see a movie...Went off the road…”

Something came back. Rainbow Dash. And Twilight Sparkle. An episode she didn’t remember, and some annoying John Crichton-wannabe...

She folded up the emergency blanket, and put it back in the battered Fire Department bag as she painfully recovered memory, “Okay...I went off the road, I got out, made an inventory of my stuff…” after that, there was nothing until... “I was doing something that involved the ponies, and The Touch was playing...”

Everything finally fit together. “Right. I’m...in Equestria.” she tried to control her breathing. Deal with it later deal with it later deal with it later...

“...I don’t remember drinking, why do I have a hangover?”

She opened up the gull-wing door next to her, and rolled out, folding the seat back up.

Satisfied, she turned back around, looking out at Ponyville. Not many were up, and it was still a bit dark. Melissa saw a familiar sky-blue pony messing around with some clouds, a pink blur on the rooftops doing...Something.

It was an alien world. Not on TV. She was here.

Glancing around, she suddenly began to feel a tightness in her chest. Her mind raced, infinite possibilities tumbling by as she rubbed her face and looked around.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity...she was barely able to stifle a whimper attempting to escape her mind.

She stumbled back against Oscar as if she had been struck physically, putting a hand to her mouth and taking several deep breaths.

The tightness in her chest grew further, and she nearly winced with physical pain. Reaching out to her backpack, she yanked out one of her water bottles, and took a long swig.

When she finally brought the bottle down, she felt something on her cheek. Melissa rubbed at it, and stared at the warm drop of water on her knuckle.

Another dripped down to join it.

No, don’t fall apart! Don’t! A little voice within her cried, You can’t!

But her eyes weren’t listening. More liquid pooled at the corners of her eyes, and she squeezed them shut.

Melissa climbed back into the back seat of the car and shut the door. She curled up into a ball and buried her face in her knees.

We can’t be stuck here...we can’t be stuck here...we can’t be stuck here…

Yet that was all she could picture. Growing old and dying in this familiar yet foreign place, unable to see home again, being buried in foreign soil decades from now or a week, depending on what might kill her.

We can’t be stuck here forever!

Suddenly, she heard a tapping from outside. Melissa quickly rubbed her red face clean of tears, calmed herself as best she could and glanced up. There was a pony silhouetted against the glass, looking this way and that into the vehicle.

She didn’t seem able to see inside, but the windows weren’t that tinted…

Melissa blinked in realization. The pony was the white and blue DJ from the previous night, the one who wore sunglasses all the time. Of course she couldn’t see through the windows.

Her name was...Vinyl Scratch. I think...

Muttering under her breath, the young woman reached over, and popped the door open.

“Yes, what d’you want?” she asked, a little harshly.

The pony winced with pain, and rubbed her forehead, “Geez, not so loud, will ya?” she spoke with a bit of a raspy yet light voice, like Nowacking, “My head’s pounding like crazy.”

“Did you want something?” Melissa asked again, a little quieter.

From some hidden pocket drifted out a little red rectangle, surrounded by the blue aura emanating from the unicorn’s horn, “You left your music box by my equipment. Thought you might want it back.”

Melissa plucked it out of the air, “Thanks.” she inspected it for a moment, and noticed that the pony was still standing there. “Anything else?”

The unicorn looked a little surprised, but shrugged, “Not really...How does that thing work? Mini decks, or something?”

“‘Decks’?”

The DJ blinked at her, “Y’know, phonographs? Vinyl records?”

“Oh...No. It’s digital circuits, run off of electricity.”

Now it was the DJ’s turn to stare blankly.

“It’s too hard to explain. Maybe I could try later with a diagram or something.”

“Yeah…” the pony agreed, but still didn’t go away.. “What other music have you got on there?”

Melissa tried not to act annoyed. Could this unicorn just not take a hint?

As her stomach lurched again, signaling the return of her fear, she managed to croak, “I’ve got a lot, and a lot to do. Let’s talk later okay?”

The pony tilted her head in concern, “You okay there?”

“I’m fine.” Melissa ground out,, “Thanks for my...music box.”

She slammed the door shut. She looked down at her hands, and realized that they were shaking.

Get a grip. Get a grip right now before you fall apart.

Almost angrily, she shoved the ear buds from the MP3 player into her ears, and flipped through the songs.

Finally, she settled on a favorite.

As the song Dimetrodon began to play, she laid back and closed her eyes.

She smiled slightly as the anxiety momentarily washed away under the assault of mediation and a decent song.

Finally, she fled to the happiest place she could think of in her mind. For once, not a fantasy realm, instead...home.

After several minutes, feeling herself much calmer now, she unplugged her headphones. Melissa squeezed through the gap between the passenger and driver seats, and carefully twisted around to the point where she could sit comfortably in the driver’s seat.

She felt something around her neck shifting, coming out of her collar. Grasping the two metal tags, she took a long look at them. They were identical plates, lined with rubber and inscribed with letters and numbers.

Melissa pushed them back under her shirt, and glanced about, making sure no one saw.

I wonder if Mom and Dad have called me in as missing yet. She had been back in Vermont for a couple weeks of vacation, and hadn’t intended to return to North Carolina until the next week, and she definitely wouldn’t have left without telling them. They probably called in when I didn’t respond to the phone.

Amber alert would come within the next day or so. Then county wide searches, and she would be another face on the missing persons list.

Heck, if she was lucky, she might appear as a footnote on CNN. More fuel to add to the anti-Bernie Sanders fire, that he couldn’t protect one little girl from his own state. Ridiculous, but why not?
Melissa snorted; she might end up on cracked.com, another one of their “strangest disappearances ever” lists.

With the same calm she had generated, Melissa pushed those thoughts away. She needed to find out what to do with herself while she was stuck here.

With longing, she looked at the darkened displays before her, the laptop carefully hidden in her backpack at full charge.
On the passenger side of the dashboard were neatly arranged her phone and tablet; charging from a portable solar panel. Emplaced upon the seat itself was a pile of gear, including all of the ammunition for her Glock. She picked up one of the handful of magazines, the rounds inside covered in an array of labels and NATO terminology. She sighed at the plastic bag containing a single spent cartridge placed next to the pile of magazines. The use of only one round felt like a punch in the gut. Though the ammo might hold out for a while, every single cartridge would be missed.

Melissa reached into her pocket and carefully inserted her car keys into the slot, turning it 1/3rd of the way through. A handful of lights winked on, displaying no GPS, no radio signal, and about 90% charge.

Her solar panel couldn’t hope to charge a Tesla. Unless she could MacGyver something to charge the vehicle, it would quickly become useless. Her laptop, with much more memory and data than any other device in her possession, would become useless.

Melissa yanked out a scrap piece of paper, still with a few available spaces despite the other scribbles from school.

She began a checklist, “Ammunition, weapons, power, vehicles, & cash”.

Charging Oscar wasn’t as big a challenge as she expected. She had a charging cord in with the jumper cables, and if she could hook him up to the hydroelectric dam, she could at least trickle-charge the vehicle. The biggest problem was the fifth category. How would she pay for anything? She couldn’t afford to trade anything from home if she couldn’t help it.

In order to get her ideas out to make money, she needed money in the first place...probably. Maybe a class at the schoolhouse, or teaching ponies how to make crystal radios.

She didn’t even consider trying to work in the physical labor department. Besides being boring, annoying, and difficult, it wouldn’t be good for the ponies to grow reliant upon her physical abilities. What would happen if she wasn’t around?

Melissa continued to ponder the various questions she had...until she heard an odd sound. A clatter against the hull of the car.

She froze in fear, realizing that she neglected to close the trunk door. What creature was now lurking behind her, salivating at the thought of her flesh ground up in its stomach?

Bracing herself, she peeked in the rear-view mirror. She was surprised to find that there wasn’t any beast, but there was a little purple tuft of hair sticking up, with a pair of wide eyes underneath peering at her.

When she whipped around, the observer had disappeared.

Intent on getting to the bottom of this, Melissa opened the door, and stepped out. There was the sound of racing feet on gravel.

Now, why haven’t they run away yet?

She peeked under the car, and saw three sets of hooves, doing their best to stay quiet. Three sets of unusually small hooves.

“Ssh!” Melissa heard one of the intruders say, and suddenly grinned.

Her earlier depression forgotten, she made as if to walk off, before quickly doing her best hood slide.

Her eyes widened, and her jaw dropped as she finally confirmed who it was. WIthin seconds, she had all three little fillies in a single minor bear-hug, and was squealing with delight.

“Oh my god you’re the most adorable little things I’ve ever seen!” were the first intelligible words out of her mouth, “I could just eat you up!”

The Cutie Mark Crusaders feelings contrasted sharply with Melissa’s. All three were struggling to breath, and hoping that this crazy human wouldn’t eat them.

Eventually, she set them down in the open trunk, and whipped out her phone.

The fillies’ fear turned to puzzlement as she twisted the odd grey square device twice as though it were a doorknob, and aimed it at them. There was a click like a camera shutter, and a blinding flash just like said camera.

The human peered at the device, and giggled with glee. She twisted it twice again, then held it out in front of her, turning her back to the CMC.

After another flash, she looked at the device again. She squealed for the millionth time, and turned the device around.
All three squinted at the picture displayed, and their jaws dropped.

“What do you think?” Melissa asked, “That look good?”

“Is that a camera?” Sweetie Belle asked in disbelief.

“No, it couldn’t be! Gotta be some magic thingamajig!” Scootaloo blurted.

“But humans don’t have magic!...Right?” Apple Bloom asked, turning to Melissa.

“No we do not. Yes, it is a camera. Also it’s a telephone, texting device, game player, voice recorder, library, audiobook library, music player, internet browser, and...and…” she grinned sheepishly at the three, “Oh my god you’re so fu...freaking cute!”

Scootaloo cringed a little, “Yeah, you said that. Can you stop?”

“Oh, sorry!” Melissa giggled giddily, and sat down between them, Apple Bloom on the left, and the other two on the right.

In the sudden silence, she had an idea. “I wonder…” She reached up, and scratched Apple Bloom behind the ears, like a cat.

As the other two crusaders stared in disbelief, Apple Bloom eyes went wide, and her arms fidgeted a little. She seemed to like it.

“What are you doing?” Scootaloo asked slowly, transfixed.

Melissa only giggled again.

“Apple Bloom? Are you okay?” Sweetie Belle asked, more than a little afraid.

“Huh?” Apple Bloom drowsily asked, and suddenly snapped out of it. A little embarrassed, she backed away. Melissa froze, reality snapping back like a crack of a whip.

“What was that?” she asked, curiosity rather than fear in her voice.

Alarm bells suddenly went off in the human’s head, Whoops.

“...Is this a no-go zone for you guys?” she asked nervously, her excitement disappearing, “Is this like bad-touch or something?”

They all stared at her.

“Oh hell…” she moaned, “Uh...is there something that your parents told you...about things like adults trying to...I don’t know, touch kids in a bad way?”

“Huh?” Scootaloo asked, “What are you talking about?” the other Crusaders shrugged as well.

“Never mind…” Melissa rubbed her face, By Cthulhu, I hope I can live through the morning…

She stood up, and felt a sharp pain in her left foot when she touched the ground. “Aww, crap.”

“What?” Apple Bloom asked.

Melissa actually chuckled, as she realized that she wasn't wearing any shoes. “You guys seen my shoes anywhere? These are my only pair of socks, and I’d rather not rip them.”

The odd incident immediately forgotten, the fillies turned around and looked into the car before them, with no small amount of investigation of her stuff here and there.

“Is this one? Scootaloo asked, holding up a white tennis shoe. Apple Bloom found the other...under the car, for some reason.

Melissa took both shoes, but hesitated to put them on; instead, she moved to the front of the vehicle.

The fillies gathered around as she popped open the front hatch, and lifted it to reveal a partially-filled front trunk.

“...Boy, am I lazy!” were Melissa’s first words.

“Oh, it’s not that much stuff,” Sweetie Belle said unconvincingly.

“What do you call that?” Scootaloo laughed, “How the hay did you forget that much stuff in there?”

“Hey, this is perfectly valid storage space! But in this case I’m glad for it!” Melissa said. She had completely forgotten about the front trunk the other night, and all of its precious cargo. Inside lay a pile of hiking gear, left behind in the aftermath of her exhausting hiking trip.

Some of it wasn’t there of course; the laundry bag was missing, as was her roommate’s pack, and most of the gear that would rot. However, what was there, like her ILBE pack and whatever else was in the handful of other boxes, was a welcome boost to her current supplies.

Melissa withdrew her pair of United States Marine Corps-issue combat boots for now, and slammed the hatch shut. She dropped one on the ground, and sat on the hood of the car, holding the second reverently.

“What are those?” Scootaloo asked, as Melissa ran a hand over her shoe.

Apple Bloom nudged her, “Boots, dummy! Applejack wears them around at home during mud season a lot.”

“I knew that!”

“Did not!”

Sweetie Belle ignored her friends’ argument. Despite having very little experience with human body language, she knew when one was sad.
“Miss? Are you okay?” she asked hesitantly.

Melissa didn’t respond for a long time. “Yeah…” she sniffed, rubbing her tiny muzzle, “I’m fine.”

She inhaled shakily, and shoved the boot into place, lacing it up, quickly followed by the other one.

High quality boots, they felt snug as she moved her toes. According to the online store description, they were much better for one’s feet than most standard combat boots, and were extremely durable.

My freaking shoes are more advanced. I bet even an aglet would be a big patent.

“What are you three doing out here this early?” she inquired, trying to distract herself, “Did you want something?”

Within an instant, she regretted those words. The Cutie Mark Crusaders regained their typical energy, and were upon her with questions. Things like “What’s your full name? What’s this? What’s that? Do humans have Cutie Marks?”

Melissa laughed nervously, and slowly moved around the car towards the driver’s seat.

“My full name’s Melissa Foster,” she began as she sat down, trying to recall all of the questions said at once, “This is a Tesla Model X electric automobile. And no, we don’t have Cutie Marks.”

“Really?” Apple Bloom asked, “Are you sure?”

“I think I’d be sure about something like that.”

“Then what’s that?” Scootaloo asked smugly. WIth effort, she reached up to tug at Melissa’s t-shirt right sleeve, trying to see some sort of barely visible shape on her bare skin.

Melissa lightly brushed aside the little pegasus’ hoof, and lifted up her sleeve. “That’s my tattoo--”

“Ha! Told you they had ‘em, Sweetie Belle!”

“Shut up! Why doesn’t Andrew have one? Remember he told us humans didn’t have them?”

“Just because it was something embarrassing--” Apple Bloom tried to say, before Melissa gently interrupted.

“Girls, it’s not a Cutie Mark. It’s something humans put on our skin because it looks cool.”

She turned her arm towards them, exposing the image fully. It was a logo, an eagle seamlessly blending with a planet beneath it, and a banner across the bottom of the planet with the label, “UNSC”.

‘What does…’oonsck’ mean?” Apple Bloom asked, squinting at the logo.

“It’s pronounced U.N.S.C, actually. United Nations Space Command, it’s an acronym from a video game.”

All three perked up, “Video games? Do you have one?” Scootaloo asked.

“Andrew’s games all broke when his thing broke.” Sweetie Belle said with a trace of sadness, but brightened again, “Do you have any?”

“Wait, his what broke?” Melissa inquired.

“That little black thing he had. Ran out of ‘juice’ he said.” Apple Bloom explained.

“And I bet being on fire didn’t help.” Scootaloo snorted.

Melissa facepalmed, “Great. Of course he didn’t take care of it. Freaking dumba--uh...idiot.”

“Do you have any video games?” Sweetie Belle asked again.

“Oh yeah, I’ve got a few. Can’t do any of my big ones, but I can do my little ones.” She reached over and picked up her phone.

She selected a game, and as all three fillies gathered around her, she began to play Fallout Shelter.

Melissa couldn’t even remember how many questions they asked, let alone answer all of them. In the interest of battery power, she simply added a few rooms to the vault, and fended off a raider attack before ending the game.

“That’s it for now guys, sorry.”

“Aww…”

Sweetie Belle got into the passenger seat, and looked around the interior of the vehicle. It was unlike any automobile she had seen before, both the few she had actually been in and the ones in books. The crew compartment was fully enclosed for one, which seemed odd, wouldn’t exhaust get trapped in the cockpit?
The cab wasn’t that cramped, in fact everything seemed fairly compact. The steering column was centered in a wheel that faced the operator, looking much easier to use than the typical big stick thingy used for steering. Oddly enough, there were also two rods mounted beside it, on a control panel in the center of the vehicle. One was mounted vertically, the other horizontally. Sweetie Belle reached for the horizontal one, wanting to know what the big button was…

“Hey, hey hey!” Melissa almost yelled, and slapped her hoof away. The energy in the others completely disappeared, as the fear returned.

“Sorry,” the human said more gently, trying to smooth over things, “You okay?”

Sweetie Belle rubbed her hoof, “I’m fine…” she mumbled, staring down at her feet and avoiding eye contact.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to. That thing’s the parking brake, if you pulled that we would’ve gone rolling away.” Melissa apologized, and smiled weakly as she rubbed the filly’s mane, “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Sweetie Belle said more clearly and sharply. Abruptly, noticing something in the leg well, she leaned down and picked up an object.

Her fear disappeared again, “What’s this?”

She held up a small little pedestal, with a spring attached. Placed neatly across the top of the spring was a gently bobbing object. It had a blunt nose, a wide midsection, and a long tail. The object was painted primarily white, with two sets of swept back wings, one larger set in the front to either side of the fat midsection, and two to either side of the tail, with a tall rudder-like shape standing between them.

“It kinda looks like a bird.” Apple Bloom said, squinting at it, “But why’s it painted like that?”

“Can’t be a bird,” Scootaloo argued, “The wings are wrong, why are they swept back like that?”

“Why does it have ‘navy’ on the side?” Sweetie Belle wondered.

Gently, Melissa took the ornament back. “It’s a model of a Grumman A-6 Intruder all-weather attack aircraft. United States Navy and the Marine Corps used them from 1967 to 1997. My mom flew one over Iraq. Could carry four types of nukes, a bunch of hardpoints for a whole lot of ordnance, and is just such an odd looking aircraft.”

She pointed to the odd little blunt nose, “Look at that thing! It’s kinda...cute when you look at it. Oh, the tail! You take a look at the A-4 Skyhawk of the period, or any other plane, and they don’t seem to have that long tail this little thing has. But the P-80 Shooting Star has a similar appearance. My guess is that when they took the prop off, they didn’t know what to do with the nose, so it’s kinda blunted, and the engines were put on the sides instead of the center for a while, so the tail was really thin. Things like the F-14 have the engines in the tail and prop planes don't. Then they started putting sensors in the nose, and...I guess it just takes a middle ground between prop planes and major jet aircraft. But considering the date of manufacturing, maybe not...”

Melissa suddenly stopped talking, and looked at her audience. “How lost are you guys?”

All three blinked. “Uh…”

She sighed, and gently placed the Intruder back in its spot.

“So...What is it?” Apple Bloom asked.

Melissa resisted the urge to facepalm, “It’s an aircraft. Fighter jet.”

“An air…” Scootaloo laughed, “You’re making that up.”

“A what?” said Apple Bloom.

“I think she means that that little thing flew through the air.” Sweetie Belle explained.

Apple Bloom laughed as well, “Really? Melissa, you really expect us to believe…”

“Yes. They did fly. In fact, this is a very tiny replica, the real one was bigger than my car. They flew faster than mach 1, fought in Vietnam, and got scrambled just about every time the Soviets got surly, a pigeon got stuck in the electrical lines, or some maintenance worker didn’t tell anyone he’d put a training cartridge in and gets half of NORAD panicked.”

She reached back into the glove compartment, and pulled out an orange bottle. Emptying a single pill into her hand, she swallowed it with a swig of water.

“My medication,” she explained, failing to clear up any confusion.

Fatigue returning again, Melissa leaned back, rubbing her eyes, “What do we do now?” She mumbled aloud, “What do I do?”

The crusaders looked at each other, “Well, unless you want to do what Andrew does around town...” Apple Bloom started, with a hair of contempt to her voice. Clearly whatever he did wasn’t the best.

“What do you suggest?” Melissa was nearly deafened by the response.

“Human Cutie Mark Crusader!”

She stuck a finger in her ear to try and clear the ringing. Huh, no blood. “That cannot be a day job.”

“It can be!” Sweetie Belle cried in glee.

“There has to be something else. No offense, but I need something that pays.”

The three nearly whined with disappointment, “I guess she does like handy-mare work after all…” Scootaloo muttered under her breath.

Melissa nearly barked a laugh, “That’s what he’s doing? Please tell me handyman means something else here than it does back home.”

“Uh…”

She actually started laughing this time, “Really? You’re not kidding? That’s what he’s doing? He’s just wasting his time! Probably been screwing it up anyway.”

“Well, that’s not all he does, apparently he does good backrubs!” Apple Bloom suggested innocently.

Melissa’s eyes nearly popped out of her skull. Get your head out of the gutter, I’m sure she means that literally…

“Okay then...I’m just gonna go talk to him, and see if we can get something together that’ll make more money than freaking maintenance work.”

She chuckled a bit as she stood up. “By Cthulhu, am I the only person who thinks of these things?”

Shutting the doors of the car, she waved goodbye to the crusaders. “See you three later. I got things to do,” Melissa looked at her watch, at the top of which was displayed the word Monday, “And if I’m not mistaken you’ve got somewhere to be.”

“Aw, but we’ve got half an hour!” They whined in unison.

Melissa laughed again, “And I know how kids can be. Now go on!”

She clicked her key fob for emphasis, and the locks snapped shut on her car.

Slowly, the three moved off in the direction of the schoolhouse. “Kids…” she chuckled again, and cheerfully tossed her keys to herself.

Melissa walked up to the door of the Golden Oak Library, but hesitated before knocking. Heck, it’s a library, not necessarily just her house.

She pushed the door open, and peered around the large chamber, “Anyone home?”

The smell of frying eggs reached her nostrils, as well as the smell of...coffee?

A door on the staircase lining the wall eased open, and the only other human on the planet leaned out. “Oh, hey.”

“Good morning to you too. Are those scrambled eggs?”

Andrew glanced back, “Yeah, probably some--”

“I haven’t eaten anything in two days,” Melissa grinned as she rushed up the stairs, “Gimme gimme gimme!”

She didn’t see anything beyond the plate of scrambled eggs for the next thirty seconds, before seizing a mug of coffee and downing the entire thing.

When Melissa set the cup down, she saw Twilight staring back from across the table. She was squinting in confusion, and held a fork in mid-air. Finally she asked “Isn’t that hot?”

Melissa twitched, “Extremely,” she muttered hoarsely, still grinning, “Got any milk? Please?”

Andrew quickly handed her a cup, and she drained that one too.

Then she snatched up the coffee cup, staring intently at the remains of the grounds inside. “Where did you get coffee?”

“The store?” Spike suggested, deadpan, walking up with a pot in his hand.

“I know that, but where do they get it?”

“They grow it.”

“Where did the seeds come from? Where do the beans come from?” Melissa continued digging.

“Why do you want to know?” Andrew asked, confused.

“Twilight, where--”

“The beans originated in Zebrabwe,” Twilight replied, her muzzle in a book levitating a meter off the ground, “They were discovered by--”

“Yes, but how did they get to this continent?” Melissa demanded.

Twilight flipped through the pages, “Several expeditions brought the plant to Equestria a few hundred years ago, and it’s been cultivated ever since.”

“Ah. So not necessarily a big trade system.” No triangle trade might have influenced something.

She finally relaxed, and sat back, more calmly eating the remains of her meal.

“You know that was mine, right?” Andrew asked casually.

Melissa immediately dropped the odd-shaped fork, and silently moved to the next chair over.

Andrew rolled his eyes, and picked up the plate, walking off and muttering obscenities.

Melissa twiddled her thumbs for a moment, before doing a double-take. Why had it taken her so long to realize? This was a dream come true, literally sitting across from the Twilight Sparkle!

A small squeal of glee escaped, and she yanked out her phone.

Twilight’s shocked expression in each photo did nothing to dissuade the squealing fangirl, who proceeded to take a shot of herself beside the unicorn, and several more photos from other angles.

Moving from fangirl photos to scientific curiosity, Melissa grabbed Twilight’s wrist, “Would you mind spreading out your, uh, hoof? Please?”

Confused, Twilight decided to humor her. Who knows, maybe this was some sort of human ritual.
She nearly flinched at the squeal Melissa released.

Ever since she had started watching the TV series, Melissa had thought about how the pony appendages would work. It seemed her hypothesis was relatively correct. Their hooves weren’t solid. Though not as dextrous as fingers and hands, they were extremely malleable, and prehensile. The hooves were able to act vaguely like a human hand one minute, with corners of the hoof raised to form surprisingly effective thumbs and fingers, or as a foot the next.
She carefully documented as much as she could.

Her eyes locked on Spike. The little dragon immediately began seeking an exit. He had seen that look in Rarity’s eyes, that look that said she was going to tackle someone for “experimental” purposes.

Melissa’s longer strides allowed her to block the doorway, and immediately she took a dozen photos, before gently seizing Spike’s right wrist..

Dragon extremities, it seemed, were a combination of bird talons and hands. They possessed a vague curved shape, with sharp claws on the end of each digit, almost definitely made for hunting. Unlike most birds, however, Spike’s claws seemed able to retract enough for precision work; blunted enough for tool using, but sharp enough for hunting. In addition, his thumbs were clearly made for tool using, Very similar to Turians from Mass Effect.

She released him, and closed the camera app on her phone. Melissa awkwardly retreated to a corner of the room, grabbing another cup of coffee.

Andrew returned with a plateful of slightly burned scrambled eggs. He stopped for a moment, recognizing the change, then shook his head and sat down.

“So...Melissa,” Twilight began, “Do you have any books with you? In your car?”

Melissa nodded, “I have a few. Textbooks, novels, but I have a lot more on my kindle. I could bring in my books, but I’m a little worried about...” she nudged her head toward Spike, “Y’know…”

Twilight smiled a little, “Don’t worry, Spike hasn’t burned many books recently, only the one during that time travel incident.”

“Oh yeah. How'd that turn out with you here, Andrew?”

“You don’t want to know.” Andrew said, twitching. He and Twilight did their best to avoid eye contact.

“Ooh-kay…” Melissa quickly averted topics, “Speaking of books, and my car, we need to begin research and development immediately.”

Andrew groaned, and facepalmed, “This again? Really?”

He stood up, and gestured all around them, “News flash, we’re in the goddamn pony Middle Ages! How do you expect us to build engines, missiles, planes, and stuff?”

Melissa crossed her arms, and waited for Andrew to stop talking, “You done? Okay, this isn’t the Middle Ages. When I still thought this was a show, I analyzed it, and this is definitely a 19th century tech level. How the heck did you think they have steam engines, hot air balloons, and an industrial base to work? Magic?”

She rubbed her temples, “Don’t answer that. Anyway, look, we can go around in circles about this until hell freezes over, or we can get to work.”

As she spoke, Melissa held out her coffee cup at arm’s length, tilting the contents slightly to stare at it, “No, wait, it’s boiled. Never mind…” she murmured, dismissing thoughts worrying about allergens.

I gotta think of vaccines, though.

“What did you have in mind?” Twilight asked politely, “For what you wanted to build, I mean.”

The human shrugged, and pulled out her phone again. After studying it for a moment, she replied, “Uh...Okay, we need to make medicine. That’s about the easiest thing on here. I bet glue will come in handy. Aluminum’s another good one, and...paint rollers? I guess…”

“What are you reading?” Andrew asked in curiosity, moving to look at the phone.

His eyes lit up at what he saw.

“What is it, Andrew?” Twilight asked.

“It’s a poster I found online a few months ago,” Melissa explained for him, “‘So You’ve Gone Back In Time’. Heh, look, it says ‘nice one’ underneath!”

Andrew’s jaw dropped, “This...wait...what?” he kept reading down the page, “Wow…”

Melissa held out the phone’s display to show Twilight, as she gave Andrew a cheeky grin, “Something you’d like to share with the rest of the class?”

“Why do you have that?” he finally questioned.

“You never know! And it works in the event of an apocalypse.” she replied.

“That’s just a novelty thing, right? None of that stuff actually works, does it?” Andrew queried.

“There are a lot of technologies that are really deceptively simple. They try to make them more complicated than they seem. Don’t you have some muskets or something lying around?”

“Of course. We’ve had them for over three hundred years.” Twilight answered, “We do have a minor armory of human weapons, though they’re a bit more advanced than what the standard is. We made them with a little help from myself and some specialists around town.”

“That, and some insane school kids…” Andrew muttered, involuntarily shuddering.

It took barely an instant to know who he was talking about. “They seem pretty sane to me.”

Andrew scoffed, “Oh yeah, nearly blowing me up with a giant gun was real rational.”

“Whatever,” Melissa rolled her eyes, clearly not taking him seriously, “You probably screwed it up somehow. I know they’re the crusaders, but c’mon! How the hell did you let them get ahold of the designs for for a modern firearm?”

“You try holding up the prime directive sometime, Captain Janeway! Nowhere near as easy as you’d think! Those little weirdos snuck it right by me!”

“Uh huh...” Melissa turned to Twilight, “Do you want to borrow my tablet? I’ve got a bunch of books on it, and some other stuff. You might be able to--”

Twilight gasped, then squealed with delight, clapping her hooves, “Oh, yes yes, please!”

“Okay then,” Melissa nodded, and walked out of the kitchen with the pony.

Andrew hesitated for a moment, then followed. How come I don’t get a tablet?

Melissa unplugged the tablet, made sure the web pages open were cached, closed most of the applications, and carefully handed it off.

Twilight Sparkle took the device almost reverently, recalling the operation of Andrew’s long-disabled cellular telephone.
Unlike the phone, this device was like a leather-bound book, only lighter, with a small latch on the side that used magnets to hold it shut. Upon opening it, she found her own reflection in a flat black device on one side. A keyboard designed for humans occupied the other side, but could be folded over to the back to leave access to the primary device.

Last time she had wasted a bit of the battery life by accidentally “rebooting” Andrew’s phone, and she intended to stay as far away as she could from the physical buttons. In this case, she couldn’t help it, trying to hold it in one hoof like a book, her hoof accidentally ran over the button at the bottom.

She jumped when it lit up, fearing something bad would happen, but quickly regained her composure, realizing that this was simply a larger version of Andrew’s device.

In exploring, the systems she found the “digital” library contained within. This “kindle” was almost as expansive as that of Andrew’s phone, although filled with many more works of science fiction and fantasy than his had.

She marveled once again at the various book covers. Many of the novels had intricate and complicated designs for their covers, instead of simple shapes or words drawn onto them. The images were filled with color, depicting enormous battles, strange vehicles emitting light or explosions, and human figures standing heroically with weapons drawn.

Even the great Canterlot library had barely a handful of books with similar covers, given the amount of chemicals and materials needed, and humans were able to build them by the millions!

A name caught her eye, Arthur C Clarke. Andrew had mentioned him as some sort of great author and thinker, in one of his many cultural references..

The novel was called Time’s Eye, apparently.

Intrigued, Twilight glanced up at Melissa, expecting her to be waiting impatiently. Instead, the human was digging around in her vehicle, looking for something. I’m sure a few pages won’t hurt.
Three chapters in, just as the story started to gain momentum, the white display disappeared, to be replaced with a black screen. “Enjoyed this sample?” it queried, offering to allow her to “Buy it in the Kindle Store for only $5.89!”

“Oh, should’ve explained that.” a voice said, and Twilight jumped at Melissa’s presence above her shoulder.

“What does it mean?” she asked.

“It’s kinda like renting a book from a library. It gives you a portion of the book to see if you like it or not, and if you do you can buy it.”

An idea popped into Melissa’s head, “Holy crap! I just thought of something?”

”What?” Andrew asked, finally appearing.

“Have you ever read Time’s Eye?” She demanded of him, barely able to contain her excitement.

“What?”

Melissa rolled her eyes, “The Arthur C Clarke book? Aliens take a bunch of humans from a bunch of different timeframes, and we get Alexander the Great’s army assisted by a bunch of redcoats and a modern helicopter crew, versus Genghis Khan’s army, helped by the cosmonauts from a Soyuz spacecraft?”

“Uh…”

“Well, it’s not actually the whole Soyuz crew, see the commander was decapitated by one of the Mongols when they landed, and the astronaut was going nuts and wanted to sleep with Khan, while the surviving cosmonaut was helping out the helicopter crew…”

Twilight seemed intrigued, but Andrew just nodded slowly, in a confused fashion.

“Anyway, in that story pieces of the land were taken with the displaced. Like someone carved out a chunk of land. The helicopter crew got a bunch of AK-47s and other gear from the piece of land that came with them. Actually the guy who shot them down came too, but he got eaten by a saber-tooth tiger.”

“He shot them down? With that...RPG?” Twilight asked, recalling the ambush that the novel had been building to, “Do they survive?”

“Oh yeah, they’re fine. The helicopter even kinda comes out okay...Though it never flies again. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that we need to know if anything came with me. Like 1632, too.”

Andrew gestured to the car, “Well, that did…”

“But I was driving that when I came through. That’s all the stories, Destroyermen, Axis of Time, A Long Time Until Now, and things like that.”

“Why didn’t anything else come with me, then?” Andrew demanded incredulously.

Twilight deadpanned, “I think you were too busy being chased by that manticore to think about anything else. There may have been some artifacts, but I doubt you paid enough attention to the area you appeared in to remember where that was.”

“Yeah, that’s more The Dragon and the George than anything.” Melissa turned to Twilight, “Incidentally, that’s another book I have on there,” she gestured to the tablet, “It’s a good fantasy novel, with a modern guy getting tossed into a Medieval-style world, but Quantum Leaped into the body of a dragon. The regular occupant of the body has his own friends and enemies, and the guy has to end up getting their help to try and rescue his girlfriend from the Dark Powers. Who I guess might be demons or something--hey!”

Andrew had grabbed Melissa by the hood of her N7 jacket, and was starting to walk away with her, “C’mon Twilight, let’s go investigate.”

“What’d I say? What’d I say?” Melissa demanded.

“Shut up and let’s go before I turn into a dragon.”

Managing to dislodge herself, Melissa fell into step with Twilight. “What the heck is he talking about?” She whispered to the unicorn, who shrugged and replied, “He’s kinda paranoid. Though he does have some reason to be. Bad things keep happening to him. The doctors have been really concerned about his well-being.”

XXXXX

“Okay, everyone fan out, look for literally anything that looks weird.” Melissa ordered, standing with her hands on her hips looking out at the clearing.
She knelt, and stuck a trowel into the grass, carefully scooping up enough dirt while avoiding cutting the roots. Just as carefully, she placed the sample in a plastic bag, and sealed it.

Placing it in a pocket, Melissa glanced about, and followed the dim tracks left by her car.

Andrew was a little ahead of her, glancing around the area where the tracks began. He found an odd grey material stuck in the ground. Fairly large, several meters in diameter. There was a smooth line cut on three sides, and like a hardened liquid on the final one. Along a portion of the cut were a pair of yellow lines close together--

He facepalmed once he realized it was. It was a piece of road asphalt, from whatever highway Melissa had been on.

He turned around and noticed --of all things-- a road sign! A typical metal post, with a white shield-shaped sign bearing the words “speed limit”, and the number “50” underneath.

“Hey, guys? I found something!”

“Good. Keep looking!” Melissa replied.

The cloud covering the sun passed, and light shone through the woods. Melissa put up a hand to block some glare out of the corner of her eye...and realized that it was a reflection.

“Huh,” It looked metallic, or artificial. Probably a bit of plastic from the Tesla, but it might be something valuable.

It was out of the clearing, in some bushes in a dark collection of trees. “Where is that…? Aha!”

The light was coming from a clump. A circular hole had been torn in a large leaf, like something had gone flying in at high speed.

Melissa started to move forward, but hesitated when she realized that the area around the clump was dark. Really dark, despite the sunlight elsewhere.

She shook her head. It was just dark! What was she worrying about?

She crouched and reached into the clump, unexpectedly withdrawing a coca-cola can.

Still intact but covered in mud. Modern shape, and the date was 2010. How did this thing get here? Road sign sure, but a coke can? Perhaps it had been tossed out a window, then a passing car had knocked it into the bushes.

Suddenly, she felt a bad feeling. A really bad feeling. Melissa glanced up, dropping the can, and yanking out her pistol.

Squinting, she couldn’t see...wait. Oh hell. A pair of eyes were staring back at her.

“I fucking hate cliches…”

Melissa thumbed the safety, and tried to find the head of whatever was looking at her. She opened her mouth to call for help, but the words stuck in her throat when she realized what it looked like.

Oh hell.

It was a large bird. A bird that came up to just above her knee, just a little bigger than a turkey, but with a tail that stuck out almost equal its body length. Unlike a turkey, it had a pair of small forward-facing claws placed on the front of its chest, like a T-Rex. Considering those, the jaw must be equally fierce…

oh hell!

It opened its jaw slightly, drooling mildly out of the corner of its mouth, exposing vicious-looking teeth.

The turkey-thing looked like a velociraptor. The normal ones, not the exaggerated ones from Jurassic Park.

As that thought crossed her mind, the tactics from the movie came to the forefront. There was a lead one to distract you…

She aimed her Glock to either side, finding more eyes staring back.

Calling out might provoke them.

How could she get out of this situation? They were raptors!

Oh wait. She was a million years more advanced than them, sentient, wearing combat boots and wielding a firearm. Duh.

Andrew jumped at the sound of five staccato bangs. He began to run when he heard snarling and screaming.

Twilight joined him, and she lit up her horn to try and pierce the darkness of the trees.

Both were shocked at the sight; On the ground were a pair of large turkey-look-alikes; one writhed, the other lay still. Glamdring, Melissa’s sidearm, lay next to a coke can. Melissa herself was a meter or two away, screaming either in rage or pain as she tried to fight off another one of the creatures. It shrieked as well, blood leeching out of a hole in its wing. It seemed as though the other two had gotten pretty close, one’s claws were only centimeters from her torn pant leg.

“Get the hell off her!” Andrew cried, and rushed forward.

Before he could sink his dagger into it, Twilight beat him to the punch. Her horn pulsated, and an energy field appeared around the turkey, lifting it off of Melissa as it slashed and kicked.

Andrew shrugged, and rushed forward, helping Melissa to her feet.

“Shit! Shit shit fuck!” she roared, “Goddammit--this--christ on crutches--hurts!”

“Where does it hurt?” Andrew asked, trying to recall the handful of medical classes he had taken.

“All over the fucking place! Motherfucker, where’s Glamdring?!”

She stumbled away from Andrew’s hold, and couldn’t stand up for even a second. She curled up into a ball, holding her side with both hands now.

“What is it?”

Melissa moaned, and didn’t reply. Andrew went to his knees, and tried to pull her hands away. His hands touched something wet and sticky, Melissa’s hands were stained with blood.

Twilight gasped, “We’ve got to get her to the hospital, now!”

“Wait!” Melissa gasped, “Get...get…”

“Get what?”

She seized him by the collar, blood staining his shirt, “The cartridges you dumbass! Pick up the --fuck!-- spent cartridges, coke can, and other stuff! We need them!”

“Yeah yeah yeah--”

“Do it or I’ll rip your goddamn head off and use it as a chamber pot!”

“Okay, okay!”

XXXXX

“Will she be alright, Doctor?” Twilight asked.

“Difficult to tell, given human anatomy,” Doctor Horse replied, examining one of Melissa’s x-rays once again, “Nothing’s broken, and we don’t think she’s lost enough blood to be at risk of death. However, we don’t know if there was any internal damage, and she is still quite pale.”

He gestured to Melissa’s sleeping form in the bed. The bed was actually too small for her, two gurneys had to be used to fit her legs.

The room had been set aside nearly a year ago when Andrew had first come in; at first for research purposes, then for treating his numerous injuries.

She appeared to be sleeping peacefully, but her face was ghostly white, several fresh cuts on her face. Blankets and a patient gown covered Melissa’s chest, underneath which were several bandages keeping the blood from her wounds within.

Andrew anxiously tapped his foot in the uncomfortable pony chair next to the bed. The pistol lay on the side table, the magazine removed and put atop the other three found in Melissa’s jacket. Her cell phone and car keys, miraculously undamaged, sat nearby, along with the cleaned coke can for some reason, and four shell casings. The fifth Andrew had neglected to put down, and now rubbed it between his thumb and index finger absentmindedly.

“Is there anything that you need for her?” he asked, not taking his eyes off of Melissa.

“Not really. We’ve done all we can for the moment,” Horse answered, “All we can do is wait and hope for the best. Your own anatomy and numerous visits here are partly the reason we were able to keep her alive, actually.”

“Thank you doctor,” Twilight said, noticing Andrew’s lack of reaction, “I don’t think we need anything else.”

The doctor made one final check of things, and departed. Nurse Redheart, one of the doctors very experienced in dealing with Andrew’s numerous injuries, remained outside.

Twilight reached up and put a hoof on Andrew's shoulder, “Are you going to be alright?”

He rubbed his face and nodded, “don't worry about me. Her first few days here and she's been attacked twice. Worse than what I got.”

“Don't blame yourself--” Twilight began.

“I don't!” He said loudly, “She’s braver than me for taking on freaking Raptors, but--”

They were abruptly silenced by a soft groan.

Melissa’s head rolled to the side, and she lifted her right arm to her head. She seemed to be checking her watch; it hadn’t been damaged in the chaos, but it still had its fair share of scratches.

“Nurse, she’s waking up!” Andrew cried, and moved closer.

She groaned again, and shook her left arm feebly.

Twilight stepped closer as well. “Melissa, you’ve just been in--”

Melissa grabbed her by the mane, clumsily tugging her closer, “How...Much?”

“How much what?!” Twilight yelped in surprise, trying to move away.

“How...Much...Blood?” She mumbled.

“Looked like a lot! Now let her go!” Andrew shouted, trying to pull Twilight away.

Nurse Redheart hurried in, but not two seconds after releasing Twilight did Melissa grab Andrew by the collar with both hands, “What’s your blood type?!”

“Why do you need to know?” He squeaked in a very un-masculine manner.

Melissa reached for Twilight again, but the glare from the nurse kept her away. She leaned back toward Andrew, “I need a blood transfusion! Does anyone know how to do that?!”

“A what?” Redheart asked, but shook her head, “Never mind. Mister Shepherd, hold her down!”

Melissa leaned away from the nurse, dragging Andrew closer, “Crichton, we need your blood! We’re the only humans on the ship, and in case Grif gets hit by the tank again, we’re going to need that blood!”

“What kind of painkillers did you put her on?” Andrew demanded, trying to pry the woman's fingers off his neck, one by one.

Melissa only shifted her grip, painfully squeezing his fingers together while still holding his collar. Her eyelids began to droop, and her words became slurred, “Also...Tesla...The Tesla…”

“What?!”

“Get...the Tesla charged, Madison Yazoo Leake!”

The others halted for a moment. “What? Who?”

“Fix the warthog...” she tried again.

“I think she’s referencing something again.” Twilight attempted to explain.

“Get more dilithium...Chakotay…” With that, her head slumped onto the nightstand, and she began to snore loudly.

Redheart’s brow furrowed, and she gently pried Melissa’s hands off Andrew, leaning her back into a sleeping position.

“Visiting hours are over.” she said with a sense of finality.

Andrew looked from the nurse, toward the other human. Melissa grimaced slightly, her right thumb, and then her index finger twitching, the latter several times.

He made a sideways glance at the chairs in the room, and sighed.

“Would you mind if I stuck around for the night?” he mumbled quietly, scratching the back of his head.

The nurse raised an eyebrow,(who hadn’t heard the rumors?) but maintained her professional demeanor, “You’re not next of kin…”

“Yeah, well, I’m the closest she’s got.”

I’m glad the girls aren’t here to make this awkward… Twilight thought, and stepped forward, “Would it be a problem if I stayed?”

Redheart looked at both of them, and sighed herself. “Andrew, you may stay, given your...displaced status. Miss Sparkle, I will see what I can do.”

“Thanks,” Andrew grinned a little, “I’m sure she’ll be glad for this.”

XXXXX

She squeezed the trigger, and the Talon M2A3 .45 Caliber Pistol kicked back, sending a three-round burst of anti-personnel rounds into the hybrid.
It shrieked in pain, the gaunt, limp face of the former Von Braun crewmember registering a flicker of emotion for the first time as it collapsed.

The female marine dropped her pistol, broken and drained of ammunition, and picked up the sword handle at her side.

The laser rapier sprang to life, as she stood over the creature before her. It lifted its head, tears streaming down its face, and it blinked once.
“I’m sorry…” the former engineer whispered, the deep tones of The Many disappearing into that of a young man’s, “I’m...sorry…”

The marine knelt, reaching out and closing the poor soul’s eyes. She stood up, and glanced around the junction. She saw something flash by for an instant, something blue and purple...

The jarhead kicked back into combat mode as something else appeared, down the hall; another voice, that shrieked, “Silence the discord!”

She looked up, and jumped back in fright as much as confusion. The creature was massive, but not like any monster of The Many she had seen before. It was a big snake-like creature, its height reaching that of the average human, but it had the head of a...chicken.

Her instincts screamed to kill it, but she couldn’t. Her legs felt like jelly, terror filling every fiber of her being. She swung clumsily at the monster, but it was as if the strength was being sapped from her limbs by the millisecond.

“Weak.” something else said, in the back of her mind.

Instead, she turned and ran, through the automatic door. She was confronted by several tiny birds, gnashing their teeth as they said “A thousand eyes look.”

The marine stumbled away, fear grinding away at her instincts, as she heard the door behind her hiss open.

“Pitiful.” the other voice said.

Tentacles, undoubtedly belonging to the chicken creature, reached out to entangle her, as she screamed. Other creatures, not just the birds, but large animatronic creatures as well, a fox, a bear, and a chicken, poorly maintained, all surrounded her.

The marine felt her bones being crushed, as the creatures began tugging on her limbs, tearing flesh…

“How could something like you possibly do anything?” the other voice finished, as blackness engulfed her...

Melissa’s eyes snapped open. She sat up, glancing around fearfully, and locating her pistol on a nearby nightstand. With finely-honed instincts, she snatched it up, flicked on the small laser sight, and slowly scanning the room for targets.

Terror faded, as did the dream itself, eventually. There was no noise, save for the gentle pattering of rain on the roof.

She exhaled in relief, and switched off the sight again. The flashlight above it would have worked better, but even half asleep she knew to preserve battery life.

As she relaxed, she carefully felt her chest, and other body parts, making sure all her various bits were intact. Other than some nasty, red cuts, stiches, and bandages she seemed to be fine. Relatively speaking. Someone had done a fine job keeping her together.

As her eyes adjusted to the low levels of light, Melissa observed her environment in detail. She noticed that she was wearing some sort of hospital gown, hastily sewn together and not exactly made for her, but worked for modesty’s sake.

Guess they took me to the hospital, she thought, looking around at all the equipment, and the style of the bed she lay in.

As she shifted her feet, she winced; she realized that the end of the bed was made up of something metal, rather than a cushion.

Melissa heard a muffled snort, and looked around. Andrew was sitting slumped in one of the pony chairs nearby. He was snoring gently, in concert with Twilight, who was leaning on his shoulder, a book lying on her lap.

Her eyes widened in mild surprise. She hadn’t exactly expected Andrew, who she barely knew, to stay, let alone both himself and Twilight.

Melissa smiled a little. Guess I could’ve landed in worse places…

Hesitantly, she reached out, and tugged on Andrew’s sleeve.

“Hey! Hey!” she hissed, “Uh...Uh…”

Snorting himself awake, Andrew mumbled, “Not my ferret…”

He soon snapped out of it, shaking his head clear of sleep, “Wha? Hey!” Andrew smiled a bit, “You’re awake!”

He elbowed Twilight, who came awake with a start.

“Melissa!” she said with sleepy happiness, and exclaimed, “You’re awake!”

“No shit, Sherlock.” Melissa growled, wincing, “where the hell is my jacket?”

Twilight blinked for a second, taken aback.

Andrew ignored it, and pointed, “Other nightstand!”

Melissa found her N7 jacket neatly folded, and smelling like...flowers of some kind. She snatched it up, hastily shoving the coat on over the hospital gown.

She started softly singing a Japanese song, one Andrew didn’t recognize.

“Do you need anything else?” Andrew asked, watching her hug her chest with one arm, and gently stroke the N7 logo with the other.

Twilight decided to let the earlier expletive pass, “Do you need water, or food, or…?”

“No.” she said flatly.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Anything you give me will probably give me cancer.”

Andrew furrowed his brow. He’d been fine eating and drinking…

Suddenly, Melissa seemed to panic. She hurriedly sat up, trying to rise, “I gotta get out of here.”

Forcibly, Twilight and Andrew pulled her back, “What are you doing?” Twilight demanded, “You were just attacked by--”

“Raptors, yes I know. This room is more dangerous to me then they were.”

Twilight got up and sat on Melissa’s legs to stop her, while Andrew held one shoulder. Despite the drugs, the young woman was quite strong.

“What are you talking about?” Andrew asked, “You need to rest!”

“A-doy!” she said, obnoxiously smacking the side of her head, “But not in a cancer-ridden medical ward! This place is a deathtrap!”

Melissa punched the wall, “The insulation! It’s gotta be asbestos! In the water, there’s bugs and critters that our immune systems aren’t ready for! The food, same thing! I don’t even know how you’re still alive!

She shoved Andrew aside, “This whole planet’s a deathtrap. My car is the only place that’s safe, and in a couple days it’ll be dead!”

“But Twilight will find a way to charge it,” Andrew said, grabbing her again, “It’ll be fine!”

“My MREs won’t last long, and I won’t survive on just apples!” she stopped struggling, and cringed, “I only have enough pills to last the month! Oh my god, medical supplies!”

She seized Andrew by the shoulders, “What’s your blood type?!”

“Not again!”

“I think the meds are still affecting her!” Twilight determined.

“What? No, I’m fine!”

Melissa finally succeeded in getting the other two off of her, and slid out of bed...only to scream with pain and collapse to the floor, clutching her right leg. Much of the limb was covered in bandages, and crimson blotches erupted underneath.

Nurse Redheart finally arrived, “Mr. Shepherd, would you mind helping?”

Restraining Melissa, both were able to get her back into bed.

She tried to sit up again, but Redheart pushed her back.

“I gotta--”

“No,” Redheart said firmly, “You don’t need to do anything. You need to lay here quietly, and rest. You’re going to sleep, and not go anywhere, or else.”

Something in the nurse’s eyes made Melissa obey. Nodding, she sat back.

The nurse, satisfied, left the room. Andrew looked from Melissa to the door.

With barely a second thought, he sat back down. Twilight did the same without hesitation.

Melissa didn’t say it, rolling over to avoid eye contact, but was secretly grateful.

As exhaustion began to consume Andrew again, he heard Melissa's voice again. Not speaking, but singing that Japanese song again.

XXXXX

Day 2 of hospital visit:

It’s funny, y’know? Of all the places I could’ve landed, anywhere in the universe, and I landed in Equestria.

One of the nicest places to be, really. I can’t tell you how many universes would suck to live in. Jesus, the thought of being stuck in Axis of Time, or even worse, Safehold? I’d be a nervous wreck in five seconds, dead in ten.

Even with the minor differences, Equestria’s still really nice. It’s the perfect industrial base to build from, no need for bizarre coincidences to build tech or anything like that, nor am I stuck with nothing. Eat your heart out, Jim Eckert. You too Andrew.

Destroyermen would have been tolerable, but still would’ve sucked. Oh, that’s not an image I like. Being a young female surrounded by two-hundred men of WWII.

It’s nice here. Really it is. Pretty, no smog.

Never thought I’d miss the smell of smog, though.

The ponies are good people, but I’m having trouble trusting them. Got this nagging feeling in the back of my head, telling me not to trust people so blatantly nice.

Got a few visits from the CMC. Real great kids. Sweetie Belle reminds me of myself at that age. Bright but fairly anxious. She actually pays attention when I ramble. Scootaloo’s a good kid. Bit of a troublemaker at times, but she’s always interested when I talk about video games and stuff. Apple Bloom was hard to get a handle on. Always was with the show. They were still adorable though.

Rarity came in after I missed our appointment, but luckily all my clothes were still being washed, so she couldn’t get at them. She implied, not so subtly, that she would get me eventually.

...Then Fluttershy showed up. Oh sweet Cthulhu and all the elder gods themselves, Fluttershy.

So I shot a few velociraptors. After all, they tried to eat me, right? While I’m bedridden, covered in bandages, in a cancer-infested hospital ward, Fluttershy walks in completely livid, ranting about the freaking birds being dead, how I nearly killed the third, and that I need to apologize to the thing.

I need to improve my marksmanship.

Obviously, I explain very carefully that they were going to eat me if I hadn’t fired, and that both of us are predators. If she actually understood the thing(which doesn’t seem sapient), she would know that it would understand; kill or be killed. Then I explained that I wasn’t going to let the bodies go to waste either, it’s just that I wasn’t up to moving.

Here’s where it became problematic. She asked what I meant by not letting them go to waste. Eventually, I admitted I was going to eat them.

Big mistake.

Fluttershy tried to attack me. Fluttershy. I don’t know specifically what she wanted to do, the nurse tackled her before she could get me. Started calling me all sorts of things, “monster”, “animal”, “beast”, “dog”, and all that crap.

I’m surprised I’m still lying here writing this. Andrew might have told them to lay off, or Fluttershy just didn’t tell anyone.

Cthulhu, she was so nice in the show...

Nice...Now that I think about it, I don’t know what that word means anymore. Nice used to mean a fast wi-fi connection, a liter of soda, chips. Now…

I wonder how Andrew managed all this. I’m barely holding together as it is.

You know what’s worse than being trapped in TV land? ~~When you know the plot.~~ Never mind, by Cthulhu, I can’t even write in my journal about half my anxieties!

Wish I could keep an eye on my radio at all times. Hate to think that I might have missed a window home or another human who has since turned off their transmitter.

What does nice mean now?

Can’t sleep well anymore. Nightmares. No need for a lot of sleep. Slowing me down, time better spent designing. Nice isn’t real anymore.

Are we Time’s Eye displacement or Destroyermen? Alternate realities swinging into one another, or across time?

WHY DOES SINGING MAKE ME DRUNK?!

Can’t sleep. What does nice mean?

Noticed that the reality isn’t identical to TV land. Wonder what that’s about. Unusual, but of course a psychic link might offer only vague ideas. f%$#ing Hasbro…

What’s in these painkillers? I’m feeling kinda loopy...Christ, what have I been writing the past five minutes?

Okay, checked with the nurse, I’m taking something called “forced march”.

Man, that does not sound good.

Author’s Note
http://rebuildingcivilization.com/sites/default/files/travel_back_in_time.jpg

Chapter 4

“...and so, what must the answer be?” Melissa finally stopped writing out the equation, and turned around to look at the rest of the one-room schoolhouse.

The foals all were either staring blankly at her, or feverishly scribbling down the math as she stepped to the side.

Briefly, She wondered how her teachers had managed to survive years of doing this, an eternity of thousand-mile stares barely comprehending what one was teaching them.

“Anyone? C’mon, I know one of you has an answer. I don’t bite.”

A foal in the back raised a trembling hoof.

“Yeah, you in the back. What do you think?”

“Three?”

Melissa pulled her calculator out of her pocket, turning the solar-powered device back on. Sure enough, that was what it said.

“Frak, that’s something else I need to make…” she muttered, and said more loudly, “Yes, correct!”

Abruptly the school bell began to ring, and the foals did what students did best; got the hell out of there before they could hear the teacher say any more.

Melissa let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding, and tossed the filed-down piece of chalk onto the old-style blackboard.

She walked over to Cheerilee, the local teacher. The pony had been taking notes along with the students, oddly enough. As the human approached, Cheerilee hastily added “= 3” to the end of the equation before getting to her feet.

“Thank you for your help, Ms. Foster. You seem to have quite the gift for mathematics!”

Melissa replied, “You’re welcome. By the way, do you think I might get paid more for doing this? I mean I spent two hours on this…”

Cheerilee shrugged, “You might. Let’s hope they don’t take it out of my paycheck though.”

Melissa grimaced. Did anyone pay their teachers a good salary? “Don’t worry, I don’t think anyone will blame you. They’ll just think it’s more of my future knowledge.”

Cheerilee breathed a sigh of relief. Melissa had originally come in for a workshop, to demonstrate some modern science, but somehow had found out about the unfortunate state of their mathematical education.

It wasn’t Cheerilee’s fault, she was the only teacher in town. She was still pretty good at teaching it, just...lacking in some areas.

The school board probably wouldn’t see it that way, they would likely have her sacked in an instant.
Or not. Again, only teacher in the town. It paid to be safe either way.

“You might wish to do more workshops in the future, I’ve never seen the students so alert.” Cheerilee suggested, “Especially given your payment. I hope it’s enough for now.” Cheerilee handed Melissa a small sack of coins.

Melissa opened the bag, squinting at the contents. “Holy hell, that’s a lot!” she hissed.

“200 bits, they said.”

“200--?” she looked in the bag again, “How did you fit them all in here?” She shook her head, “Know what, never mind. I gotta go. School bells give me an upset stomach. It’s been a pleasure, Ms. Cheerilee.”

Retrieving her backpack, and a waiting firearm, Melissa rushed out of the building. The weapon was a replica of the cosmonaut weapon, the TP-82. It was of a much poorer quality, and the third barrel wasn’t rifled, but it served its role. “Anduril” was written on the side, continuing her naming tradition.

Instead of walking down the short walkway to the main road, she took a right, hugging the edge of the playground. The children gave her a wide berth, either from her intimidating height, weapon, or association with a teacher.

Peering about, she looked for...ah! There they were. The three little figures she was seeking stood under the shade of a tree, right next to...oh hell.

Memories of taunts, jeers, and insults were shoved back into the mental bottle they belonged in, as Melissa shook her head, and collected herself. Confidently, she adjusted the strap of her new weapon, and moved along the edge of the playground to the tree.

The Cutie Mark Crusaders had evidently moved over to the tree to play a game, or talk over something, or do whatever it was they did, but were apparently disturbed by the arrival of two annoying little--fillies, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. The popular girl and her supporter. The CMC had their backs to Melissa, and Diamond Tiara was saying something; judging by body language, it was anything but nice. Tiara seemed to be holding something as well, a small object she tossed up and down, making the crusaders cringe every time it landed.

Though her mood darkened, Melissa screwed the lid on her nasty memories, wrapping duct tape around them for good measure and instead thinking about what Commander Greylorn would do.

“Hey, girls!” She called out cheerfully, grinning a bit, “You all ready to head out?”

The surprised fillies whipped around, surprised. “Melissa!” Sweetie Belle called out, “We--uh--”

“Sorry you two,” she interrupted, staring at the pair of slack-jawed brats, “But their sisters will kill me if I don’t get them home.“

She faltered for a second as she finally caught sight of the thing Diamond Tiara was holding.

A small tin and wood device. A long hollow cylinder at one point, with an undercarriage and two spoked wooden wheels attached to either side. It was a relatively decent model of a Quick-Firing 4.7 Inch British Army Medium Field Gun. The barrel was painted orange, with the wheels in purple.

Melissa knelt down in front of Diamond Tiara, staring at the toy instead of the filly, “It’s a QF 4.7 inch Gun. A model at least. It was originally a naval gun for the British Royal Navy in the late 1880s and 1890s, but somehow it got turned into a field gun around that same period, straight up into the First World War in 1914.”

She extended her hand, smiling pleasantly, “It’s got a pretty fascinating history I’d be happy to discuss with you, but we need to get going. May I have it?”

Wordlessly, the little bully handed the device over.

Putting her index finger and thumb into a circle, with all the other fingers extended, Melissa touched her thumb to her temple, “Be seeing you,” and stood up.

At her beckon, the crusaders eagerly followed her, falling in stride beside her.

They were forced to walk. Oscar was currently sitting a few kilometers away under a tent atop the hydroelectric dam, several guards hired to protect it while it trickle-charged.

“Wow!” Scootaloo was the first to speak once they were out of earshot, “I’ve never seen anyone do that! Is that some sort of human superpower, mind control?”

“Wait, really?” Sweetie Belle inquired, curious.

“Is that true?” Apple Bloom asked excitedly, as inevitable as it was.

Melissa facepalmed as they continued to bombard her with questions, but laughed, “No, I just did what Commander Greylorn would do.”

She turned the 4.7 gun over in her hand, shaking it. When no rattling reached her ears she passed it to Scootaloo, “I recommend you be more careful with this. I’ve heard far too many stories of bullies smashing what does not belong to them.”

Scootaloo hastily put the little toy into her saddlebag, and Apple Bloom hesitantly asked, “You know about Diamond Tiara?”

“Yep. That frakking brat’s gotta learn some manners.”

The Cutie Mark Crusaders looked at each other, Sweetie Belle mouthing how does she know? To the others.

Both shrugged, and after some silent debate, realized Melissa was looking at them with a small smirk, waiting patiently.

“How’d you know?” Apple Bloom inquired, “We’ve never told anyone.”

“Call it a hunch. How’d she get your 4.7 anyway?”

“Well,” Scootaloo began, “We wanted to try out more of that game…”

“Little Wars,” Sweetie Belle finished, “We wanted to try an idea we had. So we each brought some of our armies…”

Her horn igniting, she opened her bag to reveal a carefully wrapped cloth parcel. As if of its own accord, it unraveled partly to reveal one corner of it; a single poorly-made human figure on a stand. Frozen in time, the figure stood at rigid attention, rifle in parade-ground position, and was painted entirely in white. Next to the parcel was another 4.7 gun, its barrel white and wheels a light purple.

Apple Bloom had brought many more soldiers in her bag. She also brought variously colored projectiles, made to look like miniature artillery shells to be shot from the 4.7 guns.

After the Cutie Mark Crusaders saw her playing Rome: Total War for a few minutes, they had immediately wanted a try. They didn’t know what strategic command was, but by god were they going to try and get a cutie mark in it. Given the many limitations; keyboards built for hands, lack of computers, electrical charge, and many video game concepts in general, such acts would be impossible.

However, Melissa did have one thing for the briefly disappointed fillies. On her kindle she possessed a copy of HG Wells Little Wars, or known by its full title, Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys’ games and books. The famous writer had first published the book in 1913. It was a manual on a fairly complex game one could play using toy infantry, cavalry, and spring-loaded artillery guns. Sexist comments aside, the game had proven fairly popular, and was reprinted numerous times.

It had been in public domain since at least 1988, and completely free on kindle. Thus Melissa downloaded it awhile back. She came from a long line of military servicemen and women, developing in her a keen interest of warfare.

Building model soldiers and spring-loaded cannons had actually proven quite helpful in testing the pony manufacturing capabilities, and she’d been happy to do so. Several dozen cavalrymen, infantry, and a handful of guns had already been made.

“I left my cannon out on the desk,” Scootaloo spoke, snapping Melissa back to reality, “And Diamond Tiara grabbed it.”

“Just to mess with you I take it?” Melissa asked.

“Why does she do anything she does?” Apple Bloom inquired, rolling her eyes, “She just does it to be mean.”

“Amen to that,” Melissa agreed, “Back home there’s a certain type of school we have for certain ages, called high school. There are so many people who do things like that just for that reason.” her free hand balled into a fist, “And some people who make some crap up about you on Facebook and send it to the whole school, then you become a laughing stock, and--”

She blinked, realizing the crusaders were staring at her.

“Sorry. Flashbacks.”

“Your home sounds really weird.” Scootaloo stated bluntly.

“You have no idea, Scoots. You have no idea.”

They rounded a corner, and thankfully bumped right into Andrew and Fluttershy.

Melissa grinned upon seeing Andrew’s attire: he wore a full suit of purple armor, made from the scales of a dragon it looked like. They were likely the scales left over from Spike’s kaiju incident. His face was covered in sweat, and he looked fairly exhausted.

“Well, well, well,” she said, able to control her amusement unlike the crusaders next to her, “Hello, Barney the dinosaur! And to you too, Fluttershy! You guys missed the dragon migration! Be glad I have a video camera. If I can get my projector charged, I’ll show it to you.”

Fluttershy avoided eye contact, but Andrew glared at her, “Laugh it up, Melissa. Laugh it up.”

“Way ahead of you!” she laughed, “Why the he--frell are you wearing that?”

He rolled his eyes, “According to the doctors, I have a habit of getting myself injured. Might as well have told me to wear a bike helmet at all times…”

Melissa cocked her head, her smile faltering, “Well, that’s awful sexist, isn’t it?”

“Huh?”

She unzipped her N7 jacket and revealed a vest of her own made of the same material as Andrew’s armor. It was styled after modern US Military equipment, with loops and pockets and webbing all over the place, perfectly complementing her combat boots and camouflage side cap.

“I got my own MTV made, and they didn’t complain. Meanwhile, you get treated like a child with your equipment.”

“MTV like the cable channel or…?”

“Can it, you…” she hesitated to curse, noting the little fillies standing right next to her, “...you belemnite. Modular Tactical Vest. Anyway, this is just blatant sexism right here, only directed towards the guys instead of the gals.”

She turned and looked at Fluttershy, “What’s the deal with this? Do stallions in your culture need more protection or something?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Fluttershy replied, “What would that have to do with anything? He, uh...just has a tendency to attract trouble.”

“Well, be glad I’m here,” Melissa said, “I imagine you would’ve gotten yourself killed sooner or later, but since I’m here, that won’t happen!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Fluttershy blurted, “Are you saying we haven’t been protecting him?”

“And what makes you so special?” Andrew inquired with a less confrontational tone, “You just have a gun and a car, that seems to be our only difference.”

Melissa’s hand snapped up to her collar. It was frozen for a moment, trembling slightly as she compiled a response, suddenly very nervous for no apparent reason, “I...uh, well, I didn’t mean any offense, I just...and I…Engineering degree!”

She shook her head, “Forget it, Andrew. C’mon girls, I don’t want to get stiffed.”

“Huh?” Scootaloo grunted at the unfamiliar word, “‘Stiffed’?”

“Oh, let’s just go…”

As Melissa and the fillies she escorted moved out of earshot, Fluttershy found the courage to shook a dirty look at the departing human.
.

“Well that was weird…” Andrew commented, before noticing Fluttershy’s expression, “What?”

Fluttershy immediately shrank again, “Nothing!”

“What happened between you two? Tension’s so thick I could cut it with a chainsaw.”

Fluttershy whimpered a little, “I don’t like her.”

“Any particular reason?”

The pegasus flapped her wings to hover up next to his ear. She glanced up and down the deserted street, then whispered like she was part of a conspiracy, “...she’s dangerous. I don’t like having her around.”

Andrew furrowed his brow, a little surprised at her bluntness, “What on earth are you talking about?”

Fluttershy shushed him, somehow he was being too loud. “You were there when it happened! what kind of person would do such a thing?”

“Okay, I’m confused. Where, when, and what?”

“You know…” Fluttershy mumbled, “When she did the...mgfhf…”

“What?”

“The velociraptors...what she did to those poor birds…monstrous behavior.”

It took Andrew about a minute to figure it out, “Oh...she…” he mimed shooting an imaginary target.

Fluttershy winced, and nodded. Her voice raised slightly, “That...beast killed two of them! The third would have died if Twilight hadn’t saved him! His wound was infected too. He’s still sick! Why Rarity allows Melissa to stay in her home, why anypony allows her near foals is beyond me! That monster murdered two helpless--”

Andrew groaned, knowing he had to say something, but regretting what he knew would happen. “Fluttershy, you have to understand, where we come from--”

“But right now she isn’t where you come from! She’s here! We have rules of our own here, and they don’t involve killing helpless animals!”

“Were they really helpless?” Andrew inquired.

“Yes! How could they stand up to her horrible weapon? She’s a menace, and it’s only a matter of time--”

Andrew held up a hand, “Okay, stop. Don’t say you people don’t kill things in self defense, I’ve seen enough to know that if certain critters are bad enough, ponies will have to take them out. And it’s not Melissa’s fault. She didn’t start anything, she was grabbing some salvage for crying out loud! Those ‘helpless creatures’ were intent on eating her, that’s what they do! They surrounded her, and she did what I would have done! Don’t blame her for doing what she judged to be best, shooting a bunch of predators who would have liked nothing more than to have made her a meal! And she hasn’t even been here for more than a few weeks! She’s still used to our home! Give her a chance to adjust! Look at how long I took to adjust!”

He realized he had raised his voice as well, and was breathing hard.

“You never did anything like that.” Fluttershy said, “You’re gentle most of the time, and kind. But her...she’s different. Not just because of the velociraptors,” she added quickly, “There’s something else. Have you noticed the way she walks? The way she speaks and the way she handles that pistol? There’s something off about it, something...”

Andrew hesitated before replying, “No...I haven’t noticed anything odd. She sounds like she’s from the east coast, but other than that, nothing.”

He didn’t mention the flash of silver he saw in Melissa’s collar.

XXXXX

Dropping Scootaloo off in town at her home, Melissa led the remaining members of the Cutie Mark Crusaders back to Rarity’s place.

The rest of the Mane Six wouldn’t be back for several hours, hence why she’d been asked to babysit.

She made sure they had something to occupy their time, a series of movies selected from her small library, and set up on her pocket projector. Once that was done, she decided to step out for a long-awaited shower. Or closest thing she could come to.

Melissa moved into the woods, carrying a towel and a pile of clothes in a ziplock bag. The hot spring in this section of woods, where Rarity got her hot water most of the time, was a perfect--and private-- place to scrape the grime off her skin.

And a place she might pretend it was home, and not a land where talking monkeys were unheard of.

As she walked along the trail, she idly glanced at several of the plants. She halted suddenly, stooping to look at one of the ferns.

Nothing significant about it, just a fern...but something was off. She didn’t know what, it was just...different.

Anxiety, always at the back of her mind, suddenly pulsed through her heart. Anxiety, and aching loneliness, isolation, and sadness. An awareness that no matter how she imagined, this wasn’t home.

Releasing it, she walked away with a bit of a stumble.

Moving to the spring, unnaturally warm for the season, she yanked off her jacket and other cold weather gear.

The water was reasonably heated for bathing, Rarity had said, but Melissa tested it to be sure.

As she pulled off her “Cool. Nerd stuff” shirt, she let out a choking chuckle, “I really do stink!”

The Yuri Gagarin t-shirt underneath had been repaired--though it had taken no small amount of persuasion to keep Rarity from altering it--and was almost back to the way it had been. Key word “almost”. The lower half was patched fairly well, but if one looked close enough they could see the sewing lines, and the areas below them were a slightly different shade of black from the rest of the shirt. Take what you can get, I suppose.

Pulling her boots off, Melissa absent-mindedly withdrew her phone, flipping to her YouTube Red offline mixtape. Whenever she showered she liked to play music. Who didn’t?

Soon enough, The Hobbit(Rankin/Bass) soundtrack spilled from the device’s speakers, as she quickly washed all the dirt and grime off.

Sitting back at the edge of the pool, grimacing at something on her foot, she caught a glimpse at the mountains that rose in the distance over the treetops out of the corner of her eye.

She froze, then looked at the hills in full.

Home…

The damn hills were almost the same shade as the Appalachian Mountains.

Another wave of anxiety and homesickness washed over her, not helped by the realization that Home Sweet Home was playing in the background.

Angrily, she shut off the song, and climbed out of the water, seizing her towel.

Melissa opened the ziplock bag, withdrawing her “fall-in-the-river” clothes. Usually hikers will carry an extra set of clothes in their backpacks for emergencies, and Melissa was no exception. Now it was her only other set of clothes. The main kit of spare clothes was sitting in her laundry basket back on Earth.

Well, the two she had at the moment weren’t her only sets of clothes. They were simply the ones she could wear without risking her safety.

She sighed as she drew out her t-shirt. A blue Babylon Five t-shirt, with the titular station featured across the front along with three starfuries.
One of her flash drives back at Rarity’s contained the first four seasons, several of the movies, and the pilot. So the problem wasn’t that she wouldn’t see it again. The problem was where the shirt had come from.

Her brother, Garrett, had given the shirt to her a few years previously as a birthday present. Their parents were big fans of the show when it first premiered, and passed that onto their children. Melissa may or may not have developed a crush on Sheridan.

Melissa sniffled, and pulled the shirt on with pride. “Let’s hope the station’s luck will rub off on me, Garrett.” she whispered.

Her second layer, a long-sleeve shirt, only deepened the emotions. An Eagle Transporter from Space: 1999 flying over the lost moon, engines blasting silently across the right flank of the shirt. Her dad had given her this one, he’d been a big fan of the show as a kid.

The tears moved silently down her face, and Melissa could not resist. Pulling out her wallet, she looked at a small photo placed within.

Garrett, their parents Douglas and Elaine, and herself, standing together smiling on a bright and sunny day. They stood on a dock, before a massive battleship looming in the background. Grey and powerful and menacing, bristling with weaponry and sensors. Its primary armament, a pair of tri-barreled gun turrets, lay on the bow, pointed into the sky in defiance. A third sat in back, facing away but at the same elevation.

In massive white paint the number “64” was on the side of the hull, just past the anchor.

In the image she held Garrett in a headlock, ruffling her black shirt and blue legged formalwear with the effort. Her regular-suit-wearing younger brother fought back, grinning as he tried to keep his glasses on. His hair was kind of orange, like her own, though only a single color rather than stripes. She didn’t have any stripes in the photo either, her hair was mostly red; the light hitting it made it turn gold.
Her mother Elaine, a well-built woman with a full head of blond hair, had her arm around her husband, smiling, the color of her United States Air Force dress blues contrasting with his grey suit. Douglas was a redhead himself, and was gesturing to the battleship in the background.

The photo had been taken several months previously, after her graduation. To celebrate, they had gone on a brief road trip. One stop had been in Philadelphia.

Melissa’s thoughts wandered from past to present. What was her family doing now? Garrett was supposed to be training as a US Marine aviator, Elaine and Douglas were supposed to be working more on their private company, making profits and slowly becoming a powerhouse.

Melissa sighed, shakily, touching the photo gently. Guys...I wish you were here. I’m all alone.

Alone. She buried her face in her knees, trying to keep her sadness from escaping.

“Damn it Garrett, I wish you were here,” she said aloud, “This place is so frakking frustrating...I’m helpless. I can build guns and cook, but I’m reaching my limits! The plumbing’s a joke, there’s no internet or electricity, I’m running low on toiletries…”

She rubbed her face, “Something’s wrong here. I don’t know what I did, Garrett, but aside from Rarity and a few others, ponies keep shooting me dirty looks.. I can’t buy things without screwing something up, I feel like everyone’s watching me. I feel so alone, so isolated. I feel like I’m intruding every second I’m here, like I’m doing everything wrong.”

Melissa sighed, recalling a quote, “‘I never thought there could be anything worse than being all alone in the night.’ ‘But there is--being all alone in a crowd.’”

Peering at the picture again, she whispered, “You could’ve smoothed everything over, you charming little jerk.”

Growing up, there had never really been a “smart” one of the siblings. They were both bookworms in their own way, but Garrett had always been more charming. Where she wouldn’t understand humor and would get offended at random things, he would laugh and reply with the correct response.

Even so, they had been very good friends when they were young. All through school in fact. Despite his charm, they never really had a big circle of friends in high school. All they had was each other. He kept them from being hated, and she made sure those bullies shut up.

“Garrett, you probably could’ve figured out a way to get us home by now, just by being yourself, you jerk. Heck, you’re a bigger fan of the show than I am.”

He’d been a brony long before Melissa had discovered the show, and while she had quickly gotten herself up to speed, it always felt that he had been two steps ahead of her. Like she knew 99% of it, but he knew all of it. And that somehow made all the difference.

“Garrett, you would have half the town working for us, just like…”

Her sadness disappeared, replaced with anger, “...like Andrew.”

What did he have that she didn’t? He had nothing. Nothing! A liberal arts degree, the clothes on his back, and a cell phone.

What did she have? Oscar, Glamdring, every mobile device she owned, a stockpile of data, a massive library of her favorite films and shows, books, ammunition, food, medical supplies, an engineering degree, training...and yet that bastard was perfectly adapted.

She fumed continuously as she retrieved her filthy clothes.

He was dating Twilight and Fluttershy--she was sure of it--, had the Mane Six all adoring him, the town tolerated him, no food restrictions, plenty of income, everything that a displaced human could want.

What did she have? Several injuries, most of the town hating her, Celiac Disease, one possible friend, and very unstable income.

Their situations weren’t much different, why wasn’t he having a problem? Why was that Antediluvian bulldozer perfectly happy?! She was alone, depressed, and isolated.

“Goddammit!” Melissa roared, realizing she had accidentally dropped her dirty long-sleeve shirt into a mud puddle, “Why the hell is this planet conspiring against me?!”

“Stupid motherfucking miserable molecule of mildew!” she screamed, tears streaming once again, “Why?!”

Grabbing the shirt, Melissa threw it into the hot spring, breathing heavily.

“Well, that’s one sweater that won’t threaten us again.” A voice said in a deadpan tone.

Melissa yelped, realizing that she all she had on was her underwear. Seizing her towel and holding it around her, she rounded with shock and anger on Rarity..

“Cthulhu and all the elder gods themselves, woman! Don’t you people have any sense of privacy whatsoever?!”

It took her a moment to process that Rarity was smiling, and looked in Melissa’s general direction with eyes clamped tightly shut.

“This isn’t good enough, darling? Perhaps I should tie a blindfold as well.”

Melissa tried to hold a straight face, but couldn’t. She burst out laughing. Sitting down on a nearby rock, she laughed until she could barely breath. Tears still came, but perhaps she could pass the redness of her face off as being from laughter.

“I didn’t realize it was that funny…” Rarity muttered, raising an eyebrow, still with eyes closed.

“I know!” Melissa squealed in reply, coughing as she continued to laugh. She quickly pulled on her shirt and pants, “I don’t know why it’s so frelling funny! It just is!”

“Well, don’t leave your clothes sitting in the water, you never know what might happen!” Rarity turned around when Melissa allowed her to. Her horn flared to life, and the soaking wet shirt drifted between them, “And besides, that’s not how you wash clothes. Honestly, you could’ve asked me for help!”

“I didn’t want to impose, plus some of these things might need a washing machine.”

“A what?” Rarity inquired.

“It’s a big machine that you put clothes in, dump soap on, then the machine pours water on and tumbles it around. Then you put it in the dryer which does something similar except it’s used to dry the things.”

The unicorn nodded, and shook out the shirt a few times, “I’d love to have something like that--” she paused, and tilted her head to look at , “That was quite a rapid detailed explanation.”

“Andrew’s not too good at explaining Earth, is he?” Melissa asked.

“Twilight did interrogate him quite a lot, but yes, you are correct. He’s no good at explaining...many things.”

“I can see that. Fragging Jim Eckert impersonator…”

“That’s one he’s quite adept at not explaining; cultural references.” Rarity pointed out.

“I can give you my kindle if you want,” Melissa offered, “So long as you don’t break it.”

“Ah, your magic library! What marvels your people have…I’ve always wondered; what do the cities of Earth look like?” Rarity asked, tilting her head.

Melissa sighed, trying to keep it together, “They’re...they’re absolutely amazing works. Filled with skyscrapers. Buildings taller than anything you’ve seen, and dozens of them filling a city. Glimmering cities made of steel, glass, and stone. Technological marvels filling each and every one of them. Automatic doors, climate control, electric lighting, indoor plumbing hundreds of meters up. The whole of human knowledge at everyone’s fingertips, invisibly transmitted through the air. Automobiles roving the streets, massive aircraft capable of flying halfway around the world soaring overhead, trains traveling underground...And the people...Oh, the people. Millions of men, women, and children, of all sorts…”

Lifting a hand to her eyes, Melissa turned away, “We should get going,” her voice cracked, she cleared her throat, “We have things to do, don’t we?”

As they walked, they discussed the novel The Doomfarers of Coramonde. One of the few physical books Melissa had on hand.

“So how far did you get?” Melissa asked.

“I’ve gotten to around the halfway point, the Lobo vehicle just made it back to Vietnam. You were right, that could have been the endpoint. What happens next?”

“Honestly, I never read past that point. Anything later felt odd. I always find it weird how many dimension/time hopping characters have no connections back home, or are just that willing to throw their own societies away.”

Rarity nodded, “I know! Ponies are always extolling the virtues of previous periods, but just don’t understand the details of those periods, before modern magic, medicine, and technology!”

“‘One must point out...that many who now deplore the oppression injustice, and intrinsic ugliness of life in a technically advanced and congested society will decide that things were better when they were worse; and they will discover that to do without the functions proper to the great systems-- without telephone, electric light, car, lighters, telegrams-- is all very well for a week or so, but that is not amusing as a way of life.’” Melissa struggled to recall the entirety of the quote, but managed it eventually.

“Exactly!”

Ever since Melissa had shown up at Rarity’s door, soaked and on crutches, the two had been roommates. The human had been quite surprised to find that Rarity was a bit of a closet nerd, discovering that they had similar tastes, at least in terms of books.

Rarity had been her first real friend on this world, Melissa would eventually realize.

XXXXX

Hours later, when it was the appropriate time, Melissa walked Apple Bloom back to Sweet Apple Acres without any trouble.

When they got there, however, they found the family barricading the barn. As they arrived, the members of the Apple family ceased their work to look over. Melissa avoided the deadly gaze of Granny Smith, why the old mare was glaring she knew not.

“Hey, you two!” Applejack called out, releasing her hold on a large wooden beam she had been pushing, “You made it just in time!”

“They comin’ again?” Apple Bloom asked, trotting forward.

“Yep. They just can’t leave us alone!” Applejack grimaced, “Hope they don’t damage too much this time…”

“Hope who doesn’t do what when?” Melissa inquired, confused, “What’s going on?”

“Aw, the timber wolves are bothering us again.” Applejack explained, “This pack seems to have it out for us.”

“Huh? Timber wolves?” Melissa scratched her head, “Just kill them, if they’re such a threat.”

Applejack raised an eyebrow, “Sugarcube, creatures back on your world--”

“I’m not talking about terrestrial animals, I’m talking about your timber wolves. Big, made of wood, terrible breath, hard as heck to kill, but killable. Why don’t you just crush them?”

The orange pony was surprised at Melissa’s knowledge, “If we’re talking about th’ same critters, you should know that smashing them only slows them down. Guns don’t do anything, and we’ve never tried magic--”

Melissa grinned, prospects filling her mind, “Stopping them permanently is easy as pie! I can do that if I have an hour to prepare. Do you mind?”

Applejack stared at her like she was crazy, “How could you possibly stop those things?”

“Well, fire.”

“We’ve tried that,” AJ replied, “Then we’ve got a timber wolf running around on fire.”

“Okay, addendum, if I’m using that word correctly. Fire and explosives. I can get both working in an hour, I just need Andrew, some kerosene, a bunch of scrap metal, and Pinkie Pie.”

Applejack was silent for a time, simply staring.

“Trust me, it makes more sense than it seems to. I’ll do it for free or for pay. Guaranteed to keep those things away from your farm.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Applejack nodded, “Alright. We’ll give it a go.”

XXXXX

“Why do you need me again?” Andrew hissed, peering at Melissa through the low light. They both crouched in a dugout in the bushes atop one of the numerous hills on the Apple Family land, looking out over the landscape. The sun had gone down, but still offered some light. In the distance, there were sounds of a pack of wild animals moving.

“We’ve only got two TB-82s, dumbass,” she whispered back, adjusting her helmet and laying her shotgun, Anduril, on the ground, “and you’re the only guy with shotgun experience aside from me! What’s the big deal? You’ve got that armor!” She wore her standard outfit, with the addition of her MTV and a battered fire department helmet. The reflective tape, insignia, and bright yellow was all covered by a woodland camouflage net, courtesy of Rarity. A darkened headlamp was mounted to the front, behind her raised plexiglass visor.

“Don’t remind me…” he grunted. Andrew was still wearing his dragon-skin plate armor, though at Melissa’s advice, several pieces had been stripped from it to lighten the load. He awkwardly held a TP-82, and a Roman-gladius-ripoff lay on the ground beside him, “also, Twilight asked me to take notes. On your tactics or something.”

Melissa lifted a set of binoculars to her eyes, “Of course she did. They’re actual tactics versus just spamming lead all over the place like a certain statue-stealing wannabe-Indiana Jones dino fucker I know.”

“Well okay, asshole, then why’d we need her?” Andrew jerked his thumb back at Fluttershy, a bit angry at Melissa's sudden and unexpected anger, “She doesn’t seem like she wants to be here.”

Sighing, Melissa rubbed the bridge of her nose, “Look, I don’t care about your stupid little love triangle. Fluttershy, you’re the closest thing we’ve got to a combat medic, and you have experience treating shrapnel injuries. There’s no guarantee these things won’t explode the instant we fire.”

“Why the hell are we carrying them, then?!”

“Because, idiot. What, do you wanna take your little sword up against them? News flash, it doesn’t work without a shield! 300 isn’t an example you want to follow for anything! Frank Miller was drunk, high, or all of the above off his ass when he wrote that!”

They stared at her.

“Don’t...call him an idiot…” Fluttershy murmured.

“Well, I’m sorry for being stressed right now!” Melissa said, a little calmer than previously, “But there’s a bunch of timberwolves I’m trying to think about, and I can’t really think about the little niceties right now!”

“Or ever, apparently…” Andrew grumbled.

“What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“Nothing!”

Melissa growled, and banged her head against the ground. She'd never been so happy to see a bunch of bloodthirsty monsters arrive.
Below the hill, the Timberwolves emerged from the gloom, doing their best to eat the apples and wreck up the place.

“Cover your ears.” she ordered, as one of the wolves reached a trap.

It stepped on a large leaf, and heard a click from under its foot. It didn't even have a chance to look down; immediately an explosion rippled through the ground, annihilating the wolf.
In a chain reaction, three other IEDs went off, incinerating two of the wolves, and showering the rest with debris. Shrapnel bounced against the humans’ helmets, making a rapid tinkling sound, not that they could hear it.

Melissa pointed her weapon toward the sky, and squeezed the third trigger. Flares were an old invention, dating back nearly a millennium on Earth, and their use as a signaling device went back to the 1700s. At least, that's what Wikipedia said. The article she'd read during lunch in high school. Several years ago.

Man, I remember the weirdest things... Melissa thought as the flare shot into the sky. Wasn't a star shell, but it was certainly effective in lighting up the forest for a brief couple seconds. There was a sound like thunder, and a group of three Timberwolves exploded into fragments.

“That's our cue,” Melissa grinned, happy as can be as she slammed her visor down, jumped up, and moved to the edge of cover, firing her shotgun once at a dazed wolf. To her relief, the weapon didn't explode, and the ammunition went off fairly well. A Timberwolf’s head exploded, splinters bouncing off the plexiglass, as she turned and shot another.
Andrew followed suit, firing off his flare at one of the wolves, setting it aflame. They could not halt the magnesium ignition.

The remaining wolves charged up the hill, much quicker than Melissa had anticipated.

Standing up out of cover, Melissa reloaded, firing again. Once, twice.

Normal bullets would’ve just torn holes in the beasts, but shotgun pellets were known for being able to shatter wooden sheets.

And these were simply made of a few logs and kindling.

Down the hill, the remaining IEDs thinned out their ranks a bit, as did the continuous firing of Pinkie Pie’s four-pounder party cannon. Apparently the thing could be loaded just as much with grapeshot as it could be with cake.

Hastily, she attempted to reload, breaking open the stock and sending three smoking shells flying. She didn’t have the formula to smokeless powder, nor did she know how a handful of discharges had completely immersed the hilltop in smoke.

Andrew shouted something, before her thoughts became a litany of pain, and she was sent flying across the hill by something hitting her on the side of the helmet.

Rolling to a stop, she briefly felt her braincase, noting that no blood came away. Stupid, stupid, watch your damn back, watch your damn back!

Melissa struggled to get up, and raise her weapon, as a pair of villainous green eyes moved towards her through the smoke.

A sickening clack answered her when she pulled the trigger, and looked down just in time to see one of the shells she had just loaded be crushed underneath the wolf. She hadn’t closed the stock before she had been hit.

A pair of shotgun blasts echoed through the hills, as the dozens of tiny pellets sent the timberwolf straight to hell.

Coughing, Andrew moved out of the smoke. He kicked the remaining logs. “Piece of shit,” he managed to gasp, before going into a coughing fit.

“Thanks!” Melissa called out, coughing herself, as she retrieved a large bottle about the size of a jerry can from its hiding place in a bush..

Upending it, she began to pour out the contents onto the shattered remains of the wolf, a clear colorless liquid. Once finished, she lit a match, and threw it onto the body.

Immediately, the kerosene lit up, limited to the body(hopefully), and the fire diligently went to work making sure it could do no harm.

There seemed to be no other foes around, as the smoke dissipated somewhat, and four ponies came marching up the hill.

In the distance, they could see Rainbow Dash and several other pegasi dumping water onto the fires.

“Well?” Melissa coughed, swatting at the air, “How was that?”

Applejack, and the rest of the Apple family, only stared wide-eyed at her.

“What? I got rid of your wolf problem, didn’t I?” she gestured to the still-burning wolf behind her.

Peering around her, the other family members stared at the fire.

“Hello? Good, bad, what?”

“You...you really did.” Applejack finally said.

“Duh. What’d you expect?” Melissa made a face, “You expected us to fail, didn’t you?”

“No, no!” Applejack quickly said, “Jus’...Didn’t expect this.”

“Well, how else do you deal with gaseous life forms?” she asked, then held up a hand. “Hold on a second,” she started jumped up and down on a branch that wasn’t burning, the wood crunching under her weight.

“Gas-what now?” Applejack inquired.

“The wolves. They’re really hard to destroy because they possess the wood.” She picked up the stick, covered with her size-ten footprints, and held it out. Wisps of green smoke began to drift away. “The only shape they’ve been known to do seems to be timberwolves, maybe that’s the best way to get nutrients. Gaseous life forms don’t exactly have teeth, y’know.”

“What are gaseous watcha-call-it?” Pinkie Pie called out, pushing her party cannon up the hill toward them.

“They’re organisms that aren’t carbon-based, like you or I, but made of gases, like this.” she held up the stick again, gesturing to the wisps of smoke. Understanding this time, the other members of the family drew back, frightened.

“Oh, it’s okay!” Melissa hastened to say, “Less dangerous than…” she coughed, “This freaking smoke up here, man, we’ve gotta fix that formula!”

“You’re darn tootin’!” Granny Smith called out, coughing a bit herself, “These...old...lungs...bleah, can’t talk in this stuff!”

Melissa waved them further down the hill, “Let’s talk over here.”

As they filed by, she called out, “Andrew! Might wanna get off the hill! Need help with Fluttershy?”

“No, we’re fine!”

“You sure?”

“I said we’re fine!” he barked.

Melissa rolled her eyes, “By Cthulhu, crabby much?”

She realized the others were staring at her, “What?”

“Nothin’...” Applejack said.

“Okay then, what’d you think?”

Before Applejack could reply, Granny Smith stepped forward, “It’s effective, you bet yer left boot it is, but lookit the damage it’s done to our orchard!”

She gestured to the uprooted trees, “Those magic thingies jus’ tore out half a dozen trees! Trees that will take a while to grow again!”

Melissa crossed her arms, “Mrs. Smith, it’s not magic. They were Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs for short. I am sorry for the damage, but it was either this or dozens of trees and their harvest ruined. Do you really want that?”

“Least those ones still had roots!”

“Mrs. Smith,” Melissa ground out angrily, trying to stay calm, “Your crop is your lifeblood. How much of your harvest would you have lost had I not intervened?”

“That’s not the point--”

“I repeat, your crop is everything. Your pride is not worth your life. Six trees for good, or half a harvest gone. Besides, you don’t need IEDs every time, all you need is a few of these!” she held up her TP-82, “Cthulhu, why don’t you people have shotguns? Did you just not invent them?”

“Okay,” Applejack tried to interrupt loudly, “I think that’s enough--”

“Shotguns are fine. We jus’ don’t want anything you made, you--you-- witch! We don’t need your kind around here!”

Melissa tilted her head in confusion for a moment, as the gears turned in her mind. “Cthulhu’s left testicle, that’s what this is about.”

She turned to Applejack, “I am respectfully requesting my payment.”

The green elderly pony nearby snarled, “You don’t get--”

Applejack pushed forward a sack of bits, cutting off her grandmother, “Go on, Melissa. Thanks for trying to help.”

Melissa took the sack and stormed off, brushing past Andrew and Fluttershy.

Granny Smith started to say something loudly, starting with “good riddance”, but Applejack muttered something rapidly that Andrew couldn’t hear.

“What happened?” He asked.

Applejack face-hoofed. “Ah am really sorry ‘bout all this, Andrew,” she said, taking a moment to pull off her hat, “Granny and her got in a bit of an...argument.”

“About what?”

“That weapon of hers, Granny said some not-very-kind things.” she looked disgusted, “...She called Mel a witch.”

Andrew peered after Melissa, who pocketed the bags and began to walk off through the orchard.

“Your grandmother really said that?” Fluttershy asked, hesitantly joining the conversation.

“‘Course I did, I told that filthy witch--” Granny Smith began, but was surprised to see her granddaughter shoot her a glare filled with daggers.

Applejack rubbed her face, “Granny, I know you have problems with magic, but doesn’t she already have enough of her own?”

“So? We all have problems! That filly’s gotta learn some manners--”

“Maybe she wouldn’t have such a tough time if people like you wouldn’t around calling her a witch!” Andrew blurted, and facepalmed, “God, what’s the matter with you? I know she can be rude, but so was I when I first showed up!”

He started to walk off, “I’m gonna go talk to her.”

Fluttershy pulled him back, “Wait! We should give her time to cool off, first! She might release any pent-up rage on you!”

“She’s headed into the forest though!”

“Melissa is more than capable of taking care of herself,” Fluttershy assured him, “just give her some time.”

XXXXX

Melissa gently shut the door to Zecora’s hut, flicking her headlamp on as she trudged down the steps.

So she was right. The Timberwolves were more than just wood, there was something else to them. Zecora hadn’t believed it to be a gaseous life form, but there was little else to go on. An energy being didn’t fit the description.

In all likelihood it was just some gaseous life form that emulated wolves in order to reproduce and gain sustenance. The bad breath when there wasn’t much to give off such a smell other than rotting food supported this hypothesis.

Once that was done, she could consult the zebra on their secret projects, things she had been surprised the zebra knew, considering the main Ponyville residents did not. It was reminiscent of some examples of imperialism she recalled, where technologies and medicines were ignored because of the cultures they were attached to.

The sun had long since faded, and her light cut deeply into the darkness, much deeper than any bioluminescent light or lantern around the small building could.

She sighed wistfully at the thought of mass-produced flashlights, light bulbs, electric lighting, and so many things that could have improved upon the dim glare produced by the hut.

Her boots crunching and squishing in the mud, Melissa began the long journey back to Ponyville.

The road was wide, but the edge was very disturbing. There could be anything hiding just beyond the range of her light.

Skinwalkers, nightmarish creatures of Native American lore could be waiting, their vicious howls signaling the approach of dozens more. Eight feet tall, black except for their bone-white head fur, with savage claws ready to devour an unwary traveler.

She jumped at the sound of something thudding behind her, and whirled around, Anduril at the ready.

Nothing revealed itself in the light, and Melissa giggled nervously; her water bottle had fallen out of her pack.

She picked it up, careful to keep her head up to keep a light on her perimeter.

Though she would never admit it, ever since she was a child Melissa had been terrified of the dark.

A minotaur could jump out at her, wanting to do whatever it was they did in the myths.

Slenderman could exist. ‘Nuff said.

Heck, another cockatrice could come out and--

“Johnny, get your gun, get your gun, get your gun,” Melissa suddenly burst out in song, singing as loudly as she could, and put her pistol on safety, “Take it on the run, take on the run, on the run...Hear them calling you and me, every son of liberty. Hurry right away, no delay, go today, make your daddy glad to have had such a lad.”

She quickened her pace, and yawned slightly before slipping back into, “Tell your sweetheart not to pine, to be proud her boy’s in line…”

Melissa grinned as she went into the chorus; though she stumbled a bit onto the edge of the path, “Over there, over there, send the word send the word over there, that the yanks are coming, the yanks are coming, the drums rum-tumming everywhere…So beware…” she said to herself, pausing for a second, “Wait. No, it’s so prepare. Right.”

“So prepare, say a prayer…” around this area of the trail, where the path was the most thin, there was a particularly big tree, its thick roots jutting into the road. She’d have to be careful. “...Send the word, send the word, to beware…We’ll be over, we’re coming oh…” Her boot caught on a root, and for a second she hung precariously on the edge of the trail. She scrabbled at the wooden branch nearby, but it was dead. With a sickening snap, it broke. “Oooohhh Shit!”

Melissa rolled down the hill. Her helmet fell over her eyes and she lost her weapon as she bounced off branches and a rock or two.
She finally came to a stop on something soft. Too dark to tell what it was, and she was too scared and in pain to find out.

Groaning, she fearfully backed up against a tree, yanking out her pistol. Bracing herself against it, Melissa carefully panned her headlamp and the weapon’s light around, searching for anything that might try to eat her.

When nothing jumped out to scare the daylights out of her, she hastily grabbed the small amount of gear that had spilled from her bag, her TP-82, and scrambled back up the hill.

“Johnny, get your gun, get your gun, get your gun,” Melissa sang again resuming her tromp home. “Take it on the run, on the run, on the run…”

She gasped slightly. A massive yawn threatened to escape. “Hear them calling you and me...every son of liberty…”

Melissa paused again a few seconds later, and leaned over onto her knees. “Hurry right away...No delay...go...today...” she yawned, and tried to stand up.

Man, I’m tired...Melissa thought. As that crossed her mind, another yawn escaped. Her strength ebbed away with each passing second. She didn’t even know if she could make it back to Ponyville.

She had to, though. “Make your daddy glad...to…” Melissa didn’t remember much after that.

She didn’t remember making it to the apple trees. All she remembered was waking up eating grass.

“Melissa? What’re you doing back, and this late? I thought you went back to town!” A voice asked.

“Hey…” another yawn, “AJ...It’s only 7:30.”

“Yeah...That’s late.”

“Right. Farmer.” Melissa mumbled, and tried to get up. She fell on her face again.

“Sugarcube, you alright?” Applejack asked, helping her up.

“Yeah, I’m fine just point the way…” she pushed off the pony, and fell on her face. Again.

“No, I don’t think ya are. You look exhausted.”

In fact, she looked worse than exhausted. Her clothes had minor scuffs and scratches, she was nearly drenched in sweat, and her skin was looking off-color.

“I hope you’re not sick…” Applejack muttered. “C’mon inside, You need sleep.”

Melissa struggled again, “Wait, no...I can’t stay...I need to...To…” her head went limp, and she began to snore loudly.

“Celestia, what do humans eat?!” Applejack grunted, as she dragged Melissa towards the barn. Only place big enough to fit a human.

Applejack barely managed to drag Melissa into the barn, and rolled her onto some hay.

“Phasers...Full spread…” Applejack heard the young woman mutter, as she put a few blankets over her. Applejack also made sure none of the elecky-thingies fell out. Those were really important...For some reason.

“Aliens. They always have to use magic to store their info, don’t they? Never stories or books.”

Applejack went back to retrieve some of the stuff Melissa had dropped back in the orchard. When she came back, she tilted her head to the side in confusion.

Wonder what’s with her hair? she wondered. Melissa’s hair looked odd. Shiny, and rigid. When the pony touched it, it wasn’t soft. It was tough.

Aliens. Probably molting or somethin’.

Chapter 5

Author’s Note: There is some original text/dialogue in this chapter lifted from Hands that I claim no credit for.

“Status,” Captain Melissa Foster requested, smirking at the explosions rippling through the enemy ship. She sat in the captain’s chair at the center of a large darkened bridge, all the controls in a semicircle toward a large screen.
She was wearing a black uniform with a red upper body, a gold and silver “A”-like badge on her breast, and four silver pip-like pins along her collar.

“Systems are still at optimal levels,” Lieutenant Commander Twilight Sparkle replied, “The photonic cannon is offline for the moment, however. Damage has reduced its charging capabilities.” She stood at a console to the back of the bridge, near one of the two turbolifts. The logical alien wore a golden variant of the uniform, with two pips instead of one, but also the same badge.

“Ensign, what’s the enemy up to?”

The pink pony standing at the console on the opposite side of the bridge from Twilight tapped several controls enthusiastically, “The Borg ships are pulling back, but the Covenant vessels are moving in. I think they heard about the chef’s cake!” Ensign Pinkie Pie wore her own golden uniform, and with only one pip.

“Lieutenant Dash, bring us around, fire a full spread of drone weapons. Put priority on the Assault Carrier.”

The blue pegasi nodded, and carried out the orders. She wore a red uniform, and sat at a console just ahead of the captain.

There was an abrupt alarm, and a computerized voice called out “Intruder alert; intruder alert….”

A burst of static brought the radio to life, “Bridge, this is engineering!” an accented voice called out, “We’ve got Wraith in the port Pelican bay! They’re headed here--” Lieutenant Applejack’s voice was cut off by phaser fire, “Bridge, intruders in main engineering!”

Foster cursed, and keyed a command, “Andrew, how fast can the Hazard Team get down there?”

“Captain, our troops are spread thin. We’ve got a lot protecting Doctor Fluttershy and the med bay, and more are protecting Rarity’s maintenance crews. I don’t know if we have enough personnel--”

“I’ll be right there.” Foster pulled a PPG sidearm from her waist holster, as her Dinochrome Brigade uniform adjusted from Starfleet settings to combat; taking on the appearance of MJOLNIR powered armor.

“Twilight,” she ordered as she opened one of the turbolifts, “Get on the horn to Atlantis and the SDF-1. Get some Puddle Jumpers and Veritechs out here, we need to pull back and deal with this.”

She entered the lift, “Engineering.” Foster called.

After a second of comforting humming, the lift suddenly stopped. In frustration, she keyed one of the buttons, “Engineering!”

Nothing happened.

“Oh, don’t worry my dear, I’ve made sure no one will disturb us.” a voice that sent shivers down Foster’s spine came from behind her.

Packed in the close space behind her was a middle-aged man in a red Starfleet uniform. He had the biggest smirk on his face, and leaned casually against one of the walls.

“Oh no…” she whispered, and whipped back around, prying open the elevator doors to crawl out onto one of the decks that was exposed.

There was a flash, and the man was in front of her before she could even take more than a few steps down the hall.

“Interesting place. Not how it is normally though.” he commented, glancing around at the simple and functional corridor, exposed paneling on some walls and dark lighting. With another flash, he had the ship’s registry plaque in his hand.

“UNSCDF Voyager, property of the Concordiat of Man.” he read aloud, smiling more, “This is all very charming, but I’m afraid you haven’t done it right! Don't get up, allow me.”

With a snap of the fingers, the PPG, armor, and the entire hallway changed; the metal deck plating was replaced with odd pretty-looking carpeting, the dark wall panels becoming a mix of streamlined displays and smooth grey plates. The PPG became a phaser, and her armor was restored to a Starfleet captain’s uniform.

“Q…” she finally whispered, “What are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here?” he asked with a laugh, “What are any of us doing here?”

“Shut up!” she snapped, “What’s the plot?”

He tilted his head in amusement, “‘Plot’?”

“Yes! What ridiculous thing do you want?” She stepped closer, finding herself forced to look up at him. Q was about a head taller than her.
“You can’t have gotten kicked out of the Continuum again, you’re wearing a captain’s uniform. Little Next Gen, but it’s just about right.”

Stepping back, she rolled her eyes, “Well, you didn’t throw us into the Delta Quadrant, and you haven’t put me on trial. Get off my ship.”

She tapped her combadge, “Engineering, status.” and received no answer.

With a grim smile on his face, Q said in a singsong tone, “I told you...we won’t be disturbed.”

No response. Foster glared at Q, and tapped the badge again, “Computer; locate remaining senior crewmembers.”

Voyager’s computer replied with the usual female deadpan tone, “There are no remaining senior crewmembers aboard.”

“Is there anyone else left?” Foster growled.

“There is one crewmember left onboard.”

Without hesitation, Melissa seized him by the collar, no mean feat given Q’s height advantage. “Bring them back!”

He smirked, “‘Or what, you’ll thrash me?’ Come now, little girl, we both know how this ends. Shall we skip the punch?”

“I don’t know, it would make me feel better. Who’re you callin’ a little girl?”

With a snap of the fingers, he appeared down the corridor, on a lawn chair, with a baseball cap, a foam finger on one hand, and a popcorn bucket in the other. He wore a typical summer outfit instead of a Starfleet uniform, with shorts, t-shirt, and a pair of sandals.

“You, of course! Though not for long.” he laughed again, at Foster’s obliviousness to a joke never told.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, “I’ve got a battle to win!”

“I came here to watch the fun. I’ve always enjoy watching your people squirm.”

Foster rolled her eyes, and scratched her head in puzzlement. The itch was worse, and there was a strange sensation on her scalp. Her eyes went wide as she pulled her gloved hand away. A clump of gold and red hair lay in her palm.

Before she could do anything else, a shot of pain went through her mouth. There were a few tinkling sounds from within, and she felt several loose objects with her tongue. She tossed away the hair, and spat into her palm.

“Ugh…?” she mumbled. Four white teeth, covered in red blood.

“You son of a bitch!” she screamed, diving toward him, but found herself falling to the deck.

She felt a deep heaving sensation, and vomited across the floor. She looked on in horror at the pile of organs lying amongst the bile.

Spasms suddenly took over, and she writhed about in pain. Somehow she retained enough cognitive faculties to look up and see a bit of popcorn fall a few centimeters in front of her face. Q’s feet lay beyond it.

With a foot, Q nudged her face upwards to the point where she could see his mocking-pouting face.

“What...are...you...doing?” she gasped, her voice distorted and barely understandable.

“Moi?” he asked, “Nothing at all. Why do humans always blame me?”

Foster growled, and tried to reach for his feet. A tentacle responded to her command. She managed to keep down what was left of her stomach.

“What’s happening…?” she garbled, feeling her jaw disintegrate.

He laughed once again, “Where’s the fun in telling you? I might give you a hint, if you ask nicely.”

A gargling sound replied.

“I’ll take that. One word, my dear Theropoda. Urquat.”

XXXXX

“Yaaahh!”

Applejack sat bolt upright, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. “What the hay was that?” she mumbled, “Somepony screamin’?”

There were several more screams. Coming from the barn.

Immediately, she leaped out of bed and kicked open her door; Big Mac was waiting outside his own room, blinking in the still-dim early morning light, but ready to follow her.

Applejack nodded once to him, and both moved down the steps, out the door, and rushed to the barn.

Big Mac flung the doors wide, and both immediately recoiled when they saw what was inside.

“What the hay is that?!” Applejack demanded, pointing to the tall figure standing over the spot where Melissa had been sleeping.

It was a little bit taller than the human, almost as tall as Andrew, but more slender, with thinner limbs and a denser upper body. Bony protrusions stuck out from the back of the knees, and most of the body appeared to be covered with metal/bone plates, in particular the face. A pair of mandibles were attached to the sides of the jaws, within which large carnivorous teeth were hidden. Two toes bearing sharp claws struck out on each of the long feet, and as the creature turned towards them, Applejack realized that the three long fingers bore equally-fierce claws. Oddly enough, it seemed to be having trouble standing, the legs were constantly twitching and tensed up.

The two eyes, oddly shaped and more forward-facing, were filled with what seemed to be panic instead of predatory rage.

As the earth ponies approached, it yelped in fright, and held out its claws in fear, babbling incoherently. In surprise at the noise, it grabbed at its throat, the mandibles swaying clumsily back and forth as it continued to spout nonsense.

One of the more bizarre things was that it was wearing Melissa’s clothing. Jacket, pants, t-shirt, and all. Stretched in wrong places, but it all seemed to fit. I wonder…

She held her brother back, “Wait a second. Is that you in there, Melissa?”

The creature that might have been Melissa looked up, and tried to put a hand to her ear. Her hand passed through empty air, and she slapped both palms against the spot her ears should have been, feeling for something that wasn’t there. She whimpered, and looked pleadingly at Applejack.

There wasn’t much doubt; this was a fairly normal reaction to an unexpected shapeshift. She also still moved in roughly the same manner.

Melissa tried to take a step forward, but still wobbly on her disfigured feet, instantly fell flat on her face.

“Easy there, sugarcube,” Applejack said, rushing to her side, “We’ll figure out what happened.”

Melissa shook off Applejack’s hoof for a moment, and with a long alien finger drew slowly in the dirt, “CAN’T UNDERSTAND/SPEAK HELP ME!”

Applejack nodded, then replied slowly and carefully, “Yes! We...will. Just...stay...calm…!”

Melissa shook her head, gesturing to the odd holes where her ears should have been.

Applejack knew there was no getting any sense out of the human. She stuck a hoof under Melissa’s arm, and motioned for Big Mac to take the other, “We gotta get her to Twilight!”

They dragged her over to the wagon, with AJ depositing her inside, and Big Mcintosh strapping himself in.

When Applejack tried to get out, Melissa wouldn’t let go of her hoof.

“Hon, I’m sorry, I’ve gotta go…” but the human still wouldn’t let go. Her fingers clung tightly to something familiar.

With a sigh, but a comforting smile, Applejack pounded the cart twice, “You’ve got this, Big Mac! Don’t stop for anything!”

Her brother nodded, a determined expression on his face.

As they rode, Melissa seemed to calm down a little, but continued to examine the strange changes that had befallen her. She flexed her much-reduced toes, fingers, stared in fascination at the spurs on the backs of her knees, before becoming curious in finding out how her mouth worked.

She stuck out her tongue, feeling it before reaching in and wincing at the changes in her teeth.The mandibles that made up her cheeks flexed clumsily, but they seemed to be falling under her control.

Eventually, she tried to speak. “A-E-I-O-U…”

Her voice was strange, polyphonic. Like two of her were speaking at the same time.

“What are you doing?” Applejack asked.

The human held up a finger, and continued mumbling, “A-’E’-C-D-E-’Eh’-G-H-I-J-K-L-’En’-N-O-’E’-Q-R-S-T-’Eu’-’E’-W-X-Y...an’ Z.”

She groaned, “‘rak...My lifs ‘eel like they’re ‘ade o’ detached whale ‘lu’er!”

Applejack blinked, “What?”

“What?” Melissa asked.

“Ah said, ‘what did you say’!”

Melissa shook her head, “I can’t understand yu!” she gestured to her odd ears. Abruptly she grabbed Applejack by the collar, “Need ‘ey ‘edkit! Roadside e’ergency kit! The ‘ig red ‘ag at Rarity’s! ‘Ed ‘ag in the guest rung! Can...yu...get...it? Nod for ‘yes’!”

Applejack nodded, “If you think it’ll help.” she leapt out of the vehicle, and trotted up alongside her brother, “Big Mac, take her right to Twilight’s. I gotta go and grab somethin’ of hers. Can you explain what happened?”

He nodded for half a second...then shook his head. “Nope.”

AJ shrugged, “Neither can I.”

XXXXX

“Big Mac? What are you doing here?” Andrew asked of the large stallion on the front porch, “I told you before, apple deliveries go to Rarity’s place.”

The red pony shook his head, and gestured wildly to the cart he was dragging.

“What--Jesus Christ!” Andrew yelped, and desperately tried to pull out a knife in panic.

The metallic creature that sat up out of the cart rolled its eyes, “Godden it, yu ‘ucking idiot, it’s ‘e! ‘Elissa!” she tugged at her jacket, and tapped the N7 logo. With that, she stalked towards him, stumbling slightly as she went, and seized his collar, “Where de hell es Twilight?!”

A blast of energy sent Melissa flying several meters, as Twilight quickly galloped outside. “Andrew, are you okay?” she asked, her horn glowing, “What is that thing?”

Melissa moaned, and attempted to get to her feet, falling again. “‘Hut the hell thus that thor?” she demanded, and held out the edge of her jacket again, “It’s dust ‘ee ‘oo idioths!”

Twilight went to stand protectively in front of Andrew, “Why does that creature have Melissa’s jacket?”

Melissa roared with frustration, then calmed herself with great effort, With equally great effort she managed to get her mandibles together to form a few syllables, “It’s...M-me...M-Melissa...What’s...ha--ha-pp-ened to m-me?”

Her words were drawn out, slow and deliberate, occasionally hard to understand. She took another step forward, and fell flat on her face.

After a moment’s hesitation, Twilight and Andrew rushed to Melissa’s side.

“Where were you last night?” Twilight asked, “Rarity said you didn’t come home!”

Melissa looked at Twilight, the plates that had replaced her eyebrows furrowed. She turned back toward Andrew, more coherent than ever, “What’d she say?”

Andrew blinked at her, “Didn’t you hear her?”

She shook her head, “I heard, didn’t understand a word.”

Twilight put on a look of concentration, “Melissa, can you hear me? Can you understand what I’m saying?”

Melissa shook her head, becoming more panicked by the minute, “I don’t know what you’re saying!”

In spite of the situation, Twilight chuckled a little, “Oh, that’s what’s wrong!”

“What is?” Andrew demanded, worried.

“The translation spell is acting up, that’s all.”

“The what?” he queried.

“What’d she say?” Melissa asked, her syllables becoming slightly more clear.

“She said the translation spell isn’t working!”

Melissa rolled her new eyes, “Oh my god, are they translator microbshs?” her ‘B’s’ were there this time, albeit slurred.

“That’s what I--” he blinked at her, “You’ve seen Farscape?” he suddenly nodded in realization, “Of course you have. Geek.”

“One o’ these days, Andrew, we’re gonna ha’ words. Can we get inside?”

Twilight hefted one of Melissa’s arms, “Yes, we need to find out what has happened.”

Minutes later, inside the library Melissa had a large steam-powered device hooked up to her head. It looked like a strainer bowl equipped with several blinking diodes, tied to a polygraph-like machine with a small steam engine attached.

She glanced around at the very unusual untidiness of the library, books tossed about and no little purple dragon.

Instead, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy were there, in varying degrees of surprise.

Pinkie and Dash were growing red attempting to contain laughter. Rarity had been spending time fussing over her roommate, her words still indecipherable, while Fluttershy maintained her distance, but had a thoughtful look on her face.

Shaking her head, unable to be patient, Melissa called out, “Andrew! Mirror!”

Twilight garbled something at her, presumably reassuring. Complete gibberish. “Andrew! Where the hell are you?!”

He came back with a mirror that looked like it had been ripped off a wall. Twilight barked something disbelieving and angry at him, and he winced. Without a word, he handed the mirror to Melissa, and allowed Twilight to yell at him a few more times.

Ignoring them, Melissa tilted the mirror, but hesitated. Fear overwhelmed her.

What if it was a Hordika-type mutation, like in Bionicle? She dreaded the possibility that they might have only a limited amount of time before she could be cured. Looking at her talons only increased the anxiety, the Toa Metru had lost several digits as well.
She shuddered, thinking of what happened to Captain Archer, Lieutenant Reed, and Ensign Sato in Star Trek: Enterprise. Mutated beyond belief, their physiology completely changed to that of an extinct race, so badly mutated that they couldn’t even speak English anymore; they only had the urge to reclaim an ancient city, owned by the original species. Well, no urge to head to Urquat anytime soon…

She facepalmed, wincing as her claws skidded along smooth plates. What was she afraid of? It was her face, and didn’t feel that bad. Sure it felt all wrong, but nothing felt painful.

Melissa shook her head, and rotated the mirror.

That….wasn’t what she was expecting. She reached up with a talon to stroke the bone covering her face; the rigid parts were mixed in with brown-grey cartilage, that occupied the more flexible regions. The bone structure seemed to jut out slightly behind her on the back of her head, but was slightly blunted instead of jagged spikes. Most of the bone covered her forehead, jaw area, nose, cheekbones, and a handful of other areas.

With a sinking feeling mixed with curiosity, scientific interest, and fangirling, she examined her new frame again. It looked fairly strong, swift, and angular. Her two pair of toes tapped a couple times against the wooden floor, and she stared at one hand. She knew what she looked like now.

She rubbed her face; this was no longer an unknown affliction.

Right in the nick of time, Melissa heard an odd buzzing sound in her ear, and swatted at it, believing it to be a mosquito.

“Got it!” Twilight cried happily, “I had to figure out how to recast the translation spell.Melissa, can you understand me now?”

“Are you alright? What’s happened?” Rarity exclaimed.

“Yeah...I can hear you.” Melissa said tiredly, rubbing one of her eyes. Even her pupils were different…

“What’s wrong?” Andrew asked, worried further.

“Nothing much. I just realized nature decided to play a joke on me. A poisonous joke.”

“Poisonous…? You mean you got exposed to poison joke?” Twilight asked in horror, stepping forward in concern.

“I thought so…” Fluttershy muttered quietly.

“Huh?” Melissa grunted inquisitively.

“I didn’t mention it earlier, but you’re right. Look at the mud on your jacket. It’s the same type as that in the Everfree Forest. That, Rainbow and Pinkie’s reaction, and...” she moved forward, and pulled something off of Melissa’s back. It was a bright blue flower, though it did not glow anymore after a night underneath a sleeping human, “...this clue, are proof of that.”

Melissa gingerly took the remains of the flower, “Wow. Thanks, Fluttershy…” she immediately pulled out her phone and took a picture.

Rarity took one of Melissa's hands, peering at it intently, “But what was the joke?” she asked.

“Who cares?” Rainbow squeaked, giggling before she could continue, “It’s freaking hilarious!”
With that, she and Pinkie were completely unable to contain themselves, and began to laugh hysterically.

Taking her hand back, Melissa glanced at Andrew, and asked over the din, “You ever played Mass Effect?”

“No...though I have seen a few videos...why?”

Melissa rolled her eyes, and pulled out her phone. She brought up an image of the cover of the first Mass Effect game, and zoomed in on Garrus Vakarian.

As the other two squinted, Melissa pointed from her face, to Garrus, and back again.

Andrew blinked, opening and closing his mouth, “So...so…”

“Because of my waifu, I got turned into a Turian gal.”

This sent Rainbow and Pinkie into a fresh bout of laughter.

“I don’t know if he counts as a waifu--”

The death glares silenced him, and Twilight peered back at Melissa. She looked from the digital art to the human.

“So...who is that?”

“That’s Garrus Vakarian, Turian ex-cop-turned-vigilante-then-spec-ops-soldier. I romanced him in ME2 and 3, so I guess the Poison Joke wanted me to look more appealing to him or some other bullshit.”

Twilight was already making a list of terms to ask about later. “What can you tell me about what difficulties you are experiencing? Nausea? Headaches? I noticed that your voice seems to have developed something of a flanging sound.”

“Really? Great, now I’m self-conscious. No, I haven’t noticed any odd effects…” her eyes widened, “Hey, where did Applejack get off to? I really need the stuff in my bag.”

“Here ah am!” Applejack called out, bursting in through the door carrying a red bag in her teeth.

“Thank christ, give it here!”

Taking the bag, she put it on her lap, but after considering something for a moment, abruptly pulled out her multi-tool.

She flipped out a blade, and grimaced while she poked the tip of her finger.

“What are you doing?” Andrew demanded, sounding annoyed, reaching out to stop her as she squeezed the wound, and red blood began to seep out. The ponies looked on in horror,

Keeping Andrew away with the other hand, she wiped at the blood with her thumb, and sighed with relief.

“What are you doing?” he asked again, staring.

“I’ve never heard of poison joke affecting one’s judgement center…” Twilight murmured in fascination, scratching her chin as Melissa took an antiseptic wipe out of her kit.

“My thoughts exactly!” Rarity cried exasperatedly, “Darling, why would you do such a thing?”

“Guys, I’m fine, mentally for now at least. I just wanted to know if my blood was still red.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Applejack asked, “And do you have a skin problem or something? That knife is sharp! Strange to keep it in your bag?”

Melissa looked up at the orange mare with an incredulous expression, not looking down as she wiped off her blood, “It’s a tiny cut, you drama queens. What’s the big deal?”

“You cut yourself so easily with just a tiny knife…” Twilight observed, “Do you have the same skin condition Andrew does?”

“No...What skin condition?”

“Are all humans this fragile?” Rarity asked.

“What do you mean fragile?” Andrew asked.

“Such a strange species…” Twilight murmured, writing something down.

Melissa shrugged, “I needed to make sure my blood was red, because we have no idea how poison joke works. Any surgery or autopsy done on people afflicted by this? No?” she applied a band-aid, “So there’s no way to tell if my internal organs were changed as well as my appearance.”

“Okay, that’s gross, but why does it matter?” Andrew asked.

“Because, dipshit,” she continued, glaring at him, ”If my blood’s still red, that means the minerals in my body are still the same. Turian blood is blue. Hopefully, that means my digestive system has stayed the same, and only my appearance got screwed up.”

“What does that have to do with your blood?” Rarity asked.

“Turians have dextro-amino acids, which determines their blood type. In Mass Effect, they can’t eat anything from Earth, I don’t think. I’d need the web to be sure, but the point is, that’s not a problem at the moment! Freaking magic...” she felt her teeth, “‘New teeth. That’s weird.’ Well, least these things are still omnivore oriented, albeit a bit sharper.”
She sighed, now more annoyed than in panic over the loss of her humanity, “Where’s the cure for this stuff? I like Mass Effect and all, but I hate mutating.”

“You’ve done this before?” Andrew asked.

Twilight continued with her earlier questions. “Considering your avian appearance, I was wondering if you were feeling any unusual...ehm, attraction, to birds or…” Twilight grinned in a teasing manner, “To Spike?”

Melissa just gave her an expression of really? before glancing around, “Where is the little bugger? He was in here this morning…”

Her mandibles went slack, “Oh hell...the migration yesterday, that means today--”

“Dragon self-discovery quest. He went off to join the great migration.” Rainbow Dash explained, recovering enough from her laughing fit to put on a serious expression. “Which, by the way, what were we going to do about? Let him go off, alone?”

“What?” The female human demanded, “Aren’t you going after him?”

“Of course we are!...Right Twilight?” Rarity asked.

She smiled, “Leaving him alone was never part of my plan. He’s got do what he’s going to do, but we’re not about to leave him undefended.”

“How?” Andrew asked.

“Oh, oo, oo!” Pinkie Pie cried, raising a hoof, “We get our own dragon!”

“From where...Oh.”

There were several affirmative agreements from the rest of the room, all staring at Melissa.

Instead of resisting, she simply threw up her taloned hands, “Well...Shit. Okay. I’m the only one who can?”

“Yes, with a bit of work you would look like a short female dragon…” Rarity confirmed, “A costume for the rest of us wouldn’t work too well.”

“Why just send Melissa?” Rainbow suggested, “Two heads are better than one!” Eyes turned towards Andrew.

“Nope! I told you earlier, sometimes a dragon’s gotta do what a dragon’s--”

“Cthulhu’s left testicle, you are a dick!” Melissa growled, “What the hell is wrong with you? He’s just a kid!”

“Yeah...but...but...”

Standing up, she advanced on him. Andrew realized that her height had increased. From a head below him to almost eye level. And those claws... “You unbelievable bastard! You ever read a fantasy novel?! Aside from Smrgol, Toothless, Sir Isaac Newton, and Spike, I don’t think there are any dragons that are that nice!”

“Sir Isaac Newton?” Andrew asked, confused, but was silenced by Melissa's glare.

“I agree!” Rarity said, “We need as many ponies--people, sorry, as we can get to help!”

“If you don’t,” Melissa warned, continuing to advance, and raising her arms in anticipation of assaulting him, “I’m gonna reach down your throat and--”

Whatever she was going to say next was lost, as Rainbow tackled her from behind, grabbing her around the neck. The human/Turian tottered for a moment, her arms spinning around and around, while Applejack jumped in and began pulling on Dash. Pinkie and Rarity joined in the fray, and brought Melissa down to the floor with a crash. They each grabbed a limb, trying to stay out of the way of Melissa’s flailing claws.

“C’mon, Andrew!” Twilight urged, “He’ll need our help!”

“Excuse me…” Fluttershy tried to interrupt.

“Look, I am sorry. I don’t mean--”

“...to be a heartless bastard!” Melissa managed to gasp out before Rainbow got her in a headlock.

“...No, to be a huge jerk, but these are dragons we’re talking about!”

“Hello?” Fluttershy tried again.

“Oh, grow some balls you fuck!”

“Listen to me!” Fluttershy roared, silencing and shocking everypony, even Rainbow and Melissa who were busy fighting over the latter’s neck.

Satisfied that she had gotten their attention, she continued, “We are not sending Andrew into a den of horrible, mean, nasty, meat-eating fire-breathing dragons!”

“What about me?!” Melissa demanded, but Fluttershy shot her a look of...surprise for some reason, before continuing “You just can’t send him, you just can’t!”

“We’ll be with him every step of the way, ready to intervene!” Twilight argued, and looked at Andrew with a pleading expression, “Please? I know you don’t want him to go alone anymore than I do. Even so, we don’t have any other choice!”

Grumbling, Andrew looked off to the side for a long moment. “...Fine.” he said finally, “But I swear to god, I had better not be going in purple!” he gestured to the plate armor he wore.

“Of course you won’t be going around in purple!” Rarity laughed, “Why, just purple would be absurd!”

Melissa was finally let up by the mob, and dusted herself off. “I need a few things too. Rarity, what’s the strongest and lightest material you have?”

“On short notice? Silk.”

“Damn,” Melissa turned to Twilight, “I need a map of where he’s likely going. Also, Applejack, I need a couple spools of rope. And a harness, big enough for me.”

“What are you planning?” Andrew asked with a groan, rubbing his forehead.

“If we’re going to be dragons, we’re gonna be dragons! Twilight, where was that book you had back in season 1--aah, that spell you put on Rarity during the whole Sonic Rainboom episode? I just need the spell modified a bit...”

“Okay, let me stop you right there.” Andrew grunted, “You, can get yourself killed, I, will go in on foot.”

“FIne, Barney the Dinosaur. Get eaten for not flying in.”

“Whatever, Big Bird. I’ll stay on my feet.”

XXXXX

Sighing, Andrew reached up to make sure the fins on his helmet were still intact. The neon-green fins.

“Double-dealing no good deceiving pony temptress…” he grumbled under his breath.

“Did not copy that last, over.” came Twilight’s static-washed voice in his helmet, through a primitive makeshift headset. She, along with Rarity and Rainbow Dash were safely away in a hot-air balloon, AKA the observation post, while he clung to the side of a particularly steep hill. Dressed in a suit of dragon-skin armor made up to look like a dragon, with details that included...neon-green fins.

Squeezing his collar, finding the ‘talk’ button on the radio strapped within, he replied, “Nothing, dear.” in a flat tone.

“Might want to leave that on once we get inside,” a voice said from above, “I’ve still got plenty of batteries for the radios at least. Long as Twilight doesn’t screw around with the one she’s got.”

Activating the mechanism hastily strapped to his armor that would leave the radio perpetually on, Andrew glanced up. Perched like the bird she so resembled, Melissa looked down at him with a Turian smirk on her face.

“Need any help there?” she asked, a pair of lizard-like wings extending out from behind her back and stretching, most likely showing off.

Melissa wore her turnout jacket, and several other layers of padding and a handful of dragon scales. A false tail stretched out behind her, disappearing beneath her jacket. While Andrew's face was already immersed with sweat, she seemed surprisingly comfortable. Her equipment had been designed to shed heat, after all. His scales did the same, but were also grown by a creature that was used to high temperatures, and could use the rest of its body and a full covering of scales to maintain homeostasis.

Like some portions of his armor and her turnout equipment, her face had been painted shades of green and purple. Tape had been applied to smooth out everything to conform to her body shape. Every measure had been taken to make her look like a dragon.

Including, at her insistence, functional wings. It used the same spell that had given Rarity a pair of butterfly wings, but the spell wasn’t restricted to that design. The caster could choose whatever style they wanted.
At the moment, they were dragon wings, and acted as though they had a mind of their own, twitching and stretching in the humidity.

“Uh...Yeah. Give me a hand?”

With surprisingly little effort, she pulled him up onto the ledge. Barely a few meters above them lay the lip of the semi-dormant volcano. Steam rose in a never-ending cloud from the crater.

Had there been no magic available, or no dragon scales, they would have succumbed to the fumes or the heat hours ago.

Gesturing at the top with her thumb, Melissa said, “This is where we part ways.”

“What? Why?”

“If I don’t draw attention from you, they might figure out your costume is a piece of shit.” she flapped her wings, and rose up a few meters.

A little shaky as she hovered, she chuckled nervously, then added, “...no offense.” before increasing her altitude.

Andrew’s grumbling form reduced in size as she ascended.

As she gained altitude, Melissa spoke over the wind into her collar, seemingly in gibberish, “Na-as-tso-si Chuo to Ah-na-ghai. Initial insertion ut-zah. Deh-na-as-tso-si is in position. Preparing next phase. Am bi-chi-oh-dah next a-kwe-eh.”

“Hold on...hold on…” came Twilight’s reply,

“Elder God's above, he’s in and I’m going to do the next thing!” Melissa shouted, “Didn’t you write this down?! Or did you already have it when you went through my car!?”

“I did! Didn’t! Agh!”

“She did, Melissa.” Rarity’s voice replaced the other unicorn’s, “We copy your last transmission.”

“Roger that. Na-as-tso-si Chuo out.” Let’s see those dicks back home mock me for memorizing the Navajo codes now!

She knew morse, too.

As she continued to rise in altitude, Melissa heard something crackle on her radio. First, it sounded like a transmission from the observation post, but wasn’t directed at her. Even with her earbuds duct-taped to the holes functioning as ears in her head, it was hard to hear over the wind. Cranking up the volume, she heard Rainbow say, “He’s run into bullies? Kick their tails!”

“Chuo to tse-nill Klesh. Klesh, what’s happening?”

There was no response. Soon however, there was distant yelling, then, “...else want to crack jokes about dragons from Ponyville?”

Soon she heard, “I’m Smaug. Smaug the Dragon. Spike is my little brother.”

Melissa sighed, finally he cares, at the worst possible time.

“Chuo to Klesh. Ba-has-teh. Klesh, you were supposed to wait until I got there.”

“Klesh to Chuo,” he whispered back, “They were about to beat the crap out of him! What was I supposed to do?”

“Wait for further orders.” she replied, as she scanned the distant ground for the party of dragons, “Be advised- Ni-jol-lih Chuo bi-chi-ol-dah.”

“What?”

Melissa ignored the demand, as she leaned forward, and folded her wings back.

Aside from the wind, it was eerily quiet without her wings flapping. Well, it was actually really loud, but that wasn’t the point. Normally there was something, a radio crackling, music pounding, the roar of the passing plane’s engines…

“Shit.” she said, completely inaudible over the wind, as she realized the ground was closing faster than anticipated, Must be the Turian body, can fall faster without as much drag...

Her hand strayed to the cord hidden under the flap of her outfit, but didn’t pull. Instead, she angled herself to go into the spread eagle position. Instantly, her speed dropped noticeably, though it didn’t have the effect she wished it had.

“C’mon, c’mon…” her wings, under mental control rather than muscles, fought against the gusts of wind billowing around them.

Melissa was getting anxiously close to the ground, she could see a dozen pairs of large eyes gazing up at her from the center of the volcano.

Miraculously, the flimsy magic wings managed to get her speed under control, and flapped desperately at an almost-hummingbird speed.

She bent her knees slightly, tucked in her chin, and linked her hands behind her neck with her elbows packed in.

She was almost stopped on her own when she hit the ground.

Melissa awoke to find several strange faces gazing down at her.

“Ugh…” was all she could get out, and the dragons around her all breathed sighs of relief.

“I thought he was dead!” a red one said, “Ha, what an idiot. Who stops flapping that high off the ground?”

“Hey, he’s got the same scales as Spike and Smaug!” another pointed out, “Did you three come here for a family reunion or something?”

“Outta the way!” a familiar voice growled, “Don’t even think about touching my cousin!”

“She’s your cousin, Smaug?”

“She’s a she?!”

A rather shoddy-looking dragon pushed through the small crowd, leaning down to look the dazed Melissa in the eyes.
“Hey, cousin! Wake up! You alright?”

Melissa nodded, and got in on the act. “Oh, get off of me, Smaug!” she said angrily, scrambling to her feet.

She dusted herself off, and flexed the wings experimentally. They seemed to work, and she turned to glared at the rest of the dragons, “What are you lookin’ at?!”

There were a series of “oohs” from the group, and the red one smirked, “Brought your whole family, did you Spike? Needed a girl to help you out?” he mocked, fixing his eyes on Spike.

A clawed arm grabbed the red dragon’s shoulder and spun him around. The dragon, Garble, found himself staring down into the girl's eyes, “Look punk, if you’re going to insult someone, pick on someone your own size.”

Garble blinked in surprise. He had to look down to talk to this...girl, “Whaddya mean, ‘my own size’?” he asked, pushing her a bit. “You three are all a bunch of runts! And you’re a girl! We won’t accept--”

She slammed a foot into the space between his legs, then clocked him with a left hook in the side of the face when he doubled over in pain.
Garble collapsed onto his side, and Melissa easily climbed up and sat on him, deliberately stepping on his hand.

She glanced around at the shocked faces, and winced internally at Spike’s glare. “What’s the matter? Haven’t seen a woman since the moment y’all popped out of your mother? My name’s Saphira, by the way. Don’t mess with me.”

“Got that, Garble?” she demanded, leaning over and driving her elbow into his skull.

“Yeah...yeah, I got it I got it I got it ow ow ow ow!”

“Good boy!” she smirked, and jumped off, landing on the same hand as before.

Now a few members of the gang came forward to help up their leader, but he shoved them aside.
“Guess we can fit one more in the group…” he grumbled, “C’mon guys.”

With that, the majority of the group left, leaving Andrew, Melissa, and Spike to hash out some things.

“Nice entrance.” Andrew said, “Anything else to try and screw this up?”

“Go fuck yourself, I nearly...” she grabbed her stomach, “...I just fell what I can only guess is several hundred meters.”

Their argument might have gone on further, had Spike not cleared his throat.

“Who’s she?” He asked, “I thought it was just Andrew babysitting me.”

“It’s me, Melissa.” She explained, “stumbled into a ton of poison joke.”

“Ha! Nice move!”

“Hey, you’re one to judge! Hanging around with those assholes?” she gestured, “That’s just about the dumbest thing you could do.”

“How would you feel if you had never known your people?” Spike demanded rudely.

“Well, for one, I wouldn’t go around asking the dumbest type of people on the planet!” she exhaled, realizing that her rage was boiling again.

She moved forward, and went on one knee down to his level. “Spike, I know you’re having issues. You want to find your people. But these guys, they’re not good people. They’re the farthest from.” she put a hand on his shoulder, “Why don’t you go and make friends with some other dragons?”

Angrily, he shoved off the hand, “Stop that. You’re not Twilight. Look around! Do you see any other dragons my age?”

“Okay, that was stupid--”

“How does a bird learn how to act?” Spike demanded, “It learns from its nest-mates and its mother! But guess what? I never had either of those things! All I had were a bunch of ponies who thought dragons were the single greatest threat to their way of life!”

“Spike, what’s the matter with you?” Andrew asked in shock, “I’ve never seen you like this!”

“Stay out of this!” the other two roared at him, before Melissa said, “The older dragons would know more about the culture, though--”

Spike cut her off again, “These ‘assholes’, are the only window to my heritage! Last time I met an adult dragon, he tried to squash me! There’s nothing else I can do!”

“What about a library or something?” she demanded, “You could have taken a trip somewhere--”

“Into the heart of the Drakantos Empire?” he asked, “You can’t learn everything from a book, and they don’t take kindly to foreigners! They still remember the Sorventh Wars!”

“The what?”

Spike growled, “See!? You don’t know anything about dragons! And I know only pony history! Who are we to judge?”

“Spike, can’t you see these guys are huge jerks?” there was a well-timed splash signaling one of the teens being pushed into a lava pool, “You don’t want to be around these guys.”

“Gee, I didn’t know that!” he said sarcastically, “Duh, of course they’re jerks! But that might be because of my inexperience with the culture! In pony and human culture this might be rude, but it’s normal to them! How do you know dragon culture isn’t better than yours?!”

Andrew tried to cut in, “Look, Spike, she’s not saying our way is better, it’s just hard for us to accept. See, Melissa, our cultures are different in what things are acceptable.”

“I understand cultural relativism, but that doesn’t automatically mean the other culture’s ways are okay,” Melissa countered, “Slavery may have been okay in the time of the Roman Empire, but it’s objectively a human rights’ violation! There are things that are simply wrong, even if the cultural itself accepts it!”

“So we should just abandon centuries of tradition based on what you don’t like?” Spike asked, “We should all model ourselves on the humans, right?”

Melissa opened her mouth to retort, but stopped. She exhaled again, “Okay. I apologize.”

“What?” Spike and Andrew asked in unison.

“I’m sorry. That was very arrogant of me, and I apologize. I am being ethnocentric.”

“Are you feeling alright? Maybe it’s the heat…”

“Andrew, shut up. I’m fine.” Melissa grunted, “Spike, you have the right to experience another culture if you want to, even more so given your heritage. Go on and do whatever.”

Spike looked from the group of dragons, then back at Melissa. “Really?”

“Really really.”

Hesitantly, Spike moved away to follow the others.

Andrew groaned, “I can’t believe we’re doing this. I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

Melissa suddenly belched loudly, and leaned forward slightly, holding her stomach.

“Hey, you okay?”

“Oh yeah, I’m fine...Really…” she heaved a little. “I just rose to a few hundred meters, then fell the rest of the way, and it’s really hot. I think I might be dehydrated or motion-sick.”

She sat down on a rock, and pulled out a small tube from her collar, slurping water from it. With some of Rarity’s help, they had been able to create several hydration packs and hid them in the costumes, providing coolant in addition to hydration.

“You feel like you’re gonna throw up?” Andrew asked.

“I’m fine...just let me sit here for a second…” she dry-heaved again.

They heard Garble call out, “Hey, fire belching contest!”

“God, don’t say belch…” Melissa stood up and pulled Andrew with her, “C’mon. We gotta keep up.”

They took up a position on the edge of the group near Spike, watching the other dragons try and outdo each other’s fiery breath.

Soon enough, Garble had apparently decided to bug them. He leered at the three, and asked, “you two want in on this?”

He looked at Melissa in particular, “How ‘bout you?”

Andrew replied instead, “No, but Spike probably does. Eh?”

Spike looked at Andrew, blinked a few times, before grinning, “All right!” he rushed forward.

“Ha! Putting your little bro through the wringer, huh Smaug?” Garble asked.

“Yeah, let’s just say I’m not feeling up to it.”

“What about your cousin?”

“She’s fine,” Melissa replied this time, smirking and hoping the nausea wasn’t betrayed, “Don’t need to show off to know who’s the best.”

“What, you too good for us, Saphira? Rich family or something making you too good for us commoners?”

“Yeah, I am too good for you.” Melissa responded, crossing her arms, “Not because of my family, but because it’s a fact.”

“Well then, prove it!”

She raised her fists again, and the larger creature flinched, protecting his groin, “‘I don’t need to make claims,’” Melissa punched him in the stomach this time, “‘I know how good I am.’ I’ll pass on the contest.”

Garble moaned, and managed to sit up, glaring at Andrew who stood there with his arms crossed. “What’re you lookin’ at, Smaug?”

“Might want to leave her alone. I’ve seen her rip a guy’s arm off for stealing a snack.”

The red dragon didn’t listen, and watched Melissa leave, “Uh huh.”

He managed to get to his feet, making himself feel better by throwing out some abuse at Spike falling short of most dragon standards.

Melissa and Andrew stayed out of the various tests, despite Garble being utterly devoted to getting Melissa to join and hazing Spike.
He didn’t succeed in the former, but he did succeed in getting punched and kicked a few more times.

Unfortunately, he was able to satisfy himself with tormenting Spike. Tail wrestling, king of the hill, the little dragon was barely able to put up a fight. Flung across the crater by a dragon ten times his size with his tail, and his small size made it impossible to win king of the hill. It was a miracle he hadn’t broken any bones.

Then there was the worst part; lava diving.

They all assembled on top of the cliff, with the dragons each making an attempt to create a bigger splash. Quickly, only Spike, and the two humans were.

“Too good even for this, you two?” Garble jeered.

“As I recall, you’re the only one who likes swimming in lava!” Andrew countered, earning laughter from the rest of the crew, and growling from their leader.

“I shoved him in a pool earlier.” Andrew explained.

Garble spotted Spike again, who looked nervous as he peered over the edge, “What’s wrong, Spike? This stuff too hot for your little pony fur?”

“I could push you.” Melissa offered, a little too loudly.

“Yeah, maybe you need her to help you swim too!” Garble latched onto the offer.

Spike shot a glare at her, and without hesitation took a running jump off the cliff.

Andrew followed Spike down with his eyes, “Ooh, that’s gotta--” they could hear the clap echo through the crater as Spike slammed into the pool of lava in a belly flop, “...hurt.”

This time, the dragons had no jeers, all wincing and groaning in empathy as Spike floated on the surface for a moment, twitching.

“Was I that bad?” he asked, raising his head.

“No...dude, that was awesome! No pony could have survived that! You’re one tough little dragon!”

As the congratulations went around, Melissa and Andrew gave one another a smile. She activated her radio, “Chuo to Ah-na-ghai. Ba-has-teh. Mission ut-zah. Dibeh has been accepted by the gini.”

“Copy that.” Twilight replied calmly.

“I knew he could do it!” Rarity said.

“Does that mean they’re finished? We can pull Andrew out now...and Melissa, right?” Fluttershy asked.

“Impossible.” Melissa curtly replied, “Cannot extract at present.”

“Are you sure?” She asked.

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“Are you absolutely sure, because it’s quite dangerous--”

“I’m sure. I know you want Andrew back for whatever reason, but I need him, and we cannot extract. If we left now, we’d most likely end up dead.”

“when might it be possible to...dah-de-yah?” Twilight asked.

“Unknown. Will keep you posted. Over and out.”

“But surely he could slip away unnoticed--” Fluttershy interjected.

“Fluttershy--” Twilight started, and they continued passive-aggressively sniping at one another.

Eventually, Rarity came over the radio again, “Copy your last. Tell Andrew he needs to deal with this soon, by the way.”

“Okay... over and out.”

“What was that about?” Melissa asked Andrew.

“Nothing. One problem at a time. Let’s go and congratulate Spike.”

XXXXX

As night fell, they had gathered around a pile of precious gems and a fire pit.

“Alright everybody,” Garble announced, “Scary story time!”

Melissa grinned at this. Precious intel was about to be gained about the world, from another point of view.

“Which ones are we going to tell tonight?” One of Garble’s friends inquired, a little weasly dragon not much larger than Spike, but unlike the little purple dragon, possessed wings, “Huh, Garble, huh? Metal ponies? The scale-less dragons? The Disappearance of Sorventh?”

Garble raised a fist to silence the little suck-up, “Nah, that’s stupid. I’ve got a much better idea, The Fall of Sorventh!”

Obviously a synonym for the little one’s suggestion, but he didn’t complain.

“Years ago, our great leader, Sorventh...” as soon as Garble began, the other dragons all gasped reverently, “Had been cast down by the four-legs during the war.” a few eyes glanced at Spike. They guessed that was some sort of slur for ponies.

“The winners didn’t kill him or anything, all they did was send him to some island, plenty of comfort but only a few guards. His loyal followers busted him out, and he gathered an army from the islands, including my grandfather. He was headed out to go reclaim the empire, and take back Pyre.”

Melissa tapped Spike on the shoulder at that, and he hissed, “Capital city of the Dragon Nation.”

“On their way, they encountered a foe. It looked like a ship at first, but when they got closer they realized it was a sea monster. It was massive, standing high out of the water, with a dozen eyes, and a towering spike on top of its head. No teeth, no claws. It was bleeding, and wasn’t moving. Great meal, right?”

Melissa coughed slightly, to hide the clicks of her radio, and the clack of the perpetual radio mechanism. She ignored the inquiries of the observation post, the double click was a signal to listen and they presumed the worst.

“They attacked...but couldn’t hurt it. They attacked anything vulnerable, but they couldn’t hurt it. Its hide was like iron. Nothing could hurt it, it didn’t even react. My grandfather had a great idea though, go for the eyes.”

“Yeah, that should’ve worked, right?” one of Garble’s friends asked.

“Or did it? He hit one of its eyes, and it flinched.”

“Then what?”

Garble gave a predatory grin, “The army disappeared.”

There was a collective gasp. “What?” several asked.

“It just...vanished. My grandfather was watching the serpent at the time, but something, a massive force, knocked him out of the sky. He fell under the water, and saw a bunch of flashes from underwater. When he came up, they were all gone.”

“Just...gone?” Melissa asked, moving into the firelight.

He leered at her again, “Yeah, just vanished into thin air. Sorventh was gone, his army was gone. Everything just disappeared, except the serpent. It turned, and swam away from my grandfather. It threw up a wake like a ship, but moved faster than any ship ever. He couldn’t fly, and had to swim back to shore. They found him and a few others weeks later, washed up on shore with wings shredded, and shrapnel all over the place, barely alive.”

A hush fell on the teens...Until Melissa snorted, “Pff, that’s not scary at all! The flash could’ve been anything! Could’ve been exploding shell!”

“Oh really? What’s your idea of a scary story, then?”

“Ah, I don’t want to make you piss yourselves. Besides, that didn’t sound like your scariest, what’s your best one?”

Appealing to the frat-boy wannabe’s ego worked like a charm. However... “You can hear better from my rock, Saphira, wanna sit with me?”

“Not even gonna stand near you, smoke-breath. Go on before I break one of your claws off and hang it around my neck.”

This time, it didn’t discourage him oddly enough. His grin grew broader, but he threw up his hands, “Alright! I give up!”

Melissa slunk back into the shadows as Garble began a different tale.

“This one’s my best…” he grinned, “It’s about...humans.”

There was a collective gasp once again. Spike played along with the others, “Huh?”

Andrew locked eyes with Melissa, both trying to keep their expressions under control. Melissa had guessed that they hadn’t been the first transfers, but to hear confirmation…

“Those things...uh...they can’t be real, can they Garble?” the suck-up trembled as he spoke.

“Oh, they’re real. Real as you or me,” Garble’s voice dropped into a sinister tone, “Cold-blooded killers, monstrous things with no mercy. Monsters of a whole other world, that have rended the flesh of countless dragons, long ago. Humans are your worst nightmare.”

The infiltration party was transfixed, for the first time listening to every word Garble said.

“They can kill dragons with just a stare!” One of the red dragon’s friends commented, trying to add to the story, but only receiving a smack on the head as thanks.

“You idiot! They kill people with wands.”

“Wands?” Andrew blurted, but received no odd looks. They were all hypnotized.

“They look like great branches of steel that spew hellfire and metal, easily breaking through our scales and wiping us from the sky.”

The three glanced at each other. So far, everything seemed spot on.

“Those sound like guns,” Melissa pointed out, “Why are theirs so much more impressive?” she recalled that even the dragon military, with their natural abilities, still used cannon and muskets.

“They’re not just guns. There’s no smoke, no flame, and they can fire much faster than anything we’ve ever made. They’re black as night, as light as a feather, and just one can kill as many dragons as an entire company of riflemen could kill.
Humans don’t look like much. They’re these little pink things, like monkeys but with only hair on their heads. On their faces they have fur that hide them like masks of shadow, and have tiny, grotesque ears on the side of their heads. They wear clothing over their entire bodies, sometimes cloth, metal, or even dragon scales,” his voice grew menacing, “They shatter your teeth if you try and bite them. They can see you, watch you anywhere, their eyes glow green in the night, in which they can see as clear as day. They move in shadows, blending in with any environment.”

“What about in the light?” One of the dragons asked. Melissa decided to make her move, when in rome…

“In the light, they’re even worse. They’re strengthened by the light.” she said, swatting off Andrew’s hand, moving to the fire pit and lifting her wings to appear more menacing.

“You’re probably thinking that even with their weapons, you could take one down fast enough, right? Try to imagine catching one in the middle of the forest. You get your first look at one of those little pink things, and wonder what could possibly be so threatening about them? He moves low, scanning the area with his magic firearm. You stay still, maybe he won’t spot you, and you prepare to pounce. But as you stare at him, he stares right back. That’s when the attack comes...not from the front, but from side,” she brought her index fingers together, and clapped them once dramatically, “from the other two humans...you didn’t even know were there.”

She walked past one random dragon, before suddenly getting into his face, “Because they’re pack hunters you see. Even when separated, they can contact one another over great distances. They use coordinated attack patterns and they are out in force today. Then they hit you with their firearms, like this,” Melissa slammed her fist into the teen’s gut, making him fall to the side, coughing, as she turned to the rest of the group, “...Only a thousand times worse. They don’t bother to just kill you like a sword or a musket, oh no…from 200 meters they hit you here,” she pointed to one dragon’s upper chest, “or here,” she pointed to another area on a different dragon, “Or maybe just in the belly, letting your blood spill out for all to see. They make small holes, but massive exit wounds. Then they’ll come over, watching you bleed...and cook you alive.”

Garble, still grinning but with the smile not quite reaching his face, nodded, “Yeah, all of that. They eat anything at all to survive, anything. Plants, fish, bears, pigs, cows, or our brethren. They’ll even take away your mama’s eggs, and cook ‘em up for breakfast.”

“We could sneak up on them on the ground, right?” Another dragon scoffed, “No one expects a dragon to walk, then we spring up and eat em!”

Melissa laughed, a long mocking laugh. “They might be small, but they certainly are smart enough to see that coming. They know how to fight anyone and anything, they’ll see what you’re doing before you even think of it. They are terrifyingly good warriors. Before they invented their wands on their distant home, they had already conquered their world. Exterminated the monsters before they had found any magic at all. That’s how they invented their magic in fact. Without any outside monsters, they had to face their own, and find better ways of destroying one another.”

For a moment, the fear lessened as they blankly stared at her.

“They fought each other. For years. For centuries. For millennium. How many in a fight? They fought by the dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions.”

As the dragons gasped or scoffed at the numbers, Melissa picked up a burning stick poking out of the pit, and began waving it around dramatically, making lines of red in the air, “They fought for control of their world, empires rising and falling to one another...then things got nasty, when they found their magic.”

Garble nodded in agreement, “Really nasty.” was all he could say.

“They waged even bigger wars, fought in the air, on land, at sea, and under the sea. Crossing the oceans were ironclads invulnerable to anything but one another’s magical artillery. Under the sea were craft that could wipe out half the dragon navy in seconds and you’d never know it was there. On the ground they had land ironclads, that could wipe out scores of unprotected humans in only a few seconds.”

“We could still hide from them underwater though, right?” one dragon babbled, “Nothing can hold its breath as long as a dragon, and even those boats--”

“Didn’t you hear what she said?” Garble demanded, “Underwater vessels. Even without those, they have containers of air on their backs, with those they can hold their breath for longer than a dolphin. You cannot run…”

“...And you can’t hide. Those ships can stay down there for months, and find you based on the sounds of your joints creaking.” Melissa finished.

Garble continued, “You can’t even fly away. In the air they have flying chariots, made of steel and trailing fire hotter than any dragon’s fire.”

“They have massive carriers for these things, that stand over the horizon while the flying machines blast you to kingdom come, never even seeing you. And they were just getting started.”

More gasps, a few hugging their tails for comfort.

“Even in the burrows you can’t hide. They can poison the very air itself,” Garble added, “Clouds of noxious green that drift along the ground, not in the sky. The humans move through them easily, but anything else it touches dies. The few who don’t, will suffer further. Your eyes swell shut, you can’t breathe, your nose bleeds, your scales begins to itch and turn the wrong color, great welts spew yellow goop from under your scales, and everything burns worse than if you had touched the sun itself.”

“That can’t be true…” rippled some terrified murmurs.

Melissa scoffed, “He’s not exaggerating in the slightest. The worst part? That’s not even the worst of the stuff. Some of it’s invisible. Say you’re walking along one day, and smell something like musty hay. You can’t see it coming, once you smell it it’s too late. You’re in one of their special poisoned air clouds. In seconds you’re on the ground vomiting, your throat burning as your vision slowly breaks down, and you can’t breath as your lungs begin to collapse.” with a grim smile, she added, “...And they weren’t done yet. There was a much, much deadlier weapon they created, more powerful than anything you can imagine.”

“You see this?” she pointed to the end of her burning stick.

“Imagine that’s a city, bigger than Canterlot, bigger than anything you can imagine. A glistening city made of steel and glass, filled with millions of humans. A single one of these bombs this big,” she stretched her arms out to either side, “could wipe one out in the same time it took to do this.”
She dropped the stick, and stomped out the fire with one blow. The audience winced.

“When this bomb explodes, first it releases a flash brighter than the sun, if you’re looking directly at it you’d be permanently blinded. Then, as a mushroom cloud kilometers high begins to bloom, a shock wave goes through the air, knocking over anything standing and anything flying right out of the sky. It destroys everything, literally setting the air on fire in the process as it incinerates its target.”
Her grim expression was eerie as her eyes twinkled in the firelight, “If you’re unlucky enough to be close to the detonation site, they won’t find a body. You will have been burned away, leaving only your shadow burned into the ground behind you. Worse, the torment isn’t over. The survivors are covered in burns, and the intense heat can fuse clothing to flesh, or tear off scales. Then, a new kind of poison air comes, completely invisible. Yet now the poison’s not just in the air. It’s in the ground, it’s in the dust, it’s in the fires, it’s in the water…” she paused for dramatic effect, “It’s in you. And there is nothing you can do to stop it. It kills all that it touches. In fact, they have a rhyme for the effects.”

She paused dramatically, “‘Over the mountain, the ominous cloud, coming to cover the land in a shroud. Hide in a bushel, a basement, a cave, but when cloud comes a-huntin, no one's a-safe.’ After one of these weapons explodes, the poison crawls across the land, nothing can grow, nothing can survive. Except the cockroaches. Two of their largest countries, on the verge of war, built thousands of these weapons. Able to hit half a world away in twenty minutes. They had enough to wipe out the entire planet.”

“...Why?” Garble asked, looking terrified himself and clearly had no legends of nuclear weapons, “Why would they do that?”

“Why indeed. They kept these weapons pointed at each other for nearly fifty years, on a hair’s edge to firing. If they had, nothing would survive. The destruction of all their infrastructure, food, transportation, water, medicine, that would be bad enough. But the clouds would fill with the poison, killing many of those who survived the initial attacks, as well as all the plants and animals. The nations would no longer exist as the survivors broke down into fighting over remaining resources. As they would fight, all the dust thrown up by the blasts would blot out the sun, killing the remaining plants, and reduce temperatures. They called it nuclear winter. Everything would die, leaving only a world of ruins, dust, and silence. They could turn that power on us at any point they choose. Nothing can stand before them. Their destructive force and thirst for blood is unmatched by anything anywhere. There is no escape. They. Will. Kill you.”

For a brief moment, there was utter silence as her audience was stunned by sheer terror. Then she began to laugh.

Melissa continued to laugh as she walked slowly back to her seat.

“What were you thinking?” Andrew hissed immediately, seizing her, “What is wrong with you?”

“Where’d you get all that stuff?” Spike demanded as well.

“When in rome, dumbass,” she replied, flexing her claws menacingly to get him to release her, “Dudebros are all the same, it’s a pack structure. Gotta prove you’re alpha through intimidation. Beatings and scaring the piss out of ‘em works for that.”

“Alphas don’t exist! That was disproven by the same guy who made that theory!”

“Is now really the time?!”

They jumped apart when they realized Garble was approaching.

“There a problem between you two?” he asked.

“Mind your own business.” Andrew snarled.

Garble stepped back, but, noting Spike and Andrew’s expressions, decided on another course of action.

Garble grinned, “What? You two afraid of humans? Your cousin isn’t.”

“Of course we’re not scared...it-it’s just a fairy tale!” Spike said bravely, “How could anyone take that seriously?”

Garble smirked, “Better watch out…”

The other dragons all talked amongst themselves, and Melissa grinned slightly at how terrified they were...when a red wing draped across her shoulders.

Melissa slowly turned and glared at Garble, who stood there leering at her.

“Yeah?”

“Real nice story, Saphira. Thanks for the help. Bunch of scaredy-ponies, huh?”

She didn’t reply, continuing to glare at him.

“Y’know, I got some real nice gems tucked away somewhere. Want a few?”

Melissa was instinctively ready to say no, but hesitated. When in rome…

“Sure. I’ll get a few.”

His creepy smile grew, “Alright, let’s go!”

They went to an isolated ravine, only a few dozen meters from the group. Garble jumped down and grabbed a large rock, heaving it to the side.

Within a small cavity lay a glittering batch of precious gems. She couldn’t tell what type they were, but they looked like nothing she’d ever seen in person.

Picking out two of the better-looking ones, he handed one to her.

She barely had the chance to hide it and mime chewing before he turned back from hauling the rock back onto the cavity.

“How close are you and Smaug?” Garble asked casually.

“Not too close. Least not in the way you’re thinking. We’re cousins, idiot.”

“Oh, good.” biting off another piece of gem, he walked around the ravine, coming to rest beside her.

His wing fell on her shoulder again, and she glared at him once again.

“You mind telling me what that wing’s doing there?” she asked

“Saphira, I know I’m a bit rough with your other cousin, but he just needs to toughen up a bit. Harmless fun, y’know?”

“Take it off, or I’ll break it off.” said she, coolly, but inside shrieking in fear. Why oh why had she done this? She wasn’t thinking, she hadn’t been thinking...

“I’m not such a bad dragon, y’know.”

“I’m not doing this.” Melissa said, but the wing closed around her, drawing her closer to his jaws.

“Isn’t it lonely? Maybe...”

Garble’s attempt to make out with her ended with a barely-controlled scream. Melissa had grabbed one of his arms, and sank her claws into his wrist. “I said no. What part of that don’t you understand, you little shit?” she hissed, and wincing with revulsion, she grabbed his tongue with her other hand, yanking the bigger creature down to her level.

Unable to call out with much more of a gurgle, he tried to swipe at her with a claw. She merely raised her foot and put her full weight down on it.

“Don’t yell, or I’ll yank off your tongue. Do you understand?”

He nodded rapidly.

“Good. This is not acceptable behavior in society, fucktard.”

He gurgled again, and she squeezed tighter on his tongue. “No, no it’s not. Pressuring someone into making out or sleeping with you is not okay, and is never okay, get that through your thick head. When a girl says ‘no’, she means ‘no’. There is no such thing as ‘hard to get’.”

Garble tried to flap his wings, clearly not listening, but she released his wrist for a moment only to drag down one wing. She put her other foot on his wing and regained her hold on his wrist. He struggled again, only for her to headbutt him in the eye.

“You will not lure a girl like this ever again. You will not manipulate anyone ever again in the future. In the future, they will not be so kind or as foolish as me. They will kill you. You will only be able to sleep with a girl if she says ‘yes’ in those specific terms. Do you understand? Huh? You little bastard?”

He nodded rapidly, and she partly released him, keeping ahold of one of his wings and wrist.

“Now, what have you learned?”

“Ask...girls...out?” he gurgled hoarsely in fear, feeling his tongue for damage.

“Okay. Now, what’s to keep you from telling your gang that a girl did this?”

“Uh…”

She squeezed his wing, and grinned, feeling barely even any satisfaction in injuring this kid. A whimper escaped as she leaned in, “You wanna know the reason why I’m so scrawny, you skeezy-douchebag-fuck? Oh, I know that’s what you thought. Ugly too, probably. I know how I look. It’s obvious you wouldn’t buy my attempts to look normal. But the reason for why I look so weird? I’m related to humans.”

His eyes went wide, “W--what?”

“See, my family tree isn’t just dragon. A distant great grandmother of mine took a human husband. And you know what? They had an egg or two. Smaug and Spike’s parents married into the family only recently, so they don’t have the family resemblance. No clue why they’re so scrawny, but I know why I am. I don’t exactly remember what my abilities are…” her grin became more savage, and she dug her claws in further to his wrist, drawing dark blood and eliciting a low, shrill whimper, “but granny was real specific. I could remember at any moment...and accidentally murder any rotten little bastard who doesn’t know the first thing about how to act like a decent...being. If you tell anyone, I will know, if you even think of telling anyone, I will know. And I will come back, and we’ll try this again.”

She saw more fear than ever in his eyes, “ So, are you going to stay quiet, act normally, and keep my secret? And not try and assault any more innocent women like myself? Huh, you little shitheap?”

“Y-y-yes…!”

“Good boy. Now get out of here.”

Rapidly, Garble took off, and Melissa was close behind, making sure he was still on course.

He returned to his group, and immediately fell back into his normal routine, pushing the others around, and laughing.
No way she’s human, no way...Garble knew, she’s just some uppity girl who got the upper hand on me. Humans aren’t real anyway. Stupid…

Melissa landed near Andrew, while Spike was off with the other dragons.

“What happened?” Andrew asked, noting her trembling with adrenaline, “What were you doing?”

“I’m fine, nothing happened. Leave me alone.” Melissa growled.

“Okay, why are you pissed now?” Andrew demanded, “If something happened--”

Garble gathering the group together interrupted them, “Hey everyone, we’re gonna go on a phoenix raid!”

The dragons cheered, and took to the air, heading outside the crater. Spike was immediately picked up by another dragon, without his escorts’ approval. The humans shot a glance at one another, thinking of the implications, before Garble paused overhead, “Keep up if you can, Smaug!” he shot a glare at Melissa, before speeding off.

“Ah-na-ghai, this is Chuo. The dragons nabbed Spike, but I think we might have our opportunity to dah-de-yah. They’re headed...north-east. Na-na-o-nalth to the forest in that direction. If we can catch up, we might be able to slip away through the woods.”

“Copy that.” Twilight said over the concerns of her fellows, “Will rendezvous as quickly as possible.”
Melissa released her collar, and flapped her wings.

“I don’t think I can walk that far that fast,” Andrew said, “What--whoa!”

Melissa, without warning, had grabbed him by the arms, and lifted off, sluggishly, but rapidly.

“I am in no mood for your bullshit.” she grunted, “Let’s just do this and get back to Ponyville.”

“Melissa, what’s up with you?” Andrew asked, glancing up at her. The adrenaline had faded, but she kept blinking a lot.

“I’m fine.”

“I don’t think--”

“Want me to drop you? Shut the hell up then.”

Andrew opened his mouth, but soon relaxed. No use fighting with the pilot.

They flew at a lower altitude than the rest, but were still keeping up.

Andrew briefly thought back to his relationships. Melissa had missed quite a few of the arguments from the balloon, must’ve turned off her radio. The whole “situation” with Twilight and Fluttershy had to be resolved. It was only making things worse. He knew things weren’t going to be easy to fix. Even with all he’d been through with them, they were still so hard to read. Not like another human.

As he thought, he glanced up at Melissa. Concern filled him as he realized what was wrong with her. Without adrenaline, normal body-language had returned. He noted that she was still shaking, and her heart was beating so fast he could feel it through her hands. She kept blinking, quite a lot in fact.

He was about to ask what was wrong, when there was a gust of wind, a speeding object passing just over Melissa’s head…

Then, an instant later, they were falling.

Chapter 6

Author’s Note: There is some original text/dialogue in this chapter lifted from Hands that I claim no credit for. If you would like more details on Andrew’s bizarre social situation, please visit the original work.

Andrew realized that he wasn’t screaming. There was almost a sense of calm surrounding him.

“Probably should’ve seen that coming.” he stated simply, looking down at the ground far, far below.

Melissa was still holding onto him, not screaming at all. In fact, she seemed to be clinging to him tighter.

“What are you doing?” He asked casually, almost calmly over the howling wind.

“Shut up!” she retorted, and scratched at the panels covering her pockets. Ripping off one panel and letting it fall away, she pulled open the pocket, one of her biggest.
“Grab this, and tie it around your waist!” she passed him either end of a piece of rope to his sides.
“What for?”

“Shut up and do what I say!”

He did so, then with the next pair he gave. He found himself tightly bound to her, her front to his back.

“What now?”

“Close your eyes and pray!”

With that, there was a terrific ripping sound, and their speed dropped dramatically. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop him completely, as he felt himself sliding out of the ropes. Terrified, he snapped his eyes shut.

An old memory reemerged to increase his fear, his brain unable to separate the fear and anxiety both recalled and real. A friend had persuaded him into boarding a ride at an amusement park, that hadn’t seemed so bad from the ground. Upon getting aboard, he found that there was only a single not-well mounted bar to keep the occupants inside. Too late to get off, it climbed sickeningly high, before dropping at a steep angle and sent him into free fall. It had felt as though he would fly out of his seat.

That feeling returned, as he felt himself begin to slide out of the ropes.
If Melissa hadn’t had her arms under his, he would’ve.

“Okay, we’re still alive. You can open your eyes now.”

Andrew opened one eye, and realized that he had stopped sliding. And their speed had reduced dramatically. Looking up, he remembered what had taken them so long to get going when they started off, what had necessitated the balloon.
A massive silk parachute, rippling dangerously in the wind, was proving quite effective in slowing them down, though not as much as he’d like.

He also realized static was coming from his radio, “Andrew, Melissa, do you copy?” Twilight was calling, anxiously.

“Chuo to Ah-na-ghai,” Melissa answered calmly, We’re fine. Hit the silk. but we’re gonna go down hard. Headed for a dirt nap, looks like. I don’t think we’ll be able to rendezvous. Plan B, you’re gonna need to try and get Spike out on your own. Sorry.”

“Couldn’t we come and get you? We might need you!”

“You’ve got Fluttershy and Dashie. You beat the adult dragon the last time, now go!” Melissa roared into the radio, “We’re almost to the tree layer!”

She released the ‘talk’ button, and took another glance at the ground. “Hold on tight. I’ve only done this a few times.”

“What?!”

Their vision suddenly became filled with branches, leaves, and dirt, twigs and branches stabbing them.

Andrew screamed as he felt the ropes detach, but it was a mercifully short fall. It was the impact that hurt.

Andrew couldn’t tell if he had blacked out or closed his eyes again, but in any case he opened his eyes to see a Looney Tunes-style hole in the tree cover shaped like him.
He groaned and sat up, pulling off his helmet and rubbing his head.

Andrew groaned again, as he stared at the blood that came away from his forehead. Grabbing his radio, he managed to croak, “Uh…” he couldn’t remember his callsign, “This is Andrew to...to…” what’s the balloon’s callsign? Not good, very not good.

“This is…” he took a second to gasp, “Andrew, to anyone and anything. Does anyone copy?”

No response. He tried again, and there was still no response.

“It’s broken…” he muttered aloud, facepalming and then wincing, should’ve known. No static. He felt more blood trickling down the side of his face.

He looked around for his fellow crash-lander, and jumped when her voice came from behind, “Hey, Andrew! Over here!”

Slowly, Andrew stood up and turned around. Melissa, pieces of her costume lying shattered below her, was strung up upside-down in the trees, hanging from her parachute harness. One leg was over a branch to one side, her other leg and right arm were caught around a vine or something(he couldn’t tell, his vision was acting up) with her left arm dangling limply. He couldn't see her wings, and upon closer inspection he realized that they had completely disappeared. Many of the camouflage panels so delicately applied to her turnout gear had broken off, leaving it a mess of reflective-green, tan, and purple. Mud, branches, and the blood from several cuts left the paint on her facepaint a complete wreck, her “natural” skin color showing more than anything.

“Hey.” He said, stumbling a bit as he trotted over. He felt rather dizzy, and his arms didn’t sync up with what he wanted them to do.
His stomach suddenly erupted, and he puked at the base of a tree.

Melissa’s eyes widened, “Oh hell...Uh, Andrew? Stay calm, but I think you have a concussion.”

To her surprise, he stayed completely calm. Andrew touched his forehead, and looked at the blood again, “Huh.” A bead of crimson liquid made its way to his chin.

“Okay, buddy, I need you to help me down. Grab my knife, will you? I think Garble wanted revenge or something, so he sicced his goons on me, trying to buzz us or something. Probably wasn’t expecting my wings to be so frail. They disintegrated ”

Andrew nodded, knowing that she was talking but he was just not processing it. He clumsily moved forward to help, but Melissa waved him off with her good arm, “No, no no! I need you to get my knife! My knife.”
She pointed at a small black dagger sticking out of the mud under her head. A scratch ran across her cheek from the blade falling out of her pocket, though her Turian face had deflected the worst of the blow.
“Oh, sure.” he stooped, and gingerly picked up the blade.

As he picked it up, Andrew had the strangest flash of memory.
He could vividly recall stumbling into the steamer trunk in his parent’s attic, and a knife identical to the one he held glimmering in the moonlight. After a scare with a broken grenade, his parents explained that great-grandfather’s WWII equipment was not to be touched.
A Ka-Bar the scabbard had said it was.

“Where’d you get this?” He asked slowly, as fast as his brain could go.

Even more sweat erupted from Melissa’s forehead, and she looked at the vines, rope, and branches tying her up, “I think if I can cut the one holding up my leg first...Hey, hand it over, would ya?”

“Where’d you get this?” he repeated.

“Yard sale. WWII stuff, you know.”

“Yeah, except this thing is brand new. No rust, it's shiny, and oh look! It’s stamped 2010.”

Melissa rolled her eyes, “Dude, what’s the big problem? It’s a hunting knife.”

Andrew squinted at his evidence, and started to explain his other points, until a fresh dose of pain made him clutch his head again. It took him a moment to recall where he was. What was he talking about?
“Oh, Melissa! Sorry!” She was strung up in a tree! Whatever he’d been talking about, probably wasn’t important.

He handed it to her, ignoring the odd look she gave him, and stepped back. Melissa sawed at the vines, and soon enough fell face-first into the mud.

Andrew managed to help her up.

“Now help me find my tail.” As she glanced around, she unzipped her jacket, realizing it was useless as a disguise now and exhaling happily with the release of heat.
Andrew watched her stuff the Ka-Bar into its sleeve. Ka-Bar. Ka-Bar. Heh, funny word...wait, there was something else…

His eyes locked in on the second piece of evidence, loosely dangling from Melissa’s neck with a gentle tinkling. His thoughts came together again.

“Why didn’t you say?” Andrew demanded, pointing at the chain around his companion’s neck, a pair of metal plates with rubber around the edges.

“Huh?” Melissa glanced down at the dog tags, “It’s something I got for fun, y’know--”

Andrew stepped forward and pulled at the tags, “Why didn’t you say?” he repeated, his brain sticking for a moment, “Fake ones get your blood type on these too? Are the fakes made of metal? Also, fake ones always have ‘honorary’ on there. You're a soldier? Why didn't you tell me?!”

Melissa pulled her dog tags out of his hands, and sighed. “Okay...”

She paused for a moment, stooping to retrieve the main part of the remains of her tail.

“You’re right,” she confirmed, “I am a member of the United States military. Corporal Melissa Foster, combat engineer, United States Marine Corps. Semper fi.”

Andrew groaned, rubbing his face, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Melissa broke open the tail on her knee, revealing Anduril embedded inside. “Because you’re too chummy with the ponies. You probably would’ve blabbed to them, and I doubt they would take kindly to a human soldier in their midst.”
She grimaced, “Though I never actually had any combat experience to be honest. I was trained, but I was about to ship out for my first deployment when I got pulled here. I’m as green as they come. I can’t tell if that’s better or worse...”

Andrew shook his head, “I wouldn’t have told them.”

Melissa paused, studying him, Anduril’s stock open and a pair of shells in her claws, “Really?”

“‘Course I wouldn’t have. I am an anthropologist, you know. I know different cultures treat foreign soldiers in wildly different ways. I don’t know how they would react, but we could find a way to ask without alarming them.”

“Oh.” her eyes flickered with some sort of emotion, though he couldn’t tell what it was, “Your background...hadn’t occurred to me.”

The sound of dragons calling out jeers interrupted them. Andrew drew his carefully-concealed sword, as Melissa looped the TP-82’s strap around her neck. “We need to get moving.”

Their oddly calm moods disappeared, and both became quite angry for their own reasons.

Moving swiftly according to Melissa’s compass, they tried to remain hidden, and it seemed for a moment as though they had lost the searchers…

The beating of wings from behind them made both freeze.

The two looked at each other, then whirled about, “I so not in the mood for this bullshit!” Andrew roared. Melissa only screamed in anger, mandibles spread wide as she raised her weapon at the pair of dragons approaching them.

The dragon’s eyes popped wide open, and their glides became an out of control spiral barreling towards them.
Andrew and Melissa hit the deck just in time for the teens to fly over them into the trees behind them, and down out of sight. There was a sickening, wet, bubbly splash.

They moved to the top of the hollow the dragons landed in. It was a mud pit, the end closest to the humans dry and filled with sand. Dead leaves hid the pit’s true nature from anyone who tried walking in.
The dragons were stuck right in the center, when their eyes fixed on the two figures above them.
Instead of rolling around to attack, the dragons shrieked with fear, scrambling to escape.

Melissa rushed forward and flicked her safety off. “Alright, freeze!”

“No no no no get away!” the first, a fat green one, screamed. “Don’t eat us!” The second, a skinny bronze dragon cried.

“Human! Human!” they shrieked intermittently.

Andrew stepped up beside her, “We’re their boogeymen, remember?” he hissed in one ear, and dropped down into the sand.
“Yes, we’re humans!” he roared in confirmation.

They scrambled away as he approached, “He’s wearing Smaug’s skin!”

“That one did the same to Saphira!” they pointed at Melissa, who had lowered her weapon slightly.

“Yes, we killed both of them.” Andrew said, “The male had quite a bit of gristle, too thin for my tastes.” he licked his lips in a fashion similar to Hannibal Lecter, “I’d like one with a bit more...flesh.”

He leered at the green one, who curled up in fear.

“How should we cook ‘em?” Andrew asked, “Stew, or a large course?”

“How about both?” Melissa called out, smirking a little.
“Yes, you're right,” Andrew replied thoughtfully, “Hoplite here,” he couldn’t think of anything witty beyond latching onto the bronze one's scale color, “He’s good for a stew, maybe some sandwiches. But Nessie,” big fat and green, “over here’s perfect for a few meals. How hungry do you feel?”

They wailed, “No, please! We’ll do anything, your honors!”

Dramatically, Andrew raised his sword, “Anything? What use could we have for a couple of miserable dragons?”

“Rides? Hunters for food? Anything you want, oh great and powerful humans!”

Melissa sighed, waving her gun around like it was a toy, “I guess that’s the best they can do.”

She jumped down into the sand, “Alright, dibs on Hoplite. You get Nessie.”

Dragons could fly surprisingly fast when motivated. A sword and a gun to the head help with that.
They flew out at a low altitude, looking for Spike’s party.

Spotting a column of smoke, they were soon able to hear deep growling voices and high-pitched pony voices.

With some minor urging, the two were able to force their steeds into the woods…only to run smack into Garble and his gang.

There was a brief instant where time seemed to slow, all staring as they realized what was coming...then it felt like being hit with a freight train. A flurry of limbs, screams, and wings went by in Melissa's vision, until she rolled to a stop, under one of the stunned dragons.

“Andrew!” Melissa heard the ponies chorus as she crawled out, and her mood only darkened further.

She was just in time to see...Fluttershy kissing Andrew. Lover’s kiss at that, clearly not just platonic.

What the hell--”Oh shit!” a dragon she hadn't realized was underneath her shifted. Figure it out later.

Melissa rushed to stand beside the rest of the group.

“Maybe you can yell at me back in Ponyville. Teleport time?” Andrew demanded of Twilight.

“Uh...uh…Bit of a problem with that...Your parachute wasn’t working as well as you’d hoped.”

“What?!”

“I had to teleport you down to a lower altitude! That, and getting the balloon to move faster…”

Garble growling ended their argument. He stood up out of the pile of his friends, “You’re gonna pay for this you little--”

Rarity had a quick plan, “Oh, our great and powerful human lord and lady!” she cried dramatically, embracing Andrew’s shoulders, clinging to him in a very...odd manner, “You have come to save us!”

The advancing dragons halted, “What?”

“Yes, I have...arrived.” Andrew muttered dramatically.

Melissa was in no mood to play along, and silently set her sights on Garble’s ugly mug.

“Thank you for coming, your worship!” Rarity cried.

“Your timing was impeccable, your honor.” added Twilight, adding to the charade.

“My lord, d-don’t punish us! At least not t-too badly!” Fluttershy said, joining in as well as all three gathered around him..

Melissa cursed again, and desperately wanted to pull the trigger. She could probably at least injure a few of the beasts, she didn’t know how thick their hides were...

“What’s been going on around here?” Andrew demanded.

“They were gonna eat us!” said Spike, pointing an accusing finger at them.

“And do horrible, terrible, naughty things to us, your loyal concubines!” Rarity added.

“Fucking A…” Melissa muttered.

“Yes, yes they were!” Fluttershy added.

“No we weren’t!” hoplite called out.

Garble looked completely befuddled, “Who are you!? What are you?!”

Nessie squealed, “T-t-they’re humans! Real live breathing human!”

Hoplite added “They killed Smaug and Saphira--”

“They killed her? My future girlfriend?” Garble demanded in shock.

“Oh, just...die, you bastard, just...die!”, Melissa almost screamed, “I wouldn’t touch you with a fucking ICBM, let alone sleep with you!”

“What?” Garble grunted again.

“Oh yeah, that’s another ability of humans,” she added, her heart not in the charade, “My buddy here consumed Smaug, but I was Sapphira. I disguised myself,” she gestured to what remained of her outfit, “To infiltrate you all. And boy, were you forthcoming with your nation’s secrets.”

“N-no I didn’t!” Garble stuttered, “I made up humans, they’re fake, they--”

“I am Andrew Shepherd, she is Melissa Foster, and together we are the lords of Equestria!” Andrew roared theatrically, “We have slain thousands of dragons, built a throne out of their bones, turned mountains to dust, and ridden atop the backs of goddesses!”
The others were impressed by how quickly he could come up with that.

The concussion must help his imagination, Melissa thought. She pointed Anduril’s muzzle into the sky, and squeezed the lower trigger. A flare shot forth, lighting up the clearing as it rocketed into the sky. Sparks showered down from the gently descending flare.

Andrew stepped forward, pointing his blade at Garble’s nose. “If you seek to die, you’ve come to the right man.”

Nervously, the dragon backed up, “Uh...we’ll slaughter you! Right now! Right guys?!...Guys?”

Not even the suck-up had remained. The rest had fled a long, long time ago.

With an audible gulp, Garble looked back at the party. “Well?” Andrew inquired.

The frat-boy burst into tears, sobbing and collapsing at Andrew’s feet, begging him not to kill him.

Melissa moved over and shoved her TP-82 against the back of Garble’s skull. “Don’t worry about him, butt-wiping ass-munch! Worry about me!”

She looked up at the group, a cold expression on her face, “Should I remove his ears, first? Or his eyes?”

Melissa pointed her muzzle at the sky again, and reached for the butt of her weapon. With a bit of yanking, she managed to withdraw the TP-82’s final secret. In reality, the device was not just three weapons, but four. The final weapon was a wide slashing machete, made from the finest steel.

She slid it along the side of Garble’s jaw, “Maybe I should start with the teeth instead.”

“Melissa uh, my lady…” Rarity began gently, but Melissa held up a talon.

“Don’t start with me. This fucker deserves everything he gets.”

“Melissa,” Twilight began, ignoring the glare, “I know what he did.”

She tilted her head, before putting her hands over Garble’s ears, “What?”

“You left your radio on.”

Melissa sighed, “Oh.” her rage returned, “Then you know he deserves to pay!”

“Yes, but he’s the only one who knows the origins of the tales! The tales of your people! You used your own knowledge to fill in some of the gaps, but he supplied quite a lot. We need to know where he got the information.”

Melissa rubbed the bridge of her nose, or the flat Turian equivalent. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

She kicked him in the stomach instead, “Where’d you hear about our people?”

“M-my mother,” he squealed, “Humans in chariots, with wands, and--”

“Locations! Now!”

“The Southern Lands! Way far south, she said there were ruins of human war machines down there! They slaughtered us and drove us across the ocean long ago!”

“Oh, how dreadful--I mean, glorious my lord!” Rarity continued playing along, “Will you drive the dragons from these lands as well?”

“Maybe.” Melissa muttered.

Andrew quickly covered, “Nah. I’m feeling a bit merciful tonight. I only came for my agent, my student, and my concubines. If you tell me more, you will be allowed to leave with your wings still intact.”

Rarity laid it on, “...So that our lord may re-establish his kingdom! Oh, it will be glorious, to be draped in fine silks and jewels…”

Spike hissed to Andrew, “I swear to Celestia, if you add a third, I will fight you in the streets!”
“Rarity!” Andrew barked, and made an exaggerated “away with you” wave, typical of comedy and satire of nobility.

“Silk’s overrated. Try nylon. Or polyester, or acrylic…Or kevlar.” Melissa clacked her mandibles together menacingly, “By the way,” she said in a stage whisper, “That’s the kind of cloth that you break your teeth on! It’s immune to bullets. I suggest that if you don’t want to know what doesn’t resist bullets, you keep talking.”

Garble whimpered, “The humans came out of nowhere, a few dragons foretold their arrival in dreams, then wham! They came in, wiped out the first empire’s entire invasion force!” he shuddered with horror, “For years we couldn’t return, they just slaughtered anything that came their way! They protected the four-legs--I mean, the ponies, too! With magic and machines! Killed any dragon that even glanced at ‘em!”

“What?” Twilight gasped, “But-but the records…” She furrowed her brow, “...Fairy tales. Of course. Why didn’t I check?”

Melissa then leaned down to yell in Garble’s ear, “Anything else?”

“Uh...uh...I’ve heard about a place! A temple my mother told me about! In the badlands to the north! Hidden! Her mother found it during the war! It told all about humans! That’s all I know, please don’t kill me!”

“The Everfree Forest?” Twilight gasped.

“That is all, begone worm! Before I change my mind!” Andrew roared. “Melissa, let him go.”

“Are you serious!?”

“Do it!” his tone was level, but his eyes were pleading.

Melissa narrowed her gaze at Garble. His eyes darted from Melissa to Andrew, terrified out of his wits.

“He’s just a kid. Let him go. He doesn’t know any better.”

Melissa angrily reattached her machete, and got off the dragon. Careful to keep her muzzle trained on him, she ground out, “Go.”

“Oh, yes your worship! Thank you o merciful--”

“Ten. Nine. Eight…”

Garble bolted immediately.

“Hey, wait!” Twilight called after him in vain, “He could’ve told us more!”

“I think we took long enough as it is!” Spike said flatly.

“And how long could we have kept up the act? We really didn’t have any time to ask questions at length.” Andrew pointed out.

“What we did learn is quite valuable! You’re like the long-lost prince of a fallen civilization!” Rarity practically squealed, still clinging to Andrew.

“Right, a prince. Of a pile of rust more like…” Spike muttered.

Melissa gritted her teeth at the comments and said nothing.

“The sooner he was gone, the better.” Fluttershy commented, “...It might be good for us to do the same.”

“Let’s get back home…” Twilight sighed disappointedly, “We can talk about all...this.” she glared at Fluttershy and Andrew.

As they started to walk, Andrew abruptly moaned, and clutched his head. Fresh blood began to trickle down the side of his face.

“Andrew!” Fluttershy cried in concern, “What is it?”

Melissa stalked over, tore off a piece of fabric from her costume, and procured a piece of duct tape from nowhere. She brushed Fluttershy aside, and held the fabric to his head, and used the tape to keep pressure on it.

“What happened?” Twilight asked, her thirst for information dissipating, “Is he alright?”

“Shortening the distance between us and the ground still didn’t stop our initial momentum. Based on what happened, the portals do not affect momentum, and so it is conserved between jumps.” Melissa explained without emotion, before she finished the bandage.

“In other words, ‘speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out’. In this case, speedy thing here slammed into the ground at a high speed. He has a concussion.”

“A concussion?” Fluttershy asked, trying to move forward again.

Melissa held her back with a foot, “Stay back. I have medical training.”

“So do I. How did he get a concussion so easily?” Fluttershy pressed, not backing down, “It’s only a little bump on the head.”

The marine looked at her, “That’s the definition of a concussion. Temporary unconsciousness caused by a blow to the head.”

“An impact this light? Your people are so delicate! Are you really sure?”

On cue, he vomited on the marine’s feet.

Melissa glared, “Yes. I am sure. I guess your skulls are harder. Also, I am not carrying his ‘royal highness’s’ ass back to the ship. You lovebirds can.”

“What?” Twilight asked in surprise.

“If you’re gonna have a lover’s quarrel, do it before or after a mission. Not during, and especially not over the radio. Speaking of which…”

She snatched the radio out of Andrew’s collar, peering at the device as she began to walk away.

Rarity spoke up, “You’re the strongest out of all of us, shouldn’t you--”

Melissa stopped, and turned. Her grim face glistened in the moonlight, and her eyes glowed slightly. The Turian face she wore made her look like a monster in the gloom. Her mandibles twitched before she replied, “I have just spent the last few hours cooped up in this costume, covered in paint. I’ve spent even longer looking like a Turian, which was fun for exactly two seconds. One of only three radios we have isn’t working. I am hot, I am sweating, I am tired, I am hungry, so I am going to go home, and make a stew, because I have had a very, long, fucking day.”

Something in Melissa’s eyes made Rarity refuse to pursue the issue any further.

“Make sure he keeps pressure on the wound, and he’ll be fine. Balloon this way?” she pointed, and barely waited for the answer before walking away.

XXXXX

A short hike away, the balloon awaited with Rainbow Dash lazily leaning against it. “About time you showed up!” she called out, “What took you so long?”

Melissa didn’t answer. She was too busy fiddling with the radio. Loose wire, looks like. Durable little things, aren’t these?

She managed to get the wire back into its slot, put the battery case back over the motherboard, and closed the compartment completely. Static gently returned when she turned it back on.
Putting it in her pocket, she noted that she barely noticed her lack of extra fingers anymore. Was this a good or bad sign?

Taking a step toward the balloon... “Whoa--shit!”
Her left clawed two-toed foot swung precariously in mid air, over a massive chasm that appeared as if by magic. She couldn’t even see the bottom, and though it wasn’t that wide, it wasn’t narrow enough to jump.

Melissa pulled her foot back, and glanced around for a crossing, quickly finding it in an old log lying across the chasm.

The ponies emerged from the underbrush, and crossed the log as well. Andrew was the last to cross the bridge, or rather stop at the end of it, and nervously stomp on the end. “Should hold, right? Long as nothing big lands on it?”

A vicious roar, and the beating of wings signaled the completion of the jinx.

“You’re no warlord!” Garble shouted, appearing out of the woods behind Andrew, his bravado returned, “You’re a human runt!”

“Uh...uh…” Andrew mumbled, but brandished his sword, “Fear me!”

“No! I’m not afraid of you!” the teen roared, “I am not! And I’m gonna get revenge!”

Garble opened his jaws wide, putting one of his feet on the end of the bridge as Andrew put up his sword in defense. The log creaked dangerously, and both froze.

The straps of what remained of his costume were pulled back, pulling him off the bridge to fall right on his rear.

Melissa was standing in front of him, staring down the dragon before her with the muzzle of a TP-82 leveled.

“You know what, you football player-looking frat house motherfucker who's-mom-drank-while-she-was-pregnant--you’re right! You shouldn’t be afraid of him! You should be afraid of me.”

Garble recognized the weapon, but being a teenager, didn’t care. He was invincible, right? Who knows how much about the old tales were true, anyway?

“Why should I fear you? A girl?”

“He’s a nerd. A scientist. You know what I am? Your worst fucking nightmare. I am a corporal in the United States Marine Corps.”

She grinned savagely, “We are the best soldiers on Earth, everyone fears us. We are recruited from insane asylums,” for dramatic effect, she gave a hysterical giggle, “and prisons. We’re the most bloodthirsty things on the planet, and we eat xenos filth like you for breakfast. You abominations fester like a plague across every world, but we cannot leave even a single cell alive. ‘He who allows the xenos to live shares in the crimes of its existence.’ ‘If you can confront the xenos, look upon the xenos, even think upon the xenos without revulsion,” she gagged a bit as she glared at Garble, “...Then you are as damned as they.’”

“Why? We didn’t do anything to you!” Garble seemed to be in a talking mood, given that the bridge creaked any time he moved.

Melissa laughed, “‘The filth of the alien and the witch must be exterminated to preserve the purity of the human race, lest we degenerate into abomination.’”

“What about your ponies?” he demanded, pointing a claw at the others, “What about the runt?”

Melissa glanced back, and shrugged, “Some races have proven to be useful in the Emperor’s Great Crusade, perhaps they might even prove to be clean. The little one we picked up to determine exactly that with your race.”

She jumped up and down a little on the bridge, making it shimmy, “You are really not helping your case at the moment.”
Her message appeared to sink in, but Garble shook his head and his bravery returned, “I’m not falling for that twice!” and he took a step forward.

One, two, shotgun blasts resounded through the forest. The bridge completely shattered under the barrage of tiny metal pellets. Another shot, lighter-sounding, as a flare ripped through the webbing of Garble’s left wing. His look of shock lasted only for a moment before he plummeted into the chasm.

Peering over the edge, Melissa called down after him, “I suggest you buy the next girl a drink first!”

She turned around, looking at the shocked faces staring back, “What?”

“You’re a soldier?” Twilight asked.

“Really? No comment on this?” she gestured to the chasm, from which screams were emanating.

“You weren’t simply scaring him, you were speaking in a manner that suggested you were very confident in what you were saying.”

“Nothing about all the xenos crap? I didn’t mean anything by that, I was just quoting Warhammer 40K…”

“You’re right, Twilight.” Rarity agreed, “I distinctly recall the letters ‘U’ ‘S’ ‘M’ and ‘C’ on some of her equipment. An acronym for that corps she described. In our own society, few ponies aside from those with military experience would have distinct knowledge of cannons, tactics, and explosives.”

“You’re both right,” Andrew confirmed, coming out of his stupor for a brief instant, “She’s a marine. She said so herself.”

Melissa glared at him, then sniffed and rubbed her nose. “Fine. He’s right. I am a marine. Corporal Foster, United States Marine Corps, combat engineer. 2nd Marine Division, 2nd Combat Engineer Battalion.”

She yanked out her dog tags, making them jingle slightly, and shrugged, “Only trained. My unit was going to be deployed a few weeks after I got here, we had some extended leave for some reason.”

For a long time, they stared at one another.

“Well? Terrifying, dangerous, what do you think I am?”

Rainbow Dash jumped out of the balloon and trotted forward. Digging into the depths of her fur, she drew out a small brass plate, tied to a leather string around her neck. On one side words were printed, on the other the outline of a Pegasus.

“Equestrian Army Air Force, airmare first class, 16th Air Assault Brigade.” she said, grinning, “Fluttershy was in the same unit, as a medic.”

The other pegasus squirmed, then, standing up from a barely-conscious Andrew, gingerly pulled out her own necklace, “Senior airmare.”

“Pegasi have a mandatory military service requirement,” Twilight explained, “It’s a policy that was enacted during the Sorventh Wars, but...it got caught up in committee and never cancelled.”

Melissa scratched her head. “Huh. So...you’re not scared of me?”

“Why would we be? Marines are cool gals, from the ones I’ve fought--met! The ones I’ve met!” Rainbow quickly corrected.

“What?”

“I--Well, I met some marines in a bar once, off the flat-top Bugbear, but I didn’t throw the first punch! Okay, I broke a few windows, but--”

“Rainbow...!” Twilight grumbled, and the pegasus quickly fell silent.

“So...we’re cool then?” Melissa asked in surprise.

“Of course, darling, what did you think would happen?” Rarity scoffed.

“I’m connected to an organization that’s used nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, stockpiled both for several decades, has been in far more devastating conflicts than you could imagine, and was probably involved in a lot of oppression of native people...and you’re not running away screaming?”

“Do we look like we’re doing that?” Spike asked, “So you’re a marine. Big deal. Let’s just go home already!”

Melissa managed to form a grin, her first actually positive thought she’d had all night, “Alright! Let’s get Andrew...Andrew?”

Andrew was passed out on the ground.

“Ah, hell. That’s never good.”

She nudged him with her foot, “Hey, doofus! Wake up!”

Much to their relief, he mumbled and rolled over.

“Let’s get him to the hospital already.” scratching her head scales, she added, “And get me to whoever can cure this.”

XXXXX

“O’Neill, should we not be assisting Daniel Jackson with the translation?” inquired a deep, flat voice.

“I’m taking this loop off.” another, more average voice replied, with an air of boredom and refusal to care.

There was the sound of a chair scraping.

“I’m telling you, Teal’c, if we don’t find a way out of this soon I’m gonna lose it.” the second voice continued.

There was a pause. “Lose it; it means, go crazy. Nuts. Insane, bonzo, no longer in possession of one’s faculties, three fries short of a happy meal...Wacko!”

Andrew opened his eyes, blinking several times as he finally came out of sleep.

He was in the hospital. Again. His head was killing him. Again. A certain pair of ponies were waiting at the end of his bed. Again.

Twilight and Fluttershy appeared exhausted, as they had the last few times he’d been rendered unconscious. Virtually everything was identical to the last time he’d been hospitalized.

The only difference this time was the redhead/blond woman sitting near them, staring at the wall across from him. Her physiology returned to normal, Melissa sat with her arms crossed and a small grin on her face.

All three were staring at the wall, upon which a screen was being displayed, from a projector mounted somewhere above him. Melissa’s pocket projector he realized, and presumably a sample of her movie collection. He still wondered how she had so much of it.

“Okay, now watch this.” Melissa said, pointing at the screen. A middle-aged man sat working a pottery wheel, dressed in a blue smock and attempting to complete a pot on the wheel. The room just didn't fit in with the scenario, it was built like a bunker, and some sci-fi work station stood in the background. Apparently, the pot had been flawed; it collapsed with a splat into the container mounted underneath.

“He could do anything he wanted, literally anything, and he decided to take up pottery?” Twilight asked.

“That’s not all, keep watching.”

A flash of light went across the screen, cutting to a view of a concrete hallway. As alarms wailed in the background, a man in an air force uniform loomed in the foreground, cocking his ear to the side, while a soldier in camouflage standing in the background stared around the corner, gaping at something.

A cheerful bell rang several times, and the older man from before zipped by on a bike, “Hey, how’s the wife?”he asked of the man in the air force uniform.

“Fine...sir…” the officer replied, before the flash reappeared.

Melissa laughed extremely hard at that, while Twilight tried and failed to stifle a giggle; even Fluttershy let out a squeak of amusement.

Andrew furrowed his brow at the video. His mind was still fuzzy, but…

He tried to say Stargate SG-1, but all he could manage was a quiet, “Ugh-gug--one?” Sitting up, his hair found its way into the projector’s view, attracting their attention.

Their camaraderie evaporated, and all three distanced themselves from one another.

Twilight and Fluttershy did their normal fussing routine, but Andrew’s attention was still partly on the red-and-gold haired marine. He still vaguely recalled Melissa's rage. Though she smiled on occasion, it was hollow, rarely reaching her eyes. Something was quite clearly wrong.

He started out kind of casual, “So...you have Stargate SG-1 in your car? Why?”

Melissa shrugged, “Dude, I was preparing to ship out to the Middle East. I heard about how bad the internet bandwidth is, and my family explained how boring everything could be. Both my parents are soldiers. So I figured I’d be prepared. Managed to burn every other thing in my DVD library to a bunch of USB sticks and my devices.”
She grimaced, “...And I may have gotten a few things through not-so-legal means, by which I mean stealing from netflix. Goddamn, I am gonna get such a fine when we get back…”

After another awkward pause, he dove further in, “Uh...good work with the parachute, I guess. Saved our lives.”

“You wouldn’t have been in danger if you hadn’t sent him in there in the first place…” Fluttershy muttered, a little too loudly.

Melissa’s expression became sour, “Oh god damn it, don’t start that again.”

“It was really dangerous! We knowingly sent him into a place where he could die!”

“Oh gee, maybe we should have left Spike alone! Want to leave him to die with the dragons?” Twilight retorted.

Their earlier arguments were coming to a head. “Ladies…?” Andrew tried to calm them down, but they still ignored him.

“How dare you say that?” Fluttershy demanded, “You know I would never do that!”

“Well, you did your best to do it! Without Andrew--”

“She was perfectly capable of taking on the mission herself. She planned it, didn’t she?!”

Andrew, still suffering from the effects of the concussion groaned as loudly as possible, rubbing his face and leaning back, “Jesus Christ, that is it. I am done. I am done with you two fighting over me…!”

Melissa sighed as Andrew continued to yell at the ponies, and glanced at her laptop’s paused screen. Four figures in desert camo, bearing MP5s and a staff weapon stood outside a collapsing wormhole, the frame held just before the effect vanished.

How would O’Neill deal with this?

The answer was fairly obvious.

As Andrew finally got done telling off the ponies, she released a very annoyed sigh, “What is with you three?”

They paused, turning to look at her. “Excuse me?”

Melissa stood up and repeated, “What is the matter with you people?”

“What do you mean?” Fluttershy asked.

Melissa shook her head, running a hand through her hair to make sure it was still there, “Look at you three. You’re fighting over a bullshit love triangle. A fucking love triangle! This is like something out of a bad fanfic! Though I will give it credit, it’s more original than most. But...Cthulhu's tentacles, this is what you’re focusing on?”

“What should we be doing?” Andrew demanded, “Who’re you to say--”

Melissa made a “time out” symbol with her hands, “Shut up, I have the speaking ball. I’m all for interspecies romances, I mean look at what happened to me. Garrus is hot. What I have a problem with is when you start talking about that, instead of one of the greatest discovery to your species; that we have contacted one another before.”

She pulled out her phone, revealing an audio file displayed on the screen, “I recorded that entire story. Humans have been here, and I bet they’re still around. We’re a resourceful bunch, we earthlings. You guys haven’t mentioned this once since we got out of that jungle, and you’re still fussing over him. Grow the fuck up and deal with this like adults.”

“Excuse me?” Fluttershy asked calmly. The others turned to look at her, but Melissa gave no sign of surprise.

“I don’t think you should be asking what’s wrong with us. What you should be asking is what’s wrong with you? Why are you like this?” she asked, moving around the bed to look Melissa straight in the eyes, “Why are you so obnoxious about this? I’ll admit, this whole thing has gone overboard, but you’re being extremely judgemental. He’s been unconscious for the past few days, and this is the first time we’ve been able to hold a conversation that he can remember! Will you give us five minutes just to talk with him?”

“I agree,” Twilight added, “You’re calling us fussy? You’re the one who’s been throwing tantrums every other day.”

“Your people are important to you, I get that--” Fluttershy tried to say, before Melissa’s glare grew even deeper.

“‘Important’? Of course they are! Of course I’m throwing bloody tantrums, of course I’m angry, anxious, and pissed all the time! How do you think I’m supposed to react to all this?! I risked my life trying to keep Spike safe, and not once did any of you give a flying fuck about me! Butterball, you didn’t want Andrew, and only Andrew, going in, and you only tried to talk him out of it.”

“W-well, you were dead-set on going--”

“Look, I didn’t want to go. I had to go. That’s my job, to protect the innocent. He was just a kid, and none of you could pull it off. But every time I picked up the radio you idiots are more concerned about douchey-mc-nancy here! Cthulhu’s left testicle, what is wrong with you people?! I have feelings too, y’know! I was assaulted and nearly died, and no one gives a damn! All I want is some basic respect! It’s not a great feeling to have the only people you know in the world not give two shits about your health!”

She had had enough, “I can’t take your bullshit anymore. I’m outta here.”
Her hand fell on the doorknob, but Twilight roughly grabbed her by the shoulder, spinning her around.

Twilight had had enough of Melissa’s nonsense as well. Melissa had been feeling sorry for herself for far too long. Somepony needed a wakeup call.

“Melissa Foster, I will admit we’ve been a bit obsessed with Andrew, and I’m sorry if we didn’t take your feelings into account; but you need to realize you are not a foal. You’re a bright talented young mare who needs to calm down and stop freaking out at everything. You are a member of the United States Marine Corps who needs to stop feeling sorry for herself and get off her ass. Of course we’re concerned about you! I’m sorry if it doesn’t feel that way. We know you’re having issues, but you can’t let them affect you like this. You need to calm down and stop being mad at everyone. We can help you, but you just have to stop lashing out like this!”

They maintained eye contact for the longest time, before Melissa finally sighed, “God...I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. I’m sorry…” Tears began to spill from her eyes.

Not expecting it to be that easy, Twilight thought in surprise, how long has she been stressing like this?
She realized that they had more in common than previously thought.

“Melissa, it’s okay,” Andrew said, concerned, “No big deal. You’ve just been a bit crabby.”

“No, it’s not about that. I’m sorry if you thought I was mad at you. I mean, I am, but...It’s not your fault, it’s just…” her presence seemed to shrink as she sank back against the door, rubbing her face.

‘Just what?” asked Twilight.

“I...I just...I just wanna go home…” she whispered. She was completely unable to keep her feelings buried inside any longer. To their surprise, collapsed into Twilight’s arms, weeping.

Weeping for home, for family, for the world she left behind. Weeping for the world of wonders that had vanished in the blink of an eye.

Andrew looked on, feeling a tight sensation in his chest. Old emotions that occupied his dreams and half the waking world resurfaced, and he whispered, “I want to go home too…”

Earth. Neither had really thought about it in such a long while. It was if a switch had been pulled, as the most painful memories, of friendships, family, of their home came flooding back to the surface, hitting them like a freight train.
There was really no better way to describe the sadness that consumed them. How does one describe the loss of their entire world, everyone and everything they’ve ever known?

XXXXX

Melissa sat in the waiting room, sniffling a bit and staring into her phone. Try as she might, she couldn’t forget Twilight’s words.

It was bound to happen at some point. She had finally broken down; everything that had remained hidden since the day she lost Earth had come to light. Her sadness, loneliness, and frustration that had been affecting her, released.

Dammit, why'd you have to do that? Embarrassment now filled her mind, around a bunch of strangers? You're a marine, for crying out loud!
Twilight had been right. She'd been acting like a jerk and a whiny child for too long. But why did she have to break down like a baby?

Her subconscious answered, because I'm homesick.

I never get homesick! Last time was when I was ten at summer camp! I was ready to go to the flipping Middle East!

Except that was with people you knew, and on Earth. This is a different planet entirely. At least they were strangers and not, I don't know, the squad! Her brain pointed out.

No one in Stargate: Atlantis got homesick!

Did you even watch the show?

Oh...Messages from Pegasus. Right.

Exactly...You know they weren't mad at us.

“That's what's killing me…” Melissa muttered aloud.

They're nice like that, Her subconscious pointed out, and Twilight did have a point.

Yeah, yeah…

Her frustration grew as other thoughts swirled to the surface. Andrew had grown used to the idea(or so it seemed) of this new land, where few other humans were, and the possibility of never going home.

She hadn’t given up hope though, and being the only one who really believed, who knew they would make it home, only saddened her further. She couldn’t say anything that would change their minds.

You can’t keep throwing tantrums, her subconscious interrupted again, you know that.

How could anyone possibly respect her if she was constantly breaking down? She had to do something about that...

Melissa heard footsteps, and did her best to hide her emotions as she glanced up. Of all the ponies, Rainbow Dash stood there, a curious yet concerned expression on her face.

“What are you doing out here? I thought you’d be hanging around with Andrew. They didn’t really give me a straight answer when I asked.”

She sighed, and avoided eye contact.

Rainbow shrugged, “Okay, I won’t pry.”

Melissa looked down at the ground, and managed to croak, “Thanks.”

Dash cringed slightly at the tone. She had always been bad at helping sad ponies deal with the emotional parts...but if there was one thing she knew how to do, it was take somepony’s mind off a problem.

“Alright,” she said, pulling the human’s arm, “C’mon, get up.”

“Huh?”

Rainbow explained, “Let’s get you out of here. You’ve been stuck in here for days, you need some fresh air.”

“B-b-but…” Dash heaved Melissa to her feet, dragging her out the door.

“I have to be brutally honest here, you look terrible. You haven’t gotten any good sleep or food in days!” Rainbow noticed that Melissa didn’t react badly to the comments. Weird… “I know just the thing! Can I buy you a drink?”

Melissa glanced down at the pegasus, “What.”

Rainbow Dash returned her gaze with confused amusement, “Let’s go to Sugarcube Corner, get a drink and a snack. I’m hungry, and you need lots of sugar. What’d you think I meant?”

“Never mind…”

XXXXX

Journal Entry:

God, I’ve been an ass.

I mean really, why the hell have I been whining so much lately?

...Well, I have had cause to. Near-assault by a dragon, allergic reaction to poison joke, nearly getting killed several times, and being displaced.

But I guess demanding that they worry about the other stuff immediately instead of Andrew may have been going a bit too far. And I think I’ve been lashing out at people far too often.

Twilight may have gone a bit far as well, but while we’re both in the right, she’s still got a point.

I’ve gotta calm down. There’s plenty of time to find the way home.

Captain Reddy wouldn’t wallow in self-pity, he didn’t. He made sure crew was safe, kept discipline up, fought back against the Grik, and worried later.
Admiral Kolhammer, though he missed his wife so, kept his fleet intact, alive, and didn’t let anyone get rid of the “inconvenient” crew members.

Now, there are several things we need to do.

Recover more information on human enclaves to the south.

Investigate the “temple” to the north.

Find out information about surviving human colonies.

Garble said the temple told all sorts of stuff about humans. Given the technological level described, it might be useful to at least check and see if there’s anything valuable.
To achieve these goals, we will need to accelerate the various weapon projects, with focus on getting to self-contained cartridges and breechloaders. If 20th century equipment is lying around, we're going to need some serious firepower to beat any reverse engineered knockoffs.

Oscar's got a relatively reliable charger now, and with the proper modifications he could be of some combat use.
Floodlights run off local batteries should be easy to make, could mount them like the lights put on police cars.
They still have some revolver prototypes lying around. I might not be able to make a Mk. 19 grenade launcher, but with the help of the weirdo in town for warheads, I could make a Milkor MGL. Hopefully. Either that or an M79 with a gravity-fed magazine. This could provide Oscar with some reasonable firepower.

CURRENT WEAPONRY AND EQUIPMENT

TP-82 = satisfactory. Easy to manufacture as it primarily uses technology that is readily available around here, very little need to develop new stuff. Cartridges were the biggest issue*, as was rifling for the initial prototypes on the third barrel, leaving it with only flare capability for some time. Smokestack is creating another version of the shotgun, with a functional rifled third barrel that can act as a flare gun and carbine, as it should. Will hopefully prove an easy experiment on the way to more complicated gear.
*SEE ENTRY ON CARTRIDGES FOR MORE INFORMATION

Mk. I IEDs = what you'd expect. Dissimilar materials to those I was trained with, but they work until we can get some grenades.

M1 Combat Helmet = Only a few available, and took a lot of money. Rarity’s still trying to develop a pony equivalent, but needs more materials before she can. Gonna have to go with Fire Department helmet for a while.

Penicillin = Perfect! My sandwich finally rotted correctly a few weeks ago, giving me a sample of what it should look like. Though it was still in the experimental stage, and we hadn't grown much local stuff, Zecora and I deemed it necessary to use what we had to treat Andrew, given how he'd been in the mud with several open wounds, and soon got a fever. Boy, did it deliver. Bacteria here has never had to fight the stuff, so it worked like a charm. Andrew has shown no sign of infection, and the fever disappeared overnight.

Dragon Skin Vest = Excellent. Named it after the one back home, it seems to provide adequate protection. Dug some shrapnel out of my vest yesterday from my IEDs(days after the engagement), didn't penetrate and it was still effective! Vest does not seem to be a one-shot use.

FUTURE PROSPECTS
Cartridges- The locals know something about cartridges thanks to Andrew, and we managed to make some simple ones for the shotguns. I’m hoping we’ll be able to make the Springfield 1873 once we get some quality-made cartridges. The ones they have made aren’t the best. Case in point, after using the simple rounds, my TP-82 wasn’t in great shape. It was completely totalled, and I can’t understand why the thing didn’t explode.
I am utterly stumped! I don’t know how I didn’t notice the damage! I know Smokestack consulted some mages around town for manufacturing, but what exactly did that entail?

Magazine-fed pistols- Torn between Colt M1911s and something with 9-mil. The M1911’s pretty reliable, but Glamdring uses 9mm rounds. Fine parts are again a problem. See next entry for stopgap measure.

Smith and Wesson Revolver- already have prototypes ready, so these will be a useful stopgap until we can get magazine-fed pistols going. I could try combining them with those actually, make a Dardick pistol. If I can figure out how that damn thing works in the first place.

M79/Milkor MGL- Exploding shells shouldn't be too much of a problem, ironically. Turns out Equestrian military bombers(just Pegasi carrying bombs) use the same trigger mechanism for their gravity bombs, and they're supposed to be pretty stable too. Making them for a grenade launcher should prove simple.

Radio- Might be able to get something together with some batteries. Won't be mobile, but it'll be something. Made plenty of crystal radios though

Lightbulbs- Tweezers, tungsten, copper wire, a glass bottle, and some electric current. Rigged up a few bulbs around Oscar's charging station by the hydroelectric dam the other day.

M1 Garand- Pipe dream. Too many fine parts, and it's far too complicated. Shelving it for now.

Other plans, aircraft, land vehicles, automatic weapons, etc, have been shelved since day 1. Duh.

OTHER STUFF

It's weird. I always thought Twilight and I would get along swimmingly. I mean we did at first, for certain things. We both love books, she actually understands my technobabble...but ever since she went through Oscar to find my pills, we’ve been completely under each other’s skin.

On the other hand, Rainbow Dash and I have been doing the opposite. First day, nothing but insults. Occasional sniping at one another in the days afterwards, but then...it kinda smoothed out. She’s actually been really nice, for Dash at least. I wonder if she knew, or at least suspected me being a marine, that could be why. I understand her humor, better than anyone else in town, and she gets a bunch of jokes I tell, if it doesn't relate to pop culture. Military humor really is alike all over.

After my meltdown, we went out for lunch. No, not like how you think. It was just two friends getting food after one has had a bad day.

She's really awkward around upset people, I knew that, but she's also really good at avoiding accidentally bringing it up. She's my no-drama person at the moment. We ended up talking about an F-8 Intruder in a death battle with a fully-armed Pegasus.

She said that the Pegasus would have better maneuverability, and could outperform the Intruder. I countered with the fact that the WWII Japanese Zero had that same advantage, and the same disadvantage that came specifically with the same aircraft. US aircraft could stand up to way more than Zeroes could, had a better top speed, and were able to develop tactics to beat them. An Intruder pilot properly informed of the nature of his target could cut the Pegasus to ribbons before she could use her unguided rockets. That's another thing, armament's a lot heavier on the Intruder, with guided missiles, while the Pegasus weaponry is unguided warheads.

Then the conversation turned towards Daring Do, and long story short we might be working on an Indiana Jones/Daring Do crossover, with optional MacGyver appearance. Daring Do is a mix of both, after all.

God, she is so Colonel Sheppard. The closet nerd.

We scheduled another lunch event tomorrow. We might end up making this a daily or weekly thing.

On another note, the love triangle’s been fixed up. Rarity got them into some weird polygamous relationship.

My god, I must be in a bad fanfic.

Chapter 7

Author’s note: I am currently looking for beta readers. If interested, please let me know.

Deep beneath the earth, forgotten and lost for countless years, lay a concrete chamber. The entryway had been blocked up long ago, though the secrets it held had not been intended for those who had eliminated access.

A steel door, much like that on a naval vessel, served as the doorway. The lock was a large wheel, hidden gears connecting it to a pair of rods to either side that held the insulator material against the border of the door. The door bulged inward under the weight of whatever had been placed atop the other side. The metal would not hold for much longer.

The entryway was filled with ready equipment, storage racks and containers for anyone going in and out. Weapons in neat rows and armor stacked up on shelves occupied either side of the room.
At least, that was how they were supposed to be. Currently, their organization was a mess, half the weapons were missing, and much of the remaining equipment was scattered across the floor.

Beyond an inner airlock hatch lay a command center. A conference table took up the center space, covered in claw marks, the smooth surface now pockmarked and ruined. Sitting in the corner was a small radio station, or what was left after the rats had finally abandoned it.
Off to the side of the command center stood a small office, separated only by a window. The door was broken open, the table inside smashed as though a giant fist had split it down the center.

Other rooms were past the command center, supply chambers and living quarters, with enough equipment amongst the former to support a much greater number than the handful who could have feasibly occupied the space..

Weaponry, food long-since rotted, clothing, armor, books...many things normally filled the supply rooms. Again, their neat organization had been ruined, much of it scattered around, ruined and destroyed, but virtually all of the books were missing from their spaces.

A conspicuous pile of ashes sat in the center of each storage chamber.

The living quarters was filled with cots, their cushions long-since rotted away, and personal items lay scattered across the floor.

Suddenly, after so many years of peace, a noise crept into the sealed bunker. The steel entry door had creaked.

Could it have given way under the constant weight that had kept it shut? No, not yet. The metal continued to creak, but almost seemed to relax. Weight was being removed from the other side.

Mild grunting could be heard from the outside. Whatever creatures of dark and cold that could survive scurried away, as a ray of deadly light poked through a hole in the door.

The door creaked again, a different noise this time; stressed once again. Seconds later, the hinges that had held for so long finally decided to give out.

With an almighty crash, the steel door fell inwards, spilling daylight, rocks, dust, snow, and a human being into the bunker. He cried out as he rolled down the dirt-covered stairs, his helmet falling off and rolling away as he bounced against rocks and a concrete floor, eventually halting when he slammed into the bunker’s inner airlock door.

Coughing, Andrew Shepherd groaned and got to his hands and knees. He felt around, and retrieved his pith helmet, dusting it off before quickly placing it back on his head. “...Never mind!” he called out weakly to those outside, looking around as his eyes adjusted.

Getting to his feet, he dusted himself off, and flicked on a flashlight. Around his torso, covering a long-sleeve shirt, was a purple vest modeled after the Modular Tactical Vest(MTV)belonging to the United States Marine Corps, covered in webbing, and pockets. The bulky and dim angle-head flashlight was nestled in a strap above his left breast. He adjusted his long-coat, briefly revealing the pistol holster strapped around his right leg, containing a small sidearm. A TP-82 was slung over his shoulder, and a box of cartridges bumped loosely against his thigh. Thick gloves protected his hands, his scarf was up around his chin, and he wore a winter hat underneath his French-style pith helmet. It was warm in here, but there was plenty of snow outside.

Not unexpected, it was the middle of winter.

He blinked quite a lot, but nothing was coming into focus. Andrew felt he took far too long to realize his glasses had gone flying in the fall.

“Need some help down here, if you don’t mind!”

There was the sound of scrabbling, and dust and rocks tumbled down as Melissa Foster slid her way down what had once been stairs.
In the months since their arrivals, both humans’ physical appearance had changed noticeably. Melissa didn’t bother with keeping her hair too short anymore, and her neat cut had grown out to near-shoulder length. A hair tie kept it out of her eyes.

A scar ran across her cheek, left by the same knife kept strapped to her MTV. The cut had never faded, not even after they had cured her of the poison joke. Similar other minor bruises and scratches could be seen if one knew where to look.

Her frame had remained mostly the same, but she had lost some weight, with the sudden loss of protein in her diet.

Andrew’s appearance had changed as well, though Melissa couldn’t really tell, not knowing what he looked like beforehand. He had grown a minor beard, and had lost a bit of weight on his own, though not as much as Melissa without a food allergy to deal with.

“What’s the matter?...Wow!” she exclaimed, looking around at the interior of the chamber. Her eyes fell on the remains of the hatch, before glancing up at her comrade with an amused grin, “What’d you do?”

“Nothing! All I did was stick the crowbar in, then it just gave out!”

“Really? That big metal blast door? Just…’gave out’?”

“Yes!”

“Uh-huh. What’d you need?”

Andrew was looking around on the ground, feeling through the dust, “My freaking glasses. I don’t know what happened, but they’re missing.”

“Oh. Shit.”

she flicked on her own flashlight, an Enduro headlamp that had been manufactured back on Terra. It cast a friendly and bright blue light in contrast to the harsh weak orange of Andrew's lamp.
Her tactical vest was covered in equipment similar to his, though most of hers was also created on Earth. Andrew’s gear was all local.

Underneath the N7 jacket she wore over the vest, Melissa wore her most intact set of clothes, a uniform patterned in MARPAT digital desert camouflage. “USMC” was stenciled on one breast, “Cpl. Foster” on the other.

Melissa had taken her Marine Corps Combat Utility Uniform for dry cleaning the day before she arrived on this planet, figuring it would be the last time for a while she could do that before deployment.
For a time, she’d been afraid to wear it, fearing the locals’ reaction to a member of Terran armed forces. After all, they used nukes and chemical weapons, and had a history of war crimes in the past. Who knew how the ponies would react?
Once her secret had been revealed though, there wasn’t much of a point. Now, she took every opportunity she could get to wear them.
And why not? They were durable, versatile, and designed to take punishment. More than anything the ponies could manufacture.

It was impossible to avoid Equestrian equipment completely; complementing her Terran gloves were cloth pads on elbows and knees, made of itchy fabrics.

She still wore her fire department helmet for head protection. It might have been heavy, but the steel M1 Combat Helmet she’d designed turned out to be heavier. Underneath she wore a fireproof hood designed to fit under the helmet; it provided good protection against the cold. Her Under Armour gloves were battered, but they still worked. Glamdring was still in its shoulder harness, and she also carried a TP-82.

“You can say that again.” Andrew muttered, taking an inordinate amount of time to reply to her comment, “Have you seen what spectacles are like around here?”

“Are they anything like the dentists? I’ve heard about 19th century eye medicine practices; to check if immigrants had some illness they’d stick some sort of shoe-thingy under your eyelids and pull.”

Andrew rubbed his eyes, and laughed ironically, “You can see why I want to find these things.”

Several ponies joined them in the cavern, Twilight and Fluttershy. They wore cold weather gear, tactical vests similar to the humans’, but no helmets or firearms.

“What happened?” Twilight inquired, concerned, “Are you alright, Andrew?”

“He’s fine, Twi’. Just lost his glasses is all. Damn, dude. The elastic break or something?” Melissa inquired.

“Didn’t hear anything, guess they slid off with my helmet. I swear, this never happens.”

“Hey don't worry about it, I think they got pills for this.”

Andrew laughed, but the ponies were far less relaxed about the whole situation.

“His glasses are broken?” Fluttershy gasped, “Oh no!”

“I don’t know if we’ll be able to get a correct prescription,” Twilight grimaced, “Our doctors are used to pony eyes, of a much different size and shape from humans.”

Melissa and Andrew stopped in their efforts, looking from the ponies to each other. “Girls, it’s fine. I just dropped them, is all.” he explained.

The other two members of what some referred to as his harem stared back,

“Yes...” Twilight looked at him like he was crazy, “When you drop glasses, they break.”

Melissa kept searching, “Yeah, maybe a hundred years ago. Here they are!”

Plucking them out of the dust, Melissa held up a battered black set of glasses, the elastic band still whole and the frames intact. She handed them off, and Andrew took them back. To the ponies’ shock, he simply shook the dust off, and slid them right back on. His vision returned to normal and showed Twilight and Fluttershy’s confused faces.

“What?”

“Can you even see?” Twilight asked.

“Yes…?”

“But you dropped them.”

“I did.”

“And they’re still usable?”

“Yes.”

“No damage at all from the fall?” Twilight gaped.

“Nope.”

“What are they made of?”

“Um…” Andrew looked to Melissa out of habit. She was always willing to explain technical things to the others.

“Plexiglass, or something. Probably something made in the Space Race. Every other modern invention that’s awesome came out of that.” she explained, “It doesn’t break when it hits the ground, and is shatterproof safety glass. Same as in my car.”

“How can something be shatterproof?” Twilight inquired.

“Well, safety glass doesn’t come apart very easily, it’s pretty strong to begin with.”

“Yeah, she figured that out.” Andrew grinned, looking at his marefriend as she rolled her eyes. She was still nursing a bruise after hitting the Tesla’s windshield days earlier. With her head.

Melissa sighed, and continued, “When they do come apart though, they’re designed to break into little pebbles, instead of sharp shards, and if just punctured, manages to stay together. I don’t really know the science of it, but most of our transparent surfaces are made with the technology.”

“Shall we get back to the task at hand?” Andrew interrupted, “We need to find anything of value. Weapons, books, maps, anything that looks like it could help us.”

“Yeah,” Melissa agreed, and called toward the entrance, “Girls, what are you waiting for?”

Rainbow Dash and Applejack slid down the dirt mount into the airlock area. They moved rapidly out of the way for Pinkie Pie and Rarity to come down. All were clad in similar field equipment to Twilight and Fluttershy, though Rarity wore a mining helmet with a bow on it. No one commented on it but Melissa, who noted it with an odd expression, and chuckled.

“What a dreary place…” Rarity commented, “I do hope nothing decided to take up residence here.”
“You and me both,” Twilight agreed, “Think of all the damage a beast could have done to the artifacts that may lie beyond this door?”

“Yes, because I wasn’t concerned at all with our own safety when I said that.” Rarity deadpanned.

“Jeez, what’s that smell?” Rainbow demanded in disgust.

“Hoping it’s not a body…” Melissa muttered, as she investigated one of the armor shelves, noting that it was completely collapsed, “Hey look, Wal-Mart furniture!”

“No, see the angle? It was wrecked by something, didn’t buckle on its own.” Andrew said.

He moved closer to investigate the shelf, carefully wiping off some soot, “...Something with claws. Then...set on fire? Wow.”

Rarity trotted over, grimacing, “I guess we see now why the dragons knew the location of this temple.”

“Bunker.”

“Whatever.”

Rainbow Dash wasn’t investigating what lay around them in the small entryway, she wanted to see past the door. She trotted up to the human-sized hatch, and seized the wheel with both hooves. She heaved with all her might, making the door crunch and shift, but did not open it.

“Hold on,” Melissa called out, and brought forward a crowbar, “A few good hits on the hinges should do the trick…”

“Wait!” Andrew ordered, “We might need the door at some point. Don't break it.”

“You broke the other one!” Rainbow pointed out.

“That one was already broken, but this door's still intact. This one we can actually use.”

He moved forward and took the crowbar, “Just stick it in the wheel like this…Applejack, would you do the honors?”
It took not only Applejack, but Melissa, Rainbow Dash, Andrew, and Pinkie Pie to turn the wheel.

The metal shrieked, and there was a hiss of escaping air. Slowly, they were able to pull the hatch open.

Dash flicked on her own angle-head flashlight, and trotted inside without hesitation.

“Well? It’s what we came for!” Applejack said with a grin, and followed.

Pinkie PIe merely bounded inside happy as could be without a flashlight. No one questioned it.

“C'mon, guys! It's just dark!” They heard one of the other ponies call, watching as their lights moved in and out of visibility.

Twilight eschewed a flashlight of her own, instead igniting her horn and walking in after her friends.
“I’ll just stay out here…” Fluttershy almost whimpered, “Just in case the cave collapses and you need someone to get help.”

“Oddly specific…” Melissa commented, before looking at Andrew expectantly. She jerked her head at the door.
“You're the archaeologist.”

“You're the marine.” he countered.

“Rock paper scissors?”

Andrew rolled his eyes, and pushed her ahead of him, moving inside.

“What’s the big deal?” Rarity inquired, a light on her helmet projecting a yellow light, “I mean, it’s a filthy old bunker, but what could be down here that could hurt us?”

“Well, there could be more of those devil dog things--”

“You mean diamond dogs?” Andrew asked.

“That’s what I said. There could be those, there could be spiderbugs, ROUS’--”

“ROUS?” Rarity asked.

“Spiderbugs?” inquired Andrew.

“Rodents Of Unusual Size, and Metro: Last Light respectively. By the shoggoths, man, what kind of video games did you play?”

“Metal Gear--”

“‘Rodents Of Unusual Size’? I doubt they exist.” Rarity interrupted skeptically.

She didn’t know why she suddenly gave the humans fits of laughter.

They entered the command center, finding the other ponies already hard at work digging through the dust and the ruin. File cabinets were destroyed and overturned, desks smashed, shelves thrown to the floor. There were many empty boxes, and a meager handful of papers scattered across the chamber.
Oddly enough, most of them contained very little text, or were completely blank.

Rarity entered the small office, brushing past the smashed door, and found a similar state of disarray. She took note of the fact that there were again no books, no thick stacks of paper, no major documents. A flagpole with shreds of cloth was lying on its side in the corner. Judging by the remnants, and the indents on the brass and wood, claws again. Four talons, definitely dragon.
The blue remains could have been any flag, Australian, French, British, Dutch, Russian, or any of the other nation’s flags the humans couldn’t recall.

Turning to the destroyed desk, Rarity began digging through the remains. The workmanship of the desk was impressive, despite the dust and destruction it was still glossy and smooth. She did wonder why something so valuable, especially made of oak, was doing in the middle of nowhere.
In the split between the two sides of the desk, she found the shattered remains of a cup, built for human hands. She had to pick it up with both hooves, with most of the upper portion destroyed and the handle snapped off. The unicorn turned the white cup over, examining its composition, and found it made of…”Porcelain?”
“You say somethin’?” Applejack asked, trotting in.

“This cup is made of porcelain!” Rarity repeated, “I recognize it as clear as day!”

Applejack just looked at her, not understanding.

“Look at all of Melissa and Andrew’s belongings,” Rarity explained, “So few of the materials I recognize, even the cotton is different. But this...it’s made with great skill, but it could be any other cup from any city!”

“Okay…” Applejack nodded slowly, starting to walk away.

“But dear, don’t you see though? Isn’t it strange that the humans would use this material, so primitive in comparison to their own? Why not plastic, or metal, or anything else?”

“Well, not everything of theirs has to be special,” Applejack replied, starting to understand, “Maybe it’s just something simple that doesn’t need any magical materials to improve it.”

Rarity sighed, “I suppose you have a point. We’ve been making chairs out of wood for as long as written history has existed, maybe this is something similar.”

She continued digging through the wreckage of the office, finding little artifacts that had survived the maelstrom of destruction. Pencils, pens, pads of paper, little metal devices meant for clipping paper together, things one would find in an office.
They were of a wide variety of quality, some made of their fabulous future materials, others could have been taken from any office in Equestria.
No matter how poorly made, every artifact she could find went into a bag. They would need every resource they could get. Hers was of course already halfway filled with any shred of clothing she could find, but there was still plenty of empty space.
Rarity was about to leave, when the sides of the collapsed desk caught her eye. Most of the desks and containers had been ripped open, but the drawers on this oak desk were all still shut tightly. Unspoiled.
Tugging with hooves and telekinesis only resulted in snapping the handle off. The warping done to the frame had ruined it.

“Applejack? Would you mind helping me out with this?” she inquired, sticking her head out the door.

Applejack stood up from the trash can she’d been digging through for some reason, and walked back in. She tried lifting the desk from the center, to move it back into shape, but what few bonds remained snapped, splitting it in two.
Wincing apologetically, the earth pony muttered, “No use crying over spilled milk,” and moved to one of the halves. She grabbed the panel where the back of the drawer was supposed to be, and began pulling. The beautiful paneling slowly bent and creaked, breaking apart as the interior was revealed.
“Really, Applejack,” Rarity admonished, “I don’t think that was necessary!”

Applejack shrugged, “It gets the job done. Besides, what good is it anymore? Firewood is all I can see.”

“But--” Rarity’s words were cut off by the tearing of the other side’s back paneling.

“There ya go, all open.” AJ announced, smirking slightly at the unicorn’s glare, “Let me know if you need anything else.”

Rarity growled, but went to work digging through the drawers. A bottle of noxious-looking liquid, office odds and ends, a dead flashlight, matches...and a large green box. It took up the space of an entire drawer, made of advanced metals. It was much more like human technology.
Along the top was an identification code stamped in faded lettering.

“Definitely want to put that in the bag.” Applejack stated the obvious.

Melissa moved along the corridor past the command center, scanning around for any additional tunnels or chambers. So far, it seemed to be a pretty tiny bunker, like the NCR Ranger Safehouse in Fallout New Vegas. And no bugs had made their home inside. At least, nothing big.
Reaching the end of it, she noted a label in english on the last doorway, “generator room.” She stuck her head in, and winced at the sight. Piles of scrap and rubble. It looked like half the roof had caved in on the place.
She was about to take a step inside when something tapped her on the shoulder.

With an embarrassingly terrified cry of alarm and a leap into the air, she turned about, waving her shotgun around wildly.

Pinkie Pie stood there, raising an eyebrow, “Kind of jumpy today, aren’t we, Mel?”

“By all the Great Ones, Pinkie! You scared the crap outta me!”

“I hope not. Watcha doin’?”

“Making sure there’s no monsters hanging about.” Melissa muttered, turning her flashlight on the corners around her. “You ever run into any burrowing creatures at your rock farm?”

“No. No spiderbugs at least. Or giant rodents. There’s really nothing to be afraid of down here!”

Melissa adjusted her grip on her weapon, “Right. Of course.”

A realization suddenly dawned on Pinkie, “Are you afraid of the dark?”

Melissa’s eyes bulged, “No! Of course not! Whatever gave you that idea?!”

A loud shriek nearly made her hit the ceiling again.

“That was Twilight!” Pinkie exclaimed.

Four ponies and one human found Andrew awkwardly embracing a terrified Twilight, who was sitting on the floor of one of the storage rooms. Both appeared to be fine.

“What the hay is going on?” Dash demanded, “This place is creepy enough without you two screaming!”

“Look!” Twilight cried, pointing at a pile of ashes in the center of the storage area.

Applejack, curious, walked over, and kicked at the soot with a hoof, shaking loose a shred of cardboard.

Retrieving it, she found text on it. “Encyclopedia”. “It’s a piece of a book.”

Rarity picked up another fragment, “Page 84 of something, by the looks of it. But what…”

“It’s a pile of books.” Andrew said distantly, “Those are books in there.”

“Someone burned all of them?” Melissa said, disbelieving.

Andrew nodded sadly.

Melissa dove upon the ashes, “No, no! No! Those bastards! There’s gotta be something left! Something!”

The ponies helped sift through the wreckage with her, finding book covers, “...Pocket Manual...”, “Webster’s Dic…”, “Lowe’s Plant…”.
Pages appeared, with numbers or remnants of text, “...Definition: A means by which…”, “Elevate patient’s…” “Preparing and carrying a survival kit is as important as the considerations mentioned above”, etc.

Rainbow Dash looked around the area with new eyes, a sinking feeling in her gut, and found that the bookshelves were all empty. The wreckage wasn’t random, either, whatever had been stored here had all been purposefully destroyed...by something with claws.

“Guys?” she called out, “All the bookshelves are empty!”

They started looking through the rest of the room, scattering old crates and miscellaneous equipment.
“Why? Why would they do this?” Twilight demanded, “What kind of monsters would do this?”

They dug through the other storage chambers. “I guess now we know why we couldn’t find any books or maps elsewhere.” Pinkie Pie noted, “They gathered them all up to burn them.”

Finding yet another empty shelf, Melissa flung it to the floor, angrily roaring, shattering it on the concrete foundation.
Sighing, she collapsed heavily against the storage crates nearby, “‘Ignorance is king. Many would not profit from his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power.’”

“Huh?” Dash asked, using a crowbar to try and pry open a crate.

“‘Joyfully, the the mobs accepted the name, took up the cry:” her voice took on a high-pitched mocking tone, “‘Simpletons! Yes, yes! I am a simpleton! Are you a simpleton? We’ll build a town and name it Simple Town, because by then all the smart bastards that caused all this, they’ll be dead! Simpletons! Let’s go! This ought to show ‘em! Anybody here not a simpleton? Get the bastard if there is!’”

“What are you talking about?”

Melissa sighed again, and got to her feet, returning to the first chamber. “Nothing’s left. They got it all.”

Twilight slowly put down the newest fragment, and Andrew rubbed his face, refusing to make eye contact.

“Are you two gonna be alright?” Applejack asked.

Andrew huffed, and kicked an empty crate across the room with uncharacteristic rage, “Oh yeah, totally fine! It’s just all human knowledge lost! No biggie! I’ll be fine! I’m so fine and dandy I wanna fuckin’ puke!”
He slumped to his knees, burying his face in his hands.

Twilight was more controlled, but no less enraged, “Why? Why why why why why did they do it?! Monsters! Evil, destructive...bastards!”

The drama of an unexpected use of a human curse was lost on the others. Applejack looked sadly around at the storage chamber, “Maybe there’s something left we can use. Something to...What is it, 'reverse-engineer’?”

“I don't know...I don't know.” Andrew said, defeated, “Without those books...I don't know. I just don't know what to do.”

Applejack nudged him to his feet, “We keep moving forward. It's not the end of the world.”

“But...But the books,” Twilight whimpered, “all that knowledge…”

Applejack sighed, “I'm sorry to say, but what's done is done. All we can do is salvage what's left.”

Elsewhere, Rainbow Dash was leading Melissa and Rarity to the armory. What few sets of armor remained lay destroyed on the ground, any cloth uniforms were shredded, swords and the remains of firearms alike were melted into their frames. Most of it was unrecognizable.

Ammunition lay scattered all across the floor, spilled out of boxes. A few shelves of radios had been destroyed by claws. Other odds and ends lay here or there. Generally, the armory was a mess.

Most of the wreckage of the ground would be valuable, and they quickly picked up what looked useful, but it was still disheartening to see, almost as much as seeing the books.
There were some things still intact. Vintage-looking binoculars, weapon accessories, hats, anything small and easy to miss.
Rainbow spotted a green box protruding from under an armor rack, the biggest object to escape this room's destruction.
Heaving it out, she realized that it had taken some damage. The labels had been worn or scratched away, and one corner of the box was smashed by the fall.
Reaching for the latch, a gloved hand closed around her hoof before she could touch it.
“Dash, I want you to listen to me very carefully.” Melissa ordered, her eyes fixed on the box, “back away slowly, and don't disturb anything.”

Dash was about to deliver an obnoxious rebuke, but Rarity was already guiding her away.
Melissa nodded, “Thank you, Rarity. This is extremely dangerous, it's a grenade box. It may be anything from pineapples to smoke grenades, so let's treat it like a loaded firearm.”

Suddenly understanding, Dash's military training kicked in, “Bomb disposal, got it. I'll be as far away from that thing as I possibly can.”

“Why would you store pineapples in an armory?” Rarity inquired, both ponies watching from the door.
“Humans, just go with it.” Dash hissed.

“Now, what are you?” Melissa wondered. Normally she would have bomb disposal equipment with her on this, or she would be fast running the other way.
The best thing to do now she guessed would be to at least figure out what it was. Examining what was left of the labels, she attempted to decipher them.
“Let’s see...M...U...S...R...D… Then a space...A, an E, N... Next line down is D, L, and Y, another space, and S, T, and M.”

“Sounds like gibberish.” Rarity commented.

“No, it’s just worn away...what weapon has M, U, S, R, and D in it? M, U, S, R, D...M, U, S... R, D…D L Y, S T M...”

Melissa jumped to her feet, and dashed back toward the door, slamming it shut and dragging the two ponies with her.
“Everybody out! Everybody out! Shut the doors behind you and fly you fools!”

Half the ponies were already out, and Melissa seized Andrew when he started to protest, hauling him outside.

When they returned to the entryway, she barred the inner airlock hatch with everything she could, before slumping against it in relief.
“What the hell was that?” Andrew demanded, “We--”

Melissa stood up, and pointed at the door, “Mustard gas, you odd-toed ungulate! There’s a box of mustard gas grenades in there!”

Andrew visibly recoiled from the door, “Oh my god! Forget I said anything!”

“Are you sure? I mean I could just open this back up--”

“Enough! I get your point!”

“Gas?” several of the ponies asked, their curiosity aroused by Twilight casting a magic health bubbles.

“It’s a deadly weapon.” Andrew explained, “Kills anything breathing it in.”

“Mustard gas specifically isn’t that lethal,” Melissa pointed out, “it’s just very harmful. Either way, we’ve gotta stay away from this place.”

“Well, I guess those superstitions weren’t that dumb after all!” Andrew said.

“Well sorr-ee, ‘Dr Jackson’! It’s not my fault we grew up in a society that attaches negative connotations to the word ‘superstition’!”

“That may be so darling, but superstitions usually have a point.” Rarity pointed out.

Andrew nodded, “The legend is usually there to give an easy-to-remember explanation for why people should stay away from some place. Legends about invisible demons might be designed to tell farmers to, I don’t know, stay away from the areas that might contain clouds of poisonous air.”
Andrew gave an example, “There was an old battlefield left over from World War II that hadn’t been touched since the combatants left in 1943. The locals never went near it because of spirits...or maybe the unexploded ordnance left over that probably killed a few people.”

“Oh, right...that one…” Melissa shrugged, “I guess you have a point.” She took a longing look at the door one last time.

“Guess we’re off to Manehattan, then.” Rainbow said, “That signal’s not gonna find itself.”

There were mutters of affirmation as they crawled out into the sunlight, and the snow.

Rarity’s bag made a clunk as Melissa helped her out. “What’s that?”

Rarity glanced at the canvas, it had torn a little and revealed the box from the desk inside. “Oh, an artifact I discovered. I was hoping you could tell me what it was.”

Melissa froze just as she had when she’d seen the grenades when she saw the box.

It was fairly small, olive-drab, and was made of some sort of advanced metal, whatever the military used for storage containers before plastics were the norm. Clearly from the latter-half of the 20th century. Air-tight seal, by the thickness of the lid, and how tightly it was held onto by the hinges and latches.
“1X PISTOL AUTOMATIC L9A1 CAL 9MM” was written across the front. Well, the words were hidden amongst a series of serial numbers and NATO codes, but it was fairly easy to pick them out.

“Back! Back! Everybody back!” Melissa barked, “Rarity, put the box down. Carefully.”

Inquiries came from several individuals, but Melissa overruled them, “Shut up all y’all! This is my turf, my job, my rules! So shut up and do what I say!”

The roar silenced all of them. “What do you need, Melissa?” Twilight inquired calmly.

“I need everyone to stay away from the box, several meters, and get on your stomachs. Stay low, if someone’s head’s gonna get blown off, let’s make sure it’s just one of us.”

The group retreated to a safe distance, laying down in the snow to watch Melissa get to work. Surprisingly, her shoulders slackened, and she almost seemed to relax. She began to hum the strange tune she always did, very calmly and cheerfully.

“What’s she doing?” Twilight whispered to Andrew.

“How should I know?!”

“It’s human stuff. Who else are we going to ask?” Rarity pointed out.

“Shh!” Dash hissed, “Look, she’s opening it!”

Melissa removed the second latch, and slowly lifted the lid open. Her humming gave way to an unmistakable “Squee!”

Twilight took out a weathered notepad, and wrote out the onomatopoeia with a question mark.
The minutes passed slowly, as Melissa inspected every inch of the box.

“What’s she doing now?” Pinkie asked, pointing at the combat engineer removing a small square object from inside the box.
“How should I know?” Rainbow Dash shot back.

“You used to be in the military.”

“Not hers!”

“You know I can hear literally every single word you’re saying, right?” Melissa inquired, not looking away from her work.

“Sorry!” Pinkie apologized, “We’ll try to be more quiet!”

Melissa shook her head, “Well, it’s alright anyway. The ammo isn’t corroded, and isn’t likely to explode anytime soon. I know of only one other way to test them.”

She pulled a glistening, grease-coated shape from within the box, “We have to fire a few.”

The ponies and human got up hesitantly, making their way over. Melissa did a double-take at the weapon she held in her hands, and stared at it for a long time.

When several minutes passed without words, Andrew commented, “...nice pistol.”

“This isn’t just a pistol, man. Look at the slide.” She pointed to the proof mark printed along the slide of the weapon.
“Fabrique Nationale D'armes de Guerre Herstal Belgique--Browning’s Patent Depose”.

“Okay…?”

“Dude!” She glared at him, “It was manufactured on Earth! Fabrique Nationale D’Herstal! FN Herstal! One of the major weapon manufacturers back home, they’ve made the Browning M2 since the 30s, the P90 for a while, M240...oh, and the Browning Hi-Power since 1930--something!” she shook the sidearm at him, “Browning Hi-Power! L9A1 variant! Cold War! This is a genuine Browning Hi-Power L9A1 of the British Army! High tech, or close to it, a testament to human ingenuity...”

Her grip on the weapon tightened, “Human ingenuity they tried to erase. Someone, and I think we all know who, tried to erase us. Our lightning threatened them.”

“What?” Andrew asked.

“The lightning. ‘We used to control the lightning.’” she ground out through gritted teeth, “Lucifer’s Hammer. Some of the last lines of the book. That, and, ‘You can fly. But we control the lightning.’”

She clutched the box tightly, snapping back to a more chipper version of herself, “Well, I guess you got a modern firearm now. I’ll see if I can clean it and make it fire, but with some luck, your Daniel Jackson cosplay will be complete.”
Melissa gestured to Andrew’s attire, “You’ve already got most of the other stuff down, all you were missing was a pistol. I think it looks close enough to an M9, don’t you?”

XXXXX

The group retreated back to the farmer’s house where the Mane Six were staying for the night while they investigated the area. Several hours had passed, and Rarity noticed Melissa had not joined them for dinner, nor had she joined them to talk in the living room.
Andrew had joined them, so she was guessing it wasn’t a normal human thing, but she did know the two were from different sides of their country; and she knew all too well how different ponies from Ponyville could be from those in Canterlot.

Rarity excused herself from the living room, and trotted outside, magically retrieving her scarf, heavy coat, and hat from the hooks they were hung on.

The old door creaked open, and she stepped out into the cold night. The porch was fairly clear of snow, with a roof extended over it, but the path to the barn was already coated with a fresh layer of snow. It was coming down hard.

With a wince of displeasure as her gloved-hoof plunged into the snow, Rarity trotted through the snow toward the barn, using her horn for illumination.

Even from the area near the porch, she could hear the sound of the “Terran” music filtering from inside the barn.

As Rarity approached, she read the sign Rainbow Dash had carved into the barn door, after the many complaints about the cold. It was some sort of reference to an old moving-picture of Melissa’s, one so old it used black-and-white filming like equestrian photography.

“Shut the door! Where do you think you’re living-- in a barn?!”

Rarity had to admit, it was slightly amusing. The picture was called…”Go For Broke”, yes, that was it. Melissa referred to it as a classic.

She pushed the door open, and had to blink to adjust her eyes to the bright of the interior. Electric lights, both those locally-made and the handful of camping lamps Melissa had, were arrayed to provide eerie lighting in the area.

The Tesla was parked in the center of the barn, all doors open, and with Melissa sitting in the trunk. The pistol retrieved from the bunker was beside her, in pieces on a cloth.

She seemed lost in thought, as she strummed an oversized guitar, at least for pony scale; it might have been fine for humans. It took a moment for Rarity to realize the music was coming from the guitar and Melissa’s lips.

Melissa looked up, and nodded to Rarity but kept singing. It was a rather upbeat and jaunty song, with interesting lyrics. It described various grisly ways that one could be killed or maimed, from being struck by lightning, hit by an “A” train, but stating that the odds of experiencing such disasters would be minimal. The song got it’s name from the chorus, Odds Are.

Rarity clapped a little as the marine finished, and lowered her guitar a little. She opened her mouth to say something, but winced, and held her head in pain.

“Another headache?” Rarity inquired, trotting over, “Are you sure you don’t want to see someone about that?”

“No, I’m fine. Just need more aspirin.” Melissa replied, grimacing and retrieving more painkillers from her emergency kit beside her.

“Darling, you’ve swallowed quite a lot of those tablets since we got here. It seems to be getting worse to me.”

“I’m fine, Rar’, really. I don’t know what it is, must be lack of sleep. You haven’t noticed any symptoms of magical ailments about me, right?”

“I’m hardly an expert, dear. I still think you should at least ask Twilight--”

At mention of Twilight, Melissa’s ears burned. “Nope. ‘So much nope’. I cannot express--”

“Darling, it was just a suggestion!” Rarity cut her off, holding up her hooves, “Let’s change the subject. May I ask why you weren’t at dinner?”

Melissa shrugged, “Still kind of the same subject. Also I didn’t want to talk to people who’d look at me like a monster. Anyway, I ate.” she gestured at a mauled container of freeze-dried rations, completely empty.

“That’s hardly a fitting--”

“Did-ja read the label? Says ‘Meal, Ready-to-Eat’. I’m not hungry.”

“That’s not the point,” Rarity pressed, “We’re guests in their home--”

“Not really. I’m living in my car, and even if I wasn’t, I’d still be out in their barn. I’m not technically in their home, and since I didn’t go in, their food can go straight to hell.”

“Melissa!” Rarity admonished.

“Agh, dammit! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that, it’s my freaking head and this fucking migraine…” she groaned, and held her head again.

The door burst open, “Where’d you two get off two?” Applejack demanded, “Don’t ya know how rude that is?”

“Yes, AJ, we are all very aware of that. Are you also aware that bucking a frakking door open with your big hooves is quite bad for someone’s migraine?!” Melissa shot back.

Applejack raised her eye at the outburst, and Melissa looked sideways at Rarity. “Did it again?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Melissa growled, and gently beat her head against the side of Oscar, reaching for her guitar again.

She extended her guitar pick, and idly began tuning it, attempting to relax.

“Okay, I am sorry, AJ. Having a very hard time here. Found a bunker full of mustard gas, and I already have a migraine. I think I might be a little rattled.”

She cracked a small smile, and Applejack returned it. The orange mare shrugged, “I guess you got reason to be. But it might help...some ponies to understand if you explained what mustard gas was.”

Melissa blew air out her cheeks, “It’s a chemical weapon outlawed about a hundred years ago. During World War I, they loved to spam it through artillery and grenades. Kills anything, regardless of the uniform, or how many legs it has.”

Rarity gasped, but the shock turned to confusion, “But wait, isn’t that true of most weapons?”

“At least if you’re pointing them in the wrong direction?” AJ added.

“Not these. It’s literal gas…” Melissa gulped, and shook her head, pressing onward, “It floats around the battlefield, guided only by the wind, maiming or killing anything it comes into contact with. It’s horrible stuff.”

“Why haven’t you mentioned this before?” Rarity inquired.

“Because it’s unethical. It didn’t occur to me to mention things like that, and even if it had I wouldn’t have told you. It’s a weapon that frankly scares the absolute shit out of me.” she winced, and coughed. She was very clearly uncomfortable.

“Mustard gas is simply one of the most basic forms of poisonous gases. Though normally we have at least basic gear to deal with nuclear, biological, or chemical threats, I’ve always been afraid of it. Downright petrified. Some of the gases are odorless, tasteless, or invisible, you almost never know what type it is, how long it will take to kill you, or anything. All you can do is button up and pray...if you catch it early enough. If you don’t, well, you’re just screwed.”

She shivered unconsciously, her eyes filled with fury and fear, “My mother told me stories about her grandfather, my great-grandfather. He was a member of the British Expeditionary Force in 1915, World War I. Got caught in a German gas attack. Oh, he got his mask on in time, but those masks only kept your lungs and eyes unhurt. Any contact with your body causes problems, and he’d been wandering around for hours in the clouds. Then when he was sitting in a shell crater, he saw some medics with their masks off. He took his own off, forgetting that the gas doesn’t disappear that quickly, and it likes to settle in bomb craters.”

“By Celestia…” Applejack cursed, “What happened to him?”

“Went blind for a few days, had serious chemical burns, breathing problems, and cancer eventually got him decades later. He got discharged, and stayed out of the war after that, but...he was never the same. Spent his life in pain.”
Her anger grew, “I kills everything indiscriminately. You know about all our drones, guided munitions? We developed those to kill only those who mean us harm, and while we have had some collateral damage, civilians caught in the crossfire, unfortunately, that’s war. Mistakes happen. Gas however, is dangerous to everyone and everything. It kills, and its only function is to kill and kill and kill, no matter the uniform they’re wearing, or if they’re an animal or not. It will linger on for days, killing or maiming those who come into range. It brings one down to a level of barbarity, a level no one should have to reach, since it’s a slip-n-slide straight to a complete collapse of morality. It is immoral.”

The ponies’ eyes had been wide for a while, “By Celestia,” Applejack repeated, “What was wrong with your people?”

Melissa punched something solid, “The sad thing is...it’s still in use.”

Rarity blinked several times, “What? I thought you said it was outlawed!”

“Child soldiers are outlawed too, but that doesn’t stop some people. Chemical weapons have been outlawed since 1929. That didn’t stop Churchill from stockpiling, or Imperial Japan from using it in China during World War II. The Geneva Convention’s more of a ‘suggestion’ for anyone who’s not a First-World nation,” she then added hastily, “We’re the good guys, we try to follow the Geneva Convention as much as possible. Little while ago, however, the president of this place called Syria, he ordered a strike with chemical weapons on civilian targets.”

“Your people attack civilians?” Applejack demanded in disbelief, “But...but…”

“That’s horrid! What kind of war is that?” Rarity questioned, “There are rules to this sort of thing!”

Melissa inhaled deeply. The Victorian Era romanticized warfare quite a lot; Compared to that period, modern glamorized concepts of war were downright pessimistic.

It seemed the ponies, at a similar social and technological level as the Victorian Era, may have done something similar.
“Yes, there are rules. But as I said, the Geneva Convention is more of a suggestion to people...and there are no real rules in war. War’s not a pleasant thing. It’s dangerous, terrifying, and causes a lot of death and destruction. In both world wars, we broke a lot of rules. Chemical weapons had originally been outlawed in 1899, or something. But they broke that rule, and used them. Civilians took massive casualties in the large-scale bombing campaigns, men, women, and children alike. Whole countries shattered. We’ve improved a lot since World War II, we care a lot more about casualties. The Geneva Convention is a serious rule now, but...it’s not pretty. War never is.”

The ponies were quiet. “Have you ever fought anyone, Melissa?” Rarity asked quietly.

“No, not really. I was about to ship out before I got here My mom and dad have, though. My mom flew A-10s in the Gulf War and after 9/11, in Afghanistan, and my dad...well, he never talked about it much. He was a marine, some special ops thing he wasn’t allowed to talk about.”

Melissa scratched her head, “I have to admit, I’ve always had a fascination with military history and equipment. I know war’s immoral and all that. I always tell myself I believe in fighting only as a last resort, for the right cause and when there’s no other choice, and not just for the hell of it...but...I’ve always had immense respect for soldiers, and their tales are just so darned fascinating. It’s a moral conundrum, how our society both hates and adores warfare…”

She spoke more of the wars, the strifes, the glory, and the shame Earth had been through, unable to contain it all. She kept talking for who-knew-how-long.

Mud-filled trenches of horror to the heroic actions surrounding Pavlov’s House. Horrendous devastation wrought in the Allied bombing campaigns during World War II, but how that paled in comparison to what the Axis had done.

Gettysburg, thousands of men dead for a noble cause, to the worthlessness of Vietnam.

Over and over the problem ran in her head, and Melissa still didn’t know how to properly express it. She was no warhawk, no paranoid gun-toting racist, but...she was fascinated by military history, by the weapons and tactics used, and was a soldier herself. It was a strange dilemma.

When silence filled the barn once again, Melissa reassembled the pistol beside her, and picked up her guitar again.

“I didn’t know you could play an instrument.” Applejack noted, “Heck, I didn’t know humans could play our instruments.”

“I learned it in high school. Also, it took a while to manufacture a guitar pick, but it was worth it.”

Taking the crude pick, she began strumming the guitar. In contrast to Odds Are, The Green Fields of France was subdued, slow, and mournful.

It described a 19-year old victim of World War I, only one of the millions of white stones that marked the millions of graves across Europe. Had they known why they died, did they really believe what they’d been told they were fighting for?

When the song was over, Melissa didn’t stop long. The silence, and the ponies’ expressions were unbearable to look at in silence. She sang Born in the USA, Amazing Grace, At the Elbe, Christmas in the Trenches, any and all songs of war she could recall that spoke of the details. For some reason, she finished on a slightly different note. The song Imagine by John Lennon. Well, she’d never heard the original, only the version from Quantum Leap, but it matched up with the point of the other songs.

As she finished singing, Melissa suddenly slumped, holding her head again. “Whoa, got a buzz all of a sudden. Damn magic music. Dammit. This was supposed to be real somber and shit. Then I get a buzz. I’ll go on as best I can.”

“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Unless you wish to sadden us further, in which case, do go ahead.” Rarity said.

“Ooh, sarcasm.” Melissa smiled somberly, and leaned back. “Jeez, I don’t even know how to feel right now. I’m talking to you guys about the Cold War, World War II, war crimes, Vietnam, Afghanistan...you guys wouldn’t understand. Not at all.”
She sighed, “I’m sure you think humans are all bastards, now. Well, go ahead. Call me a monster. Call me a demon. Call me...call me anything you want. I don’t care.”

To her surprise, Rarity hugged her. “Oh, Melissa, why would we do that? I’m so sorry for what your people have been through. Such horrid things you describe!”

“Yeah,” Applejack agreed, patting Melissa on the hand, “Your people sound incredible.”

“Explain. Please.” Melissa asked, confused and trying to muddle through her buzzed brain.

“To go through all that, and survive! To do such things, and create such arts and magnificent inventions! How could we call you monsters? You’re to be congratulated as a species for surviving, and thriving, and creating!” Rarity exclaimed, “And even more so for acknowledging your history. I’d be concerned if your leaders hid the information, but if they allow such detail to be accessed...”

“Your people are certainly brave, I’ll give ‘em that.” Applejack said, “I don’t know if we would come out as well as you did if we went through the same stuff. I don’t even know if we could survive...all that.”

“You don’t think I’m a crazy paranoid gun-toting racist lunatic warhawk?”

Rarity shook her head, “Of course not! Your race is filled with contradictions, and we know you. We understand.”

“Yeah, you’re just a paranoid gun-toter.” Applejack said.

The barn door creaked open, and Andrew stepped inside.

“Right on schedule!” Melissa slurred, her mood changing to a more cheerful one very abruptly.

It was like the tone of the situation had been taken out back and shot. “You always seem to have great dramatic timing! You checking up on me, or...or…” she trailed off, looking confused.

Andrew blinked, looking from her to the ponies around her.

“The song problem again.” Rarity explained, suppressing a little laugh, “She was singing again.”

“‘Shaddup, ah don’t need ta answer yer questions, fuzz’!” Melissa giggled, hopping out of Oscar’s trunk and stumbling over to him.

“Y’know Andy…”

“Andrew.”

“That’s what I said, shut up. Something that’s always been weird to me. In several of the temporal/dimensional displacement stories, when there’s only one individual from the modern age, he’s always some doofus idiot ‘blandsy mc-bland-bland’ guy, who ostensively has some useful skills, but turns out to be some average moron who thinks so little of their own intelligence, they don’t even realize that telling the doctors to wash their hands will save countless lives. Then, despite being one of the blandest people on the planet, he somehow manages to always get the attentions of some hot local ‘weemen’, exotic love interest or something,” she pronounced it strangely, quoting something, “and they always fight for his attention. I mean look at Kelly Davis or Davies or whatever his name is from The Human Memoirs…”
She took on an exaggerated announcer tone, “‘Oh no, looks like Kelly must choose between a hot human woman or the literal, actual equally-attractive cat lady! Let’s watch the wackiness!’
“The damn Mary Sues always goes native too. Okay, Earth might have problems, but modern day Earth is objectively way better than anywhere else these people run off to. the intent might be to show how the average person is like a god to less-advanced people, but do you really have to make them such doofuses? Are we the only people who are different? I mean, I’m a combat engineer, with everything I need, and look at what you’ve done. I mean, you might be a cowardly, indecisive jerk, but most of the other idiots can’t do anything right, usually spend their time wandering around being lazy, nearly murdered and kidnapped a lot, or...y’know, just straight up take a viking axe to the face. The one guy just kinda went on a magic quest and forwent going home afterwards. You take the cake. I mean, you're still living out the tropes, and bein’ lazy as fuck, but you're more likable. Kind of. You haven’t taken any stupid risks, you’re actually kind of intelligent despite your doofus nature--kind of-- and I respect you about as much as I do Jim Eckert from The Dragon and the George.” she caught herself, as the others looked at her.

“Shit, I just complimented you, didn’t I?”

She placed the Browning Hi-Power in its box, sealed it, and hopped to the ground. She looked up at him, trying to suppress a goofy grin, “I finished your pistol, just gotta test fire it later. I’m gonna go veg out watching Beast Wars. Do we need some insults applied to balance out the compliment?”

“No, I think I’m good.” Andrew replied, smiling a little, and quite confused.

“Alright. Fuck you anyway.” she was still smiling as she retreated into the driver’s seat.

He chuckled a little again, and turned to the ponies behind him. “I think she’s warming up to me.”

“She’s got a funny way of showing it.” Applejack muttered, the corner of her mouth turning upward.

XXXXX

Day 7 of expedition:

Found the bunker. Definitely human, all the proportions were right. Found some supplies, attached an inventory and description of the place to this paper. The rumors were true, also; mustard gas instead of invisible demons or whatever bullshit. Had to start running though, just in case it started leaking.

Someone else was there before us, though. Definitely dragons. They burned the books, documents, maps, everything. However, something Rarity noticed was that the mass of the ashes didn’t match up with what the shelves should have contained. It was almost as if some were missing.

Certainly likely, given that they might want to control the lightning like we did, but it also arouses my suspicions once again.

Legends are dismissed in academic circles all the time, at least the ones that don’t confirm one’s beliefs. That was Andrew’s explanation for it, anyway. Twilight didn’t find much on us because she wasn’t looking at all the right legends.

I could understand that, she’s done that before, skipping over obvious answers. Look at the episode when Zecora first showed up. Though that was because of a typo.

Seriously, “supernatural” vs “super natural” remedies.

It still seems odd that there is so little mention of us in pony academic circles, even given the evidence, especially things like the bunker. Even weirder, looking at things with new eyes, Twilight did find mention of human-like creatures in very old stories, even spoke with Lyra. Very similar to the dragon stories, only from the opposite point of view. They’re viewed like...I don’t have an example, any creature of goodness that is known to be fake and is nearly forgotten about by adults, or rather anyone not Lyra.

Didn’t anyone notice how cross-cultural the stories are, though?

This is what I’ve been worried about.

I think ~~Princess~~ Queen Celestia has been killing, imprisoning, or hiding anyone and anything that’s come through the wormhole, as well as suppressing information. Immortal bitch probably didn’t think the tech was that vital, or put it on the backburner because of how advanced it was, and might not have been able to reverse-engineer it.
Is this crazy?

Partly, investigating this lead has been one reason to head to Manehattan. The signal we picked up was quite strong, and aside from the obvious revolutionary implications, it also could suggest use of human equipment.
At present, the signal hasn’t changed too much, still gibberish. They have not created a code for it yet. I’m guessing they developed wireless before wired because of their other method of communication, dragonfire. It’s wireless too, and they already had optical, so maybe they didn’t think wired telegraphy was necessary.
Or perhaps it’s based on reverse-engineered human tech.

Also, note to self: keep exposing ponies to everything, don’t hide anything. It creates trust to show that we trust them enough to show them our skeletons in the closet.

Addendum:
Been eating aspirin like it’s pez. I’ve got headaches for most of the day now. It’s not sinuses, it’s not dehydration, what is it?

I’d say allergic reaction, but...I don’t know.

Something fishy has been going on lately. I don’t know what, but something’s wrong with me.

I keep forgetting things. I keep snapping at people. I feel really angry all the time and I don’t know why. There’s something I’ve been dreaming about that I can’t remember, something that wakes me up terrified and covered in sweat. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, or what’s happening.

All I can say for sure is…

I’m scared.

Chapter 8

It was the oddest feeling of deja vu. Manehattan of Equestria looked just like Terran New York City. Melissa had been to New York back home a few times, and it felt as though she could recognize some of the streets.

The air was much colder than it would be this time of year on Earth, probably due to a lack of climate change, scarcity of powerful heating systems, infancy of industry, and the buildings being smaller and unable to trap as much heat.

Given how everything else was trapped in the Victorian age with the ponies, a decrease in temperature was unsurprising. There didn’t seem to be a mini-ice age as on Earth in the 19th century, though.

Manehattan felt like New York too. Same old urban landscape, same old obnoxious people, same old rich culture. Unlike Ponyville, there weren’t only ponies all around. Instead there were many creatures, zebras, ahuizotl bears, gargoyles, griffins, minotaurs, even a handful of dragons.
Only a handful though. Most she had seen during lunch. The group had taken a break from sightseeing to get a lunch, and Melissa, completely out of raptor soup, had had enough of veggie glop.
After getting over her...issues with the staff, they managed to get a meal.

The rest of the group was revolted, of course. Ponies were omnivores, but had many cultural taboos against eating meat. However, despite this, Rainbow Dash and Twilight were actually willing to try some. Twilight had decided to do as the romans do, and Dash… “I’ve had worse.”

To the surprise of all, both actually liked the meat.

As they neared the end of their sightseeing, the group prepared to head to the Manehattan university, where, according to Twilight’s research, a scientist by the name of Shadow Lightning was working. This was the most likely location for the signal origin.
The campus was just as widespread as the one back home, and it was very difficult to find the correct building.

This offered ample opportunity to take photos, uncannily similar to those from the late 19th century.

Taking a photo of one nearby statue, she checked to make sure it was of good quality. “There’s similarities, there’s coincidence, and then there’s just...this,” she said to Andrew, holding up the phone, “How is all this possible? There’s gotta be more than a coincidence at work here.”

Hesitating, he glanced over at the ponies. They were busy examining one tourist attraction or another, and were out of earshot.

“I know. Statue of Liberty, ‘Mane’hattan, new yorkers…”

As if on cue, they heard the distant call of “ey, I’m walkin’ ‘ere!” blocks away.

Andrew continued, “Cultures may develop along similar lines, but the odds of them being even remotely this similar are…”

“Astronomical. I mean, this is straight out of a Guardians of the Galaxy comic!” Melissa exclaimed.

“Huh? I don’t remember anything like that in the movie…”

She nibbled on the bottom of her lip, and ground out, “Original comic. The new guys got their name from Major Vance Astro of the original team. At one point the original team runs into an alien prison planet that developed exactly like Earth of the 80s. Apparently the wardens didn’t do anything, but somehow they became New York on their own.”

“Well...okay,” Andrew admitted, “...but that’s fiction. This shouldn’t be possible. Period. Should not. Unless…”

“Unless what?” she asked, squinting.

“Unless that ‘psychic connection’ stuff is deeper than we know. Think about all the legends and mythology we have, and look at how close they are to the reality here!”

He pulled her away around the corner. He didn’t want to attract Twilight’s attention. “I think humanity may have influenced them, and they us, more than we know.”

Melissa shrugged off his arm, returning to her camera. Several photos of the street filled the limited void of data storage. Rubbing her eyes, she looked back at him with exhaustion clearly visible in her. She sighed, “You ever been to New York, Andrew?”

“only once or twice.” he admitted.

“I have quite a few times. My dad has family around there. The people here are different, obviously, there’s no modern architecture, but the feel is still there. It’s not just a similarity, the feel of New York is here. I can almost imagine my uncle turning that corner. You’re right, it’s far too big of a coincidence.”

Several ponies walked by, staring at the pair talking. Melissa shook her head, “Can’t talk here. Later.”

They separated, and Melissa wandered into the edge of an outdoor restaurant area. She slowly stepped back trying to take a picture of the office building on the opposite side of the street.

Her backwards progress ceased when she bumped into something large and soft. There was a splash of liquid, and her phone clattered to the ground.

“Aah, watch where you’re going, idiot!” A familiar voice groaned, as Melissa retrieved her device.

Curiosity piqued, Melissa turned to find herself face-to-face with Gilda, the Griffin from season one. She appeared to be the ideal version of that sort of creature, with a brown coat of fur, a head covered from the neck above in white feathers, and bronze claws with a golden beak. The only difference was Gilda’s attitude. She also had bags under her eyes, she seemed to slouch in an odd manner that seemed almost militaristic, and her head feathers were patterned in a military cut.

At present, the griffin held an empty cup. She stared into it, as though the liquid might jump out of her feathers and back into the cup if she stared hard enough,

“You spilled my drink you stupid little pony--” She sputtered, before her jaw dropped as she saw the woman before her. For a moment, complete shock filled her eyes, before they became slits.
“A two-legs?!” she demanded in disbelief.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Melissa said insincerely, “I’d get you another, but that just sounded like a slur.”

“Good! I don’t take drinks from two-legs!” she hissed, dropping the cup, and shifted into what looked like a battle-ready posture. Melissa stepped back, getting into a proper stance with her fists at the ready. Gilda’s eyes were challenging, calm and collected, not the unbridled fury Melissa expected. Again, as though she’d served in the military.

“Shoulda stayed in the trees where you belong. Or did they throw you out because you didn’t have a tail?”

Melissa blinked slightly, That...that was a good one. Guess the griffins have some legends about us too. That was another thing to bring to Twilight. Why were human legends so buried in archives with ponies, and so open with the other races? “Bring it on, Rita Hayworth. I got some gold with your name on it!”

“You sure it’s not iron pyrite? I hear you two-legs need glasses to see anything at all!”

“You know, back home, eating eagle or lion is illegal...I think. But no one said anything about eating both at the same time.”

“Eating monkey’s illegal too, but no one said anything about hairless apes who stand on two legs!”

“Eagles are an endangered species back home. I wonder if maybe it’s because they kept picking fights with United States Marines!”

“Oh, you’re a marine are you? Little out of your territory, huh? Don’t you need a ship to be a marine?”

“Don’t you need to be a whiny bitch to join the air force? Or did they just keep you because of your little wings? My guys actually need training, you just get thrown out the damn window and told to shoot something!”

“Least I don’t need to cheat to get in the air! This is all natural!” Gilda flexed her wings a bit for emphasis.

“Oh, ‘cheating’? We use our intellect, not brawn, to conquer the land, the sea, the air, and space!”

“You’re cheating, you two-legs belong on the ground! Leave the flying to the real--”

Melissa roared with rage, finally snapping, and rushed forward without thought.

Gilda merely stepped to the side, hitting her in the back with an elbow, knocking her into a snow mound.

Melissa swept a leg under Gilda’s, taking her to the floor in surprise, and rolled atop the Griffin, raising a fist.

Andrew finally managed to fight his way through the crowd, and grappled with Melissa, trying to hold her back, “What the heck--”

His efforts to stop the fight failed miserably. Melissa was already ducking away as a wild fist caught the notch in his jaw.

Immediately, he collapsed, stunned. The fight went on.

After more fists and kicks, Melissa found herself face down with a heavy weight on her back; Gilda had Melissa’s arm behind her back, and her head pinned to the pavement. Something wet and sticky clung to her chin. “Huh. Thought you two-legs were something special. But you’re just a weak little runt.”

Melissa felt some of the weight shift, and Rainbow Dash’s voice. Presumably Dash was pulling on the Griffin, “Gilda, get off of her!”

“Dash? What are you doing here?”

“Shut up and get off of her!”

Melissa rolled her eyes at the sound made, as if she could hear the Griffin smirking, “This thing? What’s she to you?”

“Get off of me and maybe I might tell you.” Melissa grumbled.

“Oh, pipe down you dweeb.” Gilda snorted, “She a friend of yours, Dash? This one’s even weaker than the butterball! And she’s uglier than a dragon in the morning.”

“Real original,” the human shot back, “I coulda sworn we were exchanging actually intelligent barbs not five minutes ago. Guess you ran out of material. But if that’s the way you want to play, so be it. Your feathers stink like hell, your claws are disgusting, and frankly you look like something the cat brought in as an offering.”

The satisfaction was worth getting her chin punched into the pavement again.

“Stop that!” Rainbow growled confrontationally, “Or you’re gonna have to deal with me!”

Melissa suddenly began gasping and struggling, “C-c-can’t...b-b-bre-e-eath…!”

The weight suddenly left her, “By Boreas! Is she--”

The marine’s trick now successful, she rolled to her side like a bowling ball, slamming into the griffin as she stood unbalanced on her hind legs.

Gilda fell into a roll herself, coming up into another tackling attack and catching Melissa off guard.

She brought up a knee into Gilda’s gut, and shoved her off. Melissa jumped up as Gilda stumbled back, and tried a left hook. It missed.

“Whoa whoa whoa whoa!” Rainbow barked, moving between the two. When that didn’t work, she did the next best thing. Punching her way out.

Gilda and Melissa found themselves on the ground, nursing several fresh bruises. “Now, you two gonna stop beating yourselves up?” Dash demanded, flexing her wrist, “Or are we gonna have to get dangerous?”

Melissa spat out crimson liquid onto the street, and wiped off her chin. “Tell her that.”

“Me?” Gilda didn’t elaborate further. She wiped her own face, and flicked blood of her own onto the ground next to Melissa’s.

“Gilda, what in the hell are you doing here?” Rainbow demanded, “Why did you attack her?”

Ignoring the odd word, Gilda retorted, “None of your business. You must’ve seen what she did though!”

“I coulda bought you another one!” Melissa said loudly.

“I don’t take drinks from hairless apes, and especially not from dog faces!”

“Why you--”

“Whoa there, sugarcube!” Applejack tugging on Melissa’s hood signaled the arrival of the rest of the Mane Six.

“Andrew!” Fluttershy cried. Andrew was still lying on his back, blinking up at the sky. She swooped down to lift his head up, “Speak to me! Are you okay?”

“Get the number on that truck that hit me,” he moaned, shaking his head, “Then put me out of my misery.”

“He’s fine,” Twilight concluded, before trotting over to the finished brawl. “What is going on? Rainbow, Melissa, what did you do?”

She glanced at Gilda, “Oh...hello, there.” clearly she did not recall who the Griffin was.

“Uh...hey?” Gilda replied, raising a confused eyebrow. She did not remember either.

“Okay, this time none of this was my fault! Wasn’t hers either!” Melissa extended a thumb toward Dash, “I bumped into this feathery bitch of a Griffin, and she decided to attack me! I was just defending myself! Andrew has only himself to blame, and Dash was only trying to help.”

Twilight wasn’t entirely doubtful of their word, but the two had been getting into fights an awful lot recently. Twilight looked at Gilda, “What do you say happened?”

“This stinkin’ two-leg spilled my drink!” as if that was all the information needed.

“Uh-huh…” she turned toward her boyfriend, “Andrew?”

Nursing his jaw, the man replied, “I don’t exactly know. All I saw was a crowd of people, and these two fighting. Tried to stop it, but next thing I knew I was on the ground.”

Melissa explained, “Gilda was aiming for me, hit him instead.”

“You really thought it was that bright of an idea to stick your tiny nose in our business?” Gilda snarled at Andrew.

“She has a point.” Melissa mumbled.

Because a marine had the audacity to agree with her, Gilda attempted to start the fight up again. Dash and a few members of the crowd managed to hold her back.

“Leave it be, Gilda!” Dash ordered, “Just walk away!”

The griffin threw off those holding her back, and went to all fours. She glared at the marine a moment more, but relaxed, and walked away. The crowd dispersed quickly.

Applejack helped Melissa to her feet, and had to hold her back from chasing the griffin down, “You can let it go, too!”

Melissa shrugged her off, “Damn turkey…” she checked to make sure none of her teeth were loose.

“Melissa?” Andrew began, looking at her.

“Andrew?”

“Third time in two weeks.”

“Yes, and well-deserved each time.”

“That’s not really the point here, is it?”

Melissa shrugged, “Okay then, I didn’t start any of them.”

“You’re still beating people up.”

“Self-defense.”

“Same here!” Rainbow added, “Gilda always did look for any excuse...”

Andrew opened his mouth to deliver a counter of some kind, but sighed, and closed it.

They proceeded to their next destination, a magazine publisher famous across the nation. The building was composed of brick and stone columns, with wooden doors set between the pillars. Very little could be seen of the interior. No clear glass, no steel, no revolving doors typical of Terran New York. A sharp reminder of where they were.

Melissa and Rarity went inside, leaving the rest of the group to do as they wished. This would take a while.

The reception area was much smaller than those on Earth, both for the proportions of the creatures who built it, and a lack of technological and social development.

The air was warmer than the outside, but extremely dry. A fire roared in the corner, before several cushy chairs. Benches and chairs were arrayed elsewhere in the chamber, dimly lit by primitive lightbulbs, none occupied.

Melissa grimaced at the artificial lights, definitely not incandescent. At least not the right model.

The receptionist’s desk lay beyond the waiting area, the clacking of a typewriter echoing through the lobby.

Melissa walked up to the mare, and politely smiled at the now-common expression on the mare’s face, “Yes, I am an unusual specimen. I am a human being, but I think and speak as you do. But surely that doesn’t matter in business, now does it? We have an appointment. Probably under the name of Rarity...Rarity something...”

She stuttered to a halt when she realized she didn’t know Rarity’s last name. Or rather, she knew of a possibility, she just did not wish to embarrassingly make the wrong guess.

Luckily, her friend easily spotted the trouble. She trotted up, and gave the receptionist her last name.

The receptionist broke out of her stupor, and ran down the list, “Ah, we’ve been expecting you. I will inform Ms. Sky that you are here.”

Minutes later, they were led up a flight of stairs and into a small office. Fairly standard, a desk, shelves, chairs, and a window overlooking the street below.

The mare occupying the room was ready for them, sitting with her arms crossed looking at them as they came in. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Rarity replied, taking a seat, “We wish to publish several stories in your magazine.”

“That is easy enough--’we’?” Ms. Sky looked up at Melissa, who was trying to get comfortable in the chair scaled for ponies. “That’s not your pet?”

“No, I am not.” Melissa confirmed evenly, “I am in fact, sentient. Melissa Foster, a human being.”

“Human? Those old fairy tales?”

Melissa nodded, “Yes.”

Ms. Sky stared a moment more. “Uh-huh…” and turned back to Rarity, “Can you provide a manuscript?”

Rarity shook her head, “Oh no, I didn’t come up with them.”

Melissa unzipped her backpack, and withdrew several stapled-together stacks of paper. “This is gonna be a great deal for you,” she said with a grin.

The publisher picked them up, finding each one to be a manuscript. “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”, “The War of the Worlds”, “The Dragon and the George”, “Little Wars”, “The Mysterious Island”, and “The Time Machine” were among the titles.

“These are a bunch of books where I come from. I don’t know how much of a profit they’ll get, but who knows? War of the Worlds was published a hundred-and-twenty years ago, and it’s still pretty well known.”

The publisher flipped open the one she spoke of in curiosity, reading the first lines.

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.”
If it was good enough for aliens to last more than a century, perhaps her own magazine might have a similar legacy.

The publisher placed it back on the stack, reading the first pages of some of the others. Her smile made Melissa tense in hope.
“I think we can make room in next month’s issue for a few of these. Who shall we make out the author to be?”

Melissa shook her head, “Oh, no no no. Leave the authors as they are. HG Wells, Mark Twain, Jules Verne...keep their legacy going. You could add an additional credit, there’s some room at the beginning of each one, but I don’t intend to infringe on copyright.”

“‘Copyright’?”

“Never mind. Just forward my payment to this address.”

This scene was repeated across Manehattan, through different magazines and different book publishers. Some were duplicates, some were not, just in case.
Melissa needed a way to make some money fast. Even if most of them failed to be popular, every little bit helped.
Publishing her novels was only part of the equation. They also paid visits to playwrights, before both she and Andrew made a visit to the patent office.

“Why did you never try this before?” she asked him as they left.

“That’s a good question. Let’s pretend I already feel stupid enough for not doing this to begin with, shall we?”

“Hey, it’s not my fault paint rollers weren’t invented until 1940!”

Most of what they patented was easy stuff. They utilized the time travel poster Melissa still had on her phone, as well as a mix of both humans’ knowledge. Among other things, they patented paint rollers, the Allin trap-door breech loading conversion, penicillin, brass cartridges, paper clips, krazy glue, insulin treatments, the incandescent light bulb, morse code, and wired telegraphy.
Then there was what Melissa called her insurance policy. Designs of fixed-wing aircraft, crystal radios, radar, sonar, and a wealth of other things she felt were coming soon in development.

Once they were done, they had one last thing on their list. The whole reason they’d been drawn to Manehattan in the first place.
The signal.

Weeks earlier, while preparing for their expedition to find the human “temple”, one of the crystal radios she’d constructed had begun making strange sounds. All their transmitters were deactivated, so there had to be something else.
They’d dismissed it as atmospherics, at least until somepony noticed the sounds were modulated.
There was someone out there with a transmitter.

XXXXX

Shadow Lightning was definitely the culprit. She was a middle-aged unicorn covered in a white coat of fur and a black mane, with some streaks of grey going through it, dressed in a suit.
Twilight knew her for her company’s work in electric current, self-propelled vehicles, electric lighting, and metallurgy, and believed that of all the inventors known in Manehattan, Lightning would be the the most likely candidate.

And were they right as ever. Shadow Lightning proved to be very cheerful and outgoing, taking the existence of humanity rather well.
“What a marvelous opportunity!” she’d described it as, studying Melissa and Andrew’s appearance.
The mare had been particularly fascinated by their clothing, nothing like it existed in Equestria, “The wonders your people have created. A zipper you say? How intriguing.”

She was even more fascinated by Oscar, the instant she noticed it out her window. The copious amount of titanium, steel, composites used in the vehicle’s construction were interesting enough, but the aluminum was of the most interest.
“This is a rare vehicle, I take it?” she asked Melissa as she wandered around the vehicle inspecting every detail.

“Here? Nothing like it. On Earth? About a couple thousand, at least.”

“Ah, so is this an example of most vehicles on your world?”

Melissa shrugged, “Kind of. Most are internal combustion, Teslas are among the first to have efficient electric motors.”

“Electric locomotion? Purely? How odd. What a waste of money.”

“Well, Tesla Motors sees it a different way. Internal combustion puts out a lot of smog, and oil’s a limited resource. This is way better in the long run.”

Shadow Lightning smiled in an odd manner, “Your people certainly have some strange notions. I’m sure they’ll pass in time. Now tell me--is this real aluminum?”

“Yeah…”

“But you said it wasn’t rare.”

“Aluminum’s not rare. We can manufacture it.”

“Manufacturing aluminum--?” Lightning’s face lit up, and she bounded up to Melissa, “How is it done? What’s the secret? You must tell me!”

“It’s a trade secret. No one outside the industry knows it.” Melissa lied, leaning away from the grinning wide-eyed face before her. In reality, she did have some clue as to how aluminum was made, it being far from a trade secret and possibly may have been secured within her time travel poster.
She just didn’t want to tell this pony. There was something strange about Shadow Lightning that told her she should hold onto some secrets, a sense of uneasiness the marine felt toward her.
The worst part, it was a familiar sense of uneasiness.

The unicorn relaxed, “Oh...that’s unfortunate. Well, I could always have this automobile taken apart. We could reverse-engineer it and figure it out that way.”

“No! No, that’s okay. It’s far beyond your science.”

Lightning smiled in a different, unsettling way, “Oh, you’d be surprised at how bright our scientists are.”

Melissa facepalmed, “I don’t want anyone taking it apart, it’s kind of important to me, and it’s vital to maintaining some of my equipment.”

Lightning sighed disappointedly, “A shame. It could make quite a tidy profit. Now, you wanted to see my hertzian wave device?”

The hertzian wave device, or radio, was located inside a lab at the edge of the university campus. Thick power lines fed directly into the building, which had a large antenna jutting out of the top.

While primitive, it was certainly an impressive radio. It was also a surprising jump, given that there seemed to be no form of wired telegraphy available. That could have been explained by the fact that their most rapid form of communication was wireless, and it just never occurred to them to do otherwise. Perhaps there were some versions of wired telegraphy that had been researched, just not patented, as had occurred historically.
Either that, or they were reverse-engineering a human radio set.

When asked about this oddity, Shadow Lightning’s response did nothing to eliminate these suspicions. “We began our research based on some papers out of Canterlot. We don’t know why they weren’t used before now, but it will certainly turn a tidy profit.”

Even Andrew was feeling something was off about this pony. They decided to hold back on showing most of their patents to her, scheduling another meeting for the next day.

They departed the radio building, headed back to the car.

Pinkie Pie broke the silence first, “So...radio. What a cool idea!” “I’d love to be able to send messages home really fast!”

“It would certainly help with economics, it could revolutionize trade.” Twilight said.

Applejack nodded, “Yeah, would make it easier to report a food cart as being late to arrive. You wouldn’t believe how often apple deliveries go missing.”

“Forget trade,” Rainbow interjected, hovering in the air above the rest of the group, “How about defense? We could coordinate an offensive against the bad guys and counter their every move!”

Andrew quickened his pace to walk next to Melissa, and lowered his voice, “It’s an interesting feeling, seeing them take their first steps into the 20th century. Don’t you wonder what they’re going to be like in a hundred years?”

“Pretty advanced, especially if we have anything to say about it.” Melissa replied.

His mouth twitched, “I wanted to talk to you about that.”

“So talk.”

“I don’t know if we should be giving them so much tech so fast. I’m worried about what it will do to their culture.”

Melissa kept her eyes forward, not looking at him, “Screw the Prime Directive. Humanity got along just fine with a lot of new tech real quick.”

“Debatable. But these aren’t humans, they’re ponies. We don’t know what these inventions will do in the long run. Maybe we should use the Prime Directive!”

“We don’t know what the introduction of human culture will do either, but you don’t seem worried about that.”

Andrew’s jaw tightened, “Of course I am. But I’m not forcing my culture on them. There’s some exposure sure, but I think you’ve done it more.”

Melissa scowled at him, “And I’m forcing my technology on them? How? This is stuff they’re going to invent in the next few years!”

“And take something away from them. How would you feel if you discovered aliens had given us computers? Wouldn’t you feel cheated?”

Melissa noted the ponies behind them had fallen silent. She didn’t care. “For computers, yes, because we’ve been told all our lives that we developed computers on our own. However, if aliens gave us warp drive, and we were told that they did, I wouldn’t really care. Having the capability to go to the stars is more important than who invented it. It’s for the better, they’ll probably be thanking us in the future!”

Andrew stared at her with horror, “Oh my god, did you just hear what came out of your mouth? ‘It’s for their own good’, sounds like. You gonna ‘civilize them’, too? This is why the Prime Directive exists! To stop people like you from playing god!”

Melissa stopped walking. “That was uncalled for. You know I have no intention of doing anything like that. I’m just helping them out.”

“Helping them to do what?” snarled Andrew, “Lose their cultural identity? How important are inventors to our culture, huh? Really freakin’ important! It’s a part of who we are! Do you really want to take that away from them?”

“I’m not taking that away. How do we know they’d invent half this stuff? The future’s not set, we don’t know what could happen. My gifts of knowledge now might help prevent their extinction in the future! Look at the Native Americans. They could have survived if they’d known germ theory!”

“What do these ‘gifts’,” he held up both hands and drew air quotes, “Do to the culture you gave them to? Ever read Footfall? In the book, there’s a bunch of alien elephants that invade Earth, and they got all their technology from another alien race, and built their entire culture around the manuals!”

“Yeah, I know! I read the book! And they couldn’t develop new ideas because of that, and couldn't adapt to humanity! But this is different!”

“How?”

“I’m not giving them a freaking bible to follow. I’m nudging them along in the right direction. There are dead-end technologies they should avoid, and other tech that will have consequences a hundred years from now. They can avoid climate change if they develop electric cars instead of internal combustion. Coal puts out way more smog than oil, which is more efficient, so if we encourage them to go for the latter, it will buy them more time to develop alternatives. Imagine if they discovered something on their own without help, especially considering their magic. They might blow themselves to pieces without us!”

“Don’t we get a say in this?” Fluttershy interrupted.

Both humans tilted their heads, and remembered the Mane Six were standing right there. All were glad there was no one around on the campus at the moment. It would have been a nightmare had they had this argument in the middle of the day.

“Shit.”

“Your fault.” Melissa accused, fuming as she turned to the rest of the group.

“What’s the Prime Directive?” Rarity asked.

“And what is all this about technology and cultural corruption?” Twilight questioned, her eyes boring into the humans.

“The Prime Directive is one of Starfleet’s guiding principles. It says they can’t interfere with the development of species and societies, even if that interference is well-intentioned.” Pinkie Pie explained, finishing with a grin.

Melissa shook her head at Pinkie Pie, “I don’t even care... We were discussing the future…”

“...And how Captain Janeway over here wants to screw the Prime Directive and just go for broke.” Andrew grunted.

“Okay, the Prime Directive isn’t an actual rule, so I can’t actually--”

“Both of you! Stop!” Twilight barked, “What about cultural corruption?”

Andrew began, “Historically, there have been cases of--”

Melissa mimed a mouth with her hand, “Blah blah blah racism racism racism--”

“Oh, shut up!”

“Make me, dipshit!”

“Quiet!” shouted Twilight again, “One at a time! Andrew, you go first. Cultural corruption?”

With a glance at Melissa, he began again, “Historically, there have been examples of cultures that have been changed or damaged by invasive more-technologically-advanced groups either meeting or even invading them. We don’t know what effects human culture and technology will have on your world, and I’m worried something may be lost along the way.”

Twilight nodded at Melissa, who looked like she was about to explode, “Your turn.”

“While there are certainly cases of cultures being ruined by others, I believe that that’s the result of invasion. Of people purposefully attacking and destroying the local culture. This is different. For one thing, we’re not invading. For another, saying that simple contact between cultures will cause damage is pretty inherently racist. ‘Incompatible cultures’ has been used by horrible people to justify racism. There’s a difference between that and what happened to the Native Americans.”

“Which was…?” Rarity asked.

“Well, first the Europeans, probably because they realized they couldn’t beat the natives, infected them with a plague that wiped out half the population. There are accounts of there being too few people to burn the bodies. Then, they steamrolled over the remaining people, who didn’t have the numbers to fight and their civilization collapsed. It’s an invasion in the same way aliens taking over after I am Legend would be an invasion.”
Melissa growled for a moment at their blank looks, and Andrew took up the tale, “Long story short, the Europeans, and later the United States, started killing off the natives, then herding them into reservations.”
Melissa added, “There they were isolated from their culture, and their kids kidnapped and sent to special schools to brainwash them into forgetting their culture, attempting to wipe it from existence. The last of these schools was shut down in 1998. About twenty years ago. No one’s proud of it, and I like to think we know better now. If not, we at least don’t approve of it anymore.”

She looked up at the rest of the group. Andrew had visibly paled, and the ponies were in various states of shock and horror.

“By Celestia…” Applejack whispered.

“Monsters!” Fluttershy squeaked.

“That’s downright evil!” said Pinkie Pie.

“Evil bastards.” Rainbow Dash snarled, eliciting no reaction from the rest of the group.

“That...I...what?” Andrew stuttered, “But...how…? No...That date can’t be right. Couldn’t have been that late.”

“It’s true. A friend of mine, she lives on a reservation. She was shocked I even knew about it. It’s horrible shit.”

Twilight shook her head, “Surely, there is a difference between our situations. Aren’t there any historical accounts of cultures gelling well together?”

Melissa looked at her in surprise, “I...well, at least one I know of. You still want to know? Aren’t you horrified at us now? Aren’t we monsters in your eyes?”

Rarity replied with a question, “Did you commit any of those acts?”

“No…”

“History does not reflect the people today. We know you’ve never tried anything as horrible as that. Now, explain.” she ordered firmly.

Melissa shrugged, “Okay...I’m a little fuzzy on the details, but I know Japan managed to stay independent. They’re an island nation, and when the Europeans came, they realized they had to adapt. They saw the wheels of time in the European ships and guns and technology, and started building their own industrial base. They maintained their culture, adapted, and survived, growing into a major power, and kicked the Russian Empire’s ass, one of the other European nations.”

Andrew added, “Granted, they became one of the biggest bad guys and war-crime-perpetrating nations in the Second World War, but I guess the tale still stands.”

Twilight put on a thoughtful expression, “Alright then. Two directions, Japan and Native America.”

“Native Americans. General term. There were a lot of different nations in fact, it’s quite--” Andrew was silenced by an elbow from Melissa.

“You two both have cause to be worried. Melissa, you’re afraid of what may come, and us not being prepared, correct?”

Melissa bit her lip, “...Mostly. Who knows what will happen if another nation you’re not prepared for comes along? What if we regain contact with Earth? What if the Martians invade?”

“Andrew, you’re afraid of us losing our culture by being helped along.”

He nodded, “Of course. The Prime Directive. It seems like a good idea, now that I’m thinking about it. I don’t want to see you--your culture-- lose its...innocence.”

“How would we lose it? What exactly are you referring to when you say that?”

“Well, your kind and good-natured society might lose those parts along the way, if you’re exposed to some of what we’ve invented, or do some of the things we’ve done.”

“Are you saying that your people are monsters? Evil creatures?” Fluttershy mumbled, joining the conversation again, “Turned into that magically by your past?”

“Well no!...but, sometimes we can be evil, I mean, look at the Holocaust. Six million people murdered…”

Melissa explained, “He’s worried about what will happen to you guys if you’re exposed to that stuff.”
She turned to Andrew, “Andrew, I get what you’re saying, but giving them paint rollers and radio won’t cause that.”

“Of course not, but what will happen further along? You’re a soldier, a freaking combat engineer. You’re going to give them weapons technology. You already have. No matter how well-intentioned, interference with another culture could cause untold problems! Some cultures just aren’t ready for some new tech!”

“I don’t believe that,” Melissa snapped, “I never bought into the Prime Directive. I am not abandoning my humanity for some bullshit rules! I cannot abandon people who are in need! My duty, as a soldier, and a human being is to help! Penicillin, think of how many people it could heal!”

“Airplanes, immediate war applications!”

“Communications, connect an entire nation!”

“Coordinate entire fronts against an enemy!”

Twilight barked “Quiet!” again.

“Now,” she began, “you are both right...and you are both wrong.”

“What?” the humans demanded.

“Melissa, you are not wrong in using your knowledge to try and help us. But you may not be prepared to deal with the consequences. If you give us too much, we will become overly-reliant. Give us too little, some might become resentful. Giving us certain technologies when we’re not ready could result in catastrophe.”

Melissa conceded that, nodding, “There are a few fictional examples of this. In Larry Niven’s Known Space, a warrior race known as the Kzinti were contacted when they were cavemen, and seized a starship with all its advanced tech. They carried a lot of their cavemen tendencies to the stars, genetically modifying their females to be breeders only and making the men super aggressive. However, I don’t believe a culture will stagnate like that in most cases. Their brains were already under-developed, I don’t even know if they created writing, and the genetic enhancements only exacerbated that. Tech can freeze, but not necessarily the culture around it. Look at Ancient Rome, not much new tech developed over the course of their rule, but they went from republic to empire, rule of the people to an aristocracy...I think, and all over the place.
“And to believe that a leg up from another society will make a culture freeze is just...silly. The culture would change, they would adapt.”

“But what if that culture shouldn’t have those things? What if someone gave the Nazis nukes?” Andrew demanded.

Melissa scratched her head, considering the matter, “Well, okay...yeah, you’re right, there are some exceptions. You ever seen the anime Zipang? No, of course not. Japanese warship from modern day goes back in time to World War II, and the ship has weapons that can completely wipe out the contemporary United States Navy, but the crew only wants to stop the war while Japan is still intact. Unfortunately, Imperial Japan doesn’t care about casualties, and only watch with glee as they force the future crew to kill. There’s also Axis of Time, modern fleet in WWII, and both Japan and Germany get ahold of some future ships. The potential for doom, the Gestapo getting the NSA’s spying equipment, Japan and the sub-nuclear munitions…”
She slumped, “This is harder than I thought.”

Twilight spoke to Andrew, “Andrew, you do have good points. Cultures need to be allowed to develop on their own, without interference.”

She held up a hoof when he smiled at his small victory, “However, you are no better than she is.”

“We’re not naive,” Applejack said loudly, “We can see what’s right and what’s wrong.”

“But what if you don’t know the whole truth about what some ‘friendly’ alien tells you?” Andrew pointed out.

“Well then it’s not related to cultural stuff. The problem is that they’re lying.” Pinkie said.

Twilight glanced at the pink pony, surprised at the insightful point, “Forcing us to accept new ideas and cultures while losing our own, and being completely isolated from any other culture, are two sides of the same coin. On one side, invasion might destroy a culture, while new technology might corrupt one, or worse, interfere with the others around it. On the other, by keeping things from us, one is playing god on a different level. If your technology could prevent a catastrophe from occurring, or could save thousands, but you do nothing, you are still choosing who lives and who dies.”

“And in protecting a society from another invasive one, you are still interfering.” Rarity said, “You’re coddling them, treating them like children and refusing to let them grow up.”

Andrew’s eyes flashed with memory, “The Ocampa…”

“The who?”

“A species from Star Trek. This alien, the Caretaker, was protecting them from some bad guys because...reasons…”

“He and his girlfriend accidentally fried the atmosphere and broke the water cycle.” Melissa explained.

“Right...they were being protected from some baddies, and managed to survive, but they weren’t developing. They were actually going backwards. It was found that the Caretaker was dying, and he left enough power for their shield for about five more years, and pretty much gave up, saying that they were children who would die without him. And he was right. If Voyager hadn’t informed them, they probably would’ve all died. No weapons, no soldiers, nothing to protect them. That’s not exactly non-interference, but I guess I understand the coddling thing...”

“Both sides are playing god, just in different ways.” Twilight said, “No interference is just as bad as total guidance.”

Melissa nodded, “Like Stargate. We give tech to those who are good people, but avoid giving them unfair advantages. Only medical stuff, or things that’s just above their current stage of technology. Also, don’t give it to Nazis.”

“Giving a leg up is better than jumping to the information age, eh?” Andrew became thoughtful, and gave a conceding shrug, “You’re right, SG-1 and the Kelownans. No weapons technology, because of how it could be misused, but they weren’t non-interference either, or unwilling to give people tech in general.”

“That is kind of where I’m getting my points from.” Twilight muttered sheepishly, grinning, “I started watching the show a while back. The SGC doesn’t use the Prime Directive, but they’re still careful about who they give their technology to.”

Andrew couldn’t help but laugh at that, “I guess you’re right. Thanks.”

“So...I can keep doing my thing?” Melissa asked, feeling the conversation coming to a close and wondering how it could have been done so fast.

“Yes, darling. Everything’s fine.” Rarity reassured her, patting her as far up the human’s arm as she could reach.

“Alright...that’s dinner then. Who has the map?”

Though anti-climactic from an outside observer, the conversation ending well made all those involved incredibly relieved.

They made their way back to the car, and drove out into the street. There was a nice restaurant across the city that made meat for griffin or dragon diplomats; Rarity was sure she could convince them to make some for the humans.

Fate laughed in their faces, unfortunately.

Speeding through a road along Manehattan’s coast, Melissa furrowed her brow at a strange sound in the distance.

Her car’s sound system wasn’t malfunctioning, and it didn’t sound like her brakes…

“Does anyone else hear a whistle?” she asked.

Andrew shifted in his seat, looking behind them. His eyes widened and he groaned, “Aw, crap. It’s the cops! Pull over!”

Flipping on her turn signal, Melissa pulled over to the side of the road. “How have they not caught us before?!”

“Shut up before you get us arrested!”

A pegasus in a blue uniform zipped by the driver’s side window, unprepared for the sudden deceleration.

He landed a bit ahead of them, and quickly trotted back. It was a little awkward, the bottom of the window being about where the top of his head was.

Melissa leaned out, keeping her hands in plain view, “Is there a problem, officer?”

For the first time, there was a pony who didn’t seem surprised by the fact that she was an alien life form. Being a police officer in the pony equivalent of New York, that wasn’t actually a shock.

He looked to be a middle-aged pony, a sergeant if she understood the pony ranking system correctly. Lines crisscrossed his face, and his muzzle was bent slightly out of shape as though it had been broken. Clearly a lot of experience. His eyes locked on Melissa for a moment, but not with the usual emotions behind it.

The moment passed, “Miss, do you have any idea how fast you were going?”

“24.5 miles per hour.” Melissa said in a confused tone.

“Twenty-five--” the cop groaned, “Tourists…” and face-hoofed. “The speed limit for the city is ten. How did your automobile even get to that speed?”

“It was designed to.”

Grimacing at the answer, the cop flipped out a notepad, “License and registration, please.”

Melissa flipped down her sun visor, and handed out the registration form, then her license.

The cop showed some sign of surprise this time, raising an eyebrow at the strange materials. 21st century paper and plastic.

He stared at them for a long time, glancing from one to the other.

“You aren't from Equestria, right?”

“That's correct, officer.”

The officer scratched his head, “ma'am, I'm afraid you're going to have to come with me.”

“Might I ask what I am being charged with?” She inquired.

The cop blinked in surprise, “‘Charged with’? Oh, miss, I'm not arresting you, the station just needs to verify these documents. I need to know if these qualify as legal documents here. Just follow me down to the station, and we'll get this all sorted out. You can drive yourself, in fact.”

He walked away to in front of them, and flapped his wings. She pressed the accelerator and began to follow the cop.

Melissa realized Andrew and the ponies were staring at her, “What?”

“Why can't you be more polite like that all the time?” Andrew inquired bluntly, “you've been really nice all day, and yet you're still kind of a jerk!”

A long silence followed.

She couldn't ignore it, she would have to deal with it sometime. With a heavy sigh, she began, “I'm sorry if I come off as an asshole, everyone. I don't mean to. I've been under a lot of stress recently, and I can be hard on those around me. These damn migraines, the mustard gas, the fact that I'm marooned far from home...I don't know why I've been so aggravated, maybe everything's just piling up. I’ve been told I demand a lot of myself, so maybe that's another factor. I'm a handful to deal with, an asshole, and under a lot of stress. I am sorry.”

“You're not that bad.” Rarity attempted to soothe, “sure you can be a bit rude, but it's no worse than…”

“Dealing with Rainbow.” Applejack said with characteristic bluntness.

“Hey!”

Andrew scratched his head, “You can be a handful, to be sure, but it's nothing I haven't been through. Guess I forget that sometimes.”

“You weren't exactly the most diplomatic of people when you first appeared,” Rarity pointed out.

As Rarity attempted to keep the situation calm, while Fluttershy and Twilight glanced at each other in the back seat, their own feelings toward the marine floating to the surface.
Twilight and Melissa had never really talked much after the incident at the hospital, and had in fact been evading each other.
Fluttershy hadn’t forgiven Melissa for any of her behavior before the dragon incident, and her feelings had only soured after the discovery of what the secret ingredients in her soup was. And why several velociraptor skulls had turned up in garbage disposals around town.

Pulling into what served as the parking lot for the station, the group emerged from the vehicle and followed the sergeant into the police department.

The lobby was fairly standard, albeit more primitive than human ones and did not feature much in the way of waiting area aside from a few benches. No magazines or anything for those bored. An exhausted-looking mare sat at the main desk, staring at a book without moving her eyes.

The sergeant took Melissa’s documents further back into the station, directing the group to wait in the lobby. while the cop went in back to examine her records.

By her clock, and the primitive one in the station, it had been an hour before he returned.

With friends.

Several angry cops entered the lobby, a dozen more from the entrance.

They brandished pistols, batons, and horns, all directed at Melissa.

She cursed, and reached for Glamdring. Andrew withdrew his L9A1 from his waistband, both sought targets.

“No! Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” Twilight cried.

“Sunset Shimmer!” one of the cops yelled, “Put down the repeater and lie down with your hoof--things in front of you!”

“Repeater? Sunset Shimmer?” Melissa demanded, looking at Andrew.

He shrugged, as bewildered and confused as she was.

“There’s no one here by that name!” Melissa replied. She figured “repeater” meant her pistol.

The sergeant from earlier stepped out of the crowd, “Sunset Shimmer, I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you. I know that hair anywhere. C’mon, you know me. Surrender, and we won’t have to hurt you.”

Melissa’s trigger finger twitched, “Officer, I have no idea who you are. I have no idea who you think I am. I am not her. Who the hell is she?”

The cop sighed, “Sunset, we don’t have time for this. We’ve known each other for years, you can trust me. I don’t want to have to order them to take you into custody.”

“They won’t take me alive.” Melissa growled, “And I only met you today!”

Andrew went the more intelligent route, “Don’t you have to charge someone before you arrest them?”

“Yes, that’s an inalienable right!” Rarity and Twilight said synonymously, and looked at each other in surprise.

“You know exactly what you’ve been charged with, Sunset.” the sergeant said, “Don’t make us resort to force.”

“You’ve given her too long already sir.” another cop growled, “I say we take her right now.”

“Over my rotting corpse!” Melissa leveled her pistol.

The doors to the police station flew open once again, light as bright as day filling the night.

Most of the cops, the Mane Six, and just about every other type of pony in the room bowed immediately.

Melissa’s pistol, so long a source of power and comfort, felt like a paperweight. Princess--Queen--whatever she was, Celestia was standing in the doorway. A handful of royal guards, clad in the armor they had been for over a century, quickly followed. Of note was the fact that they had eschewed their ceremonial spears for actual weapons; muzzleloading rifles, breechloaders hadn't quite gotten through to a major manufacturer yet.

Twilight’s brother, Shining Armor, Captain of the Guard, stood beside Celestia, wearing a sidearm holster in place of a sword.

“Queen Celestia!” Twilight gasped, looking up from her bow.

“Your highness!” the police sergeant gasped.

Celestia gave an affectionate nod to her student, but held up a hoof to silence her. Her eyes locked on Melissa.

Beside her, Melissa noted Andrew had subtly put his pistol away. She did not. Though it felt like a paperweight, who knew if the show was a totally accurate measurement of the Queen's power? A well-placed shot at the right time…
Melissa shook her head, what the hell was that? Why would I want to kill her?

Keeping her hands in plain view, she slowly put her sidearm back in her holster, hoping it would earn some points with the queen.

Celestia slowly trotted forward, looking Melissa up and down. Her eyes were clouded, unreadable.
"Have you nothing to say for yourself?" She finally asked, softly.

"Uh... Ma'am?" Melissa asked in confusion.

"After all that's happened, all this time, you still wanted revenge? You know that if you had just turned yourself in, nothing would be held against you."

Melissa stepped back, "Excuse me, ma'am, but I think you may have mistaken me for someone else."

Celestia's eyes remained calm, "Sunset, do not play this game. We know it's you." She looked Melissa up and down again, "what have you done to yourself?"

Melissa looked to Andrew, who shrugged in bewilderment. "...I haven't done anything to myself. Okay, I lost weight but..." Celestia's gaze narrowed into a glare, "... aaaannd you don't care. But I have no idea who you're talking about.”

As she spoke, she looked up directly into Celestia’s eyes. Instantly, all thoughts vanished with a blinding-pain through her skull. She reached up, massaging her temples...before blackness overcame her.

XXXXX

The marine opened her eyes, on her back and staring up at a stone ceiling. She sat bolt upright, trying to get off the wooden cot she found herself in.
She cried out in pain, falling to the cobblestone floor face-first as she tried to stop moving and agitating her injuries.

Okay. Injuries. Ow, ow, ow, and oh look! Fucking ow! It would be easier to make a list of things that didn’t hurt.

She lifted her head, Yay, that doesn’t hurt!

She was in some sort of cell, stone all around with a wooden door, iron bars in the small window. Bars also blocked another window that let some light in from the outside above the wooden bed.

Knees function now. She struggled to a sitting-up position, and checked to see how much blood and teeth she’d lost. It felt like she’d been through a night of drinking in Metro 2033, only with a lot less liquor and more hangover after blackout. Her head was hurting from inside, not just bruises. No lost teeth though.

Shit. Her phone was missing. She still had her winter gear, her blue caboose hat, scarf, N7 jacket, gloves, and combat boots. But she was missing not just her phone, but her watch, Glamdring, combat vest, flashlight, swiss army knife, and her wallet…

“My wallet.”

Melissa jumped to her feet, and staggered over to the door. “Hey,” she called out, spluttering a little, “Hey, you fuckfaces! Where in the bleedin’ hell is my wallet?!”

“Quiet down, over there.” a voice replied distantly. The guard most likely.

“Can it, you rhizopod, and get me my wallet before I come over there and tear out your tongue with a rusty nail!”

A heavy sigh, then in a lower voice the guard asked “She’s a piece of work, isn’t she?”

“Shut up you stupid fucking...fuckwhistle!” Melissa screamed, “I have ears!”

Another guard hissed, “She heard that?”

“Yes you shit-eating asshats! Despite what conclusions you may have drawn about my ears, they’re no less capable than yours! So stop talking about me, get over here, and give me my wallet back!”

More sighs. The first ruffled a newspaper by the sound of it, “I’m sure she’ll calm down eventually. You know how some of them are.”

The second said, “Yeah, but she’s crazy or something! You heard what she did!”

“Oh my god, you moronic pestilential pachyderms made of idiotic walruses! I didn’t do anything!”

Silence, for the first time.

“Cthulhu’s balls…” she whispered, facepalming, “You dipshits think I did something. What the fuck could I possibly do?! I haven’t done anything! Unless you count the fights and--oh shit, you think--”

Melissa slammed into the door again, “You dumbasses think I’m a shapeshifted pony?! Are you high?! What did she do, anyway? Murder? I thought you guys were all above that, ‘n’ shit!”

One of the guards finally came to the outer door, a concerned expression on her face, “Ms. Shimmer, this won’t be that bad if you calm down. I’m sure Celestia will be forgiving--”

The marine slammed into the door once again, and screamed, “What the fuck did I do?!”

The second guard arrived, looking in. The first asked, “Should we call somebody? She doesn’t seem well.”

The second seemed less friendly, “Hard to tell if she’s well or not, physically I mean. I’m sure it’s just denial. She’ll burn herself out in a few minutes.”

Through gritted teeth, Melissa hissed, “I’m. Right. In front of you. You asshole.”

“Oh, calm down--”

“Calm down? Calm down?” The marine roared, kicking the wall with her boot, “Look where I am, shit-for-brains! I black out, and wake up to find I’m in the middle of a goddamn cell in a goddamn 19th century judicial system with a bunch of fucking ponies and a monarch who’s pissed at me for no goddamn reason!”

The first guard tilted her head, “Well, you did give her that black eye--”

“I did what?!” Melissa shrieked, sending the metal in the cage ringing.

“Left eye. Clocked her right there.” the second guard said, pointing to his face, “Guess you were too busy trying to claw the cops’ eyes out to notice.”

“Oh shit...oh shit shit shit shit shit…” Melissa grumbled, pain reaching her nerves again. “No! No no no!”

With great effort, she blew air out her nose, and regained some self control, “Give me my wallet.”

“I’m sorry, miss,” the first guard explained, “we can’t do that.”

“Give it up, right now, or I start busting heads!”

The second rolled his eyes, “C’mon, let her burn herself out.”

Melissa cried out in anguish at the guard, and began thrashing, throwing herself against the bars, the walls, smashed the wooden bed, destroying everything she could get her hands on.

“No! No! No! It’s not my fault! I didn’t do it! I’m innocent, do you hear me? Innocent!”

The first guard watched Melissa’s outrage with a mix of fascination and horror, not replying to Melissa’s demands that they give up her wallet when her reeling mind came back to that.

Eventually, bruised and battered and exhausted, Corporal Melissa Foster sank into a corner, curled up in a ball, sobbing.

Eventually, somber and struggling through tears, she sang softly the same Japanese song that perplexed all in Equestria who heard it.
The Galactic Pilot.

Chapter 9

Melissa awoke to a great feeling of cold. She groped for her bedroom window to shut it, thinking maybe she’d left it open the previous night, before realizing where she was. Opening one eye, she glared up at the open window to the outside, bars blocking escape. She was stuck in a cell, in a prison. Somewhere.

Wherever she was, it was much chillier than Manehattan.

Instinctively, she looked at her wrist, wondering why her watch wasn’t beeping...before remembering where that was. In the grubby hands--hooves, excuse me-- of some pony scientist, who was probably smashing it to pieces for chirping unexpectedly.
“Bloody primitive screwheads.”

With a groan, she sat up, smacking her lips and shivering, before she unleashed a pair of explosive sneezes into her arm. She let out a hiss of disgust at the amount of junk on her sleeve.

It took her a moment to realize that the shivering wasn’t just from awakening, she was covered in a layer of frost. Fear spiked, and she flexed her fingers, feeling her nose and ears. She pulled off her gloves to examine her fingers further. To her immense relief, nothing was frozen. Her skin was stiff and cold, but still a healthy color. Thank God for 21st century winter clothing. And the thick wool blanket she'd found in the remains of the destroyed bed.
The cell was warmer than she'd expected, so perhaps the snow had just drifted in and hadn't been melted by the prison’s heating. It would explain her lack of frostbite.

It still wasn't anywhere near as warm as it needed to be. Ponies must not require as much heat to survive.

“Fragging dark ages,” she mumbled, sneezing again as she shot to her feet and moved to the opposite side of the cell untouched by snow, ignoring an odd shadow in her peripheral vision, “When will they invent shatterproof glass?”

“It is difficult to tell, given their current technological status,” a voice replied, “Though it doesn’t need to be shatterproof. All it needs to do is allow light in, but not allow an inmate to escape. The cold may not be malicious, or even misunderstood biology, just technological limitations.”

Melissa gave a shrug, “Doesn’t make any difference to the cold.”

She paused, frowning. That voice was familiar.

“Hello?” Melissa asked, hitting the wall she was leaning against, “Who said that?”

“That was me. Over here.” the voice came from the other side of the cell, and when Melissa looked...her eyes bugged out.

The figure was obscured by the shadows, but she immediately knew who it was.

“Is there a problem?” he inquired, seeing Melissa’s odd expression, a mix of shock and excitement.

“No...no problem at all. Except...all of them.”

The figure squinted, “...Excuse me?”

The marine flattened herself against the wall, “Okay, I lied. Several problems. Aside from being hungry, thirsty, suffering from exposure, and massive migraines, I think I’m losing my mind, or someone’s trying to mess with my head. Because you don't exist. You can't exist. Also,” she sneezed explosively again, “I think I’m getting a cold. Do you know how to get snot out of polyester?”

“Why would you think you were losing your mind?” the other asked, and added as an aside, “Don’t worry about your jacket, polyester doesn’t stain.”

With a chuckle, she replied, “Oh, I don’t know, maybe I think I'm losing my mind because of the Maximal Fuzor I can see standing in my cell, and the fact that I know that the one who is apparently standing in front of me is fictional, and not real like with the ponies. If he was, we’d have had reports of giant robots since 1984! So, either I am losing my mind, or you’re some sort of imposter. Given the messed up shit I’ve been through lately, it’s hard to tell.”

The figure stood almost a meter taller than her, with a pair of wings jutting out from his already-broad shoulders on mechanical joints. His body was robotic, artificial in nature, built from metal plates and paneling, with his joints artificial and hinge-like, colored by silver and grey with hints of bronze. Thick arms were packed with power, a roundel surrounded by spikes was on his chest, with bright silver plates above and below. Eagle talons of all things made up his feet, and synthetic fur lined his upper arms, legs, and parts of his torso. His head looked like that of a wolf, with a muzzle and points like ears stretching back, only much more compressed into a humanoid size; his expression was pleasant and warm. His body design and color gave the appearance of plate armor. Knight in shining armor indeed.

He was a transformer, a fictional character she’d first seen on a laptop when she was in third grade. Silverbolt, a Maximal aviator straight out of Transformers: Beast Wars, shook his glistening wolf-like head. His whole appearance was strange, even for the transformers franchise, and even for the beast warriors at that. While most of the Beast Wars characters turned into single animals, there was an additional line of characters who were a mash-up of various animals, the Fuzors. Silverbolt was an eagle and a wolf put together, shaped like a griffin in beast mode but with the wolf replacing the lion.

Okay, not CGI, but doesn’t look weird either? The hell? Something else puzzling, instead of some horrid scheme or emptiness, Melissa saw Silverbolt’s orange eyes were filled with everything she’d expect from the character; chivalry, kindness, and a doofy-nature.
“You can't be real.” She repeated, “There are several things that you could be, but none of them involve a Maximal protoform somehow ending up in Equestria. A, You're something my slowly fragmenting brain has come up with for reasons I don't know. Third man syndrome perhaps--”

“I hate to state the obvious, but doesn't missing man syndrome require much more loneliness?” Silverbolt pointed out politely.

Melissa opened her mouth to protest, but realized that he was correct, “Huh, why didn't I think of that? Never mind, option B, you're the result of a regular mental breakdown, visual and auditory hallucinations. My subconscious created you because...I don’t know, some random bullshit.”

“The need for a companion?” he guessed.

Melissa shook her head, “Right. Duh. How do you…” she groaned, “this brings us to point number three.”
She gestured toward the door, “You’re with them. You’re a shapeshifter of some kind, or a hallucination brought on by a spell. You want defense data, you want technology, you want strategic information, you want…”

“Melissa, why on Cybertron would any of that be valuable to them?” Silverbolt inquired, “You know their culture. They are not a warring people. Technology may be valuable, yes, but you know as well as I that invasion is the furthest from their thoughts.”

Melissa growled, picked up a fragment of bed, and chucked it at the Maximal. It passed through him and clattered against the wall behind him, proving at least that he wasn’t a shapeshifter.
“You won’t get me this way. Trying to use my own mind against me, huh? You won’t get me!”

She stalked to the cell door, “You hear that, motherfuckers!? I ain’t cracking! You can get rid of this damn apparition now!”

A guard, not one of the two from the previous night, appeared at the door. “Um...ma’am? Is something wrong?”

“First, go fuck yourself, but I bet you were already doing that when I called. Two, you can call off this damned…” she flailed a hand at Silverbolt, “...Thing, because it’s not working. Do you hear me? I won’t crack. Third, go fuck yourself. Or did I mention that already?”

The guard stared at her, trying to decipher her rant. Finally, he gasped in realization, “Ooh, you’re talking about your alienist! Is there a problem with it?”

Melissa blinked, her mouth opening and closing, “‘Alienist’? What is that? I know that…”

“I believe it’s a 19th-century term for psychiatrist,” Silverbolt offered helpfully.

“Can it, Rin-Tin-Tin. You, fuckface. Talk. He’s correct, alienist does mean--” she shook her head, and glared at Silverbolt, “Quit reading my mind!”

“Is there something wrong with it?” The guard asked again, “I could get a doctor…”

“No. Shut up. Then un-shut up and answer my question. What is an alienist?”

The guard stared again. “How do you not know?”

“Buddy, I get that all the time. That is my life. There’s a ton of crap I don’t know that everyone else somehow knows. Pretend I have amnesia, and answer. My fucking question. You imbecile.”

The guard shrank back a bit, “It’s your prison buddy. Y’know, prisoners always get lonely, and sometimes there needs to be a voice of reason. Everyone needs a friend, even criminals. This is very standard stuff, how do you not know?”

“She does not come from this planet,” Silverbolt explained, therefore she could not know. It’s quite frustrating, not just for you, good sir, but for her especially.”

Melissa banged her head against the door, mumbling incoherently.

“She also doesn’t do well without coffee in the morning.” he added, chuckling a little, his voice warming the marine’s heart but alarm bells were still going off in her head.

“Don’t we all?” the guard sympathized.

“Why is he here?” Melissa grunted, “That can’t be it! That can’t be the only reason!”

“The alienists are there just to render aid! That’s it!” the guard whimpered, dodging a bit of saliva, “He’s a friend to you! That’s all! No other reason!”

He quickly scurried away, leaving Melissa and Silverbolt behind.

Melissa rested her head against the door. Her eyelids drooped, and she smacked herself in the face to stay awake.

Stepping away, she moved to a wall, and slid to the bottom. She wrapped herself up in the wool blanket once again.
Silverbolt, clacking with every footstep just like she remembered, moved to sit in front of her, straight back and cross-legged.

For a long time, all she did was look at her boots, trying to understand her situation.

“Sorry about the...throwing thing…” she mumbled, “the thingy I threw.”

He shrugged, “It is alright, you were merely frightened. This is clearly a hard time for you.”

The marine snorted, “Tell me about it.”

She sneezed several times, and cursed, “Agh, I think I’m getting a cold.”

“It looks that way, unfortunately. I suspect this cell is doing you no favors. It may be wise to maintain good behavior, and then explain to them your problem. I am sure they will be accommodating.”

Melissa rolled her eyes, “Fat chance. We’re in a monarchy.”

Silverbolt replied, “A monarchy with a kind heart at its head. It may not be an ideal system of government, but…”

“She threw me in jail for no freaking reason, how’s that for a kind heart?” Melissa snapped.

“It’s not her fault, it’s just a case of mistaken identity. Remember, shapeshifting is completely possible here. Remember when you accidentally stumbled into…” he grimaced, and looked embarrassed, “...Twilight and Andrew while they were alone?”

Melissa shuddered at that, but then tilted her head, “I was just thinking that...are you reading my mind? Every other minute you come up with something that seems like it’s based on my own reasoning. Just what the hell are you? You’re not Silverbolt, I know that much. And I need more than what that idiot gave me.”

Silverbolt replied calmly, “I am Silverbolt, but I am more than that. Internal alienists, as they are called, are generated from a spell cast over prisons. They scan the user’s subconscious, and pick a figure from that individual’s past that will serve as a friend and advisor in their time of need.”

Nodding, Melissa mused, “I guess that might explain why you keep reading my mind. You’re an extension of my subconscious, communicating with me on a more vocal level.”

“Exactly. Though I don’t exactly read your mind. I just offer aid, and sometimes that comes in the form of conclusions you might have come to on your own.”

“So it’s like third man syndrome crossed with Urgo from SG-1, only less annoying.”

Silverbolt nodded, “I suppose so, yes.”

Standing up, Melissa stepped over to the window, looking out at the countryside before her. The prison was built into a mountainside, likely near Canterlot. The landscape far below was covered in a layer of snow.
“I still don’t trust you. There’s no way to verify this.”

“I am telling the truth, I give you my word.”

Shaking her head to stay awake, Melissa turned back, “And how valuable is that, huh? Just above utterly worthless?”

Silverbolt looked disapprovingly at her, hurt, “That was uncalled for. I assumed you knew me better than that.”

Melissa felt a twinge of regret, wrestling with paranoia. “Do I, though? You say you’re more than who you appear to be, how much more? At what point in the canon are you from? Beast Wars, Beast Machines, or that weird 3H Comics phase? Are you the guy I know, or are you that angsty asshole who has Silverbolt’s name stapled on?”

The Maximal looked at her, and for the first time she noted some hint of hostility in his eyes.

“The other Silverbolt? The...peacock? Do not compare us. He and I are not the same. We are not even alike. A dishonorable creature.”

Melissa peered at him, “What?”

“That peacock is a vengeance-driven monster, with a thirst for revenge. He is not me. To be that sort of person…” he shuddered, “I am appalled at the prospect. I never want to become that Maximal. Whoever he is, that is what I am not.
“I know what you know, I know what he went through. Trapped in that wretched form for months, controlled by Megatron once again. I feel horror at these events...but I almost feel more horror at what the peacock became after being freed. To abandon not just one’s honor, but their very code, rejecting who they are. I was a Predacon once, controlled and manipulated by Megatron. But I did not feel enjoyment at firing upon fleeing foes, I felt no urge to sacrifice my beliefs. Even when he attacked me for disobeying orders, I refused to sacrifice my beliefs. The idea that I would feel liberated by being removed from my code of honor…” he shook his head, “You may not trust me, but you must know I am no peacock. I refuse to give in. I don’t know what he is, but that peacock is not Silverbolt.”

Melissa was silent for a moment. “I always wondered what you’d thought about that. You never did give in during the first series.”

She looked thoughtful, “I was wondering why my subconscious chose you. Maybe favoritism, or comfort, but considering how your job seems to be reasoning with me, I think I figured it out. You don’t compromise principles or your honor. Perfect for someone in my position.”

The Maximal smiled sadly, “I know I will still have to earn your trust, Melissa, but I will do my best to do so. On my word as a Maximal, as a soldier, and as an individual.”

Melissa finally smiled in reply, “And I for one feel honored that such a warrior would have a place embedded in my skull. Whether you be here for good or for ill, I’m glad you’re with me.”

XXXXX

Some time later, she couldn’t tell how long, the door was opened. A pair of guards waited, and told her “her majesty” wished to see her.

Melissa’s patience and reasoning abilities were wearing thin, unable to be sustained through the hunger and exhaustion and cold.

It was only thanks to Silverbolt that she didn’t attack the guards and go on a rampage, instead following them dutifully.

She was led through a maze of corridors, some stone and others partly natural. Likely part of the cave system built under Canterlot, built by “greedy unicorns” or whatever.
No access to the surface, perhaps to keep criminals out of public eye, or block escape routes. The path led all the way to the inside of the main castle, and she was led through a series of great halls that she recognized.
Far more realistic than in the show of course, but depicting the same images. Sombra, the Mane Six, Nightmare Moon…
She stopped at some in a particular series.

The first was a depiction of Discord in all his glory, while the second was of him hovering over several marionette sticks, with the three pony races strung below them in great pain.

It hit her once again that she was again in TV land. This mural shouldn’t be here. It was an image made for a fictional little girl show. A show with stupendous writing, but fiction nonetheless. Nothing she’d seen should be here.

Was what she was seeing real? Was any of this real?

The marine looked down at the carpet underneath her, rough and fragile under the touch of her scuffed combat boots. She looked at her hands, scratched and healing from the previous night’s tirade.
Her jacket, small tears and scratches here and there. Running a hand across her cheek, the scar was still there.
Her injuries were real enough.

Discord wasn’t real. He was an entity of fiction, voiced by John De Lancie, and inspired by his role as Q of Star Trek fame, in which he chewed through entire decks of scenery.

But here Discord was. Displayed like Hitler or Stalin. A villain who still gave the locals shudders. His atrocities and crimes taking up two of the windows, and both of his defeats most of the rest.

Melissa stepped up to the image before the guards could stop her, feeling the heat of the sun beating through the window. She reached out, hesitated, and touched the glass. It was cool to the touch, the frozen winter air outside allowing in a slight draft from the corners. Ridges followed the outlines of each of the patterns.
The pain in her temples seemed to dilute, fading to a dull roar for some reason.

Could this all really be a fabrication of her own mind? Had she lost her mind in the car crash? Was it a coma dream? Was it a...she shuddered, pre-brain-death hallucination?
So long ago that crash seemed, now.

Was this all in her mind? The people she’d met, the struggles, the discoveries, the tears, the laughter...was it all simply a fanfiction her subconscious had created? Did she lie in a hospital bed, Garrett by her side, waiting until she woke up?
Or did she shamble around the inside of a mental ward, ignorant of the world around her? Her friends and family slowly drifting away, saddened by the daughter, sister, or friend they’d lost?

Andrew, was he imagined? Some bizarre mix of various sci-fi characters? The ponies, were they only her mental images?

Did it all mean nothing? All her efforts to do good on this world, to be kind and fulfill her duty as a marine, as a human being?
She looked down at the floor, her hands balling into fists.

“Is...something wrong?” Silverbolt inquired, appearing by her side.

Melissa sighed, “I don’t know. I don’t know much of anything anymore. It used to be so simple, it was a world I understood...I used to be some marine corporal from Vermont. Now...I don’t know. I don’t know anything now. Is all this real?”
She gestured around, “You, them, Celestia, Andrew, the Mane Six, everyone. Are any of them real? Are you real? Did I die and go to heaven or purgatory or Valhalla? Am I just crazy? Is everything I’ve done completely worthless? What’s real anymore?”

“Does it seem real?” Silverbolt tilted his head questioningly.

“Well...yeah. Of course.”

“And you still control your own actions, do you not?”

“...I assume so.”

“Then for now, it doesn’t seem to matter. Leave it be, just for a little while. Take things as they come, there is no use in baseless conjecture. And ’perhaps if you know you are insane, then you are not insane.’”

“Philip K Dick.”

Silverbolt smiled, “Who best to quote when questioning reality?”

Melissa felt compelled to smile in reply. “Well, I think ILoveKimPossibleAlot will be pleased to hear about this.” she gestured to the Discord mural, “Maybe he’ll hire her on as his agent.”

“If we make it back to Earth.” Silverbolt commented darkly.

“Oh, nobody ever thought you’d make it back to Cybertron. Who knows what will happen?”

The guards had resigned themselves to the strangeness by this point. She didn’t seem overtly hostile, and decided to simply wait until she was ready to move on. It was a brief surprise when she started walking again, and they quickly fell in step.

At last, they came to the great doors to Celestia’s throne room.

The doors were opened, and Melissa was let inside.

“Primus…” Silverbolt exhaled, looking around at the stain glass windows, the gorgeous construction of the building, “It’s like seeing the Ark…”

“Yeah, but a lot less satisfying.” Melissa snorted back, “And a lot more dangerous.”

“I wouldn’t say so,” he shrugged, “We do not have Megatron stalking our every move.”

“We do have these jerkoffs though,” she gestured to the guards through the closing doors, “I bet if I even sneeze they’ll come and clobber us--me.”
Speak of the devil--she sneezed into her arm again. Grimacing at the sleeve, Melissa tried to ignore Silverbolt’s amusement at calling her bluff.

The Maximal pointed out, “These people don’t appear to be the violent type. I believe this is simply a case of mistaken identity. Otherwise, I imagine things would be much worse.”

“Much worse? How could they be much worse?!”

“Your very spark could have been ripped from your body, and placed in an unholy vessel of suffering and pain, then forced to watch helplessly as you are set against your friends...and the love of your life.”

Melissa stopped, looking at him with an expression of mortification, “Right. I’m sorry…”

He waved it off, smiling a little trying to ease the tension, “‘Tis alright. I suppose it never happened. Not in our…’headcanon’, correct?”
Abruptly clearing his throat, Silverbolt nodded down toward the end of the massive hall, “By the way, I believe marines are supposed to offer a gesture of respect toward heads of state.”

Melissa froze, realizing that Celestia was still in her throne across the large chamber, with a slightly confused expression. And impatient.
“I suggest we approach this from the ‘mistaken identity’ angle,” Silverbolt suggested, “Showing respect will gain us favor.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but, rubbing his temples, Silverbolt cut her off, “You’re not respecting her personally by doing this, you're respecting the office. The people in charge aren’t the same thing as the position. Everyone has to swallow their pride at times. You’ll be surprised at how far good manners can get you.”

“And boyish charm…” Melissa muttered, and took a step forward.

Striding briskly to what looked like the official place to stand, she stopped, stood to attention, and raised her hand to her head in a salute.
“I am Corporal Melissa Foster, United States Marine Corps, of the Armed Forces of the United States of America. I believe I have been wrongfully imprisoned, but I am willing to overlook this in the name of diplomatic relations. Hopefully, we can discuss how to get through this whole thing. I am deeply apologetic for my attempted assault, and while I can offer an explanation, I doubt you would accept it. I am willing to make amends.”

Celestia might have been surprised, but she gave no sign. She simply sighed.

The queen looked the corporal in the eyes, sadness and regret dancing in those magenta eyes of hers, “Sunset, I gave you ample opportunity to return peacefully. Nothing would’ve been held against you. Yet you still insist on conspiring against Equestria.”

Melissa lowered her arm, remaining at attention. Curiously, the name “Sunset Shimmer” caused a tightness in her gut, a tweak of intense and inexplicable anger.
“Your highness, I apologize for attacking you in Manehattan. I was not in control of my actions. However, I am not this Sunset Shimmer, and I never intended to attack your kingdom. Whatever crimes she committed I had no part in.”

The queen stood up from her seat, moving toward Melissa, “Still insistent on maintaining this charade, are we? A shapeshifting spell or potion won’t change what happened, or what you were planning to do.”
She pointed at Melissa’s hair, “You felt no need to correct that? That’s how we were able to spot you. Your mane is still the same color.”

Celestia paused, and tilted her head to look at Silverbolt. He turned around, but saw nothing of interest behind him.
“Yes, I am looking at you,” Celestia confirmed, smiling, “Hello there. I take it you are her alienist.”

“Wait, you can see him?” Melissa asked.

“Why, of course,” Celestia answered, a hint of surprise on her face, “Why wouldn’t I be able to?”

“I thought the guards were the only ones who could. Who else can?”

Celestia frowned, wearing an expression not-unlike a teacher frustrated with a student forgetting a fact, “You know this already, Sunset.”

She turned back to Silverbolt, “Might I ask your name?”

Taking it in stride, the Maximal bowed, “My name is Silverbolt, your highness, Senior Aviator aboard the Maximal Exploration Starship Axalon. Of late, I am her incarceration assistant.”

“Interesting...what are you exactly? Is that armor, or your skin?”

“It is armor, but has the same capabilities as your epidermis. To answer your first question, I am a Cybertronian, a mechanoid lifeform.”

Celestia nodded, yet still puzzled, “Yet you have wings, and...a wolf’s pelt, curious. Integrated with machinery, but nonetheless, much of it is organic. How can you be mechanoid?”

“I doubt you would understand,” Silverbolt replied gently, “But all of it is technological. It is a synthetic sheath, designed to imitate the form of a non-sapient life form on the planet my ship was stranded on. Unfortunately, the vessel intended to give me such a form was damaged, and the sensors malfunctioned, combining two forms into one.”

“A starship, you said?” Now that was odd. Celestia didn’t seem confused by the concept.

She turned back to Melissa, “Interesting friend you have here, Sunset. Have you learned a few things while you were gone?”

Standing at ease, trying hard to contain the rage that bewildered and kind of scared her, Melissa insisted, “I am not Sunset Shimmer. I am--”

“Sunset, enough, there is no need to keep hiding. We know it is you, we know what you were planning to do. Now, we could dismiss the charges against you if you were willing to tell us what’s on the other side of the portal, how you got back without using the portal, and and help us return the stolen equipment. As for your punishment, however--”

As Celestia spoke, she reached out a hoof for whatever reason, only for Melissa to flinch and draw back, “Stay the hell away from me.”

“Melissa? What is it?” Silverbolt exclaimed.

The queen was taken aback as well, looking between her and her hoof, “What’s the matter?”

“I know how monarchs are when they’re pissed. Divorced, beheaded and died, divorced, beheaded, survived!”

Celestia squinted in confusion, “What in Equestria are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I mean! This is gonna be some kangaroo court, then you’re gonna cart me off to the guillotine!”

Celestia was horrified. Silverbolt rubbed the bridge of his nose, “Melissa, you know that’s not what she’s like.”

“Oh, I do? What about what she did to her sister?! Her own fucking sister!?”

“Sunset?! What is wrong with you?” Celestia demanded.

“What’s wrong with me?! What the fuck is wrong with me?!”

Melissa released an ironic laugh, “Once did a pony who shone like the sun look out on her kingdom and sigh. She smiled and said, ‘Surely, there is no pony so lovely and so well beloved as I.’ So great was her reign and so brilliant her glory, that long was the shadow she cast which fell dark upon the young sister she loved; and grew only darker as days and nights passed.”

“Melissa…” Silverbolt said, frustrated, as Celestia’s expression of horror increased.

“Soon did that pony take notice that others did not give her sister her due, and neither had she loved her as she deserved. She watched as her sister's unhappiness grew. But such is the way of the limelight, it sweetly takes hold of the mind of its host, and that foolish pony did nothing to stop. The destruction of one who had needed her most.”

The two stared at her with horror. Melissa felt a twinge of regret, but was too angry to pull back.
“So Bowser, you’ll excuse me if I don’t let this bitch anywhere near me.”

“Melissa, that was extremely unkind. You know how she feels about her sister! That was just about the worst possible thing you could say to her! Primus, are you trying to get us into further trouble?!”

“Cthulhu’s left testicle, Silverbolt...I...I..” as Melissa stuttered, Celestia noted an anomaly. There was...something in her eyes, not an object, just...something that disappeared. As it did, Melissa’s demeanor suddenly shifted, and she covered her hand with her mouth, “...Oh hell.”

“Sunset...what happened to you out there?” Celestia asked quietly, “What did they do to you?”

Silverbolt appeared to notice something was wrong as well, and spoke to Celestia directly, “Your highness, please accept my deepest apologies. Miss Foster here has been through alot lately, she’s suffering from sickness, fatigue, exposure, she’s just not quite mentally fit.”

“Oh…” Celestia still showed no sign of fury or hate. Only deep motherly concern. “Is there anything I can do?”

The Maximal nodded, “She does need better living conditions, and food that’s better for her.”

She dipped her head, “I will see what can be done.”

He turned back to the marine, “See, Melissa, it’s all a misunderstanding.. She’s not the enemy.”

Celestia tried to add, “Sunset, whatever--”

The anger reignited in a flash once again, and there was something in Melissa’s eyes yet again. “Shut up. Shut up and stop calling be that. Is this really a misunderstanding?” she demanded, looking at Silverbolt, “After Inferno attacked you and Quickstrike, was Megatron telling the truth when he said ‘it was all a misunderstanding’?”

The incorporeal Maximal bowed his head, “Of course not, I must shamefully admit that. But this is different--”

“No. No it’s not. The thing is, we have no reason to trust her. I’ve done my best to do it the right way, but she clearly is not interested in treating us as equals. She’s treating us like criminals.”

“Sunset,” Celestia tried to interject, “I--”

Melissa growled, “Stop that. Stop that right now. That is not my name, my name is Melissa Foster. M-E-L-I-S-S-A. Mike, echo, lima, indigo, double-sierra, alpha. Corporal, March 18th, 1995, serial number 504-48-7378. Sunset isn’t here, I don’t care how my hair looks, I don’t care what bullshit you pull right out of that enormous ass of yours, I’m not her.”

Celestia’s face was one of utter horror and sickness, “What did you go through while you were out there? What was on the other side of that portal?”

“It’s Foster, you big white cunt, it’s Melissa Foster. Corporal. March 18th, 1995. Serial number 504-48-7378. That’s my name, that is who I am. I am a combat engineer in the United States Armed Forces, born and raised in Vermont. My dad’s first name is Douglas, my mom’s Elaine. My brother’s name is Garrett. Silverbolt here? He’s not real...no offense, Bowser. He’s from a computer-animated kids show! Trauma can cause a lot of problems, make a bunch of fake details, but nothing like this! The only time I think that happened was with Sam Beckett, and that was in Quantum Leap! Fiction! And his brain had been jumping around various people, so he was getting their memories! You really believe my mind created an entire life, race, and set of values just for the purpose of my hallucination?!”

“Well, there is still a lot about the brain that we don’t know--”

“Oh fuck you! Fuck you and fuck your science! I know more about the brain than your entire planet does!”

Celestia’s eyes narrowed slightly. Not a glare, but something in between. “That’s an interesting opinion.”

“Don’t believe me? I know every single part of the brain!” more or less, she thought, and suddenly broke into song, “Neo-cortex frontal lobe, brainstem, brainstem!"

Ignoring the befuddled expression on the monarch’s face, it was all Melissa could do to think out the tune of Camptown Races and the lyircs of the Parts of the Brain song.

Silverbolt and the queen of Equestria stared at her when she finally finished.

“I don’t know if that was appropriate…” the fuzor muttered.

“Your apparent superior knowledge of the different parts of the brain notwithstanding, Sunset--”

Melissa roared nonsense, made a strangulation motion, then settled for grabbing her own head in frustration, and walking a short distance away. Silverbolt’s supportive hand on her shoulder, though imaginary, was immensely welcome.
“Your highness, that name seems to aggravate her. It seems you may wish to refer to her as what she wants to be called.”

Celestia must have nodded or something, Silverbolt’s hand patted Melissa's shoulder twice.

“Very well. Melissa? Should we postpone this until you feel well again?”

That almost brought the corporal to tears. Celestia was like so many teachers, so many nice people she had known, why did she keep snapping at her? Well, there was good reason, but why couldn’t she give the queen the benefit of the doubt? Silverbolt was in all likelihood correct, it was probably a misunderstanding...so what was the matter with her?

What was wrong with her?

“Just...just give me a second.” Saying thank you felt like a stab in the gut. Why?

“How did you get back--how did you get to Equestria?” Celestia asked, being much more careful this time, “The portal Sunset Shimmer escaped though, is currently inoperable. There hasn’t been enough time between opening periods for you to have come through there…”

Melissa kept her lips sealed, her hostility rushing back. “Melissa Foster. Corporal. Serial number 504-48-7378. March 18th, 1995.”

She looked up at Celestia, who tilted her head in confusion. “Again with that information. A serial number? Some sort of date? What does that string of numbers mean?”

Melissa answered “Code of the United States Fighting Forces. Article five. ‘When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give my name, rank, service number and date of birth. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.’ Name: Melissa Foster. Rank: Corporal. I belong to the United States Marine Corps. My serial number is 504-48-7378. My birthday is March 18th, 1995. And that’s all you’re getting from me. As I said, you wouldn’t like the answers to my questions.”

“Surely there’s some arrangement we could come to!” Silverbolt protested.

“Silverbolt, I’ll be the first to admit I’m being a fucking asshole, but there’s a bunch of stuff here that if I say it it would be paramount to treason!”

“Treasonous to whom?” Celestia inquired, “How would basic information about this other world be as such?”

“‘Because,’” Melissa said as if speaking to a child, trying to recall a quote, “‘When dealing with alien civilizations, “secret” knowledge is almost worthless, but “common” knowledge is extremely dangerous.’ See, your secret info might be important, but it’s nothing compared to what’s in a public library. If they get their grubby mitts on your knowledge, they’ll hit you with something you know but didn’t expect. If they get your common knowledge, they will understand your motivations, your psychological weaknesses, blind-spots, and use that against you. They’ll destroy you with it, and you’ll never see it coming. Maybe that’s true, maybe not, in fact I disagreed with it up until now, but it’s all I got. I don’t know how you could use it against me, so I’m not taking any risks.”

She fixed Celestia with a cold hard stare, “So there. Anything else you wanted?”

Celestia was thoroughly flabbergasted. Completely unable to react for several minutes. “Guards?” she called out finally.

The massive doors opened, and obediently a pair of guards stepped out.

“Take her into custody, but let me speak to your sergeant.”

Their sergeant stepped through the doorway past the guards taking Melissa with them, “Ma’am?”

“Instruct the guards to take her to one of the more spartan rooms in the palace,” Celestia told him.

He blinked, “But--Ma’am--”

“Sergeant, at present, she is far less adept at surviving the cold than we are. It seems our cell blocks leave her quite sick. In addition…” Celestia sighed, “There is a slim chance she might be an actual human, and we don’t want to run the risk of getting in trouble.”

“With what? A bunch of old fairy tales?”

Celestia didn’t answer. “Do as I say, sergeant.”

The sergeant emerged from the throne room, gave his directions to the guards, and they set off.

“So, what do you think?” Melissa asked Silverbolt with some hostility.

“Huh?” one of the guards inquired, looking between her and whatever she seemed to be looking at.

“Not talking to you!” Melissa growled, “‘Bolt?”

The other guard looked at her, then to his fellow, “Who’s she talking to?”

“Not you, cocksucker!”

Realization suddenly dawned, and the marine facepalmed, “Oh...you can’t see him. He really is Urgo. It’s my alienist. Prison buddy. Apparently everyone knows about them?”

The guards both muttered oh, shrugged, and spoke no more.

“So. Silverbolt. Your opinion?”

Silverbolt looked reluctant to speak. He scratched his head, “...I think she will be lenient. She seems like a good soul, you couldn’t have offended her that much…”

“I did that badly, huh? What a SNAFU…”

“What did you expect, doing everything you possibly could have done to offend her? Primus, Melissa, what is the matter with you? You bring up her past mistakes, refer to her with what might be the most offensive word in the english language, and then refuse to speak to her at all!”

It felt like an electric shock had snapped through her head, and Melissa halted, leaning against a pillar and clutching her head.

“Ooh...fuckin’ A, don’t yell. She wasn’t willing to talk, you saw that. She thought I was whoever that little bitch Sunset Shimmer is, and she wanted a way to get to Earth. No way am I even helping with that.”

Silverbolt stroked his chin, “She asked only a few questions. She mistook you for that other pony, asked how you came to this world. Your response was to yell at her for the identity crisis--that was understandable, somewhat--refuse to offer any further information--less understandable--, and insult her with what may arguably be the most offensive word in the english language. Yes, obviously she is the clear and present danger. The kind-hearted ruler of a less advanced society than Victorian England is a threat to the...engineer belonging to the planet of technologically advanced homo sapiens who could wipe out their entire nation in twenty minutes. By the Matrix, Melissa, what is the matter with you?! Why would you do such a thing? Is it your intention to get yourself terminated?”

“Obviously not! But...but I…she...” Melissa groaned, her head hurting worse than ever. She hunched over, applying pressure to her temples in the hopes it would dull the pain.

The guards stopped, looking at one another in confusion.

After a moment, Melissa released her head. She straightened up, looking somewhat dazed.
She shook her head, clearing it, “Silverbolt?”

He was gone.

“Silverbolt--!” she gasped, glancing about in dismay.

“Behind you,” he said, and she turned about with relief. She briefly made as if to hug him, but dropped her arms quickly.
He was looking at his hand, turning it over in puzzlement. “How odd…”

“I think I disappeared for a few seconds…”

Melissa winced in pain again, “Try not to do that again, you scared the piss out of me. Anyway, Celestia--it was her fault, she...”

“You referred to her as a--”

“I did not!” Melissa denied, “I…” she winced again, “No...I did? Shit, shit shit shit. I did. Why did I do that?”

Silverbolt was surprised, “You were angry, yes? You’re hungry, you’re upset--”

“She’s the goddamn queen of the sun! She could kill me in an instant! Oh fuck, oh fuck me, what is the matter with me?”

The Maximal was perplexed, “I don’t know. Perhaps we should discuss this out of range of the guards?”

Melissa glanced down one of the guards, a few dozen centimeters shorter than her. His eyes were locked straight ahead, courtesy of intense guard training much like the Queen’s Guard back home. That didn’t stop certain universal twitches of confusion common among humans and ponies to seep through the cracks.

The guards led her not back to her cell, but instead toward a different part of the palace, one of the taller dormitory towers.
Though with heavy locks mounted on it, the door that she was led to was otherwise normal. Made of thick wood, though.

The room was much more spacious than the cell. Still fairly spartan, but there was a bed, lights, a few books on a shelf, and no draft. The windows were glass, but judging by the drop, it didn’t look like she’d want to try anyway.
The guards began to walk out, but one fell behind the other, stopping to reach into his pocket. He withdrew a small round object, glancing at it before cursing, and muttering, “Right. Forgot.”

Melissa looked back at him, “Something wrong?”

The guard looked up at her. He was a unicorn, possessing round Harry Potter glasses, and a dark-green coat with patterns of red stripes in a form of war paint, or at least personal preference. His muzzle was red, and stripes of red were across the sides of his jaw and his legs. His mane was a slightly-brighter red and a stripe of lime green. Under his armor just barely visible was a cutie mark displaying a chessboard and two question marks. In his hoof he held a pocket watch, connected to the inside of his uniform by a metal chain.
“It’s nothing, really. I forgot my watch broke this morning. Force of habit, you know?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Can it be repaired?”

The guard waved off her concern, “It’s fine. Just gotta find a watchsmith at some point. Hope it’s not too badly damaged this time…”

“This time?” Melissa inquired.

“It’s an old family heirloom, been beaten up a lot over the years. My dad will not be happy if he finds I broke it again.”

Melissa held out her hand, “Mind if I take a look at it? I could spare you some cash.”

The guard clutched it back protectively, “I--I--gotta go.”

Melissa grimaced, “C’mon, dude. I’m an engineer. I solve problems. Some philosophical problems, but mainly practical problems. I may not be a watchsmith, but it could be something really simple. What else am I gonna do with it? I can’t use it for a weapon, it’s a freaking watch. I can’t keep it, you’ll beat the hell out of me to get it back. I can’t smash it, I imagine I’d end up flying out of that window. It’s only in my best interest to help.”

The guard thought on it, and eventually, with great reluctance, he placed the small battered device in her hands.
“I...I tried winding it already, but it still won’t move. It’s a weird watch. Some ancestor’s unique design, it can be wound manually, or just by waving it around. It’s been mind-boggling for anyone who’s tried to remake it.”

Melissa raised an eyebrow at that, “Real high-tech. Huh.”

She turned it over, studying it. It looked like it might have been a wristwatch once, judging by the two loops at either side above and below the face, but whatever had been there had long since worn away. It was a very elegant design. Despite the scrapes it had, it still looked impressive. Shaking it, something inside rattled.

“Careful!”

“Keep your pants on,” she said to the guard’s puzzlement, “I got it.”

She flipped it over, and pried open the back panel. A gear was loose inside, and she pushed it back into place with little difficulty.

“All done.” she declared, closing the back...before her eyes locked in on the letters carved into the steel back. There was a pony family name scratched into the panel, but the machinery-made letters were what drew her attention.
She turned it over, and looked at the front again. Just above the mounting for the hands, there were two individual words printed.

The marine’s hands shook as she passed it back, “Real nice piece. Take good care of it, you hear me?”
The guard looked puzzledly at her, but said, “Thanks. I’m Guardscolt Wild Gambit. Give a yell if you need anything.” With that, he retreated through the door.

Melissa sat down heavily on the bed, listening to the locks being engaged.

“Is something wrong?” Silverbolt asked, materializing nearby.

“You didn’t see it?” she whispered.

“See what?”

“The writing on the watch.”

The words were burned into her mind, “Dos en acier inoxydable, résistant à l'eau.”

On the face was the type, “automatique”, and the manufacturer. “Cartier”.

XXXXX

Perhaps several hundred meters away, the Mane Six, Spike, and Andrew were in a common area close to where guests in palace were accommodated. The group lounged about on a handful of couches and chairs around a fireplace, the only ones in the dark chamber. Night had descended, and the only light came from from a lamp next to Rarity, the roaring fire, and the Samsung tablet Twilight had on an armrest.
Strangely, all the ponies were arrayed away from Andrew. Normally Twilight or Fluttershy would be seated near, but now they sat with each other opposite him. Spike, recently arrived from Ponyville, was with Twilight, providing moral support.
There were circles under Andrew’s reddened eyes, noxious smells emitting from his clothes, and he slouched forward on the tiny chair he sat on. With the only other human on the planet at risk, he wasn't taking care of himself very well.

“Melissa’s charges are wide,” Rarity said, peering at a piece of paper she held in one hoof, “They include but are not limited to, two counts of conspiracy to commit theft of a national treasure, falsifying identity, illegal surgeries, violation of a restraining order, several counts of trespassing, possible treason,and three counts of assault, one of which on military personnel, one on the queen herself, and one on members of the Manehattan Police Department.”
She placed the paper back on the table before her, among the piles of other documents and folders.

“Bullshit.” Andrew spat. “Bullshit.”

The ponies all stared at him, having heard the word very little, and mostly from Melissa.

“Total BS.” Rainbow agreed, “She’d never do that! I mean, the assault maybe, but who wouldn't have those charges?”

“Jus’ about every law-abiding pony?” Applejack inquired with an eye-roll.

“I find it hard to believe myself.” Rarity agreed with the human and pegasus, “This is not the woman we know.”

“Do criminals ever reveal their true selves?” Twilight inquired, staring at the wondrous gift bestowed upon her by the human she no longer understood. The tablet. An artifact so advanced that even the casing was beyond their science. Andrew had known it was real, he recognized it, everything had been right.
Was it a fake? Was it taken from whoever had originally owned it and the vehicle? Or was Melissa really who she said she was?
“She was aggressive in the past, but I never expected her to...to punch Celestia! Do we actually know anything about her?”

“Twilight, don’t say that.” Andrew said angrily, “She’s as human as I am. I know you two didn’t get along, but you can’t be thinking--”

“I’m not!” Twilight barked harshly, another individual breaking from behavior, “I don’t know what I’m thinking right now! I don’t know who that person is, I don’t know if she’s guilty or not, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know!”
She put her face in her hooves, anxiety going off the charts, as Spike patted her shoulder comfortingly. He glared at Andrew, months of some strange rivalry reflected in that instant.

“Did you know this Sunset Shimmer character?” Rarity asked gently, “According to her records, she was one of Celestia’s pupils up until about a year before you came to Ponyville.”

Twilight shook her head, “No...I don’t remember much of anyone from my magic school. I remember her mane and coat though. It matched Melissa’s exactly.”

“Oh, like that’s a good excuse!” Andrew threw up his hands, “Say, let’s say I’ve got the same hair color as a serial killer, should I should be thrown into jail? That’s about on the same level as throwing someone into jail for skin color! Is your judicial system made of racists?! And that’s not even her natural hair color, it’s hair dye! Fake!”

Rarity picked up a file, “That’s not the only evidence, unfortunately. The police sergeant, a stallion Ms. Shimmer had known from her youth, positively identified our friend as the former. Several other witnesses confirmed her behavior, appearance, and mannerisms as identical or very similar to Ms. Shimmer.”

“Who cares? I know her, and she is not this...Sunset Shimmy person!” Rainbow said.

“Unfortunately, the justice system cares. There is plenty of evidence here to bring it to court.” Rarity grimaced.

Pinkie Pie, otherwise silent during the conversation, picked up one of the documents at random, “Wow! How’d they get this one? Oh, it was her. Duh.”

“Who?”

“Oh, Agent Sweetie Drops was spying on us when Melissa’s leg was still messed up. Y’know, from the Tartarus security agency that was shut down when the bugbear escaped?”
Pinkie looked at everyone like they were crazy, “C’mon, everyone knows her! She does have a secret identity though, and really doesn’t want other ponies talking about it!”

“How’d you--” Andrew started to ask, but Twilight shook her head, “Don’t even bother.”

“Hey, what was with that treason charge?” Rainbow Dash asked suddenly, “If they don’t think she’s really human…”

“Reportedly, Sunset Shimmer was being escorted to holding by several palace guards, and managed to gain the upper hand against them. She found a way to escape the entire Household Division and Canterlot Police completely undetected, and hasn’t been spotted since. The idea has been put forward that due to our friend’s equipment, she was either willingly or unwillingly employed by the human government, transformed into a human, and equipped to come back and gather information on our defenses. Those who put this idea forward say it is true even if Melissa is who she says she is. While the idea is ridiculous, their evidence will be somewhat persuasive. Using Twilight’s notes, they have pointed out several unusual points in our friend’s story. To start, her automobile.”
Rarity turned to Andrew, “Darling, isn’t it true that most motor vehicles on Earth are powered by...gasoline?”

He nodded, “Yeah, of course.”

Rarity grimaced, “The prosecution seem to find it too much of a coincidence that of all the vehicles that might have been brought here, it is one of those few that doesn’t require gasoline. There was no need to build a refinery, she simply created an adapter and adjusted the power output until she could refuel it.”

“That’s circumstantial evidence though,” Andrew pointed out, “Statistical impossibilities happen all the time.”

“There’s more. They question why of all the people to use the vehicle, it was her, who is not only a soldier, but a combat engineer and a member of your Marine Corps; a unit highly-renowned for its ability to adapt to any environment. Combat engineers are, by her own admission, trained for undermining enemy defenses, and preparing for the rest of the army following. The prosecution wonders why, of all the millions of soldiers on your world, it would be one from your world’s most powerful nation, a member of the (arguably)most adaptable military service, a foot soldier instead of a cook or sailor, one with training in undermining defenses, and one with plans immediately set into motion for how to deal with her circumstances.”

Most of the ponies were gaping at that, as was Andrew.

“That’s...real specific.” Rainbow pointed out.

“Yeah, why do they think Earth wants to invade? We haven’t had any contact with them since we left!” Cried Andrew.

“We don’t know that. We have only yours and her word that you were sent here by accident.” Twilight said quietly.

Andrew looked at her in shock, “...what?”

“We don’t know if you’re telling the truth.” She repeated more clearly.

“Wha...but...Twilight…” he stuttered, “You know me. Would I lie?”

She avoided his gaze.

He looked at the yellow mare beside her, “Fluttershy, help me out here. You don’t think...this is crazy, right? Right?”

Fluttershy looked away as well, squeaking “I...I…”

Andrew slammed a fist on the arm of his chair, “Damn it! What is wrong with everyone?! We’re not lying about anything!”

“C’mon, you two!” Rainbow pleaded, looking at Twilight and Fluttershy, “You three are in a big love triangle, for crying out loud! You know he’s not a liar!”

“And Melissa’s no scheming criminal.” Rarity said, “She might be...unusual, but if she were really preparing to invade, wouldn’t Earth have prepared a much better infiltration plan? Posing as a pony would be much more effective!”

“If she were really a spy, you wouldn’t even notice.” Andrew said, “Spies never try to attract attention, and they certainly don’t get into fistfights with Griffins over spilt drinks.”

The lines were drawn. A pegasus, a dragon, and a unicorn on one side, a human, another pegasus, and another unicorn on the other. Eyes turned toward the earth ponies, daring them to pick a side.

Applejack leaned back in her chair, “I honestly don’t know who’s a liar and who’s telling the truth. I know our friends here certainly believe they have no idea how they got here, but here’s something none of y’all have considered. What if you’re both right? What if you both didn’t know how you got here, but you were sent here deliberately? By some other force?”

The others were silent. “What are you thinking of?” Twilight asked.

“I don’t know. It’s the only answer I can see.”

“Pinkie Pie, darling,” Rarity said, turning to the last member of their party, “You’ve been uncharacteristically quiet tonight. Do you have any thoughts on this matter?”

The pink pony did not reply immediately. When she did, it was soft and quiet, a tone and vocabulary that disturbed all listening. “Something else is going on here. Something big. Something that’s making my stomach churn.”

Though all those present knew she was insane, Pinkie Pie’s word could always be trusted. The darkness of the chamber around them was all the more intimidating. The crackling fire transmitted a menacing score.

Chapter 11

The time had come. The guards came in the morning. Melissa was ready, her fatigues as clean as she could make them, her jacket zipped up to a neat level with N7 insignia clean and shining. Her boots would’ve impressed her drill sergeant, and she even combed her hair. She didn’t have a chance to cut it, so not up to military standard, but it sufficed. The ponies didn’t seem to mind long hair.

They led her through the palace to the basement once again, through the tunnels. It seemed they used the abandoned mines for more than just moving prisoners, there were storage areas, sewer lines, and primitive electrical systems carrying light to limited areas of the city.

From the distant sounds, they even used the network as a way to get around the city rapidly, a subway on foot.

“Intriguing what they’ve been able to do with only the most basic forms of industry.” Silverbolt mused, his eyes glowing brighter than the dim lanterns the guards carried.

“Well, magic might help. But give me electricity any day.”

“It’s not that they did it on purpose--” Silverbolt suddenly stopped walking, “What in the name of Primus…?”

“Bowser? What is it?” Melissa inquired, turning around.

He had stopped, and was looking at his hand, turning it over. “Something’s...wrong.”

There was an odd sound, and a stab of pain in Melissa’s skull. As she watched, a wave of what looked like static washed over Silverbolt, and his appearance began to become snowy.

“What’s wrong?” she demanded, alarmed.

“Something’s wrong. I feel...strange.” the snow faded, but there was another wave of static, and his voice became distorted for an instant.

“Oh no…” Melissa whispered, grabbing her hair in anxiety, “This is what happened to Al when Sam got electroshock therapy in Quantum Leap!”

“This is not good.” he observed. The guards had stopped as well, and looked at each other nervously.

“No shit Sherlock--Ah!” she cried out, holding her head in pain. The snow returned, and the distortion as well.

“I think your alienist is malfunctioning, ma’am.” one of the guards said, “It should pass.”

“No, I don’t think it will. There’s some other force at work here.” Silverbolt said, “there is very little that can affect an alienist like this. We need to figure this out, and fast.” as if to punctuate his words, he began to flicker in and out.

“...And I don’t think I’ll be able to stay with you at this rate.”

“Oh, Great Old Ones! You’re gonna fade away and leave me alone! Damn it!” her skull hurt again, “No! I can’t do this without you!”

“Melissa! Stay strong! You can do this!” he encouraged, his voice fading and fluctuating, static traveling over his appearance, “Just remember that you’re innocent!”

“Silverbolt!” she yelled, reaching out, “Don’t leave me!”

He finally faded out.

“No! Silverbolt!” she screamed as her head hurt worse than ever before, and she fell to her knees. The world seemed to distort for the longest time, until the pain finally faded.

No Maximal reappeared.

“Damn, damn damn!” Melissa cursed, whirling on one of the guards, “You bastards! I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you!”

She punched the guard in the face, then in the gut, sending him to the floor. She spun about to face the other, who was attempting to conjure a spell.

Melissa dove upon him, gripping the guard’s neck with both hands and squeezing. The guard’s face rapidly began to turn purple, his horn flashing and sputtering. In desperation, he released the energy the spell contained, letting out a small explosion.

She still had her grip on him, her face covered in soot. “Nice try, you bastard! What the fuck did I ever do to you, huh? What! The fuck! Did I? Ever do?!”

Her brief rebellion came to an abrupt end when something struck her back, and pain tore through her body.

Her muscles contracted, spasming and completely unable to move. She still held onto the guard’s neck, her fingers refusing to respond to commands. A distant part of her mind connected the experience to that of being shot with a taser, where the muscles simply refuse to move. Rather stupid if one’s trying to get their target to drop something.

The electric shock ceased, and her muscles relaxed. Melissa collapsed to the floor in a heap, the guard falling as well, gasping for air.

She blacked out.

When Melissa awoke, she was being dragged along by the guards, her knees bumping painfully against every little thing in the path. Rope had been tied around her hands, and she could barely move. Two more guards had joined the first, helping them pull her weight.

“By Celestia, what happened?” A familiar voice demanded, as if from the end of a long tunnel.

“She went nuts, tried to kill me.” a hoarse voice replied, presumably the guard she assaulted.

“Ridiculous! Untie her this instant!”

A hoof gently lifted her head to eye level. Rarity, wearing a rather good-looking dress, was examining her bruises with concern, “Melissa, darling, can you hear me? Are you alright?”

Melissa uttered a moan.

Rarity released her head, “I said untie her!”

“Miss, with all due respect, she tried to strangle him.”

“Why in Equestria would she do that?”

“Silverbolt…” Melissa murmured. She managed to lift her head, and saw Rarity looking around for the Maximal.

“That’s just what I was thinking, where is he?”

“He’s gone.” Melissa croaked, “They took him. They pulled him out of my head.”

“What?! Why?” Rarity glared at one of the guards, “Explain yourselves!”

“It wasn’t us! Her alienst just started malfunctioning, vanished, then she started screaming and grabbed me!”

“Well then, who was it if not you?”

“The big white bitch.” Melissa spat, struggling to get her own feet under her. Strength was returning. Looking around, they seemed to be in some sort of antechamber, likely the one leading to the courtroom.

“Melissa--” Rarity began, but the marine was already up and towering over those around her.

“I don’t know why, but it must be her.”

The hoarse-sounding guard snarled, “Shut up you big ape. Don’t ever talk about her like that!”

“Cease verbally assaulting my client and release her!” Rarity barked, “This is getting us nowhere!”

“Miss, there is no way--”

The guard looked at something behind Rarity and paled. “Y-your Highness!”

Melissa mentally kicked herself for not spotting the only other being equal to a human in height emerging from a doorway.

“Guards, untie her.” Celestia ordered cooly, “And forget this incident ever happened.”

“But--but--”

“Untie her! She cannot be blamed for the malfunction of her alienist. It is well-documented that in cases when that has occurred, it has resulted in similar incidents.”

The guards did as they were told.

“You are dismissed.” she added.

They attempted to protest, but wilted under their queen’s stern gaze.

Watching them go, Celestia spoke, “This will not be brought up in court. None can be blamed for this.”

“Eat my ass, you cum-colored christmas ornament!” Melissa spat, flipping her off with both hands.

Rarity groaned. Whatever it was Melissa had just said, it was undoubtedly quite offensive, “Your highness, I am so, so sorry for her. She’s really not doing well.”

“I understand--”

“Fuck you! Have your fun later! Rarity, courtroom or no?” Melissa demanded.

“This way…”

Rarity led the way into the courtroom. It was a side door to a typical looking courtroom, just like all the ones in movies. The jury set against a wall, the two sides of the case to either side of the chamber, and a judge and witness box against the main wall. The audience took up half the room.

The remaining members of the Mane Six and Andrew, were sitting just behind what Melissa assumed was the defense’s side.

Melissa stumbled over to the table and sat down on the chair too small for her. She slumped forward, tears spilling down her face as she tried to hold in the sobs.

“Hey, what happened?” Andrew asked from behind her, “Melissa, are you okay?”

“Silverbolt’s malfunctioning. He went offline, and there was an incident.” Rarity explained.

“What? What kind of incident?”

“The taser kind.” Melissa mumbled, “Welp, I’m boned.”

“No, we’re not. It’ll be fine.” Rarity hissed, “Just stay calm.”

“Without Silverbolt--”

“How did you manage before Silverbolt?” Twilight inquired, leaning over the railing.

“I...got along.”

“Then just do that for a little longer! You can do it.”

Melissa grunted, “I’ll try.” She wiped at her tears with her sleeve, willing them to go away.

Minutes later, she couldn’t tell how long, somepony who had been hovering around the courtroom suddenly appeared in front of the table.

“Ah...this is her?”.

Melissa looked up to face the prosecution, a tall mare, clearly upper-class with her outfit and accent.

“I am sorry,” Rarity said quickly, stepping between the two, “We are not supposed to speak prior to the trial officially commencing.”

“Nonsense, regulations are meant to be bent.”

The lawyer stepped around Rarity, pushing her to the side, “So, Sunset Shimmer. My, my, you’ve turned yourself into a walking abomination, haven’t you?”

Rarity implored Melissa, “Don’t do anything. She’s trying to bait you.”

The lawyer smiled venomously, “Oh, don’t bother, you small-town neophyte upstart, I’m sure she’s perfectly able to speak for herself.”

She smirked at Melissa, “Well? Are you? Or are you just an animal, prancing around in that mutated body of yours? Tell me, does the smell come with the surgeries, or did you purposefully stop bathing?”

“Did you?” Melissa asked simply, her voice cold and harsh.

The lawyer blinked, “I...”

“A word of advice, I suggest next time you go shopping for clothes, you don’t do it in the nuclear waste dump. You smell like you bathe in shit.”

Opening ceremonies interrupted their little engagement. Queen Luna trotted in, serving as the judge for the case. Melissa didn’t pay much attention to anything after that, she didn’t care. All she cared was that one of her only friends, who’d appeared when she needed one the most, had vanished.

What was the point of it? Why had Celestia done it? Torment, entertainment? Spite? Sabotaging the case?

Does it matter? A voice in the back of her mind wondered. She doesn’t care about you. She wants to destroy you, and everything humanity’s built. Why do you think the only trace of humans is a bunker buried in rock and mustard gas?

Melissa shrugged to herself, It could have been the dragons. But how could they have beaten us? Attrition I suppose.

It doesn’t matter. Celestia wants to destroy you. That is all that matters. What can be done?

Melissa glanced around, spotting Celestia sitting near the other lawyer. She noted the guards had weapons. Crappy pistols, a few revolvers, but they could be useful in an emergency.

However, there was another option. The files Rarity had given her. The evidence exhibits. Glamdring was in the exhibits. If things didn’t go her way, she could get it. You’ll go down with honor.

Honorable? That’s what you call gunning down civilians and cops?

Most of the chamber was made up of civilians, few actual combatants. It would not be right to attack.

At that train of thought, there was a twinge of pain.

Silverbolt had been right. There was something strange going on. Lately it had felt like her brain had been compressed, it was harder to think and harder to focus. Perhaps it was her lack of ADD medication. She’d only gotten back on them for her leave, and getting off them was bound to have some side effects. And given the uneven points she’d taken some of her remaining stockpile, her body was definitely going to complain.

The headache remained constant this time. She noticed its increase in intensity had been gradual. Trying to relieve tension through pressure points failed, so the marine resorted to draining the cup of water on the table. Then she drank the entire pitcher next to it.

Still no change, if anything it intensified.

Rarity elbowed her, apparently it was time for opening statements.

The other lawyer stood up, and cleared her throat, “Fillies and gentlecolts of the court, with the evidence I will bring forth today, I think you will find it quite clear that the accused is guilty. This mare is Sunset Shimmer, the perpetrator of the crimes we are here to discuss. A year and a half ago, Sunset Shimmer was the student of our fair queen, but was unsatisfied with the progress she was making. She attempted to seize additional power, scheming to steal the elements of harmony, but was luckily found out. As she was being escorted from the palace, having been removed from her position, she assaulted the guards, escaped, and disappeared. Up till a week ago. Seven days ago, Sunset Shimmer was reported in the vicinity of Manehattan. She had dramatically altered herself into the abomination you see before you, and changed her identity. In a fit of rage at being discovered, Sunset assaulted three members of the Manehattan Police Department, hospitalized two others, and inflicted bodily harm on our queen. In total she has been accused of two counts of assault, resisting arrest, attempted theft of a national treasure, two separate counts of conspiracy of theft, falsification of identity, illegal surgery, violation of a restraining order, possible treason, and several counts of trespassing. The evidence will show you that the accused is responsible for all of the listed crimes, proving her guilty as charged.”

The lawyer spared a sneer at Melissa, and sat down. Rarity snorted with confidence, and got to her feet to deliver her own opening statement, “Your Honor, fillies and gentlecolts of the jury; no matter whatever false and circumstantial evidence that can be brought forth, I can assure you that my client, Corporal Melissa Foster of the United States Marine Corps, is innocent on all counts. you will find Melissa Foster is not Sunset Shimmer, and therefore cannot have committed the crimes. She was not even on this world at the time of the first events, she was in university at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Engineering. Her mind was on classwork, deadlines, and graduation, not personal power. She had no idea we even existed. This mare may bear a physical similarity to Sunset Shimmer, but I can assure you that she is not the same person. She is simply a member of the United States Armed Forces, lost far from home and everything she knows. You will find that over the course of the one crime that can be attributed to my client, assault and battery of the queen herself and several members of the Manehattan Police Department, she was not in control of her own actions. You will find that my client is innocent of all charges.”

She looked back at the lawyer with a competitive expression that read better luck next time, and sat down.

“The prosecution may now call its first witness.”

The lawyer nodded, “I wish to call to the stand one of the guards responsible for escorting Sunset Shimmer out of the palace.”

A guard went up to the stand, in dress uniform. He gave an account of what happened. Sunset had broken into a secure archive, and been arrested. Before she could be escorted to a secure location, she overcame her guards escaped. When asked, the guard gave a description of Sunset Shimmer.

The opposition lawyer nodded, “Thank you very much, private. I have no further questions for the witness, your honor.”

The guard was dismissed, and the lawyer sauntered over to Melissa, leering at her.

“As you can see by her physical characteristics, she bears a remarkable similarity to the accused. Her mane is of the same pattern, her hide the same tone, and her eyes and face match with what we have on record. Exhibit A.”

The clerk passed several pieces of paper to the jury. The first were several sets of pictures, presumably comparing Melissa and Sunset Shimmer.

At the lawyer’s prompting, the clerk handed out another set of paper. This time, the jury uttered words of disgust when they saw what was printed.

“As the jury is now being shown, exhibit B clearly shows that surgeries of this nature are not unheard of in Equestria, legal or otherwise. A close friend of my esteemed counterpart has legally experimented on herself to create similar changes in the body.”

Another stack of paper, presumably showing off Twilight...with her total lack of understanding of human social behavior, IE, no pants.

Melissa expected a witness to be called to confirm the evidence, and was surprised to find that they did not. They kept talking.

She nudged Rarity, “Don’t they have to verify the evidence with a witness?”

Rarity raised an eyebrow, “This evidence was already verified. They’re given facts of the case, why restate them? Didn’t you read the packet I gave you?”

“Uh...yeah! Totally!”

Rarity looked at her doubtfully.

“Okay...skimmed it.”

“We have also found no records in any recognized doctoral institutes of these specific surgeries being done, thus making them illegal.” the lawyer finished.

“Physical characteristics alone are not enough to convict a pony,” Luna pointed out, “What other evidence can you present? And can you prove that she participated in these surgeries?”

“According to reports from specialized agents, she was observed to refuse polite conversation with many clerks on many occasions. Rude behavior is a trait known well to Sunset Shimmer. As is now being passed to the jury, exhibit B-2 is a transcript of her dialogue, or lack thereof with several clerks. In addition to her characteristic poor attitude, she has shown remarkable intellect in numerous areas, demonstrated military training, along with proficiency in singing and certain musical instruments. Exhibit B contains samples of Sunset’s school, military, and music records.”

The lawyer turned to the queen, “Your honor, I would like to bring to the stand a well-known expert in these matters of shapeshifting.”

Luna nodded in acknowledgement, “I will allow it.”

“I call to the stand Twilight Sparkle!”

Melissa pitched forward onto the table, banging her head several times.

“Whatever is the matter, darling?” Rarity whispered.

“Perfect opportunity for her revenge!” the marine moaned, “I’m screwed. If you don’t mind, I’m gonna assume the position so I can more easily kiss my ass goodbye. Oh sweet merciful shoggoths…”

“Oh, calm down. She’s not one to hold a grudge. That’s just the sickness, exhaustion, hunger, anxiety, stress, fear, and general fatigue talking!”

“Real helpful there, Rar’.”

“Miss Rarity, do you have an objection to this witness?” Luna interrupted.

“No, your honor! My client’s mind just has a tendency to wander!”

The bailiff brought Twilight to the front in the witness’ box. She fidgeted nervously, and Melissa furrowed her brow at how the unicorn’s eyes kept dodging to her hoof out of sight, as though…

The marine blinked. Just like all the people in class who try to sneak a look at their phones! Did she smuggle in my tablet?!

“Miss Sparkle…” the lawyer began.

“Oh, just Twilight is fine.” she interrupted.

“Ah...Twilight, then. You have the greatest experience in this area of shapeshifting, turning a pony into one of these upright creatures. Tell me, what is the standard result of one of these spells?”

Twilight’s eyes darted down again, “Well, it’s a potion actually. After enough of the potion has been been consumed or applied to the skin, a physical reconstruction of the body occurs. Down to what level, we are unsure, but as far as we can tell, it at least goes down to the skeletal level. The subject’s body undergoes a dramatic change, the skeleton altering itself to reduce or increase bone mass in accordance with whatever species they belonged to beforehand and are now becoming, forming a new shape. Muscle mass adapts in conformity with this procedure, adopting strength and density appropriate to the species they are taking the form of. Skin tone and shape changes obviously due to the muscular and skeletal modifications, losing all fur. Hooves become hands, ears shift position and shrink, losing some of their range in the process, neck decreases in height, eyes are reduced in size, and general body size increases. The tail disappears, and the mane is reduce to the top of the head. We are uncertain as to what reconstructions are applied to the internal organs, as we have not tested these chemicals on human subjects as of yet, however--”

“Is it possible for a change like this to occur?” the lawyer pressed, clearly bored.

“Well...yes. However, At present, a complete change is only theoretical. Our potion mixture still leaves residual traces of pony biology--”

The lawyer held up a hoof, “Thank you, Miss Twilight. I have no further questions.”

Luna nodded, “Does the defense have any questions at this time?”

“Yes, it does, your honor.” Rarity acknowledged, standing up.

Trotting over to the witness’ box, Rarity spared Twilight a smile, reassuringly patting her hoof, “Twilight, dear, don’t be nervous. How are you holding up? Properly fed and rested yourself before now, I hope.”

Twilight cringed, “Rarity…”

The lawyer stood up, “Your honor, I object to this. This has no relevance to the case at hand. She is simply wasting time and in my opinion, this behavior is entirely inappropriate for a courtroom!”

Luna shook her head, “Overruled, prosecution. This is simply the way the defense acts during her cases. Feel free to examine the records if you wish. Counselor, you may proceed.”

Melissa stood up and shouted over, “Hey shitbird! I think calling the accused an animal, and insulting her hygiene counts as inappropriate behavior!”

With a smash of the gavel, Luna rolled her eyes, “If the accused would please refrain from similar outbursts in the future, and the prosecution abstain from further baiting of the defense to boost her own ego, may we get back onto the topic of the discussion at hand?”

“Thank you, your honor,” said Rarity, “Twilight, take a breath before you pass out.”

Twilight had had her teeth gritted, and her eyes squeezed shut for the whole argument, and now began sucking in lungfuls of air.

“And please, do it quietly.” Rarity advised, holding in a smile, “Now...as my esteemed counterpart inquired,” her voice carried a more subtle hint of sarcasm, “you have created several chemical concoctions with which one can become a homo sapiens sapiens, correct?”

“Yes.” she nodded.

“While you did say a complete transformation was theoretically possible, did you not also say that there were some side effects that had not yet been worked out?”

Twilight nodded again.

“Could you expand on that?”

The unicorn looked to her side again, “As of yet we have not perfected a formula that can complete a 100% biological change. Residual traces of Equestrian biology remain after use of the potion, such as Equestrian ears in addition to human ones, wings in the cases of pegasi, and the mane is lengthened, to where the tail once was but not in the same location from where it had grown.”

“And your formula is the most advanced in the land, is that correct?”

Twilight’s confidence seemed to increase, “Of course. I have the most experience in doing this, and I have several specimens to work with. Any other facilities working on this same formula are months behind at best, as far as I know mine is the most advanced in the world.”

Melissa looked over at the lawyer with a satisfied grin, only for it to fade and her heart to sink as she realized the lawyer was smiling as well. Had she been expecting this?

“Thank you, Twilight. Stay calm, you don’t need to be anxious.”

Trotting over to the jury, Rarity mused, “Hypothetically, let us believe that my client is Sunset Shimmer. Clearly, to shapeshift into this level would have required an extremely advanced formula, and logically one of Twilight’s. If that’s the case, then why does my client have no residual Equestrian biology? She should have additional ears, and an extremely long mane. She didn’t have the resources to develop it on her own, being a fugitive, so how could she have done this?”

Rarity trotted to several tables, upon which copies of the initial exhibits of evidence lay. Peering disdainfully at the disturbing imagery of exhibit A, she began, “From tests conducted, we can conclude that physical alterations, if any, were not conducted upon my client. At least, none that we can detect. Several mages were consulted during the investigation, and none could determine how exactly my client has been ‘altered’. With Twilight’s formula, it has always been possible to determine if her potion was involved. Why can we not detect it now? Either she is a natural human, or she has been altered through means which we cannot detect.”

“An excellent point, miss Rarity,” the lawyer interjected, “How do we know Sunset Shimmer sought out local means to alter herself?”

Luna raised her gavel, but Rarity held up a hoof, intrigued, “I have no further questions for this witness, your honor.”

“The witness is excused, but the court requests that the prosecution refrain from speaking out of turn,” Luna sighed, “the prosecution may call its next witness.”

The lawyer smiled venomously, “Very well, I call to the stand...Sunset Shimmer.”

Melissa growled harshly, snatched up a piece of paper, balled it up, and chucked it at the lawyer, “There’s no one here by that name, shitbird! If you want to call a witness, call one who’s actually here!”

“Counselor, please control your client,” Luna said, “And the accused is hereby informed that she is not required to take the stand if she does not wish to.”

“Quite right, darling.” Rarity soothed, “It is quite alright, and in fact I encourage you--”

“Dammit Rarity, I can’t avoid it! This Sunset Shimmer sounds like a condescending bitch, and if I don’t take that stand, the jury will be more convinced that I’m her!”

With that, Melissa shot to her feet, and stomped over to the witness’ box.

The bailiff opened the door for her, and requested that she remain standing.

A clerk appeared nearby, holding out a book, presumably their constitution if they lacked a bible. He recited in a bored tone, “Raise your right hoof--or whatever you call it--. Do you promise that the testimony you shall give in the case before this case shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you Celestia?”

“‘Ain’t no thang’.” she said with a laugh, and attempted to low-five the clerk, succeeding in hitting the book the first time but not the second. Briefly, she noted a methodical pounding sound in the distance. Andrew’s head must be hard to make that much noise. I didn’t know he saw Airplane II!

“Sorry, buddy. Cultural reference. What I meant to say was ‘I do’.” she explained to the mildly confused clerk, “...Though I never said we were getting married!” she added, making the rhythmic pounding increase in frequency, and generated some laughter in the room.

The lawyer shook her head, “Can you please stay on topic?”

“Well shitbird,” Melissa began, sitting down, leaning her chair back and propping her feet up on one of the railings surrounding her, “it’s not my fault that you haven’t asked me any questions. Also, I’m suffering from a cold, fatigue, hunger, exposure, I’m anxious as all get-out, stressed, and frankly afraid for my life. Thus, I feel perfectly justified in cursing up a storm you fucking butt-wiping ass-munch, because I’m expecting to be taken out back and shot by the end of today! Or something else grizzly, such as being left to die from exposure, flown to pieces, each limb tied to a horse and each one sent in a different direction, burned at the stake, electrocuted, blown up, used for bayonet practice, or simply drop-kicked off a cliff. So please, considering how it’s my ass on the line, and…” she made a show of thinking hard, “nothing of yours on the line, I think we can forgive a little straying off topic, don’t you think?”

The lawyer was speechless for a long moment. In fact, everyone in the room was staring at her with eyes wide with shock. Except for Andrew. He was still trying to do his best to shatter the railing before him with his head.

“Corporal Foster...are you unaware of what year you live in?” Luna inquired.

“Well, our dating systems are different, so I doubt they’d match. Why?”

“Well...I would just like to know where you got the idea that we participated in such barbaric practices!”

Melissa puffed a strand of hair out of her eyes, “Everyone’s got skeletons in their closet.” thoughts of Guantanamo Bay flashed through her mind, “Let’s get on with it.”

The clerk, still standing near the witness box, rolled his eyes, “Please state your first and last name for the record.”

“Melissa Foster.”

“Your real name.” the lawyer growled, but Luna hit the gavel again.

“Melissa.” she repeated, “Mike-echo-lima-indigo-sierra-sierra-alpha. Foster. Foxtrot-oscar-sierra-tango-echo-romeo. Not that hard.”

“You may be seated...but you already are.” the clerk stormed off.

The lawyer walked up to the box, and leaned against it for a moment. Up till Melissa happened to untie one of her boots, and dumped the dust and grit out inside the box. The smell it released drove the lawyer back, who choked, “Is your name one given to you at birth?”

“No, I got it out of a box of crackerjacks, shitbird.” Melissa replied sarcastically.

“Oh, for--Stop making references!” Andrew blurted, stopping his incessant pounding, “At this rate we’re gonna be burned at the stake or here till midnight!”

“Andy, are you on trial here? Cuz I don’t see you suffering from exposure!”

“Fillies and gentle--Fillies and gentlecolts!” Luna managed to interrupt, continuing to bang the gavel, “If there are any further outbursts I shall begin picking at random whom to remove from this courtroom!”

After several long moments of silence, Melissa edited her answer, “Yes, shitbird. That is my legally born name.”

The lawyer nodded, “So Miss...Foster, if you are not Sunset Shimmer, then who are you?”

“As I said about a jillion times, I am Corporal Melissa Foster, date of birth March 18th, 1995. Serial number 504-48-7378.”

“And what does that mean?”

“My rank, shitbird. Corporal. My name, Melissa goddamn Foster. My date of birth, March 18th, 1995. My serial number, 5-oh-4-dash-4-8-dash-7-3-7-8.”

“What is a serial number?”

“A registry number for the military to keep track of the millions of soldiers under their command. It's indicative of where I was recruited from, my birthday, and something involving my citizenry.”

“Your profession is the military, then? What exactly is your job?”

“I’m afraid that's classified. Not my choice, but orders for being held prisoner instruct me to give up as little information as possible about military matters.”

The lawyer looked at the notesheet, “I have been told you have previously stated your profession in the military as being a combat engineer. Is this true?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny this.”

The lawyer scowled, “Alright then. Where are you from? Another continent? The depths of the south?”

“How do you not know about your region to the south--no. I’m not from around here.”

“Obviously. But where are you from? Another continent, just as obvious--”

“Humans aren’t native to this planet...Least I don’t know of any local ones.” Melissa added. “We’re from Earth. Around the sun known as Sol. The Orion arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. In the cluster of Fuckus You-us.”

“Ah...How did you get here then? A rainbow bridge?” the pony’s words dripped with sarcasm, rolling her eyes.

Melissa hesitated in her answer, “That’s not too far off actually.”

Laughter rang through the hall, as the lawyer pony glared. Odd that she did that instead of taking advantage of it. Perhaps she was supposed to make Melissa seem like the stupid savage?

“Yes, very amusing. Now, how did you get here?”

Melissa sighed. This was not going to be fun.

“We have a few working theories, shitbird. Dimensional or spatial displacement. All I can tell you for sure is that it wasn’t voluntary.”

The lawyer stared, surprised at the strange vocabulary.

“Spatial displacement is our personal favorite, but considering certain factors it is certainly possible for dimensional transference to be a possibility--”

“Speak english!” the lawyer demanded, “What in Equestria are you babbling about?”

Melissa locked eyes with the lawyer for several seconds, “Are you done, shitbird? Good. Dimensional displacement is where you stay in the same place in space, but you shift universes. Though if that’s what we did, I suppose we don’t stay in the same place. Unless this is Earth spatially, but just went through a massively different geological history.”

“How would you have done so?” The lawyer probed.

“I don’t know. It's very hard to explain. I barely know any of the science at all.”

“Unfortunate. What about this other concept you created?”

“Spatial displacement. That’s where one gets pulled through a wormhole to some other location.”

“A wormhole?”

Melissa released a breath through puffed-up cheeks. At first, she didn’t know how to explain it. How did Carl Sagan do it? “Uh...okay…” oh, Carter in Stargate! She managed to explain it! “Imagine space is like an apple. Normal space is like the outside of the apple, you travel along it to get from one side to the other. Meanwhile a wormhole is burrowing a hole through the center of the apple. Travel along that, and the distance is reduced, right?’

“Yes…”

“That's about all I can tell you, as this is getting into the territory of national security. All I can tell you is that that was one of our possible methods of transportation.” But I bet you know all about this, I bet you bastards have a stargate stashed in the basement!

“Intriguing...intriguing, yet...why should we believe you?”

Melissa shrugged, “Don’t believe me? Ask him, shitbird.” she gestured to the other human.

“Is this true?” the lawyer asked, not bothering to call Andrew to the stand.

He nodded, “Yeah, we’ve tried to find an explanation for it. That’s what we came up with.”

The lawyer seemed to grow more angry. Her voice remained level, however.

“Where were you on the night of the incident?”

Melissa furrowed her brow, pushing out her chin, “Well, I don’t have Google calendar with me...but I think that was a Saturday, right? I woke up late that morning, was up the previous night typing and playing Halo 2. I ate a turkey sandwich, chips, and coke for breakfast--”

“I didn’t ask for a description of your day! I asked where you were!” the lawyer screeched.

Melissa flipped her off, “Well, you were going to, shitbird. Anyway long story short, I was playing games for half the night, then for the other half, doing the things all mammals do when they’re alone.”

The lawyer opened her mouth, but Melissa held up a hand, “You really don’t want to know. Suffice it to say, I was on Earth during that whole incident.”

“I see. Has your land had any contact with Equestria before?”

Melissa’s eyes remained steady, “I am not at liberty to discuss that.”

“Need I remind you that you are under oath?”

“I’m not lying. Nor can I answer the question.”

“And why not?”

“Matters of national security.”

The lawyer said, “How unfortunate.” She smiled viciously, and turned to Queen Luna. “I have no more questions for the accused.”

As Melissa sat back down next to Rarity, the lawyer spoke to Luna again, “Your highness, no matter her true identity, we must face the fact that this...this...savage is a spy! Even if the accused is not Sunset Shimmer assuming the guise of a human, she is still a criminal and a danger to us all."

Clamor filled the hall, as Melissa and Andrew jumped to their feet, protesting with varying degrees of profanity.

“It is obvious. Look at this mare’s equipment, her identity and knowledge of our world, or if she is Sunset Shimmer, her additional training.”

“What about me?” Andrew demanded.

The lawyer didn’t look at him, “The other human is clearly a canary. To test the environment and find out if it’s habitable for their species. Taking into account his considerable lack of higher brain functions, he is neither a great loss to their society, nor a security risk, if he were to die or be caught respectively.”

“Hey!” Twilight managed to keep Andrew from speaking any further and unleashing his own profanity.

“What evidence do you have for this?” Luna inquired.

“Your highness, think about it. By her own admission, the ‘United States Marine Corps’ is a unit designed to operate in a wide a variety of environments on a moment’s notice. And not just an enlisted soldier, she’s a combat engineer. An engineer who of her own admission prepares obstacles and defensive emplacements. Perfect for judging our defensive capabilities and assessing potential invasion sites. And not just any combat engineer, she’s one who’s regularly thought about a situation where she would be stranded alone without support, and immediately put those plans into action. Simply a part of her culture, or something more? How does she know about our world if he does not? And really, if she were here by accident, why not a quartermaster, a sailor, an officer, a cook, or a standard soldier? Why someone who could easily assess our defenses, sabotage them, and possibly stage an uprising?”

The lawyer trotted over to the evidence table, gesturing to the picture of Oscar, “Exhibit B. Most human vehicles are powered by burning petroleum oil in an internal combustion engine. Only a handful are powered purely through electrical current. Why this vehicle, and this mare? Why not a petroleum-burning car with a cook? Or even a civilian?”

She pointed to Glamdring, “And what about exhibit B, her weapon? Not even the most powerful of human weapons, but the ammunition was apparently easy enough to replicate--she was scheming to replace it, according to reports. Why not one of their automatic weapons, with difficult-to-make ammunition? Exhibit C, her hiking equipment. Recreational devices, why would she just happen to have all of what she needed aside from some minor items? Exhibit D, the portable data storage devices. She was supposedly going on deployment in the near future, why would she have these recreational devices in her vehicle and not at her base? Exhibit E, her uniform. Why not stored at the base?”

“That is purely circumstantial evidence!” Rarity burst out, “We have no way to verify any of this!”

“Certainly not. But does this threat not exist? A highly-advanced race that can appear from nowhere exists somewhere beyond our borders, and from our information, our military doesn’t stand a chance in resisting it. I implore the jury to pronounce this mare guilty, and have her put into military custody!”

Rarity gaped, her eyes narrowing, “That’s what you wanted this whole time, wasn’t it? She was right! You want her knowledge! You evil...villain!”

Her client did not hear any of this. To Melissa’s ears, everything was becoming muffled with an intense ringing that grew steadily louder and louder.

“Oh, shit...ow, ow, ow…” the marine moaned, holding her skull.

“Melissa? Are you alright?” Rarity asked, breaking out of her lawyer-self and laying a hoof on her friend’s shoulder.

“Ah, dammit! No! I’m not! I...I...ah...” she stood up suddenly, unsteady. “I’ve gotta...I’ve gotta get out of here.”

She took two steps, wavered slightly, then hunched over and vomited across the floor. Straightening up for a moment, she immediately toppled over backwards. With a crash, the table collapsed under the impact.

“Melissa!” Rarity cried in horror. Collective gasps resounded through the room.

Rarity tried to rouse her, and several of the guards arrived to try and do the same.

Her eyes open but unseeing, twitched rapidly, and suddenly she began to convulse.

“She’s possessed!” someone yelled.

Andrew rushed over to Melissa, and tried to hold her down, “Keep back! She’s not possessed, just having a seizure! Someone help me here! We’ve gotta make sure she won’t hurt herself!”

Applejack and Rainbow Dash arrived to help, they and the guards holding down Melissa’s struggling limbs.

“What else do we need to do?” Fluttershy demanded, coming over to help as well.

“I don’t know! I don’t even know if this is what we’re supposed to do!” he roared in panic.

All of a sudden, she stopped thrashing. Her eyes continued to twitch, and her head kept moving back and forth.

“Is she saying something?” Applejack asked, noting Melissa’s mouth opening and closing rapidly.

Furrowing his brow, Andrew leaned in, trying to listen.

“Corporal Melissa Foster serial number 504-48-7378. I will make every effort to escape. I will never surrender of my own free will...I am an American fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life I am prepared to give my life in their defense...I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies...Corporal Melissa Foster serial number 504-48-7378. I will make every effort to escape. I will never surrender of my own free will...I will obey the orders of the President of the United States...I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy...Corporal Melissa Foster serial number 504-48-7378. I will make every effort to escape. I will never surrender of my own free will...I will obey the orders orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice...Corporal Melissa Foster serial number 504-48-7378, I will make every effort to escape. I will never surrender of my own free will...I am an American fighting for freedom and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in in the United States of America...Corporal Melissa Foster serial number 504-48-7378, I will make every effort to escape. I will never surrender of my own free will...”

“What’s she saying?”

Andrew scratched his head, “She’s rambling about something, I think it’s some military oath. But she keeps repeating one thing over and over again.”

“What?”

“Name, rank, serial number, that she’ll make every effort to escape, and that she’ll never surrender of her own free will.”

“Huh?” Applejack grunted, confused, “Escape who? Surrender to whom?”

“Us, obviously.” one of the guards holding Melissa’s arm down replied, “Who else?’

“That doesn’t seem right, though.” Rarity pointed out, “Up to this point, she’s been treating it mostly as court case. According to her code of law, name rank and serial number is for wartime enemies. And we’re not at war, obviously.”

Suddenly, Melissa began to convulse again, much more violently.

Just as quickly, she ceased her motions. Her babbling stopped.

Her head rose up on her own power, and her eyes fell back under her control. Slowly and mechanically both did move.

The marine turned to Rarity with the most disturbing smile on her face.

“Hello there, Rarity…” she said with two voices, one distinctly not her own. Frankly she sounded like a Goa’uld in Stargate SG-1, “Miss me?”

Melissa yanked her leg out of a guard’s hold, and smashed his muzzle with her boot.

She pulled her arm out of the other guard’s hooves at the same time, clocking the stallion in the eye.

She rolled to the side, barreling through two bystanders, and sprinted toward the evidence table. Extremely fast, and yet clumsily. Snatching up her Glock 17, she slammed a magazine home and raised it with finely-honed skills, the complete opposite of her walking.
Two shots rang out, and two guards dropped to the ground. Panic and screams ensued.

Andrew tackled Rarity and Fluttershy to the floor as Glamdring’s barrel was turned on the Mane Six, who wisely found any cover they could. Melissa fired.

The bullets whizzed by overhead like angry bees, two finding themselves embedded in a guard and an innocent bystander. The ponies in the room scattered, attempting to flee.

More guards fell, the reports of several different sorts of weapons and screamings ringing out.

Andrew and Rarity overturned the table, but by the time they could cower, the fight seemed over.

They raised their heads shakily above cover, and Andrew cursed the guards who’d taken his weapons.

Clouds of grey smoke left by the gunfire drifted around the figure holding her pistol like a stereotypical gang member, giving an eerie feel to the scene. The smoke was like that of a volley from a line of musketeers in an old movie, left by 9mm cartridges reloaded with black powder and shoddy primers to replace spent ammunition. The marine stood very awkwardly with her knees folded inward and one raised her than the other, as though she weren’t used to standing on her own legs.

Melissa aimed her weapon at Celestia and Luna, who stood confrontationally before the human. Why weren’t they fighting?

They realized the queens’ hands were tied so to speak; they were unwilling to unleash their powers in such an enclosed space with so many innocents, and unwilling to harm the individual before them, despite so many she had injured.

“What’s wrong with her?” Rainbow Dash hissed, “What’s wrong with her eyes?”

Melissa’s skin had turned pale, her hair darkened to a harsh color, and her eyes...her eyes. The pupils were shrunken beyond what one might have thought possible, the eyes themselves twitched around everywhere in two separate directions, and were glowing yellow, with the pupils red.

She cackled in that strange combination of voices, staring at Celestia, “Hello again, my sweet Celly. Oh, how I do loathe our times apart.”

“Corporal Foster!” Celestia stamped her hoof, “What are you doing? What’s gotten into you?”

The marine’s head made a sickening snapping sound and leaned to the left side. Without warning, she stepped forward and slammed a steel-toed combat boot into Celestia’s knee. There was the sound of bones crackling, eliciting a groan of pain and sending the queen to the ground. Raising her pistol, Melissa halted Luna in her tracks when she pointed at the crowd.
“Remain calm! This is a simple hostage situation! If you two try anything, your precious Mane Six dies.”

She fired another two shots above the heads of the Mane Six, halting any of their efforts to move.
“Anyone else in here, front and center! Sit with the Mane Six!”

A few dozen ponies emerged shakily from cover, from all walks of work, and tiptoed to the designated area.

“And sit down!” they did as instructed.

“Oh, what’s the matter Tia?” Melissa laughed, pointing her gun at the downed queen, “Don’t you recognize me? What about you, Lulu? If she doesn’t work out, you’ll do I suppose. I really want to figure out how the plumbing works, in here, if you know what I mean. Nudge, nudge, wink wink, say no more.”

The queens let their jaws drop, looking at each other with sickened expressions.

Melissa cackled again, “Oh,she’s a weird one then, isn’t she? You couldn’t recognize me even from that vulgar comment!”

She gestured dramatically at her shadow cast beside her, and those who remained in the hall bugged out their eyes.

Instead of the shadow of a human, there was the shadow of a draconequus, gesturing wildly with his empty right hand despite Melissa’s right hand being the one holding the pistol.

“Christ on sale!” Andrew whimpered, cowering behind the table, “Discord!”

Melissa/Discord’s face appeared above him, “Ah, Commander Shepherd! Someone finally recognizes me!”

Discord seized the human by the collar and pulled Andrew out from behind cover, holding the pistol to his head.
“Andrew!” Twilight and Fluttershy cried out, but Discord only flicked his safety menacingly.

“Ah, ah, ah! Don’t want your waifu’s head blasted off, do you?” he grinned wildly.

Discord muttered in Andrew’s ear, “You know, I can see inside this soldier’s head, I can see her memories...and her deep secrets. She really hates you, you know. Especially now. She’s had very vivid dreams about murdering you actually. She thinks you weak. A worthless cretin who should have died in those woods. She resents you for what you have achieved. Why would something like you, a worthless liberal arts major, get everything, when she, a marine who’s worked hard all her life, gets only torture and destruction? How could she be unable to make friends, and you end up the toast of the town, dating two ponies? One of whom was a personal hero?”

Andrew downcast his eyes, and Twilight told him in earnest, “It’s just Discord! Don’t listen to him! You know that can’t be true!”

He locked Melissa’s malfunctioning and twitching eyes on Twilight. “Greetings, dear Twilight. Get rewarded by Trollestia for freezing me? Of course you did. Molestia wouldn’t miss a chance to ego-stroke her young ward.”

Pointing at Twilight, Discord continued, “You betrayed her trust, you know. You and your show were what got her through something horrible called high school, and within days of her arrival, you betrayed that trust by violating her privacy and accusing her of being mentally ill. You know she has a plush toy of you in storage somewhere on her world? That is how much she idolized you. And you betrayed the trust she put in you. She blames you for her problems, all that she has suffered. Is she wrong?”
Twilight opened her mouth to reply, then blinked, looking out into the distance. She raised a hoof to her mouth in shock, blinking more rapidly as she sank onto her hindquarters.

“Twilight,” Fluttershy said, holding her friend, “It’s not your fault! How could you have known?”

Peering at Fluttershy, Discord grinned, “Oh, she positively loathes you, hippy. She’s had thoughts about eating every single one of your pets. The bear, the birds, the chickens...and that pretty, plump little rabbit. Angel bunny, how ever did he get his devil horns? Was he named ironically? Never mind, off topic, she considers you a threat to her personal health.” Pulling at one of Melissa’s sleeves, Discord revealed that the limb underneath was much thinner than it had been on her arrival, “No one noticed that she never took off her long sleeves? This creature has a disease that prevents her from eating wheat, and cannot consume your hay products. Then to add insult to injury, you actively deny her the meat products she needs to survive. And you call me a monster?”

Fluttershy whimpered, moving to step behind Andrew.

The marine’s neck snapped again as Discord looked at Rainbow Dash, “You’re one of her only friends, Dashie. And she doesn’t consider you that bright. Cute, but not that bright. She dreams about you, bee-tee-dubs.” his eyebrows bounced in a sickening manner. Rainbow looked sick, as she plugged her ears and hummed loudly.

With a snap of the fingers, a flash, and a tinkle, Discord disappeared, only to reappear near Rarity, the smile back on his face as he got in hers. “Ah, the luscious Rarity. Her first real friend on this world. She does admire your confidence, and finds your conversation rather stimulating. And yet she hates your neat-freak tendencies, how you physically assault others on a regular basis, and before you invited her in, was avoiding meeting you. She was afraid of you. She did not want her precious clothing to be violated by your fashion sense. In fact, the only reason she went to see you was because she needed a piece for a combat helmet, not out of the goodness of her heart as she said. I imagine she finds having to deal with your sister annoying as well.”
Rarity had her hooves over her ears as well, and was humming loudly, but her face was scrunched up.

Discord stepped around, passing a guard who had taken a bullet in the arm, and writhed in pain. He looked at the injured mare with indifference, prodding her with his foot, “Such a shame. Friendly fire.”

“We can’t just leave her like that!” Applejack cried, “Quit yer yapping and let us help the wounded!”

Discord raised Glamdring without looking at Applejack, “Why so much concern, AJ? She doesn’t have health care, therefore she doesn’t deserve medical aid, isn’t that correct? After all, anyone not republican and a conservative is a drain on resources, a moocher, a sponge. Damn shame if they die, but no big loss.”

He smirked, then said in a stage whisper, “In case you didn’t realize, she hates conservatives. All she did was try to help you, all she did was try to save your farm using her superior knowledge. But that’s liberal behavior, accepting change, so what did you do in return? Allowed your grandmother to voice her senile and stupid complaints and try to walk all over Melissa, ignoring the fact that she’s done more to protect your farm than you ever could. She only likes you because apples are about the only thing she can eat. If the meat didn’t talk around here, she’d never go within a mile of your disgusting farm.”
Grinning even more, he gestured at the wounded guard. “Tend to the whiners, or let them die. Take your pick.”

Applejack shot a defiant look at Discord, but rushed over to help the guard. She had some of the other hostages help tend to some of the other injured.

Discord/Melissa made eye contact with Pinkie Pie, who glared defiantly at him, “Oh, Pinkie! For one thing, she finds you extremely annoying, no tact at all, and unable to know when not to bother people, always pushing your nose in where it doesn’t belong. She’s been avoiding you for quite some time now. For another, she’s terrified of you. She fears your abilities, and doesn’t even know if she would be able to kill you if she tried. Do you have something called a ‘healing factor’? It’s apparently critical to her plans, something to do with Deadpool. Also, she knows that you know about them.”

You experience a chill as you read this line.

“Leave my student and her friends alone, Discord!” Celestia barked, “And leave that mare alone!”

Discord snapped Melissa’s fingers, and reappeared holding Luna in a headlock. “But this is the best part, my dear! However, the story still has a build. Lulu! How are you?”

He gave her a noogie. With his gun hand.

“You’re the only one who didn’t think she was Sunset Shimmer. And she’s also noted that you’re the only one of your royal compatriots who actually spends time among the people. What do you think that might indicate?”

She didn’t reply of course, and struggled to free herself without hurting the possessed Melissa.

“Odd…” Discord commented, “There don’t seem to be any hateful thoughts for you. Sure hope that doesn’t cause any great divide between you and the rest. You’d better hope so. By the way, she loves the royal Canterlot voice. Reminds her of Galadriel.”

He released Luna, and snapped his fingers again, reappearing on the judge’s seat, feet propped up.
Making a show of looking down his nose at her, Discord raised opera glasses summoned from nowhere to look at Celestia, “Ah...my dear sweet Tia. Now we come to you. She hates you the most. You are to blame for her exposure, her hunger, her illness.”

Throwing the opera glasses at Celestia, he hopped to his feet, “Melissa hates you. Loathes you. Utterly despises you. Unsurprising, given that I've been pumping her quaint little head with aggression and hatred and manipulating her for some time now, but then again, you threw her in jail for being intelligent and having better hair than you. When she first got here, she always wanted to meet you, hearing that you were very sweet and kind. The epitome of goodness. Like the Mother Thing, that creature of Heinlein fame. Then, when she first meets you, she is surrounded by the pigs, and taken into custody. After being brutally beaten, of course. She is placed in a cell exposed to the elements, fed grass and oats, an alienist installed in her brain without her consent, and she is extremely fatigued. Then you accuse her of being Sunset Shimmer. When she denies it, you accuse her of lying, or being mentally ill. And finally, your lawyer concludes that she’s a threat to national security. I’m shocked, Tia! Shocked!”

“What do you want?” Celestia demanded, doing her best to ignore the jabs, “How did you escape?

“What do I want, bae?” he giggled, “What do I want?”

Discord fired a shot into the ceiling.

“That’s a very big question, isn’t it?”

Another shot into the air, “What do I want? I want revenge, obviously.”

Taking full advantage of Melissa’s powerful lungs, he directed his attention on the door, where several guards could be seen taking cover, watching the situation unfold and unsure of what to do, “You, out there! I have your queens prisoner! Send in someone to negotiate or I commit significant amounts of homicide! So says Discord!”

Discord took the opportunity to loot the remaining ammunition clips from the evidence table, then popped back to the judge’s seat, “Now, we wait.”

“Are you alright?” Fluttershy asked Andrew, helping him to a sitting position, painfully.

He nodded, and furrowed his brow, “Why do I recognize her second voice?”

“That’s Discord alright, now that I know to look for it.” Twilight said.

“No, I mean I’ve heard it before. I don’t remember where…”

“You’ve heard it on TV, obviously.” Discord interrupted. There was flash of light behind them followed by his head suddenly beside them, eliciting a yelp of fright, “John De Lancie. Quite handsome for a human, played Q in Star Trek.”

“Discord, how did you escape?” Celestia demanded from her position on the floor holding her injured leg, “We re-created the seal!”

“Oh, you did, you did. Look outside that window, however, to the garden. Your questions will be answered.”

Luna helped her sister up to see out the window, and the queen of the sun furrowed her brow, “What?!”

Discord laughed again, making a motion with Melissa’s pinkie finger at the side of her mouth, “I’ve heard of out-of-body-experiences, but this is ridiculous! ‘It’s not something you see everyday, the back of your own head.’”

In the distance, in the royal gardens, Discord’s statue remained, hands held out in a desperate attempt to shield himself from the instrument of his imprisonment.

“As she says, ‘even dead gods dream.’ And an imprisoned spirit of chaos can still influence the mind of a human.”

“Did she make a deal with you or something? To save herself?” Andrew asked, going to the worst case scenario.

“Oh, how quaint. I’m not Bill Cipher,” Discord laughed, “I simply dove into her mind.”

“But how?” Twilight inquired, “Surely she would have told us, there must’ve been signs!”

“Don’t you get it? She doesn’t trust you. She--”

“Or,” Andrew interrupted, “it could have something to do with the fact that americans don’t put much stock in dreams, and don’t tell others what they might be hallucinating. Everyone’s terrified of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, so she probably was just scared.”

Discord pointed at him with the pistol, “Exactly right! You were in fact all scaring her!”

“What?” asked Celestia, “She knew we meant no--”

“No, no in fact she didn’t. In fact, ever since you first arrested her, she’s been expecting to be taken out back and…” Melissa/Discord flinched, “Oh...oh! This one’s mind is positively filthy! I’m going to need a shower after this!

“Tia, as she’s been saying, and you’ve been ignoring, she is not Sunset Shimmer...though your guess was not too far off. She is simply a soldier lost far from her home, who’s been abused, assaulted, and mentally tormented, among other punishments. And now, she is going to be the instrument to my freedom.”

Abruptly snapping his fingers, Discord appeared by the railing between the court and the audience. Looking confused for a moment, he snapped his fingers again, appearing only halfway through the audience.
“I need to stretch more.” he sighed, and moved to the door. He did keep a fair enough distance from the doorway, a clear firing corridor to anyone coming in, stopping any hope of reinforcements jumping him without casualties.

“Where’s my negotiator?!” he yelled outside, “I’ve still got plenty of bullets, and at least eight extra weapons from a bunch of dead and dying guards!”

After a few minutes, a tall unicorn stallion, coat as white as snow, mane a mix of dark and light blue, and a cutie mark that was a shield with three stars above it. He was dressed in a set of purple armor, a large plume of the same color as his mane.

“Shining Armor?” Twilight cried in disbelief as she recognized her brother.

He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw her, “Twily! You’re still…”

A gunshot cracked past his feet as he took a step toward her.

“Hello Francis!” Discord cried happily, “Done waterboarding babies? Why are you in here? Is the Mask of Light somewhere around?”

“I’m here to negotiate your terms.” he growled, “And save my sister.”

“More quaintness, eh, Jaller? You don’t have dedicated hostage negotiators yet. Well, gives me an additional hostage.”

“What? But--”

“Oh, you can still negotiate, Gil Nexdor,” Discord said, “You’ll just have to do it from in here. Just stand there and yell to talk with them.”

“Now wait--”

Bang!

Discord reloaded, “Next one’s hitting the wounded, Billy.”

Shining Armor opened and closed his mouth several times, and looked at Celestia for confirmation.

“It’s the only way.” she nodded reluctantly.

Shining exhaled heavily, “Alright Discord, what are your demands?”

“Well, Lance…” Discord snapped his fingers, but nothing happened.

There was a sound like a lighter dry-firing as he tried several more times, and huffed, “No musical number I suppose. How unfortunate for you, Morro.”

Leaning back in his chair, Discord thought, “Hmm...what do I want, what do I want, what do I want?”

Snapping his fingers again, Melissa’s sunglasses appeared in his hands, and he chewed on one end.

Twilight leaned over to whisper to Andrew, “This is very odd behavior for Discord. Normally his effects would be widespread, and he wouldn’t take hostages. He’d just do what he would want to.”

“Maybe controlling Melissa is taxing his abilities?” Andrew supplied.

“Perhaps...but humans aren’t used to attacks on the mind, so she might not be able to fight back effectively. I doubt it would take that much effort to keep her under control. I mean look at the evidence, It looks like he managed to disable her alienist, and we haven’t seen his control weakening. It must be something else.”

Luna crept over to sit by them, “The seal keeps all of his major abilities entrapped. It seems as though he only has enough power for cheap tricks.”

“Maybe we could use that to our advantage, try and tire him out so Melissa can get him out of her head.” Andrew mused, “he may have control of her now, but with limited magic, overstretching might be able to weaken his control.”

“I’ve got it!” Discord yelled, making everyone jump, “I want myself brought in here, along with the elements of harmony, a barrel of apples, and those forces assembling outside to back off or I shoot Twilight. The longer you take, I start killing more hostages. After the magenta one, I shoot Celestia, Luna, Andrew, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Fluttershy, you Todd, then the background ponies at random.”

“Anything else?” Shining asked through gritted teeth.

“I also want an index for the Canterlot archives. Not the public one, I want Celestia’s personal index.”
“What difference would that make?” Shining inquired, keeping his voice level.

“It would include all of your dirty, dirty secrets. Now go and tell them, Dylan!”

As Shining stormed off to the doorway, Andrew shakily got to his feet. He warily moved toward the witness box, leaning against it nonchalantly.

“So...Discord. Uh...how ya doing?”

Discord shrugged, “As well as I can be, Commander Shepherd. I’m feeling rather peckish. Hope those apples get here soon.”

Before Andrew could say another word, Discord held up a hand, “I know what you’re trying to do, commander. You’re trying to appeal to the real Melissa. You’ve come over here to drop certain conversational hints that will elicit an emotional reaction so as to weaken my hold on her.”

He leaned to the side to peer around Andrew at Twilight, “Isn’t that right, Twily? Just like last time.”

He sat back, and looked back at Andrew, “That’s not going to happen again. Quick question. Be my accomplice?”

Andrew squinted, “What?”

Before he could finish his word, Discord had seized Andrew’s head, index finger on his temple, “Excuse me, I misspoke. It wasn’t a question. It was an order.”

Before he could react, there was a transfer of energy between Discord and Andrew. Instantly he went rigid, every limb stretched out.

“Andrew!” Fluttershy and Twilight screamed. They watched as he twitched and trembled, his eyes becoming clouded over with a spiraling rainbow of colors, and his skin began to pale.

The ponies stared in horror as Andrew slowly turned around. He blinked rapidly as the opaqueness over his eyes faded, and stumbled a little, leaning against the witness booth.

“A-Andrew?” Twilight asked desperately, reaching out a hoof but wary of the pistol aimed at her head.

“Huh…?” he grunted, then shook his head and shot to his feet, “The fuck do you want? I’m really freaking fine! Why the fuck do you want to know?!”

“What? I--”

“Leave me alone, you bitch! Why the fuck do you have to check up on me every fucking second of every fucking day?! You don’t have to treat me like a baby! Goddamn, every day since I’ve gotten here you’ve done that! I’m completely fucking sick of it! Just shut up for once in your life and leave me alone!”

Twilight was horrified. She stared with anger, rage, and shock at Discord, “What did you do to him?! Are you controlling him as well?”

Discord yawned, “No, of course not. Not directly at least. That’s simply not original. And would give me a bit of a headache. Don’t you recognize the symptoms? Andrew, get a weapon and keep them from escaping.”

Fluttershy trotted up to Andrew as Discord was talking, and cringed as she mumbled, “Andrew…”

“Oh, Flutters!” he greeted, a strange look in his eyes, “Done playing in the shit with all the animals?”

She gasped, and that only seemed to make him grin, “Y’know I hate that fucking rabbit of yours. I’ve wanted to eat him everytime he tries to fucking kill me!”

“Andrew, leave her alone!” Twilight ordered.

“Y’know, Fluttershy,” Andrew continued speaking, extending his middle finger to Twilight, “after the time travel incident, we were considering telling you our whole thing together was a joke? I mean, I don’t think polygamy is legal here. So I figured eventually I’d break up with you, and go with her. After all, she’s much better looking.”

He put on a look of disgust, “Y’know, for a pony. Never thought I would be into that weird shit.”

As Fluttershy worked to hold back tears, he put on a fake expression of sympathy, “Oh, don’t worry, Flutters. You are a better kisser than her.”

He walked over to one of the injured guards, now somewhat quiet and bandaged. He grabbed the pony’s revolver and roughly pulled off the stallion’s ammunition containers.
“Stupid shitty guns,” he muttered, using the guard’s jacket to wipe the blood off the action and fumbling with the cartridges, much weaker than he was used to, “Primitive fucking pieces of shit. How the hell did you people make it to an industrial nation if you can’t make simple guns right?”

He looked up at Discord, “Is Melissa bothered by the plumbing here too?”

Discord snorted, “There’s no end to the things she’s bothered by. She hates you, the Mane Six, Celestia, the plumbing, lack of showers, everything.”

“Would you mind telling her she drives me nuts?” Andrew inquired, grinning as he test-fired the revolver on a nearby wall, “She’s the most pompous, arrogant, condescending, foul-mouthed high-and-mighty person I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting! I hate all the junk she has, I hate how she thinks she’s so much smarter than everyone, I hate all that stupid shit she’s memorized and keeps referencing, everything she does pisses me off! I have no idea why we’re even friends! Also, tell her that her hair looks like bacon. I’ve been wanting to eat it since day one.”

Rainbow Dash shot forward and seized Andrew by the shoulders, “Andrew, snap out of it! This isn’t you!”

With manic glee, he flipped the revolver around, and smashed Rainbow Dash across the face in a pistol-whip, spewing blood and a tooth across the floor as she fell to the ground.
“I’d appreciate it if you would leave me alone from now on. You keep finding new ways to piss me off everytime I blink, misinterpreting that whole incident with Twilight, and you keep hitting on me! Just...keep your mouth shut and don’t talk to me ever again.”

“Now do you see?” Discord asked, laughing. “You’ve all experienced it.”

“It’s his hypnosis technique…” Luna realized, just like what the Mane Six had been subjected to during the first escape of Discord. She watched as Andrew glared at Applejack, who'd come to help Rainbow Dash to her feet.

“I still haven’t forgiven you for breaking my jaw, AJ.”

The earth pony didn’t reply, gingerly picking up Rainbow’s missing tooth and passing it over to the moaning pegasus.

Unable to elicit a reaction, he stepped over to Rarity, “Y’know, I’d appreciate it if you would stop hitting on me all the damn time too. Spike’s been threatening to kill me every other time you do it.”

Discord vaulted over the judge’s box, “Oh, Andrew, it’s not her fault. She’s just sexually confused, hitting on every other male in sight.”

“Oh, really?” Andrew inquired, oblivious to Rarity’s shocked expression.

“Yes, it’s quite a fascinating topic actually. I’ve discovered in the depths of my gracious host’s mind something called ‘head canon’. In it I’ve found several ‘fan pairings’, one for so many ponies around here. Quite an odd subject, actually.”

“Which ones involve Rarity? You said she was confused.”

“Oh, there’s one called Rarijack. See, Rarity’s so far in the closet she could find Narnia, and refuses to admit she’s attracted to Applejack.”

Both laughed, watching Applejack blush and Rarity burst out “Well, I never!”

“Any other fan pairings?”

“There’s a website called WatchPony.com, with a top ten list of most popular fan pairings. Number ten was RainbowPie.”

“Oh-ho-ho!” Andrew laughed, “I totally see that!”

Rainbow’s moaning only increased, “Hey!” Pinkie Pie cried indignantly, “We all have a right to privacy, and why should we listen to you anyway?!”

She stood up, “He’s the god of chaos, isn’t he? Being a big meanie is his job description! These aren’t our friends talking, it’s Discord!”

Discord snapped his fingers, and reappeared next to Pinkie, putting his arm around her, “Oh, very perceptive, Pinkie Pie! But you’re wrong about one thing. I haven’t lied once. There may be exaggeration, but virtually everything here is stuff I've found in their heads.”

He released her, and pushed Pinkie into one of the other hostages, “Go back to planning your parties, idiot. Leave the talking to the big ponies.”

“What was number nine?” Andrew inquired.

“That was…” Discord furrowed his brow for a minute, then began to laugh, “Oh as if...I’m going to skip that one. It would just make you want to punch me. Number eight was Derpy and that Doctor Who-wannabe. Number seven involves Twilight.”
He bounced his eyebrows at her.

“Well? Tell us!”

“The relationship was called Sunlight--”

Suddenly, Discord twitched massively, reaching a hand up to his head. For a brief instant, the yellow in his eyes faded to be replaced with moderate cyan.

“Shut up shut up shut up you fucking asshole!” a single voice rang out at the top of her lungs, as Melissa fell to her knees, “Shut up shut up and get out of my head! I’m not her! I’m...not...”

An ear-wrenching scream resounded through the massive hall, and Melissa’s head pitched forward for a moment.

Seconds later, her eyes popped open yellow and red. Discord jumped to his feet, dusting himself off.

“Dear me, I should get that checked. Marcus!”

Everyone in the hall looked at each other, confused.

“Wayne Green! Hostage negotiator stallion!”

Shining Armor realized what he was talking about and stepped forward from the door.

“What’s the word on my demands?”

With a glare, Shining Armor reported, “They’re on their way.”

“Interesting...no negotiation? Just acquiescing to my demands? How strange…”

Discord walked up to Shining Armor very slowly, “Say, Andrew…”

“Yeah?” grunted Andrew.

“No, not you. Him. Andrew Francis. How’s the wife?”

He smirked evilly, “Oh, wait, you’re not married yet. Better hope you don’t.”

“What were the other pairings?” Andrew inquired.

“Oh yes! Forgot! There was Appledash, Twidash, Flutterdash…”

“Just leave her alone!” Twilight roared, “Your demands are being met, why do you keep doing this!?”

Discord locked eyes with Twilight, and smiled. “‘Why? Because I can.’” his laughter filled the hall once again.

XXXXX

An hour had passed. Most of the wounded had been tended to, and the more seriously injured were removed as part of the terms dictated for negotiation.
The elements of harmony, and Discord’s physical form were still supposedly being transported, but it was clearly a delaying tactic.

Still, Discord seemed content. He’d eaten half the barrel of apples, and was leafing through Celestia’s index, laughing every once in awhile.
Andrew kept an eye on the hostages, giggling to himself and occasionally dishing out more insults.

Celestia, Luna, Shining Armor, and the Mane Six had gathered together in the center of the other hostages, whispering to one another.

“Just hold still...there!” Twilight said with satisfaction, as Rainbow Dash’s tooth clicked back into place.
“Now that won’t hold forever,” Fluttershy explained, “We need to get that to a proper dentist, but it should work for now.”

Rainbow spoke with a bit of a lisp, “Thanks. I am going to kill him.”

“It’s not his fault!” Fluttershy said quickly, “It’s just Discord making him say those awful things!”

“Didn’t sound like Discord was making it up. He always did seem bothered whenever I did those things...I thought it was harmless.”

“Rainbow…” Twilight said gently, “You remember what I told you about what happened the last time? How all of you were acting completely out of character?”

Rarity interrupted, “But you also said some of what we said and did was the result of repressed emotions and concepts. It was as if we were drunk. Some of what we said was harsh, but we meant it and it was hard to see it in the open. How do we know it’s all made up? Do they truly hate our world?”

“We can’t know that for sure,” Celestia insisted, “We can’t trust anything said here until we get them back to normal. Now, we must stop panicking and formulate a plan!”

The Mane Six all dipped their heads in respect, and Twilight immediately formed an answer, “Emotional responses seem to cause problems in his control. And Melissa’s break did tell us that she was still in there somewhere. Perhaps we could find something to trigger them? Discord can’t control ponies that same way twice, and Andrew’s condition is one we’ve dealt with before. If we fix him, that’s one less asset for Discord to use.“Freeing both of them should prevent this from happening again.”

Fluttershy spoke up, whispering, “Um...if no one minds...uh...last time, Twilight helped talk Applejack out of it. Maybe something like that will work?”

“Can’t do it to Melissa. Look what happened to Andrew.” Applejack pointed out.

“How do we free her then?.” Rarity inquired.

Twilight grimaced, “I don’t know. It’s not his typical mind control he’s using on her. It’s something different. I doubt my spells from last time will work.”

Luna replied, “If I could see into her mind, perhaps I could figure out a way to break his control. I suspect her real self is in a sleep-like state. I might be able to interact with her.”

Twilight shook her head, “That could just get you trapped, your highness. We still don’t know what else Discord is capable of.”

Pinkie Pie abruptly stuck her head in, “If you’re looking to provoke her, maybe fight fire with fire?”

“We tried that. It didn’t work.” Applejack said.

“Yeah, but that was using a spark against a fire. The spark never works against a bigger fire, trust me, I tried. It doesn’t have enough air to last long enough! You make the fire big enough though, and it doesn’t go out like the spark does, right? It helps to take down the bigger fire, rather than be burned out by the big one. So we use a fire instead of a spark!”

Twilight furrowed her brow, “I don’t know if that’s how that works--what are you--”

Luna gasped, “Wait! I understand now! You mean that if Andrew is freed, because he can’t be taken over again, he’ll be the bigger fire!”

Pinkie smirked, “Duh!”

Rainbow Dash squinted at the queen of the night, “You understood that? I barely understand her half the time!”

“If one spends enough time in Pinkie Pie’s dreams, many things about her begin to make sense.”

“Well, it’s a plan! Let’s try it!” Rarity encouraged.

“Alright then.” Shining Armor concluded, “How do we get Andrew’s help? I’d really like to hit him. A lot.”

Twilight smiled a little, “I don’t think that’ll be necessary. If I remember the building dimensions correctly, we shall have an opportunity.”

Minutes later, a workpony wearing a hard hat and an orange vest trotted in nervously, looking for Shining Armor.

“Visitor!” Discord called out, throwing an apple core at Shining’s head, “Linden, get it!”

Shining managed to dodge the core, and trotted over. “Yeah?”

“Sir...it’s about Discord’s body. We uh…”

Discord vaulted over the edge of the judge’s seat, and jogged over, “Who say what now about me?”

“Uh…” the workpony got even more nervous, “We can’t get it through the door.”

“What?!” Discord roared, “Oh...incompetent ponies!”

He seized Shining Armor in a headlock, “Andrew, keep an eye on the hostages while I go and get myself unfrozen, this has gone on long enough!”

Andrew made a show of opening his revolver’s chamber, loading it, and snapping it shut.

Twilight nodded to Luna.

The queen rather nonchalantly trotted over to Andrew, keeping an eye on the weapon he held.

“The fuck do you want?”

“Very little at the moment.” Luna replied, “I simply wish to glean from you your opinion on something. Do you know the…” she resisted the urge to turn back at Twilight for confirmation, “Tee-vee show...Farscape?”

Andrew’s face seemed to clear for a moment, as he lit up, but then was puzzled. “How do you--”

“I thought it was disdainful. They balanced c...computer? Computer animation and puppets poorly. The acting was repugnant, and the scripts were distasteful.”

She was already backpedaling as Andrew launched himself at her, not bothering with the gun.

Luna’s timing was a little off, and he managed to land on her instead of on the floor.

It turned out to be a blessing, his momentum pushed both of them back toward the crowd, and immediately, Andrew was surrounded and set upon by the angry ponies.

The Mane Six and the queens did their best to pull the mob off of him, just enough at least. Several ponies held him down, while Twilight moved to stand by his head. Her horn glowed with energy, and released a spell.

Andrew’s color returned, and he stopped struggling. Blinking rapidly he rubbed his face, then looked around at everypony around him.

“Please please please please tell me I didn’t--”

“You did.” Twilight grimaced, “But you’re back now. And we need you to talk to Melissa.”

“Oh...okay.”

Helping Andrew to his feet, Applejack commented, “Well that wuz real easy. Kind of anticlimactic, now that I think about it.”

“Yeah! Almost like the writer didn’t have anywhere to go with this, and just decided to fix it!” Pinkie Pie agreed.

“Not now!” Twilight barked, before sprinting out the door with Andrew.

They rushed outside to the plaza outside the courthouse. A rig designed to carry Discord’s frozen body was disassembled in the center, and a long furrow followed the statue from the rig, across the cobblestone, and stopped a few meters from the bottom of the stairs below Andrew and Twilight.

The cops, soldiers, and workponies surrounded the possessed Melissa, and the frozen statue of Discord. Discord had Melissa’s arms raised over her head, holding several things together.

They realized it was the lead element of harmony, with Glamdring’s barrel scraping the gold away.

“Nobody comes any closer or I shoot!” they heard him roar.

“What else does he want now?” somepony asked, and as if in response, Discord yelled, “Give up the other elements or lose them all now!”

“Andrew,” Twilight implored, “You’re the only one who can talk her out of it! There’s no one else who can!”

“What can I do?! I’m just me, I’m no good at talking to people! Look what happened literally two hours ago!”

Twilight went up on her hind legs, resting her hooves on his shoulders, “Andrew, that is your friend down there! She’s alone, she’s under Discord’s influence, and is afraid of everypony at the moment! She needs help!”

“But you’re the friendship speech pony! I’m a freaking coward, just like Spike said! I’m nothing, I’m not special! I can’t--”

“Andrew. You know that’s not true! When I was in danger you walked into Tartarus itself to try and save me! You may have serious judgement issues, but you’re not just a ‘cowardly indecisive jerk’! Do you think we’d be friends if you really were?! You’re better than you think, and nobler than you know! Andrew, please!”

Andrew looked between her and the figure at the bottom of the stairs. He slowly rubbed his face, resting his hands there for a moment.

“Please...help her.” Twilight said more quietly.

Andrew didn’t reply, and let out a sigh. Slowly, he walked toward the scene, pushing his way through the crowd.

Hands in his pockets, he hoped to look non-threatening. Discord wasn’t having any of it, unfortunately.

“Keep back!” Discord barked, “I’ll do it if you don’t!”

“Okay!” Andrew said, putting up his hands, “Keeping back!”

“What do you want?” the demon of chaos demanded.

“I just came to talk.”

“Really? Just to talk? You came to stop me!”

Andrew shrugged, “Well, I thought that was obvious.”

“Then why’d you want to talk?!”

“I didn’t want to talk to you, you egotistical ass. I want to talk to her.”

Discord laughed, and in a gargling voice said “‘Nothing of the host survives’.”

Andrew rolled his eyes, exhausted and angry, “Cut the crap, Discord. Yeah, Goa’uld, Har-de-har. Let’s get on with it.”

“Well then, speak away! I’m sure she’ll love to hear more berating!”

Andrew took a breath, here goes nothing. “Melissa...I’m sorry.”

Discord tilted his head in confusion, “What?”

“I’m sorry, Melissa. I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through, I’m sorry that you got taken away from Earth, I’m sorry--” his voice broke for a moment, and he coughed, “I’m sorry that I haven’t been the greatest of friends to you. None of this is your fault. It’s just unfortunate circumstances. None of it’s your fault, and you shouldn’t blame yourself for any of it.”

Discord lowered his arms, and for a brief instant the yellow in Melissa’s eyes faded. A tear ran out of the corner of her eye, and she whispered, “I...I can’t do this, Andrew…I can’t go on like this, I just can’t. There’s nothing I can do.”

Andrew realized with immense sympathy and sadness, that she wasn’t talking about standing up to Discord.

He looked at her for the longest time, his duster blowing around in the wind. What could he say?

He suddenly remembered a quote, with incredible clarity, “‘I know, it’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.’”

“‘What are we holding onto’?” Melissa’s eyes returned once again as she answered with the correct line.

“That all isn’t lost, that there’s some good left in the world. We’ll get home, that we’ll survive and we’ll make it home. You can’t give up Melissa. It’s only a passing thing. We’ll survive. You’ll survive. The ponies don’t hate you. I don’t hate you. We’re here for you. Help us fight for the good, and put down the gun.”

For a moment, her arms trembled, as her eyes clouded over.

The soldiers and cops raised their weapons, ready for anything.

Melissa dropped the crown, lowered her pistol, and straightened up. She stepped into a human posture. Her eyes cleared to reveal moderate cyan, glowing all the brighter as her skin and hair returned to normal. Melissa began to cry and laugh at the same time, grinning for all the world as she fell to her knees. “He's gone…”

Andrew went to sit beside her, grinning himself, tears threatening to spill from his eyes as well.

“We did it…” she mumbled, “we didn’t surrender...I am who I am again.”

Andrew raised a hand, not knowing what he wanted to do with it for a moment, then settled for patting her on the back, “No, you didn’t surrender. You got him out of there.”

To his utter surprise, she embraced him, sobbing and laughing for joy. The headaches were gone, her depression, sadness, and paranoia released. She felt free for the first time in what felt like years. Her mind was her own again. No more anger, no more aggression pumped into her brain, just a pure feeling of freedom.

The crowd erupted into cheers over their victory, safe in the knowledge that Discord had been beaten once again.

“Uh...uh…” Andrew yelped, gingerly returning the hug, “Melissa...Melissa!”

Snuffling, and still grinning from ear to ear, she release him, “Dude, I thought you were an anthropologist! Hugs are as good as handshakes in pony culture! And fuck it anyway, I was in need of one, so you can just stuff it.”
Wiping at her nose with her sleeve she gestured to the frozen statue behind them, “If that ass escapes again, remind me to kick him in the balls.”

“Duly noted.”

Chapter 12

In spite (or as a result) of her release from Discord’s control, Melissa suffered a mental breakdown. Flashbacks, paranoia, and hallucinations. Mood swings and extreme fear.

Despite the Equestrian understanding of the mind being poorer than that of their Terran counterparts, they did know how to treat certain mental ailments. They offered plenty of support for the poor woman in her time of need.

Her equipment was returned, Silverbolt returned to her mind, and she was visited almost hourly by several members of the Mane Six, all concerned for her well-being.

Andrew stayed with her continuously, being just about the only person she could talk to who would know what she was talking about.

Days after the trial, Celestia paid a visit to Melissa, out of a feeling of obligation, and empathy for a fellow individual in pain.

Andrew passed her on his way out of Melissa’s room in the hospital, to catch a few hours of sleep and charge another electronic device.

“Oh, uh, hello.” he greeted awkwardly, still not knowing how to act around her.

“Hello, Mr. Shepherd. Is she awake?”

“Yeah...uh, yes, your highness! Just a heads up, if you’re going in there...just know she’s not in her right mind. Remember that if she does anything.”

She dipped her head, “I will remember that.” and trotted into the room.

The room was fairly normal, but with a little less space available. Most ponies didn’t have Melissa’s size, and the retrofitted bed made for her took up quite a bit of space.

Melissa was sitting up in bed, a laptop off to one side, a calculator in one hand, and a pencil in the other. Diagrams and math scribbles covered the papers lying on the bed. She looked exhausted, her eyes red and dark circles under her eyes. A tray of food, bones of chicken stripped bare and a few specks of rice lay off to one side.

Silverbolt was standing off to one side, hand on his chin, considering the human. Noticing Celestia walking in, he stepped over.

“Your highness, though she might not say it now, Corporal Foster would like to extend her deepest apologies for everything that has happened, for everything that was said, in particular the, uh…” he tugged at a non-existent collar, “the comment in reference to human reproductive, eh, details.”

Celestia dipped her head, “And I accept them, Senior Aviator. It was not really her speaking, Discord was controlling her mind. There is nothing to be angry about.”

Silverbolt grimaced, and said in a low voice, “Your majesty, I’ve tried explaining that. So have several others. To no avail.”

Celestia was a little saddened by that, “Well, I hope the genuine article can clear it up some.”

Silverbolt shrugged, “You may try.” and stepped aside.

Queen Celestia trotted over quietly, like a forgiving mother whose child had just had a tantrum.

Melissa continued writing, entering a few commands into a spreadsheet on the laptop.

Silverbolt was on the other side of the bed, “Melissa, Celestia is here.”

No snarky comment, which was more off putting than her silence. There was nothing, only a weak nod of the head.

Celestia did her best to sit on the end of the bed, more a lean with her forelegs tucked underneath her, “Hello, Melissa.”

Melissa finally turned to look her in the eyes. She shook her head as if coming out of a trance, and her eyes bugged out. “Oh! Ce--your highness!”

She struggled to rise and salute, tottering on her feet as she came to attention. Celestia quickly waved for her to sit down, “You’re ill, you don’t need to get up.”

Melissa slowly sank back onto the bed, nearly sitting on a piece of paper. Looking at the mess as if for the first time, she started sweeping the pages up, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting company. I’ve been busy.”

Celestia picked up one of the pieces of paper. On it was a diagram of something called an internal combustion engine.

“I thought you were hesitant to give us new technologies,” the queen commented.

“Things change.” Melissa muttered.

Taking the diagram from Celestia, Melissa stopped moving. She looked back at Celestia, and blinked several times.

Looking at the papers in her hands, she reorganized them and sat down. Her eyes locked on the cast around Celestia’s knee.

She shifted away until she hit the wall of the room, pulled her knees up, and buried her face in her hands.

Celestia half-heartedly reached out, then withdrew her hoof. “My word...I am sorry for all of this, Melissa. I’m sorry for what has befallen you, and for all that you have been through.”

Her voice muffled, Melissa let out a whimper, “Uh-huh.”

“None of it was your fault. nopony blames you, it could have been any of us.”

“Uh-huh, of course. By the Elder Gods, Just put me six feet under now and get it over with.”

Celestia squinted in confusion, looking at Silverbolt. He sighed, “Human burial tradition is to place the body six feet underground.”

“Oh! No, no, no, no one’s going to hurt you!” the queen said quickly, “What would make you think that?”

“Paranoia is one symptom of what she is experiencing,” Silverbolt explained, “Though the doctors have been unable to determine whether or not this is her pre-existing paranoia.”

“Melissa, no one wants to hurt you. Everything’s alright now, you don’t have to be afraid.”

Celestia reached out to touch Melissa on the arm, but the marine flinched and squirmed away.

“Why are you so afraid of me?” Celestia inquired quietly, “In all my years, there are few that have been quite as afraid as you are.”

That brought no coherent response.

Silverbolt grimaced, “Another symptom of what she’s going through. Extreme fear.”

“But even before she became ill she was afraid, and it went deeper than Discord’s influence. Why?”

Silverbolt glanced at Melissa, who was looking at him with one eye. She nodded, gesturing to Celestia with her head.

“She fears your wrath, despite knowing how good you are. In human history there have been many occasions of monarchs with very poor tempers, who have executed prisoners for very little cause. That is one thing she fears.”

“But I have never done such a thing--”

“She knows that. She’s feeling guilty.”

“Guilty? But...Melissa, it wasn’t your fault, not at all. It could have happened to anypony.”

Melissa croaked, “But it couldn’t have been anyone else. And it didn’t happen to anyone else. It was just me, and only me.”

“You don’t know that--”

“I don’t?” Melissa lifted her head, her eyes red and fresh tears spilling down well-worn channels, “It’s simple logic, really. I was the only one with the training, the weapon, the physical strength, and the...bad resistance to mind control.”

“Why do you think it was your fault?”

“Because it was, dammit. My fault. If I’d been able to fight him off, those guards and civilians might still be alive. I know I had no control, that I didn’t pull the trigger, but I sure as hell can be blamed for it. And if I don’t, everyone else will.”

“Melissa, there are few who can fight off an attack like that. Especially--”

“But I know how to fight off mental attacks! It’s very simple! I know how, I should have, I should have been able to, but I couldn’t stop him! He got in my mind, and used me to kill and destroy, and I couldn’t stop him! I should have been able to stop him! I tried. I tried so hard. But I wasn't strong enough! I wasn't good enough! I should have been able to stop him. I should, I should."

She was weeping now, rocking back and forth as she gasped for air, “My fault, my fault, my fault…”

Melissa felt a strange warmth envelop her, and a wing draw her close into an embrace. “No, it’s not your fault.” Celestia said soothingly and firmly, “It’s not your fault. You’ve done nothing wrong. Nopony is to blame here but Discord.”
The forgiveness and sweetness and light in her voice only made Melissa cry harder, unable to keep all her emotions within her and completely overwhelmed.

For a long time Celestia sat there, holding the sobbing human, simply offering her presence.
Finally, she spoke, “I may not know much about mental conditions, but I do know this. If you do not address the problem, it will only get worse. Perhaps you should talk to your friends. I get the sense it will help.”

XXXXX

Here they were again. Three species, seven people. Sitting as they had the previous days, around the fire.
Andrew was staring at the fire, brooding on his experience, his significant others on the same couch this time.

Applejack broke the silence, looking at Rarity, “I haven’t been to see Melissa, lately. How has she been since...y’know…”

“She hasn’t been doing well. She’s healing, but he hurt her in ways that don’t show up on the surface.”

“She had a minor mental breakdown.” Andrew did not look up, still staring into the fire, “She’s been extremely depressed, and anxious. Keeps jumping between self-hatred and regret.”

“Understandable, given what she’s been through.” Twilight pointed out.

“Is there anything we can do?” Pinkie Pie inquired, “Maybe I should…”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” Rainbow Dash said quickly, “The doctors are worried about ‘too much excitement’.”

“Too much excitement? Quit joking around, that’s impossible!”

Andrew explained, “Mental breakdowns can have some adverse physical effects on humans, including high blood pressure and increased anxiety. You might give her a heart attack.”

He hesitated a moment, before continuing, “What Discord said about all of us really hurt her. I think she’s been avoiding most of you. Except for the two ponies she couldn’t avoid,” he gestured to Rarity and Dash, “She’s afraid of what you might think.”

“She was under Discord’s control, we can’t blame her.” Applejack insisted, “What does she think we’re going to do?”

The door at the end of the common area slammed open. Light streamed in, revealing a familiar silhouette standing in the doorway.

Dressed in a hospital gown and her beloved N7 jacket, Melissa made tiny steps toward the assembled group. The light from the door cast an eerie glow through the half-empty bottle she held in her hand.
Rainbow Dash zipped over to a nearby armchair, and dragged it over to the fire, where Melissa accepted it without protest.
She sat down, held up the glass she clutched in her other hand, and filled it. The liquid had the distinct smell of wine.
Melissa drained the glass in one gulp, then immediately poured more in.

“Is that alcohol you’re drinking?” Rarity asked, furrowing her brow.

“Yep.” another drained glass. Refill.

“Why are you drinking wine?” Andrew inquired, watching with concern as the liquid content in the bottle dropped further and further.

“Because that’s what people with celiac disease and who’ve been possessed by demons of chaos do, okay? Sorry we can’t all...something something, I don’t know. Jack is hard at work, here.”

“Who’s Jack?” Rainbow Dash asked, “Friend of AJ’s?”

“Yeah, she would know.” Melissa hiccuped loudly.

“How are you feeling?” Twilight asked hesitantly, “We haven’t seen you in a while.”

“How the flying fuck do you think I’m feeling?” Melissa took another shot. “I’m a worthless and awful piece of shit. I’m glad everyone knows that now. Thanks a lot, Discord, really cleared that up.”

She put the glass to her lips again, and was surprised when nothing came out. “But you’re the only people around who can stand the sight of me, so...fuck it. Go ahead and yell at me. It’s what I deserve.”

Fluttershy drifted over hesitantly, hovering above the ground, “We don’t blame you for what Discord said. He’s made us do awful things before. We know what it’s like.”

Melissa looked at the pegasus. For an instant, everyone braced for an explosion, for the marine’s famous temper to break through.

“You have no idea what it was like.” the empty glass in her hand clattered to the floor, rolling across the carpet. She began drinking straight from the bottle, “I don’t know what Discord has done to my brain. I don’t know how long he’s been manipulating me. It could have been when I first came through that portal. My brain’s a mess. Nothing feels right anymore.”

She pulled out her phone, “I’ve been trying to figure things out from my notes. Everything feels right...but what if that’s just what he wanted?”
Slumping, the marine closed her eyes, “It’s all my fault. Everything, everyone who’s dead, the chaos, the destruction, my fault.”
Her temper returned briefly, much weaker than it had ever been, “I know everyone thinks it’s not, and I may not have pulled the trigger, but I sure as fuck could’ve fought harder. If I’d been able to keep him out..."

She was crying again, and noted that it was the first time in a while she’d been embarrassed to be doing so in the presence of so many others.
Rainbow Dash trotted over and gave her a hug. “It’s never easy, Mel. It never is, dealing with this stuff. Believe it or not, we’ve all been through something like what you’ve been.”

“It’s not the same…”

“Getting shot in the chest and surviving isn’t much different from being shot in the arm, now is it?” Rainbow pointed out. “Different wounds, still a whole lot of pain.”

“Yeah…”

Rainbow released her friend, and forced her over to sit next to her on the chair’s armrest. “You know we’ve all been under Discord’s control, right? That’s the shot in the arm. You may have had it worse, you were possessed by him. That’s the shot in the chest. You lived though, right?”

Melissa drained the rest of her bottle of liquor.
“You know, all my life I thought I could handle everything, and fix any problem. But when he was in my head, I realized there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so helpless.”

“When we were being controlled, I had a similar experience.” Rarity said, staring at the fire. “To lose all control like that…”

“It’s awful.” Pinkie said, “I can’t even think about what happened. I couldn’t sleep right for a weeks.”

Fluttershy spoke, her voice cracking, “I couldn’t believe the things I’d said, the things I’d done.” her voice gave out, and she leaned against Andrew for comfort.

“Yeah, verbal abuse. That’s comparable to shooting people.”

Twilight shot a dirty look at the marine, “Really? You think that’s all she did?”

“Yeah…?”

Silverbolt muttered in Melissa’s ear, “The series is different from reality. Tread lightly.”

Melissa started banging her head against the empty bottle of alcohol, “Take me for a fool, please. I’m an idiot. A useless idiot marine.”

“Discord never made us kill anyone,” Twilight screwed up her face, “But he certainly tried. There were several ponies in the hospital afterwards, who swore we put them there.”

“Jesus! What’d you do?” Andrew demanded.

“Things we’d like to forget.” Applejack said, glancing down at the floor.

“I sure wish we could.” Rainbow muttered.

Melissa let her bottle fall to the floor, “I wish none of this had happened. I wish I’d never come here.”

“‘So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us.’” Andrew quoted, “‘There are other forces of work in the world besides the will of evil.’ Is it really so bad here? Where would we be without you? Where would you be without us?”

“Better off. Both questions.” She snarled glumly.

Andrew shook his head, “Did you really want to be stuck in a war with no end? An endless war in the desert? Risking death by a people who have been under the thumb of dictators and invaders since the British Empire? Equestria certainly seems like a better deal. Okay, it’s not great, but it’s not the Middle Ages either. You’ve got friends here, you’ve got a whole new world. You’re where no one else has gone before.”

Don’t get me wrong, I miss home as much as you do. I miss my parents, I miss my brother. But you can’t say it’s been all bad, and you can’t say Afghanistan would be all that much fun.”

“At least I’d be home. There’d be other humans about, people I know…”

“But you might have ended up with worse than Discord’s control. An IED, an RPG, shot, stabbed, captured, tortured, and/or beheaded. Are those preferable to living here?”

“No, of course not,” Melissa snapped, “But I’m a soldier, I go where I’m assigned. At least there I’d be of use. I wouldn’t be shooting allies while under the control of freaking Q.”

Andrew countered, “But you’re of use here, as well. You saved Applejack’s farm, you saved my life a couple times, and you helped keep Discord under control. You refused to offer him a platform to use for his purposes, and now the ponies know how to block him from doing it again. You can make a difference here, and if we make it home, we’ll be famous. Could you really earn that building bridges in the desert?”

Melissa leaned back, looking up at the ceiling, “But if I hadn’t been brought here, those people might still be alive.”

Andrew stood up, and walked around into her field of vision, “And maybe they wouldn’t. Stuff happens. Through no fault of our own.”

“I guess you’re right…” Melissa sniffled. “I still feel awful about what happened.”

“We’ve all been through it, Mel.” Dash repeated, “We can help you if you let us.”

“Why? Why would you help a dumb marine from beyond the stars?” Melissa moaned, “All I’ve ever done has been make a complete ass of myself.”

She sat up, “Discord wasn’t entirely lying about a bunch of the stuff he said. Kind of. He’d been pumping a bunch of rage and crap into my head, but it was only exaggerating things that were already there.”

“If we really cared about that, would we still be sitting here?” Pinkie Pie of all people uttered those words, “Andrew’s pretty rude too, and he’s our friend. We don’t care. Both of you have been through a whole lot of yucky junk, and while it may be hard at times, you’re still our friends.”

“Who would we be if we abandoned you based on the word of Discord?” Twilight inquired, smiling a little, “Friends aren’t people you never have problems with, they’re people worth forgiving.

Dash grinned, “So you had some problems with us, big deal. If you really hated any of us, you would’ve run off long ago.”

Melissa was silent for a very long time.

To everyone’s surprise, the marine’s stoney face cracked. A corner of her mouth turned upwards, “‘You freaking tiny horses with your relentless positivity and your self-esteem.’” She seized Dash in a massive bear hug, threatening to squeeze the life out of the poor pegasus.

“You remember the psychic connection I mentioned? That, and seeing all of you, was single-handedly responsible for keeping me sane throughout my senior year of high school. When the world was driving me nuts, there were six pastel ponies who kept me going.”

Her smile grew bigger, and she pulled out her wallet. “I never showed you guys my family, did I? My brother introduced me to the show when I was having a particular bad day.”

She took out the photo, taken in a time that seemed so far away now, and turned it outwards.

The amazing technology, dime-a-dozen back home, was incredible here. Full color, fully portable, and perfect quality.

Dash took the image from her hand, squinting at it. She passed it on to Andrew rapidly.

Andrew grinned, “That definitely looks like you. This your brother?” he pointed.

“Yeah, Garrett. Called him Garrus all the time.”

“Do I really want to know why?”

“His favorite color is blue, he always played Turians in ME3 multiplayer, and was a great sniper in all our video games. He introduced me to the show, after...”
Melissa’s hand balled into a fist, her eyes glinting with memory, “After an incident. I was pissed, I was upset, and I happened to walk into the living room when he had it on. I was confused, and...I don’t know, maybe he was trying to distract me or something.”

A glance at Rainbow Dash. Her no-drama person. Perhaps she saw a little of him in her.

“He showed me the first episode, and I saw all of you.” she gestured around, “All y’all, not you,” pointing to Andrew, “But all of you. Honestly, despite what I’d heard about the show, I did not anticipate liking it. I thought you would be a little girls’ show, not a bunch of hobbits. Simple folk just living their lives with simple acts of kindness and love, caring for one another. Earth is by no means a horrible place to live, but it’s a long way from Equestria. Your world was a sense of stability, the Shire.”

“The Shire? Hobbits?” Andrew asked, knitting his brow.

“Dude, why can’t you see it? You’re a Tolkien fan. This isn’t little girl land, this is the Shire. Or Wales. ‘It is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keeps the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.’ You can’t see it?”
She shook her head, “Discord was telling the truth about the plushie, Twi’. To me and my brother, you were all a sense of stability in a chaotic world. A nutbar on a shot toward the White House, worrying about jobs and the future...I saw myself so much in you people,” she nodded at Twilight, “And you especially. I can’t express how much it means to me to be stranded here with you people.”

She looked up beside her, presumably at Silverbolt, “He’s right. I may miss home, but there’s certainly worse places I could’ve ended up. Pure methane atmosphere, or in Destroyermen. I know I’m an ass, but I’d like to thank you all for putting up with me over these past few months.”

The marine looked up at her friends, realizing in her mind that she now thought of them as that, not just “the ponies”.
“I don’t know if I really believed you were actually the ponies I knew. Those sweet, kind, and innocent creatures I knew--they couldn’t really exist, could they?”
Her face brimmed with emotion, “To err is to be human, to forgive, divine. You really are those ponies. You forgave me.”

“I did too.” Andrew added, chuckling a bit.

“I guess you count too, Andy.” she laughed, though her smile faded a little, “I am still willing to atone for all the crap I’ve done. Just let me know what you want me to do for it. I’m a combat engineer, building crap is my bread and butter. I can probably rewire the entire electrical grid you got going on here, I could rebuild your entire civilization’s buildings until hell freezes over. I’ve been working on internal combustion engines the past few weeks. If I can work with some mathematicians, I might be able to rediscover the secret to powered flight...”

Chapter 13

Author’s Note: There is some original text/dialogue in this chapter lifted from Hands that I claim no credit for.

The moon was rising into the sky, the light from the sun fading over the horizon, and Ponyville was no darker than it had been at midday. It wasn’t torches that lit the town, nor was it arc lamps, but electric incandescent light bulbs. To streetlamps to the buildings themselves, was pumped massive amounts of power provided by the distant hydroelectric dam that had suddenly seen an increase in practical uses.

Instead of a handful of arc lamps for the entire town, every individual building had at least one incandescent light bulb.

Andrew glanced around at the brightness of the train station, a little shocked. When he’d left, It was still using kerosene lamps. He adjusted his pack, straightened his pith helmet, and stepped out into the streets, marveling at the brightness he hadn’t seen in so long.

To think this was all because of her. His friend. “A simple marine from Vermont”, as she described herself.

The cool night breeze swept through the street, making him shiver and zip up his jacket further. It was almost summer, why was it so cold?

He felt like he’d taken a backseat to his whole life recently. Melissa had done more in months than he’d done in almost a year.

That was probably why he’d gone looking for more human outposts. Needed some alone time.

He passed a telegraph pole being repaired by a work crew, pegasi lifting the heavy cable back up and making sure it stayed where it was. The cable ran from beyond the horizon all the way to a new building near the center of town.

Human design, pony built. brick, mortar, and concrete, unlike the wood of the structures around it. Dozens of cables wound their way through the streets, splitting off from power lines to meet at the building.

The telegraph poles were similar to telephone poles back on Earth, possessing a dual-purpose of carrying telegraph signals and electricity to the lights in town.

Mass telegraphy. Another innovation made by a “simple marine”. Something that had never occurred to him in all the time he’d spent in Equestria.

It had made half the postal service obsolete, and given capabilities to the average person previously only accessible by high-level unicorns.

Andrew didn’t hate Melissa for anything she’d brought.

Not much.

Actually, he had no idea what to feel. Maybe a hint of jealousy. God, I feel like an idiot.

So many things were here because of her. So many simple, stupid little things. Why was I working as a handyman? Unclogging people’s drains...what is wrong with me? I could’ve made a ton of money!

He shrugged to himself, Well, I do make money now. And I get to use my degree finally...

Perhaps it was just jealousy. He’d done a lot of thinking on his expedition. Her arrival made everything better, hadn’t it? He had someone to talk to, who would understand his references, who had copious amounts of pop culture stashed away. She even had a bunch of new stuff, and not just things he’d missed by being away. Sealab 2021 may have been a decade old, but he hadn’t heard of it, and it was hilarious.

“If you’re lookin’ for me, you better check under the sea, cuz that is where you’ll find me, underneath the sealab, underneath the water...sealab at the bottom of the sea…” he muttered to himself, singing the song that had been stuck in his head for the last week. He didn’t know why. The last time he’d seen the show had been before he left Canterlot.

Canterlot. He looked at the city glowing on the distant mountain. He rarely saw Melissa anymore. Maybe that was the reason for his weird thinking. Or maybe it had something to do what he’d found.

When the marine set upon improving the state of pony technology like a madwoman, she’d moved to the city, something about not being able to expand in Ponyville. Rarity and Rainbow would occasionally go and visit her in her home.

He had not. He had sent telegrams, but not much else.

He kicked himself mentally. He shouldn’t be feeling sorry for himself. I need to talk to her. I need to tell her about...everything. That comes first. And maybe then I could sort all these feelings out.

Andrew reached the library, and out of habit, checked the mailbox. Inside was an orange envelope. A telegram.

Noting it was a little late for mail delivery, Andrew shrugged to himself and opened it.

Reading it, his face drew into a frown, “Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.”

The address was Melissa’s new home in Canterlot.

Andrew knocked on the library’s door, knocking sand off his boots as he waited.

The door opened, and Andrew looked down to see Spike looking up at him with a slightly surprised look. He nodded at the human, then turned back, “Twilight, Andrew’s back!”

From one of the other chambers of the library came the clatter of books falling. Minutes later, Twilight galloped out. They met in the center, sharing an embrace.

She grinned, “Andrew! Why didn’t you send a message saying you were coming home today?”

“Telegraph lines aren’t out to the town I was in. Pretty weird one, middle of nowhere. I had to hike from the train station to get to it, and…”

“Never mind, how are you? Come on in! Spike, get some tea! I’ll send Owlowiscious to Fluttershy--”

Andrew set his bag down, “I’m fine, but when was the last time you checked the mail?”

Spike quickened his pace out of the room, feeling Twilight’s gaze burn into his back.

“Why?”

The human handed her the open envelope, and she took it.

“Southern Equestrian Telegram” was typed across the top of the form, above the row of dates, serial numbers, and other data that accompanied every telegram sheet.
Below lay the message itself, written in all caps. Morse code had its limitations, and several words were abbreviated, but the meaning was understood.

“TO TWILIGHT SPARKLE PERSONAL STUDENT OF CELESTIA PONYVILLE GOLDEN OAK LIBRARY
FROM USMC CPL M FOSTER 184 MEADOWBROOK LANE CANTERLOT X

TWI S X YOUR BROTHER TO MARRY REPEAT MARRY IN 20 DAYS X SA DID NOT NOTIFY YOU X DO YOU HAVE PLAN OF ACTION X MESSAGE END XXX”

Andrew was slowly backing away from Twilight, whose expression slowly descended into a scowl.
Suddenly from the kitchen came the sound of Spike regurgitating a newly-arrived message. He walked back in, holding a scroll with Celestia’s official seal on it.
Such a method of communication still gave Andrew the creeps, and more than a little feeling of disgust.

Taking a moment to find a place, the dragon began to read, with his exaggerated impression of Celestia, “Dear Twilight, I apologize that you were not informed of your brother’s wedding sooner. I was under the impression that you had been until Corporal Foster brought it to my attention. I was hoping that once alerted to his mistake your brother would have the opportunity to send a message. Unfortunately, Corporal Foster outpaced him. I am taking this opportunity to say that I would very much like you and your friends to aid the preparation for this wonderful occasion of a marriage between Princess Mi Amore Cadenza and Captain Shining Armor of…”

Spike stopped reading, “Blah blah blah...nothing else significant, just what she wants us to do. The rest of the gang has been asked for.”

Twilight scowled, then with determination ordered, “Spike, pack a bag for us, then get down to the train station. Andrew, don’t unpack. Go and wake up Rainbow, so she can help get the rest of the girls up. I’m going to the telegraph station.”

Andrew tapped her on the shoulder, and preemptively stepped back just in case, “Twilight, maybe we should leave this alone till morning. At least take a second before you send off an angry message you may regret. You may be overreacting--”

She glared at him, “Andrew, dear…” she ground out the second word through gritted teeth, “Before I came to Ponyville, I had one friend, one person I trusted the most. That was my big brother! And I just found out he didn’t tell me about one of the most significant decisions of his life, and to someone I’ve never even heard of?! How am I supposed to react?!”

Andrew put up both hands, and mumbled, “Sounded stupid the moment I said it…”

XXXXX

Rainbow Dash pulled the door of the dining car shut, muting the sound of the train rocketing along. She turned to face the car, putting up a hoof to shield from the glare from the windows. Far out toward the horizon, the sun was just beginning to rise.
She glanced around, finding the car to be like many she’d seen before. On the right, a few dispensaries of serve-yourself goods, and further down the car a counter with a bored-looking earth pony stallion waiting for his shift to end. On the left were a series of round tables bolted to the floor, chairs rattling around with the motion of the train.
All except one, that is.

Andrew was slumped forward on the table, face-down near a cup of coffee. Under him, somewhat protected were a pile of papers and a journal. His arm was stuck near his head, still poised to write. His backpack was on the seat next to him, covered by the pith helmet he’d worn since Rarity had given it to him.
Something about it “fitting the archeologist image”. Rainbow didn’t object. Daring Do wore one, why shouldn’t he?

Rainbow Dash trotted over to Andrew and flicked his ear, “Wake up, sunshine. Twilight and Fluttershy are makin’ out in human form.”

Andrew sat up sharply, his glasses askew, a pen stuck to them, and he wiped drool from his chin, “What…? Where…” he rubbed his face, “What time is it? Hey, you of all people should respect people’s rights to sleep. And to respect others privacy!”

“It’s not really private if everyone knows,” Rainbow smirked, “And I’m bored.”

She went to the pot of coffee near the clerk. She poured some in a cup, then glanced at the clerk, “You got any whiskey?”

The clerk gave her an odd look, but handed over a small bottle, “Isn’t it a little early for...alcohol…?” he trailed off as he watched her pour the liquid into her mug. His expression lasted even as the pegasus gathered sugar and put that in as well, and stirred it.

She went back to Andrew’s table, and sat down. Dash realized he was staring at her, “What?”

“What are you drinking?”

Dash took one sip, and immediately, any exhaustion was gone as she coughed extremely hard. Wheezing, she replied, “Something called an irish coffee. Melissa says they’re good for keeping you awake.” she looked at it, “Boy, that stuff’s strong…I thought the bottle said whiskey…Want a sip?”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to drink alcohol in the morning.” Andrew shook his head, “And I definitely don’t think you should take drinking advice from the marine. They can drink people under the table and still be sober enough to fight.”

“Eh, they’re not so tough. Anyway, I only drink them when I’ve got something like today. You’ve got a pen on your face, bee-tee-dubs.”

Andrew rolled his eyes, and realized she was telling the truth about the pen, “Okay, I’m gonna ask that you never say that ever again. And I really don’t like you drinking that stuff.”

Rainbow grinned, “Why not?”

“Because...because. I don’t know.” he managed to get the pen unclipped from his glasses, and dropped it on the floor.

Rainbow leaned down to grab it, and felt a breeze ripple through the train. She sat up in time to see Andrew closing the window, and her cup missing from the table.

“Hey! I paid for that!”

“Better that you don’t have it. Here, actual coffee.” he handed her his cup, and slumped forward slightly, his eyelids drooping.

She glared at him, but was torn between her urge to hit him and her urge to accept a free drink. She chose the option less likely to get her thrown off the train, and picked it up.

Rainbow still had the pen in her hoof, and studied it. It wasn’t a fountain pen, and it looked like one of those newfangled ballpoint pens they could never get to work. It was obviously human-made, nothing Equestrian-made could have been this fine. It was non-reflective and matte-black, with “Fisher M4B” inscribed on the cap, and the name “M. Foster” engraved in cursive along its side.

“Did you steal one of Melissa’s space pens?” Rainbow asked, “She never lets these things out of her sight!”

Andrew snatched it back, “She lent it to me, said I might need it in the desert. Or somewhere cold. It’s a ballpoint pen that can work anywhere, in case you’re wondering.”

Rainbow nodded, “Yeah, they’re awesome. Works better than anything we’ve got, and even writes underwater! Trust me, I tried.”

Andrew didn’t even ask, instead opting for a different question, “I’ve been out of the loop for a while. Has Madame Macgyver made ballpoint pens yet?”

“Who--? No, she hasn’t. Her company’s not in pens yet.”

“Well, that’s something she hasn’t got down.” he grunted, looking out the window, “A thousand points for her, one for me. Great.”

“You alright?”

Andrew didn’t answer right away, instead staring at the spiral-bound notebook on the table. In the corner of the cover was a round logo. In the red circle were the capital letters “B” and “L” in white, and overlaid between those two was a blue circle, containing a capital “N”. B.N.L.

Melissa was such a nerd. She named her company after a disney movie.

“I don’t know, maybe? How am I supposed to feel when a friend of mine goes from some random castaway to head of one of the biggest companies on the planet?” his hands balled into fists, “And makes you feel like the biggest idiot in history.”

“Buy ‘N’ Large isn’t that big.” Rainbow Dash pointed out.

“Well, they’re certainly the most influential! I can’t name any other company in history that has nearly that same amount of hands in that many cookie jars! Toys, tabletop games, communication, movies, plays...she got Rarity in on her board of directors and got her to start producing clothes based on human fashion! Melissa’s making utility equipment, military gear, electrical engineering, engineering in general, and books! Lots of books! She did that in a few months, while in all the time I was here, I did jack diddly!”

He held up the spiral notebook, “This wasn’t around when I got here. I coulda made a ton of money, but no, I was too damn stupid to figure it out! But no, Melissa figured it out immediately, and kept all the money to herself!”

Andrew panted for a moment, then snarled, “So...no, I’m not alright.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow, “Wait, you haven’t gotten any of the money? That doesn’t really sound like her.”

“Well, she’s the one hogging all the patents, why not all the money too?”

Rainbow sighed, “She doesn’t mean to hog all the patents, or the other cool stuff, she just thought about this sort of thing a lot back on Earth. She’s a big Destroyermen fan.”

“Don’t remind me, she keeps trying to get me to read it.”

“It’s a good series! And anyway, you’ve done pretty well yourself.”

“Yeah, worked as a handyman,” he sarcastically made an “ok” sign with his hand, “That’s real significant.”

“What do you call being the only one looking for the legacy of the lost human colonists?!” Rainbow demanded, “I mean, she may have gotten you moving, but as far as I know, you’re the only one who was! You’re the one who found the first bunker! and you...you…”
She paused to sip her drink, “What did you find out there, anyway? I didn’t keep up with events.”

Andrew seemed to brighten up a little at the distraction, and handed her his notebook, “Well, most legends of humans put them in remote areas, and I went to a few likely places. Appleloosa, Vanhoover, this really weird village up north…” he shuddered, “It was creepy. Ten miles from the nearest train station, whole place shaped like an equals sign, everyone with the same mark on their rear…”

“So...did you find anything?”

Andrew glanced out the window again, averting eye contact and scratched his head, “...Not that much. Some human remains, a few more bunkers not even close to intact...but no documents, there was nothing we could use to find out what happened.”

“Well now, see? You’re doing stuff Melissa’s not! She’s hanging around Canterlot filing paperwork for Buy ‘N’ Large, while you’re out being a stallion version of Daring Do!”

“It’s Indiana Jones, you know it’s Indiana Jones…”

Why didn’t you bring Twilight and Fluttershy?”

Andrew looked down at the floor, “I dunno. Guess I needed some ‘me’ time. Felt good to be moving around for some reason, and it felt good to get paid doing my job instead of shooting dragons or trying to mount a one-man invasion of Hell.”

He glanced at her, “Why? Were there any problems?”

Rainbow shrugged, “Not really. Well, felt a little boring without humans around town, we were all kinda used to you two. Twilight and Fluttershy were alright, I think, they just were real quiet and missed you. We did manage to have some of our own adventures though. Fluttershy built some confidence, and helped out with the Cloudsdale water resupply…”

“Really? That’s...interesting.”

Rainbow gave him a knowing smirk, “You have no idea what that is, do you?”

“No clue.”

“Whatever. Fluttershy built self-confidence, the Cutie-Mark Crusaders got into a whole thing with a newspaper...oh, and...uh…” she looked to the side, “Fluttershy, Rarity, and I kinda sorta...got involved in an incident with a dessert.”

Andrew blinked several times, “That sounds like…nope, not even gonna ask. But they weren’t too mad at me for leaving?”

Rainbow shrugged, “Ask them yourself! I’m no good with emotions. Though considering how awkward things were after the Dragon Migration, they might have at least appreciated not talking about it at all. Twilight’s still pretty angry about her brother, maybe you should deal with that.”

The car door opened, and a conductor emerged, calling out, “Canterlot, next stop!”

He noted that there were only two passengers in the compartment, and trotted up. The fact that Andrew was human didn’t register, “You folks might wanna get back to your seats. We’re pulling into Canterlot in a few minutes.”

Rainbow nodded, “We heard ya the first time.” she glanced at Andrew, “C’mon and help me wake up the gang. Rarity’s hard enough to get up as it is, and gets cranky on long trips.” Andrew nodded and put on his pith helmet, packing away his gear.

Rainbow Dash turned to walk away, but stopped, “Hey, word of advice? I’m not good with emotional..things, but I know not talking about this stuff doesn’t really help anything. If you have a problem with Melissa, talk to her, for the love of Celestia. The only two humans on the planet can’t hate each other, right?”

XXXXX

As the train approached Canterlot, reaching the outskirts of the mountain city, it was quickly apparent that something was up. A massive energy barrier formed a protective sphere around the entire city, and cast an eerie magenta glow.

The train approached the apparent edge of the city, as defined by the perimeter of the sphere, and it slowed dramatically to pass through the field.

As the vehicle slowly chuffed through, the shield could be visible passing through the train cars, and through ponies, leaving a cold shiver up their backs, but otherwise left them unharmed.

They rapidly approached the station, and Andrew could see a familiar bacon-haired--well, more red hair now than anything-- individual standing above the ponies who awaited the few other passengers on the train. Strangely enough, there were more guards on the platform than civilians, standing at each of the exits.

Andrew, Spike, and the Mane Six quickly exited the train, moving in pairs or singly toward Melissa, dragging luggage.

“Hello, Melissa!” Rarity called out, waving to Melissa.

Melissa grinned, “Hey, Rar’!”

She jogged the short distance across, and exchanged a hug with her friend.

The unicorn looked beside Melissa, “And a fine hello to you too, Silverbolt.” Rarity curtsied a little, “I trust you are well?”

A moment later, she chuckled, blushing a little, “Oh, you!”

Melissa facepalmed, “Such a kiss-ass…”

“Why darling, it’s hardly his fault if your subconscious created such a polite alienist.” Rarity retorted with a smile.

Another awkward silence, “Oh don’t you start again.” Melissa grumbled, but let out a little snort of laughter.

Andrew watched the exchange with fascination. “You still have that thing going on, I see.”

Taking notice of him as if for the first time, she replied, “Hey there. Yeah, he's still in here.” she rapped her knuckles on her head for emphasis.

Briefly, Andrew noted that the definitive streaks of blonde in Melissa’s hair were completely gone; instead, she appeared to be a natural redhead, though he could still see a few pieces of blond whenever the sun caught it.
Andrew nodded, “that's...interesting, I guess.”

He looked Melissa up and down. She still wore her N7 jacket, over her Babylon 5 t-shirt, with a camouflage military-issue cap, under which were golden sunglasses. The marine still wore her combat boots of course, battered white socks with a red band around the top...and a miniskirt. An orange mini skirt with two shades of red in stripes along one side, about the average size of shorts. Modest and functional.

His face widened in a grin, and he began to laugh, “Are you wearing...a miniskirt? You?”

Melissa’s cheeks burned, and he could almost feel her menacing gaze burn into his soul. “Laugh it up, Grandpa. Laugh it up. I can still rip your arms out. It’s a combat skirt!”

Andrew was wise to stand a few meters away. She may have been a head shorter than he was, but he knew not to mess with her...too much, “Why the heck do you always call me that?”

She pointed, “Your grey hairs.”

“My what?!” Andrew tugged futilely at his hair, trying to see it out of the corners of his vision.

“You didn’t notice?” Twilight asked, squinting as she and Fluttershy approached, “Do you just not look in the mirror?”

“And is it a crime to change one's style every now and again?” Rarity redirected the conversation, “Why, I think it's a crime not to!”

Melissa’s rage faded slightly, “we don’t have to all be Rainbow Dash! I can wear ‘girly’ clothes all I want! It’s comfortable, and functional!”

She paused, then gestured at the air, “Silverbolt agrees.”

“How can I believe you, even if he is real?”

Fluttershy drifted up between them, “Sorry to interrupt...but...Melissa, I thought you were working on your insulting tendencies…”

“I am! Dr. Wolf says I’m improving! I haven’t once called Andrew anything remotely vulgar since he got here!”

“That’s an improvement?” Andrew snorted.

Melissa looked like she was about to deliver a biting retort, but her eyes twisted over and looked at something in her field of vision.
Unexpectedly, the corner of her mouth turned upwards. She looked down at herself, “I guess it is a little unusual. And you didn’t mean anything by it.”

She glanced at Twilight, and nodded a greeting, “Hey, Twilight. I see you all got my message.”

Twilight was still in a sour mood, and merely nodded, “I got it.”

Melissa went over and crossed her arms, looking down at Twilight, “Twi’, listen. Before you go off and yell at Shining Armor, I just want you to know that he didn’t mean to forget to tell you. He’s captain of the Royal Guard for cryin’ out loud, he probably got distracted!”

Twilight rubbed her face, “That’s what everypony’s been telling me, but that doesn’t make sense! He should’ve made time! You managed to get a message out, but he couldn’t?”

Fluttershy came by her side, “Twilight, I’m sure he had a good reason…”

Andrew nodded, “And if you want, you can make him feel guilty over it.”

“Yeah!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed, “If there’s anypony who can make ponies feel guilty, it's us!" Her eyes suddenly expanded to disturbing proportions as she cried. "’Wh-Why couldn't you tell me, Shining Armor? Aren't you m-my big brother?’"

Melissa took a few steps away, “Holy frakking cheese doodles, that’s creepy!”

Andrew simply had a hand clapped over his eyes, “You said guilt. That's not guilt. That's nightmare fuel."

Pinkie Pie huffed. "Maybe to you."

Rarity interjected, trying to be helpful, "And besides, it's not like you won't have a surprise for him, too," Rarity said with a knowing smile.

Melissa rubbed her face, “Oh come on! Really!? Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?!”

“Well, if you want to put it that way…”

Andrew blinked, nervously laughing, “Come on, it’s not like Twilight wouldn’t tell her big brother that...uh…”

“And my family…” Twilight added, mumbling.

“That she’s dating a mythical creature and another mare?” Rainbow Dash finished, “This is gonna be great! I’ll get the popcorn!”

Melissa smiled, “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but I have never related to your social ineptitude more.”

Andrew was looking at Twilight, “When did you have this little thing scheduled?”

Twilight flushed, “Well, everything was so rushed, what with the company, Discord, and I hadn’t come up with a proper way to inform them…”

She coughed, “Correction. I sort of told them about you...kinda, but not about our whole...arrangement.”

“And you say your brother is the one who doesn’t update you…” Melissa groaned.

"M-maybe I could tell them...?" Fluttershy suggested. "I-I mean, I don't want to... In fact I can think of a lot of things I'd rather do instead, but um... Well... Oh dear..."

“Okay, no. Screw that.” Melissa barked, “All three of you. Here’s the thing to do. Get together, go to them, explain the situation together. No getting negotiators, no nothing. Just go and talk to them, for the love of Cthulhu.”

Rarity tried to calm everyone down, “Now, I'm sure Twilight's family and sister-in-law-to-be are very understanding ponies. Nothing to worry about! What could possibly go wrong?"

Andrew stepped away from the group and found a pillar to bang his head against.

“Was it something I said?” Rarity inquired innocently.

“Oh, if we’re getting secrets out,” Dash said, turning to Melissa, “Andrew’s been dealing with feelings of inadeq--inad--”

“Inadequacy?” Melissa asked.

“Yeah, that’s it. He’s jealous of all the money you’ve been making not getting to him.”

Melissa balked, “What? But...I sent him the account info months ago!”

“The what?” Andrew asked, returning and rubbing his skull.

“The account of money?” Melissa demanded, “Hello? I sent it to you months ago! Paperwork and all!”

“What account? I’ve been making ends meet with--”

Melissa spoke slowly, “When I started B.N.L., I set aside accounts for many different parties. Publishers, companies, writers back home who deserve the money. I also set aside some personal accounts for some friends I know. Including you. There is plenty of money in there for you to do archeology full time, or move up here and help me with tech.”

He stared at her, “Really? And how I have not heard about this?”

“That’s what I wanna know! I sent you several letters months ago! What happened? Do you just throw your mail out?!”

Abruptly, Spike interrupted, speaking from below them, “Hey, Melissa, you do know mail can get lost, right?”

Melissa looked down and locked eyes with the dragon, “Yeah, but that doesn’t happen often!”

Spike shrugged, “Maybe for you, but it happens all the time to the rest of us. That’s why I send all of Twilight’s mail through magic, so it doesn’t get lost. That’s probably what happened!”

Melissa scratched her head, “Well, that explains a whole lot of things…I’ve got the forms at home, I can get you them anytime, just say the word.”

Andrew was awkwardly silent, “Uh...thanks…”

Twilight began walking toward one of the exits, “Let’s get out of here and find my brother before this gets even more awkward.”

“What’s with all the security around here?” Applejack asked, “The shield hasn’t been put up since the war!”

The group noted that there was even more security. The guards were carrying rifles. Not muskets, nor even the rifled muzzleloaders they’d wielded a few months back, but what looked like Springfield Model 1873 breech-loading rifles. Well, modeled on Springfield rifles, they were stamped with the proof marks of the Springbok Armory.
The guards also wore steel helmets. Not medieval knights helmets, or pith helmets like some of the army had been wearing, but proper steel helmets. They looked like salad bowls with their wide circular brims, a bit like shorter and more squat steel pith helmets in shape, and were stamped with the symbol of the Household Division on the front. Andrew recognized them immediately as the British helmets he always saw in old World War I and II movies. Brodie helmets, modified for pony skulls. Behind the straps, the tips of the guards’ ears could be seen poking out, folded down.

“I’m sure they’re just taking appropriate precautions,” said Rarity, “Weddings do bring out the strangest in some ponies…”

As if on cue, Pinkie Pie sneezed, and out of her nose spewed confetti and streamers.

Everyone backed away from her on that.

Melissa said, “It’s not that, there’s been a threat on the capital.” she rolled her eyes, “I told them shields were just for emergencies, and that it didn’t need to be on 24/7. I also told her that conventional warfare defenses wouldn’t stop terrorist attacks, and that normal police and intelligence work should stop them provided the people involved are competent...but the big white…uh, queen, decided to go against my advice. Geez, you revolutionize the military, police, and economy, and that still doesn’t get you enough credit to be listened to?”

“Sugarcube, the queen knows what’s best, why don’t you listen to her?” Applejack suggested.

“Like I’m gonna trust her! And who’s the 21st century soldier here? I’m trained in conventional, asymmetrical, and urban combat!”

They approached the exit to the train station, and were stopped by a Royal Guard sergeant, armed with a revolver strapped to his side, “I’m sorry, everypony, but you’re all going to have to submit to a security search.”

Andrew rolled his eyes, “Great, it’s just like being home.”

“I know, right?” Melissa snorted, “Look!”

She pointed to a unicorn standing in the center of the exit, between two guards armed with Springfields. “Dude’s a walking metal detector.”

Dash turned to the guard, “Seriously, how do you not know us? And just what do you think we’re going to carry? Only those two are wearing anything!”

The guard had bags under his eyes, and had clearly been up all night, “Ma’am, please, just go through the checkpoint. It’s standard procedure.”

Melissa rubbed her face, “Dashie, even I had to go through it. They’re worried about everything from giant monsters to shapeshifters.”

“Shapeshifters?” the rest of the group gasped.

Andrew noted Melissa’s posture changed at the mention of the word. She was quite tense.

“Yeah, Celestia took that one into account for once.”

The guard interrupted, “Sorry, Corporal Foster, I hate to interrupt you. Sir, would you mind stepping through first please?”

Grumbling, Andrew bent down and stepped under the unicorn’s horn.

The unicorn’s horn began to flash, “Sir, please remove any dangerous items--”

“Yeah, yeah, I know the drill.” Andrew grumbled, and began emptying out his pockets. Miscellaneous things mainly, but of note were knives, matches, three magazines of 9mm ammunition, the L9A1 pistol he still held onto, and his pen.

He handed it all to the guard, and walked under the unicorn’s horn again.

No blinking this time.

“I’m sorry sir, but most of this stuff will have to be confiscated.” the guard stated.

“Sergeant, if you’ll allow it, I will take custody of some of those items,” Melissa said, “namely the firearm, ammunition, and the pen.”

The guard handed over the pen, and passed some non-lethal equipment back to Andrew, but shook his head, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we can’t allow any unlicensed--”

“Sergeant, when I say ‘custody’, I don’t mean I’m gonna hand the thing right back to him. I will secure it someplace safe.”

“But--”

“Sergeant, I am a contractor, but I am your superior within your chain of command, and will pull rank if I have to. In addition, that firearm is property of the United Kingdom Armed Forces. As a member of the United States Armed Forces, which is allied with the UK as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and being the only representative of said organization present, I claim jurisdiction over that weapon, and I intend to take it into custody.”

Rarity backed her up, “She is correct. I’m a lawyer, I can verify it.”

The sergeant sighed, and passed the weapon over, “Yes, ma’am. Sorry ma’am. But...please, either get him a license or keep that weapon locked up. I could lose my job.”

Melissa nodded, “Don’t worry, no matter what happens, I’ll take the fall for it.”

She looked at the rest of the guard detail, “None of you are involved in this! Don’t worry!”

Melissa glanced at Andrew, “I’ll hold onto this. You’ll get it back once you get a license.”

“But--”

“Dude, I’m a contractor, and I filled out the paperwork, that’s why I keep my guns. Paperwork now means you wouldn’t keep running into problems later.”

He begrudgingly agreed eventually..

The rest of the Mane Six passed through without incident, and they began walking through the city.

Melissa put the space pen in her pocket, and Andrew noted the motion, “So, how’s progress on making ballpoint pens?”

Melissa scowled, “Not good. I can’t figure out how they did it! It’s been driving me nuts! The most common writing tool on Earth and I can’t…”

A corner of Andrew’s mouth turned upwards, “I would’ve thought you’d have been able to make these by now, Ms. Macgyver.”

She opened her mouth to deliver a sharp retort, but rolled her eyes, inhaled, and exhaled, “I’ve been having trouble getting them made. Do you know how hard they are to make? Didn’t you see that video...”

Despite so long separated from the internet, her hand still strayed to her jacket pocket and her phone, then relaxed. “Never mind, I don’t know exactly how to make modern ones. Historically, it took a while to make them work properly, let alone economical, so I’m still working on that. Space pens are right out though, I’d need pressurized nitrogen, tungsten carbide, and plastic for that.”

“I think they made them just using ink from newspapers.” Andrew said, trying to hide a smile, then gave up upon seeing her expression, “It dries almost immediately. You just need it to have the right amount of viscosity. There’s probably some other stuff involved but that should be enough to get you going…”

“How did you--? Agh!” she rubbed her face in relieved frustration, “Oh, dammit! So freaking obvious! Ah!”

Andrew pumped a fist, “Yes, finally my knowledge base comes in handy! Dibs on the patent!”

“Fine, fine. You get stock in the company. I’ll put you on the board of directors if it’ll make you happy. Hot damn, thank you! That problem’s been bothering me for so long…”

As their conversation wound down, Twilight took the lead further into the city, “We’re going to the castle to find my brother.”

Andrew stood in her way, “Twilight, I know you want to see your brother, but maybe we shouldn’t all go. We don’t want this to become a public spectacle.”

Melissa nodded, “Roger that.” she turned to the rest of the group, and one little dragon in particular, “Spike, you know Jasper Pie’s Pizzeria?”

“Sure!”

“Take everyone there for lunch, Fluttershy, Twilight, Andrew and I will go and deal with this. Tell Jasper it’s on my tab.”

Andrew interrupted, “Wait, did you say pizza?”

“Wait, you’re coming with us?” Twilight asked.

“I--I--I’m coming too?” Fluttershy whimpered.

“Andrew, I’ll order out for us. Fluttershy, yes, that’s what I said you should do, isn’t it? Twilight, I’m the only one physically adept enough to keep Shiny and Andy from killing each other.”

“‘Shiny’?” Twilight asked, “How familiar…”

“Darling, didn’t you know?” Rarity asked, “She and your brother are quite good friends!”

Melissa nodded, “Yeah, that’s the other reason I’m coming with. Booze brings everyone together, and apparently ponies and humans aren’t much different in that respect. Also, he’s a gigantic nerd and likes my board games. Dunno how the whole dating thing didn’t come up, but who cares. We’re going, right now!”

She paused briefly, kneeling down to talk to Spike. “Spike, if I ask ‘Texas’, you say, ‘star’, got it?”

“What?”

“You got it? Don’t tell anyone I said this. And keep an eye on the others, I’m trusting you on this.”

She went to Rainbow Dash, and whispered, “If I ask ‘Normandy’, you say, ‘Beach’.”

“Huh?”

She leaned over to Applejack, “If I ask ‘barn’, you say ‘yard’.”

“Uh…”

She hesitated to approach Pinkie Pie, who was hopping up and down, “If I say ‘Dead’, you say, ‘pool’.”

“Is this a sign-countersign thing?” Pinkie asked.

Finally, Melissa spoke to Rarity, “If I say ‘Hubble’, you say ‘Telescope’.”

“Melissa, what on earth are you talking about?”

“None of you forget, but don’t tell anyone, or each other what I said.” Melissa said, then walked with the others toward the royal palace.

“What was that about?” Andrew asked.

“Nothing. If I ask you, ‘Stargate’, you say, ‘SG-1’, got it?”

“Again, what are you doing?”

“Twilight, if I ask ‘star’, you say ‘glimmer’, understood?”

“Fluttershy, if I ask, ‘Sam’, you say, ‘Max’, got it?”

All three were staring at her. “Don’t tell anyone we did this.”

“Did what? What are you doing?” Andrew demanded.

“I can’t tell you!” Melissa barked, then sighed, “I can’t tell you now. Later, okay? Let’s deal with the other drama!”

After an incident with the guards, they finally met with Shining Armor. On the battlements of the castle for some reason.

He grinned as he caught sight of his sister, and rushed over, reaching out to her, “Twily! Oh, I’ve missed you! How was the--”

She avoided his hoof and scowled at him, “How dare you?! How dare you not tell me in person that you were getting married!? I’m your sister, for pony’s sake!”

Somewhat taken aback, Shining Armor tried to explain, “It's not my fault! The queen has requested a major increase in security. Didn't you see all the guards at the train station?”

“Yeah, there's a big wedding coming up. Maybe you heard about it?” Twilight rolled her eyes.

Shining Armor sighed, “It has nothing to do with the wedding. A threat has been made against Canterlot. We don't know who's responsible for it, but Her Highness asked that I help provide additional protection.”

“Yeah, through use of an utterly unsustainable means.” Melissa grunted, “Against my advice. She doesn’t seem to understand fatigue! Keeping your troops on high alert for weeks on end without a positive verified threat or act is just...stupid.”

Shining Armor glanced her way, but kept talking to Twilight, “The burden of keeping Canterlot safe and secure rests squarely on my shoulders. Staying focused on the task at hand has been my top priority.”

Andrew guessed that a dramatic vocabulary ran in the family.

Twilight put up her hooves, possibly imitating a human gesture, “Okay, okay, I get it. You've got a really important job protecting all of Canterlot with a force field only you can conjure up. But still... how could you not tell me about something as big as your wedding? Am I not that important to you any more?”

Shining put a hoof on her shoulder, “Hey. You're my little sister. Of course you're important to me...But I'd understand if you didn't want to be my best mare now.”

“Oh, goddammit! Quit with the soap opera stuff!” Melissa burst out, making Andrew rub his face.

Twilight was heedless of the commentary, “You want me to be your best mare?”

“Well... yeah.”

Melissa opened her mouth for another spectator comment, but Andrew put a hand over her mouth. He yelped in pain when she bit down instinctively.

Twilight gasped, “I'd be honored! But I'm still pretty ticked you're marrying somepony I don't even know! When did you even meet this ‘Princess Mi Amore Cadenza’?”

Shining Armor chuckled, “Twily, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza is Cadence, your old foalsitter.”

“Cadence?” Twilight demanded in disbelief, “As in the Cadence? As in the greatest foalsitter in all the history of foalsitters?!”

Her brother laughed, “You tell me. She was your foalsitter.”

Twilight was practically squealing, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh! Cadence is only the most amazing pony ever! She's beautiful, she's caring, she's kind…”

Melissa interrupted, dragging her two compatriots with her, “Okay, hate to do this, but it must be done. Shiny, this is Andrew Shepherd, and this is Fluttershy...something, I don’t know, I don’t know her last name.”

Grinning, her gaze swept over them, “Now, isn’t there something you three wanted to tell him?”

Shining Armor’s face became a frown, “Mel, I know she’s dating him,” his eyes fixed on Andrew, big brother instincts apparent, “You told me. Repeatedly. Remember that night…? Wait, you wouldn’t.”

“Was it that night when I woke up in a barn and had to go get my phone back?” Melissa glanced at Andrew, who was attempting to form a question, “Oh, broke up an underground gambling ring doing that. Idiots couldn’t even turn it on.”

“Yeah...you weren’t exactly all there that day…” Shining Armor pointed out.

“Whatever. You two, Andrew, Shiny, you good? Are you okay with this?”

Shining Armor fixed Andrew with a cold stare, and slowly trotted forward. Looking Andrew up and down, he commented, “So, you’re the mythological creature my sister’s dating. You’re tall.”

He glanced at Melissa, then back at him, “You’re even taller than she is. That won’t help you if you do anything to hurt my sister.”

Melissa stepped between them, “Oh, cut the crap, Shiny. He’s harmless. Big sibling instinct not needed. He might a bit of a dick at times…”

“Hey!”

“...and might be reenacting about 50% of clopfics, but he’s alright.”

Shining Armor’s facade seemed to crack, and she didn’t relent.

“Now, I’m gonna do something for your own good.”

She turned to Andrew, “This guy’s the second-biggest dork here. We play board games every wednesday with a couple of other people. We started with Steve Jackson’s Ogre, and right now we’ve got a GURPS Reign of Steel game going, and he plays a spacer from Tranquility Base. I’m the GM, of course. You shoulda seen the look on his face when I killed him. He--”

“Okay, I think he gets the point!” Shining interrupted, wincing.

“No, I think I want to hear this!” Andrew grinned.

Melissa smirked predatorily at the liberal arts major, “You’re not as tough as you look either. I caught you tearing up during a certain SG-1 episode? Hmm, season five, episode twenty-one?”

“Okay, that’s a sad episode! You were--”

“Um...if you don’t mind me asking…” Fluttershy interjected, “I...how is this good for both of them?”

Heedless of the flushing and angry faces to either side, Melissa put her hands on her hips, “Simple. Make them both look stupid in each other’s eyes, so they won’t see each other as a threat.”

She turned back, “Now, is there something else you’d like to tell him?”

Before Twilight, Andrew, and Fluttershy could even begin to sweat, a new voice entered the fray. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything…?”

All turned to look at an alicorn standing at the door to one of the battlement towers. The dark-pink pony wore regalia that matched that of the queens of the land, and was slightly shorter than Luna, but taller than Shining Armor. This was obviously Princess Cadence. Few ponies in the land other than alicorns had that much of a mix of mane colors, so there wasn’t much chance of her being anyone else.

Melissa froze, her eyes locked on the princess. Cadence had frozen as well, and seemed shocked at the presence of both the marine and Andrew.

Andrew noted the marine’s breathing quickening, and her posture began to fall into a combat stance. Her eyes narrowed, scanning the environment. Her hand reached into her jacket, before falling.

“Melissa, something wrong?”

Melissa looked at him, and there was something in her eyes. Paranoia and anxiety had returned, and fear. She had completely changed.

Her voice was cool and confident. “Fuck this. You can sort out the rest of this on your own. I’m out.”

“What? Why?”

She didn’t answer, storming off.

“Melissa!” Andrew went after her, quickly lending his apologies to the rest of the group. He couldn’t keep up with her pace, quickly losing her.

He found himself lost in the palace just as quickly, and could not find anyone to give him directions.

That is, until a certain pink pony tapped him on the shoulder.

“Yagh!” he jumped and spun about, groping for a sidearm that wasn’t there.

Pinkie Pie laughed, “It’s only me, Andy! What are you doing wandering around here?”

Andrew was breathing heavily, and gasped out, “I got lost looking for Melissa! Jesus, you scared the crap outta me!”

Pinkie made a face, “Hope not literally...you’re looking for Melissa? I saw her go down one of the secret passages with her mopey face on.”

“Secret passage?” Andrew scratched his head, “What is this, Hogwarts?”

Pinkie Pie shrugged, “Well, there’s no room of tranquility that I know of...”

Shaking his head, Andrew asked, “Do you know where she went?”

He paused, then added, “Wait, you saw someone sad and then didn’t try to cheer them up? Who are you, and what have you done with Pinkie Pie?”

Pinkie grinned, “Silly, I am me!”

Her grin fell a little, “I did try cheering her up once. It didn’t go well. I think you should leave her alone. When she wants to be left alone, it’s probably a good idea to do that.”

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t do that. Where is she?”

Pinkie looked at something on her hoof, “I dunno!”

Andrew growled in frustration, “God, no matter what species, women stick together...I’m trying to help her!”

“She’s got a gun, Andrew. And plenty of bullets.”

“I just want to talk to her, I’m worried, I don’t want her to...to…”

“To what?”

“I’m trying to stop her from shooting herself!”

Pinkie stared at him in disbelief, “What?! Why in Equestria would she do that?!”

“I don’t know! Loneliness, depression?! Okay, maybe not that extreme, but she was acting freaking weird! Took one look at that princess, and just took off!”

“...And that was evidence that she was gonna…?”

Andrew facepalmed, “No, I...that was a guess. I’m just worried about her, is all! Do you know where she is?”

Pinkie grinned, “Course I do!”

Instead of doing anything, she just stood there smiling.

Taking a deep breath, the human slowly asked, “Can you take me to her?”

“I could, yes!” she kept standing there.

“I would like to see Melissa. I am worried about her. Would you kindly take me to her?”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Pinkie asked, and grabbed his arm.

He immediately took his arm back, “Whoa! What are you going to do? Tell me exactly!”

She looked at him, puzzled, “I was going to take you to her…”

Andrew hesitated. One of the few projects he and Melissa, along with Twilight, had been able to collaborate on was investigate exactly what Pinkie Pie was, and what her capabilities were.

Their findings had been...less than satisfactory. All they knew was that she had an ability to travel extremely fast without breaking the sound barrier. Melissa’s theory was that she somehow had access to subspace.

While Andrew guessed that wasn’t truly the case, he wasn’t willing to risk life and limb.

“No, just-just lead me to her.”

She gave him a funny look, but shrugged, and began bouncing away.

Following her out of the castle, he found that night was falling; who knew how long he’d been lost in the maze.

As he and the pink pony moved deeper into the city, he noticed traces of human influence.

Some of the local fashion choices seemed less Victorian and leaning more toward comparatively relaxed clothing. Instead of top hats, frilly jackets, or complicated outfits, there were baseball caps, simple t-shirts with designs on them, regular pants, plain jackets and comfortable shoes. Though some were carbon-copies of human designs, some outfits had been modified with the Equestrian’s unique flair. Vibrant colors, interesting shapes and patterns, and Andrew noted that those Rarity had made were easy to pick out. Normal Equestrian fashions were still prevalent in great numbers, but human clothing really stood out.

He noted the use of paint rollers by construction crews, who were busy expanding the city, installing new electrical systems, or rewiring old ones.

Newsstands published the pony versions of magazines similar to “Tales to Astonish”, still featuring War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, but were slowly replacing them with other human books and stories. Novelizations of the original Star Trek episodes and Babylon 5 were pretty popular.

There were quite a few magazines and booklets with grand titles like “Images of an Alien World”, “Cities of Glass and Steel”, or “World of Wonders” featuring depictions of Earth environments and cities. The articles were partly copied from digital encyclopedias, or interviews with Melissa and Andrew himself. Some of the magazines featured more suburban titles such as “Appliances of the Future” with images of refrigerators being the most prevalent, and toasters or electric sewing machines as the runner-ups. Some primitive versions of the appliances were being tested by Buy ‘N’ Large, last he'd heard.

One magazine or another featured other technologies, like aircraft or cars, and there were even a few that were describing human history, and famous works of art.

Not all of the magazine articles were flattering. Some of the articles voiced valid concerns, “Human Influence- What does it mean for Equestrian government policies?”, “What is the Equestrian military planning to do with its new weaponry?”, “Do these humans have another agenda?”

However, even in the land of the friendliest society humanity had ever encountered, tabloids still existed.

Hand-drawn images, or those copied from photographs of Melissa adorned the covers of more than one, even after so long spending time here.

The articles usually had sensational titles, “Human Invasion Coming”, “The aliens’ moral sickness”, “Perversion of our culture”, “Dishonoring our military”, “Military spends thousands on worthless weaponry”,or Andrew’s personal favorite, “Fairy tale monster caught corrupting the youth”. He didn’t know if it referred to himself or Melissa it was complaining about, they’d both made visits to schools and universities to speak.

It wasn’t as though Melissa had the monopoly on yellow press. More than one suggested that he and the marine were conspiring to take over the world, that they were sleeping together, others that demanded to know what he was doing in the desert, and even one that said he and Twilight were trying to create some sort of monstrous hybrid creature...Thank god they haven’t figured about Fluttershy.

Disgusted, Andrew quickened his pace.

There were other positive things related to humanity being sold in shops. Andrew noted several establishments selling various goods inspired by Earth. A music store had “Classical Human Music” in sheet music and records displayed in the front window. From the open front door came a tinny rendition of Vivaldi’s Spring.

There were other shops selling a few human food recipes, not many though. There were a few selling gluten free bread, and unfortunately it was likely to become an obnoxious diet fad here like it had back home.

He stepped into a small bookstore, finding a much wider array of human books. Magazines only printed single chapters, whereas these were the whole book.

Scanning through a shelf, Andrew found The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, a novelization of the movie Aliens, and Eric Flint’s 1632. 1632 was only the first in the series, there were no others.

Andrew picked up the copy of Aliens, and stared at the cover. A recreation of a xenomorph skull was on the cover. There were several warning labels as well, for the more innocent pony folk. He had no idea how Melissa got this published, but that wasn’t what was in his mind.

He sighed heavily.

Pinkie Pie was looking at a copy of 1632 herself, and noted Andrew’s somber expression, “How come there aren’t any more of these?”

Andrew sighed again, and Pinkie realized she might have struck a small nerve.

“This is the only part of the series that exists on this world right now. You see this?” he held up the Aliens book, “This is the novelization of a sequel, only the first sequel. Mine and Melissa’s kindles, what little we could get from mine, only hold so much. The only pieces of the first Aliens movies and the other sequels are locked in here,” he tapped his temple, “And when we’re gone...it’ll be gone for good.”

Pinkie’s eyes widened, “Oh, but Andrew, you don’t know that!”

Andrew nodded slowly, “I know. I just wish…”

He looked at the cover of Aliens again. Stay calm, stay calm…

“I just want to see this movie again. God, I want to see a movie theater again. I miss stupid ads before movies, I miss new stuff…”

Pinkie Pie seemed stumped for a moment. Even her party-assembling skills had their limits on such short notice. She had to improvise a way to cheer him up. She grabbed the book from his hand, appeared at the cash register, then was back in front of him.

“I may not be able to send you back, but maybe you can get a smile from this. It’s on me.”

Andrew did manage a weak smile then, as he recovered his composure. “Thanks.”

“Isn’t it weird how the tiniest things always seem to set you two off? One time, Melissa started crying when she ate a pizza!”

Andrew exhaled, “Not touching that...Speaking of which, weren’t we looking for her?”

“What, did you forget?”

“Forget it…”

“Huh?”

Andrew sighed yet again, and walked out the door.

He narrowly avoided a group of foals running by, some of them singing off-key Pack up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag.

Several blocks later, Pinkie Pie stopped along the blank side of a building, where a number of posters had been placed.

“Ooh, this looks like fun!” she gestured to one of the posters, and Andrew moved to get a look for himself.

He gaped at what he saw.

It was a ponified version of the Star Wars: A New Hope. All the characters were wearing the right outfits, they seemed well-cast, every little detail was spot on. Andrew looked over the poster, trying to puzzle it out.

In one corner, he noted the sponsor. It was the B.N.L. logo once again, but its full name was spelled out this time, and the company subtitle sat underneath.

BUY ‘N’ LARGE

Combining Terran Ingenuity and Equestrian Know-How to Create a Better Future

Pinkie Pie had eyes only for the description of the subject of the poster, “It’s going to a musical, one of the biggest budget shows ever!”

“Big blockbuster huh? Well, if even half the people who saw it the first time turn out…”

“Blockbuster?” Pinkie asked.

“What you were just talking about, gonna make a lot of money and be a big spectacle,” Andrew answered distractedly, “Jesus, how did she do it? Did she memorize the script or something?”

The fact that there were human stage plays was no surprise. They’d done some of The TIme Machine, Shakespeare, and a few other plays the two humans could remember, but nothing on this scale!

The other plays had been required to provide a small enciclopedia with the programme for context, and those were fairly close to current pony technology and culture(at least historically). How would they explain space travel, directed energy weapons, tractor beams…?

Andrew shook his head, “Headache, jesus...Pinkie, just lead me to her please before something else shows up.”

It was...some hours later when they finally tracked down the missing marine. Andrew still didn’t have a watch or electronic device.

Night had fully fallen, and they arrived outside some sort of restaurant-coffee-shop affair. One of those restaurants that have a bar and live music, judging by the sign, “Stop in at our bar” and the music coming from within.

It was called “The First Hipster” for some reason. Maybe it was all the people in human fashion and carrying human books or magazines walking in and out.

Andrew paused at a sign placed on the sidewalk, staring.

“In response to complaints, the First Hipster would like to state that our meat does not contain sapient creatures.”

Pinkie looked at it, “Oh yeah, there used to be protesters camping out here every day. The police weren’t having a fun time dealing with them.”

“They sell meat?”

Pinkie raised an eyebrow at him, “Where have you been? Out in the desert? More ponies have been getting over the herbivore diet. My family never got into it in the first place, though I don’t really get how everypony else did it. I mean, they eat gravy, cheese--”

“Wait, doesn’t gravy come from--”

“Meat! I know! They get it from the pigs!”

“I wondered what they were for...isn’t that where you get your leather, too?”

“Yep!”

Andrew opened his mouth to reply, then the music from inside the restaurant caught his ear. “Is that...Rocket Man?”

Sure enough, from the open doors filtered one of Elton John's more famous songs.

He turned and walked into the open doorway.

The lights were down in the restaurant, but it was still bright enough to see. Around a central stage were arranged several dozen tables, perhaps a third of them full, and waiters passing among them. The bar was off to the right.

Based on posters and schedules he could see on the walls, Andrew guessed human stage shows were pretty common. He saw ads of everything from bands to Monty Python sketches. At each of the tables he noted a thick pamphlet. Picking one up, he found it seemed to be a small encyclopedia on human culture.

Rocket Man occupied the air, telling the story of a blue-collar astronaut, just doing his job and yearning for home.

Andrew noted a prevalence of ponies in khaki uniforms among some of the tables closer to the door. The new standard-issue Equestrian Army and Equestrian Air Force outfits, worn by soldiers out on the town for the night. There were only enough in blue navy outfits to count on one hand, given how far they were from a naval base.

The song chorus explained the astronaut's longing to get home, the next landing such a long way off.

Melissa was on the center stage, with a pianist and a pony with a drum set had positions to either side behind her. A custom-made guitar hung from the marine’s shoulder, and she was strumming it like a professional in the instrumental moment.

His eyes on the stage, he nearly ran into a tiny purple dragon only a little shorter than the ponies.

“Gah! Spike? What are you doing here?”

Spike glanced up at him, then at Pinkie.

“Hey, you two! What are you two doing here? How’d things go with Twilight’s family?”

“Don’t ask, it was weird. What are you doing here?”

“Jasper’s Pizza was burning down again, so we came here.” Spike said evenly, pointing with his thumb at a table where Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash were seated.

“Wait, what about fire?”

“It’s happened before. C’mon, we saved you guys a seat!”

The song chorus went on again, the astronaut expressing his worries that he's changed too much since he was last on Earth, that everything he has, everything he is, will be used up before he can return home.

The three approached and took seats.

Rarity was busy watching her friend on the stage, “She certainly is a fantastic singer, isn’t she?”

Applejack shrugged, “I reckon so. But is it just me, or does she sound like Twilight when she sings?”

The last lines were repeated several times. The astronaut was afraid he'll never make it home again, his next touchdown so long off it might never happen. There was a strange emotion in Melissa's voice as she sang, one no one could quite place.

Andrew leaned over, “Hey, did you notice anything weird going on with her? Did she talk to you two at all before she started singing?”

“She’s human, darling. Of course she has strange behavior!” Rarity said, smiling a little.

“She was singing when we got here,” Applejack replied, “I did notice she seemed to be singing a particular kind of song a lot...does that count?”

“What kind of songs?”

“A lot of sad and hopeful ones, real lonely types occasionally.”

Rarity added, “Several about overcoming adversity, as well. There was Do You Hear the People Sing, Odds Are, the Marines’ Hymn, There’ll be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover…”

Rainbow Dash broke off from her argument with an Equestrian army grunt at another table and leaned over, “There was that weird...what was it…? That Japanese song she keeps singing...What is with that anyway?”

Applejack looked at Andrew, “Why do you want to know? Is there some kind of problem?”

Andrew grimaced, “Hasn’t anyone noticed how she’s been acting? All the things she told each of us, and then when we met Twilight’s brother’s fiance…”

Rainbow Dash grinned, “Hey, wait a minute, how did that go? Where’s your marefriends?”

Andrew gritted his teeth, and flushed, “Not talking about that, we’re talking about the marine!”

“Oh, I definitely want to hear this one…”

“Shut up! When the fiance showed up, Melissa got really pissed, and...she looked scared.”

The other ponies looked at each other.

“But…”

Rarity was interrupted by the sound of applause and hooves stomping the ground as Melissa’s song ended.

Melissa stood up, swaying a little, and drained a glass in her hand.

“Alright everybody--pony, whatever, I just got a few drinks in me, so I’m probably only good for one more song. Until then, I’m gonna keep singing. Anyone object?”

There was no negative response. A few called out encouragement, demanding more music.

Melissa settled down on a stool. “Toby Keith wrote this next one. Didn’t listen to his stuff much, but this one’s good. American Soldier.”

Putting her glass down by her side, she gave signals to the pianist and drummer. The piano played a few notes, and the marine strummed her guitar. Putting on a rather good impression of a southern accent, she began to sing.

The first few verses weren't clearly about a soldier, they were at first describing a father fulfilling his responsibilities. There were certain references to phrases associated with the military, but they were subtle.

Some of the patrons were tapping their hooves to the beat, nodding their heads or swaying in time with the song. The sound of the drummer’s instruments began to become audible, growing steadily in power as the piano faded out.

It had been recorded in the midst of the Iraq War. The next few verses could be interpreted as right wing rhetoric, and arguments could be made about association with the cult of the soldier, but they weren't necessarily that sort of thing. The lyrics were still powerful. It was one of those songs that could be used for positive or negative purposes.

She stopped singing to deliver a brief instrumental solo, then the chorus started up again. Proudly it declared the values of the United States Military, those all regardless of political stance could agree upon.

The vocals complete, the piano came back in briefly, to fade alongside the drums and the guitar. The song was brought to an end.

Andrew furrowed his brow, then looked at the others. “Does that song selection strike anyone else as odd?”

Rarity held up a hoof, “Andrew, darling, it’s perfectly alright if she is sad or upset over something. We shall just ask!”

Melissa stood up as applause and stomping of hooves rang through the building, “Okay, every-person-place-or-thing, I had better get outta here before I pass out. Be sure to tip--no, donate! Every little bit counts! Tipping sucks, write your congress creature, or parliament, or whoever to make it illegal!”

She stepped offstage to applause, stumbling somewhat, making her way over to the group.

Melissa grabbed a chair from one of the other tables, and blinked blearily.

“Oh, hey Andrew. How ya doin’, pardner?”

“Melissa, how much have you drunk?”

“.04 percent. Standard drink.”

“What?”

She rubbed her face, “Remember health class, ya idjit.”

“I do. And I remember all the stuff about intoxication and liver damage...”

“Oh please! I’ve got Russia on one side of the family, and Wales on the other! The Welsh are freakin’ highlanders! Richard Burton had every liver disease known to man, but died of a brain...thing at 59...or some age like that. Dash drinks irish coffees for breakfast, why don’t you yell at her?”

Dash commented, “He did. Threw one out the window this morning!”

“Ah, showing some independence, eh, Andy? What are you doing here anyway?”

“I was following you after you ran away.” Andrew replied.

“I didn’t run away,” Melissa snarled, “I went to go get drunk.”

“Why?”

Melissa gritted her teeth, “Because.”

“Look, Melissa, I’m kinda worried about you! You just had something really traumatizing happen to you just a few months ago! I think I have reason to be concerned when you do something like that!”

“I just saw someone I hated and didn’t want to talk to her, what’s the big deal?”

Andrew shook his head, “That wasn’t it. I think you were afraid of her! You’ve been acting weird since we came in on the train. What is up?”

Melissa leaned her elbows on the table, and rubbed her face, “It’s classified.”

“What?”

“I can’t tell you, alright?!”

“Can’t tell him what?” Twilight asked. She and Fluttershy approached the table, both looking somewhat down. Twilight had an odd expression on her face as well. “Where did you two go?”

“She ran off!” Andrew pointed.

“I didn’t run off, I walked away from a conversation I didn’t want to participate in!”

“That’s the same thing!”

“No, it isn’t!”

“Yes it is!”

Twilight facehoofed, “Both of you, quiet! Melissa, why did you...leave the conversation?”

Melissa crossed her arms, “I can’t tell you that!”

“Why not?” Andrew and Twilight demanded.

“Because I can’t! Now would you lay off? I’ve got a headache, I’m drunk...oh, do you guys have a place to stay?”

She held up a hand before anyone could answer, “Never mind. It’ll be cheaper if you stay at my place. I’ve got room!”

Andrew’s curiosity was piqued, “You do?”

“Oh yeah, I’ve got plenty.”

“She’s right,” Rainbow Dash backed her up, “I’ve stayed over a few times.”

The others made noises of agreement. Twilight grimaced, “Normally I stay at the castle…”

“No!” Melissa snapped, then spoke a little lower, “No...you’re guests, and...if you six aren’t all together, something bad may happen.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Andrew demanded.

“I. Can’t. Tell. You.”

“Why not? You said later earlier, so it’s later!”

“It’s about the shield! I can’t talk about it! Seriously, Celestia’s orders!”

Andrew barked, “Since when do you listen to her?”

“When I actually agree with her orders. Now, stop asking questions!”

“Alright, alright, jeez!”

Melissa got up, “C’mon, I can get delivery at my place. I imagine you guys are tired, too. You got all that wedding prep tomorrow.”

She spat the last couple words, and stood up. “Someone gonna pay for the drinks?”

The three ponies and one dragon paid their debts, and Melissa grimaced.

“I miss payment cards, by Cthulhu…”

They left the building and headed out into the night. Instead of walking all the way through the city to Melissa’s place, they decided to take a streetcar.

With a small light on the front, and the clunking of thick heavy cables, a cable-hauled tram crawled up the street.

The city had been using cable-cars for years, it was only in the past decade or so that they converted to using electric lights.

The benches were small and uncomfortable, forcing the humans to hang off the sides. Andrew was having to hold Melissa by the arm in case she fell, and was forced to endure more drunk singing.

“...Then raise the harp of Erin, boys, the flag we all revere-- We'll fight and fall beneath its folds, like Irish volunteers! Then raise the harp of Erin, boys, the flag we all revere-- We'll fight and fall beneath its folds, like Irish volunteers!”

“Oh, shaddap!” one of the other passengers shouted, an exhausted-looking unicorn wearing a suit.

“You stuff it! I’m drunk, I’m happy, and I’ve never been on a streetcar before I got here! Let me have some fun!”

“You’ve never been on a streetcar?” Twilight asked.

“Well, started takin’ it when I got here. They don’t have them back home.”

“What?” Applejack asked, “But I thought...well, you’re so advanced...”

Andrew spoke up, “Well, we have subways--underground trains-- but in the US we don’t use streetcars--”

Melissa cut Andrew off, “General Motors and all the other automotive companies bought up the tram lines in the cities, then tore them up so they could make room for the cars.”

Rarity grimaced, “They rathered to boost profits instead of providing actual services, making everypony buy their automobiles and use their roads instead.”

Applejack and Twilight seemed to be having trouble wrapping their heads around the issue. “But...why? Were trams more expensive? Wouldn’t they be cheaper?”

Melissa leaned closer, swaying with the motion of the tram, “That’s exactly what they say in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Boeing and General Motors wanted us to invest in planes and cars and highways and stuff because they wanted monies. Word of advice? Don’t invest completely in highways and planes, that shit’s terrible for the environment. I mean, invest in them, but don’t forget to invest in trains, lots of trains, and make them a public service so no jackasses with dollar signs in their eyes buy them all up. But don’t no invest completely in those other things either. You need all of them, cars have utility, planes have speed,and trains have bulk. Don’t let them take your trains, though! You need your trains! If they’re entirely a private service, some dickhead company whose name rhyme with funeral donors will buy ‘em up, pull ‘em up, and replace them with highways, and fuck up city roads forever at the same time. Then when the environment’s shot to hell, other huge dicks won’t let you refurbish the lines, despite the convenience and money it would bring everyone!”

“What--”

Melissa held up a fist, shaking somewhat, “Dey took er trains, mehn! Dey took er fecking trains! And then when we try to get them back, it takes a fucking decade to even get the plans, then Wall Street crashes, we’re fucked again, and...and...I just wanted a ride to my hometown, fucking A, is that too much to ask?!”

“Melissa...” Fluttershy tried to speak up, “What about--”

“Trains are cool, better for the environment...we used to have one of the best train networks in the world, but because of shit-eating companies like General Motors fuck us over, the thing that helped us win in World War II is gone! It got us to ship tons of equipment all over the place, my grandfather used to talk about the hundred-car trains that would just go on for minutes at a time, and…”

Rarity patted Melissa on the shoulder, “Melissa, darling...take a deep breath. You’ve had too much to drink.”

“General Motors can go to hell.”

“Yes, of course, just...just calm down.”

The tram eventually reached Meadowbrook Lane.

It was a recently-developed area, plenty of land available with several mansions along either side of the lane. Several were still being built in typical pony fashion, with some architectural updates from Melissa’s engineering background; better able to withstand earthquakes and simple entropy of time. The street itself wasn’t dirt or cobblestone, but asphalt.
The group didn’t care about those of course, they only had eyes the strangest design of building they were moving toward.

It was built directly into a hill rather than on top of it, with a low silhouette. A small driveway led up to the side of the house into a garage, within which a Tesla Model X could be seen. A small stairway went up from the driveway to a landing, where the entrance, a little round green door, was visible. On the side of the landing, a flagpole stood, the Stars and Stripes flapping in the breeze from its tip. Andrew’s heart lurched at the sight of it, seeing it so far from home...It helped to only make the situation stranger.

“This is your house?” Andrew asked, his jaw slacked as he stared. “Really?”

“You got a problem with it?” Melissa strode up to him, glaring upwards at his eyes a few dozen centimeters above her.

He wisely stepped away before answering, “Well, no...but...but...Bag-End? Bag-End?”

Sure enough, Melissa’s house was not a conventional house. It was a hole in the ground. A Hobbit hole. Bag-End, normally owned by a Baggins in Middle-Earth, but a Foster would do in Equestria.

“I had money to burn, but I didn't want a mansion in the traditional sense. And this is a lot easier for electricity maintenance. And I wanted a piece of home. You got a problem with it?” Melissa repeated.

“Really, Andrew, it is quite rude to criticize your host’s home!” Rarity admonished, backing up the marine, “I honestly don’t see the problem. It’s quite nice inside--”

“You knew about this?” Andrew demanded, “How?”

“She actually pays visits.”

“Well, I’m sorry for being a bit busy!”

“With what? Being Twilight’s personal tongue-bather?”

Fluttershy, Twilight, and Andrew all flushed at that, the rest of the Mane Six stared, and Spike scratched his head, “I don’t get it.”

“Shots fired…” Rainbow hummed.

“Where’d you learn that?” Melissa demanded.

“What are you, a Hobbit?” the archeologist demanded, trying to turn the conversation around.

Melissa nodded enthusiastically, “Why yes, yes I am. Technically. My grandmother was Welsh, and Tolkien lived roughly in the area between Wales and England. Heck, my great-grandfather probably met him. Also, my family tends to be short, and have a lot of traits similar to Hobbits.”

“Except for the extreme violent tendencies.”

“Nah. That’s just good ol’ human and/or American stock. Then again, Hobbits are known to be pretty lethal on their own with no combat skills.”

“Point there,” Andrew consented, “Better run if you see them pick up a rock, those things’ll take your head off.”

With six confused ponies, one dragon, and another human in tow, Melissa walked up the small driveway.

As they reached the cobblestone path upwards, Andrew stopped to read a sign posted in the dirt. “Do not disturb. Remains will not be returned to next of kin.”

“Geez, what happened to ‘beware of dog’?” he muttered to himself.

Melissa noted his curiosity, “I tried to put up a sign that said, ‘Beware of landmines’, but the cops had a chat with me and said it was...” she put up her hands in air quotes and spoke sarcastically, “... ‘threatening bodily harm’ or something like that.”

At Andrew’s horrified expression, she patted him on the shoulder, “I’m kidding! Mostly. The cops did have a chat with me, and I get their concern. I was originally thinking it would be just like ‘beware of dog’, but where it’s not a given that a dog will rip someone's throat out, it’s guaranteed a landmine will blow you up. It’s illegal to set up hazards that could do injury or kill someone as a defense of property. They knew I wasn't actually placing them, but the threat of them was enough to cause problems. I thought it was funny, but I’m a sick sonofabitch and a marine. My dark sense of humor has gotten me into trouble before.”

“I hate to imagine what kind of kid you were like in school with jokes like that. What, were you in detention every day or something?”

Melissa didn’t answer, she simply smirked with no humor or amusement.

There was another sign posted on the bright green round door, “Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.”

Melissa opened the door with a key, and entered.

While the rest of the group stepped inside tentatively, gazing around in wonder, Melissa and Rarity strode in confidently.
Melissa sat down to take off her boots, and Rarity hung up her hat on a hook nearby.

“Well? Come on in!” Melissa said, seeing the rest of the group’s hesitation, “This is a mansion. I got plenty of room.”

Andrew looked about in astonishment at the amount of detail in the structure. While many of the items weren’t the same, the basic design was identical in many ways to the Bag-End seen in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, with some elements thrown in from the book.
The walls, floor, and ceiling were coated in quality wood, there were chandeliers and conventional lights providing electric illumination.

The parlor to the left of the entryway was closed off, and Rarity led the others to places where they could hang up their clothes and store their luggage.
No sooner had the group noticed that Melissa had slipped away than did a sound system activate; somewhat distorted at first, then became clearer.
Through the house came a jaunty drum beat, then the twanging of guitars. Come and Get Your Love by Redbone began to play.
They saw the marine bobbing her head in time with the music, as she emerged from the parlor, making sure it was sealed shut, then walked toward the kitchen.
“This the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack?” Andrew inquired.

“You know it! Have you seen the second one?”

“They made a sequel?”

“Duh! It’s the MCU! They’ll be cranking out sequels until we’re a hundred years old!”

Later on in the night when he had the chance, Andrew took Melissa aside. ‘Hey, can we talk?”

Melissa shrugged. Her cheery demeanor had faded a little, likely her body processing the alcohol, “Sure, dude. Parlor.”

Melissa opened the door, let her friend in, then shut the door behind her, and turned to watch Andrew as he stared at the parlor.

It seemed to have been sealed for a reason. Every available surface was covered in technical specifications, drawings, blocks of text, page after page after page.

The USS Wisconsin. Aircraft carriers. Cruise liners. Steamers. Many of the images were arranged by time scales. Aircraft, from the first hot air balloon in 1783(based off info from the John Adams historical drama), to the first zeppelins, to the Wright Brothers, to the Red Baron, dozens of models of planes whose times came and went in the 30s, even more planes, all the way up to the F-35 jet.
Tanks, Greek soldiers, and M1 Garand rifles turned to drawings of nuclear reactors, solar panels of a dozen different varieties, power lines, circuit diagrams, rockets, satellites, computers...she was trying to copy down everything she could remember.

Andrew didn’t have time to take it all in. He had to let her know. He stepped forward and placed his bag on the table.

“I couldn’t tell you anything about this over the telegram. I...damn it, just look!”

He dumped out the battered backpack, releasing a pile of drawings, notebooks, and various odds and ends.
A paperclip held together a set of papers on top, and he seized it, sitting down and unclipping it.
Briefly, he noted the chair actually fit his backside. It seemed Melissa had gotten chairs designed specifically for humans.

Melissa leaned over the table, looking at the images. They were of dig sites, of tables laden with artifacts, of skeletal remains.

“We knew humans were here, but this is the first time we’ve found bodies. It took me forever just to find anything, actually. Most of what I found was in the middle of the desert, or in the mountains. Places that are really hard to reach.”

“What exactly did you find?”

“A bunch of stuff. Bones. Ruined tools. Foundations. But that’s not the point. The point is how little we found, and where we found it. Why are human remains only in the hardest areas to reach? Both of us appeared right next to Ponyville!”

Melissa glanced at him, concerned, “Something tells me you have a theory.”

“It’s yours, actually. Remember when you were in jail, and you were rambling a lot--”

Melissa held up a hand, looked at Silverbolt, then turned back, “I don’t. He does. My memories are all muddled from then. Which theory?”

“The one about the ponies hiding things from us. Remember? You were insulting Celestia a lot--”

She held up a hand again. Silverbolt was likely explaining what happened, and she slowly rubbed her temples, “Right...it’s coming back. Humans have clearly been here, we’ve got the bunker supporting that, and the legends. I was wondering why there wasn’t much more physical evidence…”

Andrew grimaced, “I think you were right. I checked all the most likely places, but I could only find stuff in areas no one had been in years. In some of the places, things just didn’t feel right. People were real quiet, wouldn’t even give me the time of day. When I could get a lead, they were weird. Dead-ends, or it looked like something had been there, but had been removed. Even found a few that looked like they had been buried. For example, I was checking a few bodies of water, where some of the legends were based, and there were piles of sand in places they really shouldn’t be. Checked with a geologist, and he agreed.”

“What’s the relevance of sand?” Melissa asked doubtfully.

“There was a report I read from a few decades ago back home. Someone found the wreck of a Roman trading vessel in a bay near Rio De Janeiro. There were a bunch of claims by the Brazilian government to deny it, insisting that the Portuguese were the first to discover Brazil. Then when the diver went looking for it again, silt had been poured on the site, and statements by the Brazilians were really suspicious. ‘Nothing happened, but if it did, we fully approved of it’.”

“I think I heard about that...has anyone else investigated these spots before?” asked Melissa.

He shook his head, “Not that I’m aware. Again, no one was real chatty. And ponies aren’t normally like that!”

“Yeah, you can’t go anywhere without having a ten-minute conversation!” Melissa agreed, “What is going on here?”

“This whole lack of humans thing has been rubbing me the wrong way since I got here. I think you were right. The ponies might be staging a cover-up. You can see why I didn’t take this to Twilight.”

Melissa rubbed her face, “I knew it. Damn it, I knew it! Oh! I think they might even have some human gear lying around, too!”

Andrew squinted, “What?”

“They talk about all the concepts they haven’t heard of, but they’re catching on way too fast. And they have submarines!”

“Well, i knew that. I used one to check out those underwater spots.” Andrew pointed out.

“How cramped was it? Subs are always cramped, right?”

“It was pretty cramped…”

“Early submarines were cramped even for people like me, and you’re a head taller! Shouldn’t it have been impossible to fit?”
Without waiting for an answer, she took a piece of paper and drew a submarine. It was a long cylinder shaped like a pencil, with a sharp point, a screw propeller aft, and a hatch and cupola on the top. “Okay, what is that?”
“That’s one of the subs...Melissa, what are you getting at?”

“That’s not a pony sub. That’s the USS Alligator.”

Andrew thought for a moment, “The what?”

“FIrst US Navy submarine, wasn’t commissioned, but it was launched in 1863.”

The archeologist snorted, “An American Civil War submarine? Really?”

“It’s not impossible. I thought you were an archaeologist! There was the Turtle in the Revolutionary War, and the H.L. Hunley for the Confederates.”
“The Confederates?”

“Yeah. That damn thing sank three times and out of the three crews, maybe twenty guys in total, only two survived the first sinking. Second time it killed the designers, and the third time she went down for good. It may have been a work of art, but it was also a piece of crap. They found it in the 90s, put it in a museum. The Alligator was the Union sub, much more well-designed in my opinion. The weapon wasn’t a bomb strapped to the front of it, they used divers to deliver mines. She never saw combat, but was also lost. Being towed around North or South Carolina, they hit a storm, and she threatened to sink the steamer, so they cut her loose.”

“What does this have to do with the ponies?” Andrew asked, trying to cut to the chase.

“We never found Alligator. She was still somewhat afloat, and probably drifted a while. She’s supposed to be off the East Coast..somewhere. No one’s ever found it. I guess we know where it went, now. Probably washed ashore somewhere around here and they picked her up to reverse engineer. All the dimensions matched what I read online, and--”

Silverbolt appeared, tapping her on the shoulder, “Melissa, listen to yourself! Don’t jump to conclusions. You’ve been working with the Equestrian Military for a while now. You gained their trust! Why would they hide this from you?”

“The US government covers up things all the time.”

“Look at the evidence! A handful of artifacts that happened to be in the wrong place? Sand? Quiet ponies? A submarine that looks vaguely like one back home? You must consider how different people in different countries can be. The artifacts in the more obvious places could have been taken by scavengers, the sand might be some sort of industrial accident, or an earthmoving project, or any reason! The Atlantic is a big ocean, and consider how long it took to find the Hunley. Records from the period could have been wrong as well, and you found those dimensions on Wikipedia!” his eyes were imploring, “Melissa...they’re your friends. Don’t judge them too harshly without giving them a chance to defend themselves! Give them the benefit of the doubt!”
“Silverbolt, they might have stolen the Alligator! US Military property!”

“They had no one to return it to, Melissa. Talk to them if you think it’s true, it may have simply not occurred to them. They may have thought it belonged to another country, not humans!”

Andrew waved to get her attention back, “Talking to him again?”

“Yeah...he says not to come to any conclusions without hearing the ponies’ side of things.” Melissa mumbled, “The sand thing, did you hear any suspicious statements by any officials?”

“No…”

“And if the ponies weren’t too chatty, that doesn’t really say much. Even inside a country people can be wildly different. There’s a Rooster Teeth video about one of their guys moving from New Jersey to Austin, and being really confused that everyone was so chatty.”

Andrew slumped in his chair, “I...I don’t know what to say now.” He looked dejected at the contents of his bag, “You’re saying this is all...worthless?”

Melissa held up her hands, “I didn’t say that. You might be onto something here, but we’ve gotta keep an open mind. Who knows what it could be? We should take this to someone in the morning.”

She put on a thoughtful expression, “Just to be certain...we take this to Queen Luna. Twilight probably wouldn’t know, since she’s so close to us. They wouldn't tell her anything if there is a conspiracy. Luna seems like she’s been out of the loop, and might not be party to any possible cover-up, but also has power. If we talk to anyone lower, we risk everything.”

Andrew nodded, and there was an awkward pause between them.

“I can’t believe you were the one giving me the pep talk.” he grinned.

“Well, who says I have to be the crazy one around here all the time? The common sense switch can sometimes lean in my direction. Just leave the paranoid ravings to me, buddy.”

Andrew sat up, “Speaking of crazy, here’s something weird I found.”

He pulled out a picture of a firearm. Corroded, covered in dust, it was too wrecked to identify its specific model, but it was clearly a submachine gun of the 20th century. It could have been a Thompson, a PPSh-41, or an MP40, it was that badly corroded.

“Okay, so you found an SMG.”

“How old would you say this design should be?”

Melissa squinted at the image, “At a guess? Maybe eighty years.”

Andrew handed her a sheet of notes, detailing how it was dated, “It’s over a thousand years old.”

He took out another picture, showing the remains of an outfit of some kind. Only zippers, a handful of fibers, assorted bits and pieces, and a steel helmet remained. “So was the owner.”

“That’s impossible.” Melissa said.

“Really? It gets weirder.”

Images of Roman equipment, just the armor this time. “This stuff belonged to the Republic of Rome, should be two-thousand years old, at least.”
Another sheet of notes, “It’s only a thousand years old.”

Melissa tilted her head, “Now that is crazy. Are you sure you did the dating thing right?”

Andrew shrugged, “19th century archeology wasn’t the best, and it’s the same here...” He took out an image of a matchlock firearm, “But I’ve still got a much better education. Look, this is right, this thing is only four-hundred years old.”

Melissa nodded in agreement, “Okay, now that makes sense. 17th century. Must’ve been an error in the others.”

She patted him on the shoulder, “You might be out of practice, man, and even with more advanced concepts you’re still limited by the tech around here.”

“But...this should be right. I don’t know how a 20th century gun could be older than a 17th century gun!” this was clearly something that had been bothering the archeologist for a long time, “This is impossible!”

“Andrew, how much sleep have you been getting? What have you been eating?”

He looked at his boots, “You sound like Twilight.”

Melissa sighed, “I wish. Lately I’ve been seen as ‘doubtful’.”

“You? Really?”

Melissa didn’t comment, she walked out of the parlor, “C’mon, let’s get some food. I got human recipes.”

Melissa cracked the parlor door open again, and went for the kitchen. As Andrew emerged, Twilight approached him, looking rather uneasy.

He leaned against a wall, crossing his arms, “Twi’, is something bothering you? You’ve been acting funny ever since you met Cadence.”

Twilight nodded reluctantly, “It’s silly...just...she forgot a secret hoofshake we’d done since I was a foal.”

“Well, it’s been a long time, maybe she forgot.”

“And she was acting unusually in generall” Twilight added. “I mean... You noticed it too, didn’t you? Melissa did too, but she’s not talking about that.”

Andrew conceded, “If you mean Shining Armor acting kind of like a zombie, and Cadence being a bit...”

Twilight nodded vigorously, “That’s right. She’s just been strange ever since we got here, and it’s bothering me.”

Andrew nodded, “I understand... But I don’t know what we can do about it. I don’t know Twilight, we haven’t gotten good sleep in two days. Why don’t we rest on it?”

Twilight sighed morosely, “I suppose…”

They returned to the dining room, where Melissa was talking about some old 80s show, Captain Power or something like that, comparing Rainbow Dash to one character.

The group ate a small snack, chatting about recent experiences, how businesses were going, and about the news. The same conversations all sentients carried out regardless of day and age.

As the night wore on, one by one the ponies drifted off to bed. Finally, Twilight, Andrew, and Melissa were the only ones left.

Andrew scratched his chin, considering what he was about to say. “Hey, Melissa? Weird question…”

“Shoot.”

He leaned forward on the table, “I get that you’re a combat engineer and all that, but...how do you remember all this stuff? How have you gotten so many things made? It’s not just guns and books you’ve made, you’ve been making toys, clothes, board games...even adapting movies that I know you don’t have. How the heck are you doing all this? I was completely stumped when I got here, I couldn’t think of any way to improve things!”

Twilight raised her eyebrows, “That’s an interesting question. Melissa, how are you doing all this? You are out of your element technology-wise, and without the proper industrial base you’re accustomed to...well, some of what you’re doing shouldn’t be possible. I’ve read theoretical studies of time travel that have talked about this problem.”

Melissa leaned back in her chair. “Okay...did either of you read Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court?”

Twilight nodded while Andrew shrugged, “Maybe?”

“In the story, the titular yankee is sent back in time to England in the 12th century I think--”

“The sixth, actually.” Twilight corrected.

“Oh...well I haven’t read it in a while. Anyway, the guy, Hank, is something of an engineer from the late 19th century. So he tries to industrialize everything, somehow remembering absolutely everything from rifling, to cartridges, to gunpowder, to explosives. He remembers things to a level that should be impossible, especially as he arrived with nothing but the clothes on his back.”

“Well, okay, your stuff helps with that I suppose,” Andrew conceded, “But shouldn’t it still be impossible for you to remember this many things, even with all your gear?”

Melissa tilted her head a little, “One might think that. In fact, The Man Who Came Early was apparently made as a response to Twain’s story, as well as Lest Darkness Fall, but I’ll get to that one in a second. A modern GI goes and hangs around with some vikings, and despite his advanced knowledge, doesn’t have the knowledge required to make the tools to make the tools to make the tools. He knows how to make a modern bridge, but can’t do that with the junk the vikings have lying around.”

“Perfectly reasonable,” Twilight commented, “I may know how a steam engine works, but if I didn’t have my library or somepony with the expertise, I wouldn’t know how to get all the minerals needed. Much less how to smelt or refine them.”

Andrew looked even more confused, “So...if that’s true, then why have you been able to do all this stuff? Why have you been yelling at me for not doing anything? If that guy couldn’t do anything, what luck would I have?”

Melissa replied, “I don’t exactly consider either story to be correct. A Connecticut Yankee is too far on the hopeful side of the spectrum, while The Man Who Came Early is too far on the opposite side. See, this is something everyone gets wrong because they underestimate their own knowledge base. Even if you can’t make a fighter jet, you’ve still got a hundred years difference on the locals! Bards and storytellers made a decent living, you could recite Shakespeare or The Song of Roland! You could advance math simply by teaching locals about arabic numbers! Washing your hands, you could save thousands of lives! This is why I say Lest DarknessFall is the correct example. It’s about a guy going back in time to Ancient Rome. He’s a bit like you, Andrew. He’s an archaeologist, not an engineer. He can’t reproduce clocks, gunpowder, or cannons, but he gets some other things going, and starts mucking about with politics.”

“That still doesn’t explain all of the stuff you’ve been bringing out. How can you just happen to have it all?” Twilight asked.

“Well, for one, I’ve got an advantage over those other guys. I’m in a place that is having its industrial revolution, while those guys were dealing with the freakin’ medieval era. A lot of basic knowledge from high school was mind blowing back then. Second…” she looked off to the side, “I’m not exactly building all of this on my own.”

“Huh?” Andrew grunted, “But...what?”

“Look, do remember our conversation in Manehattan? You said something about giving a leg up to the locals rather than jumping up?” Melissa asked.

Andrew nodded.

“That’s kind of what I’ve been doing. With a bunch of this technology, I haven’t been coming up with it by myself. At least, I didn’t completely create it. I’ve just been spurring on the engineers. I’ve explained smokeless powder for guns, I know how brodie helmets are made, and I can recognize the machinery, but this is something else those time travel stories screw up. I can’t do this on my own without help.”

Andrew tilted his head at her, “...What?”

“I’m a combat engineer. I’m the jack-of-all-trades of the military. My job is in driving big vehicles, demolitions, repairs, mobility, countermobility, breaching, construction, utility, and shooting the bad guys. I’ve got a college education in engineering, and a lot of the tools haven’t changed since the Industrial Revolution, but I don’t know everything. I know how a plane works, but I can’t make an internal combustion engine, much less one small enough to carry its own weight, a plane’s weight, and the pilot’s! I haven’t been coming in here and injecting new ideas exactly, I’ve just been explaining what I need to the engineers. They’re the ones who’ve been figuring stuff out. They look at the problem, and they try to solve it. This works sometimes. They figured out proper rifling, they figured out how to make cartridges, and they figured out how to make the brodie helmets. Other times, things explode. I tried to make a liquid-propellant rocket and nearly blew myself up. We’ve been trying to make automatic weapons, but it hasn’t been working. I’ve been trying to update their airships, that didn’t go well.“

Twilight nodded, “You’ve been using the correct method of giving us new technologies then.”

“I suppose. Your engineers are a lot better at this than I thought. I mean...man! I forgot how much stuff you guys already knew! I should’ve paid more attention when I played Civ 5, technological growth is not a straight line. You’ve figured out x-rays before you figured out smokeless powder for cryin’ out loud!”

“From what I’ve gathered, a lot of your famous 20th century inventions were conceived around the level of technology we are at right now. At any point during your Victorian Era you could’ve gone a completely different way…”

Andrew was still staring at Melissa, “You’re saying...that...most of what you’ve invented, you didn’t actually invent?”

She made a so-so gesture, “Kinda. BNL patented the stuff. Most of the purely-Terran stuff is pop culture, the telegraph, paint rollers, and a few other things. For the most part though, I worked with pony engineers to get things to work. This is why I formed my company, Andrew. I don’t know everything.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, then blew air out his cheeks, “I...wow.”

“What? I’m sorry if I’ve been making more money than you, man, but--”

“It’s not that--well, not exactly-- it’s...I guess you’re not that much better than me after all. Now I feel stupid for being jealous.”

“Not your fault, Andrew. It’s the freaking universe. The wormhole dumped us out here. All we can do is adapt and use what skills we have to survive. Anyway, my skills have kind of peaked. Once we get into World War I technology, it’s going to be much more conventional tech development. I’ll be able to give some hints, but nowhere near the stuff from before. I’m not a naval engineer, or aeronautical. I don’t know how to build vacuum tubes or nuclear reactors.”

“That’s kind of comforting, I guess,” Andrew said, “We’re on a more level playing field.”

“It’s not a competition! And anyway, I would’ve won if it was.”

“You got more technology, but who got friendly with the locals? I’d say that counts for more.”

Twilight looked between them, a smile creeping onto her face, “So...you two aren’t mad at each other anymore?”

Melissa glanced at her, offering a weak smile in return, “I’m sure we’ll find something else to argue about, but this hatchet is buried.”

They continued talking about various subjects for some time, Curiously, Andrew and Twilight soon found out that Melissa was trying to avoid going to bed. Once Twilight figured this out, she decided she’d been polite enough, and headed to bed as well.

Andrew didn’t follow. He was going to stay awake until Melissa fell asleep. And would try his luck again at figuring out what was with her.

“Melissa, what has been going on with you? Seriously, I haven’t seen you get this hammered before. Isn’t there something you can tell me about this super secret operation about yours? There’s no ponies around…”

Melissa shook her head, “Nope. I can’t tell anyone.”

“Anything? Nothing at all? Clearly this is bothering you. You’re drunk, you were singing really sad songs, and you’ve been snapping at people again. Just...talk to me. I might be able to help.”

Melissa refused to meet his eyes, “I didn’t think it would be this hard.”

“What do you mean?”

She rested her elbow on the table, with her chin on her hand, “God damn, it’s been hard. I still wake up screaming or crying or both. I keep thinking about the people Discord killed, or about home. I keep thinking about my mistakes, what I could do wrong with this mission. I don’t know if I can trust my instincts. I don’t know how long Discord was controlling me.”

Her rambling continued, “I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing. I’m scared. Cthulhu’s balls, I’m scared of fucking up. All my life I used to think I could fix any problem, confront anything, but now...I don’t know. I’m faking it. I’m barely holding together. The storm’s coming and I’m scared. I’m scared, I’m doubting, and I’m alone.”

“You know you’re not, right?” Andrew asked, hesitatingly putting out a hand to touch her forearm before drawing it back, “I mean, I’m here, and you’ve got the rest…”

“I understand, but...I don’t think you do. There’s people here, yeah, but no one on my same level. I can’t talk about these things with you guys, and I don’t even know if you’d get it. You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Of course I would. I’d probably believe it more than the rest would at least.”

“No, trust me. You wouldn’t and I can’t tell you anyway. I’m sorry.”

She sighed heavily, “It’s been a rough ride, huh? For both of us.”

He nodded, “Yep.”

“Do you...do you still dream about Earth too?”

Andrew rubbed an eye, and looked off into the distance. “Yeah, I do. Anything in particular you thinking about?”

“I guess my parents. And my brother.”

“Me too. My brother might be the weirdest person I’ve ever met, but he’s alright.”

Melissa snorted, “My little brother’s kinda the same. God I miss him."

Her upper body wavered a little, “I’m just gonna...gonna…”

She slumped forward onto the table and began snoring loudly.

Hefting her, Andrew found himself unable to drag her.

“Need some help?” Spike asked, appearing beside Andrew. Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed Melissa’s legs, and together they brought her to the master bedroom.

They managed to pull off her jacket and get her onto the bed, her head on her battered NASA pillow. As Andrew was pulling back the blankets, a small lump drew his attention.

It was a little plush toy, with a tag indicating its Terran manufacturing. It took Andrew a minute to realize it was a plush of Godzilla.

Spike noticed it, “What is that?”

Andrew quickly put it behind his back, “Ehrm...nothing?”

Spike furrowed his brow, amused.

Andrew rolled his eyes and showed it.

“What’s the big deal about that?” the dragon asked, confused, “It’s just a stuffed animal.”

“It--well...I mean...back home, it’s always seen as a little weird when adults have plush toys.”

Spike snorted, “I guess we got ya beat in a few areas.”

“Well, everyone does it, it’s just frowned upon. I don’t care how she gets to sleep, personally I hit myself over the head with a hammer.”

He reached down to lift her arm and put the plush into the crook of her arm. Melissa’s other hand shot up, grabbing his wrist.
“I gotta...gotta…”

Andrew was hissing in pain, trying to push the half-asleep marine back down and get the blood flowing to his hand again.
Spike rolled his eyes, and walked over.

He pried her fingers loose, then simply sat on Melissa’s chest, using his weight to force her down.
“So that’s how you get Twilight to sleep.” Andrew mumbled, looking on at the odd scene, “You’re like a freaking cat.”

Spike made an indignant expression, “Hey, doesn’t matter how I do it so long as the geniuses get their sleep like the rest of us right?”

Andrew shrugged, “I guess so.”

Melissa’s hand shot up again, this time only to tap Spike on the shoulder.

“Dude, feed Ray, will you?”

“Huh?”

She pointed to a corner of the bedroom, where a small lighted glass box could be seen. It was a pet enclosure, filled with sand, dried grass, and a little water spigot nearby.
Andrew stepped over and peeked inside, but couldn’t see anything.

When Spike added a bit of food, a small leopard gecko decloaked from his hiding spot, scurrying to gather the sustenance.

Andrew glanced at Melissa, “Does he talk?”

Her eyes closed, the marine muttered, “Nah, one reason I got him.”

“His name a reference to something?

“Other than being a reference to him being a ray of sunshine in my life? Nope.”

She could feel Andrew’s doubtful expression.

“...Maybe Ghostbusters?” She admitted reluctantly, trailing off to sleep.

Andrew and Spike left the marine to sleep, as she curled up with her plushie.

She would be forced from slumber again, shaking and sweating. The others would find her passed out in an armchair that morning under a blanket, clutching her Godzilla plush with one arm and Glamdring with the other.

Chapter 14

Author’s Note: There is some original text/dialogue in this chapter lifted from Hands that I claim no credit for.

The next day, at a nearby diner, the humans, dragon, and ponies ate their breakfasts. Seven spoke animatedly of the wedding, while two virtually silent.

Andrew was quiet to begin with, and was even less encouraged to join as Twilight got more and more aggravated in discussing the behavior of her brother’s fiance. Her attempts to coerce him into joining only made things worse.

Melissa hadn’t spoken other than to order food, and get her sign/countersign responses back from everypony. She had switched from her casual outfit to her fatigues once again. There were bags under her eyes, several cups of coffee nearby, and she was busy sketching out a blueprint.
“SA-23E Mitchell-Hyundyne Starfury” was written at the top.

She’d been ignoring most of the conversation, when Twilight’s words caught her ear. “...You mean you all haven’t noticed anything?”

Rarity said, “The princess is about to get married. I'm sure any negative behavior she might be displaying is simply the result of nerves.”

“Really?” Melissa looked at her, “I don’t think nerves are a good enough excuse for a complete personality change!”
She realized she had spoken, and winced, avoiding eye contact. The marine went to work finishing off the starfighter’s cockpit.

“Coming from the mare who has two restraining orders, and attacked somepony!” Rainbow Dash grunted ignoring or not even seeing Melissa’s body language, “And yet you’re fun you be around!”

Andrew spat into his drink, “What?! Restraining order?! When did this happen?”

“Have any of you ever met Cadence before?” Applejack asked, ignoring Andrew, “Who are we to judge? It’s been a decade since you’ve met her, Twilight. Ponies can change in that time.”

“But...I thought I knew her…” Twilight shook her head, becoming angry again, “That doesn’t excuse her behavior! Have you all been so caught up in wedding planning that you haven’t even considered the possibility that there shouldn’t be a wedding?!”

Applejack was surprised, “You ever think maybe you’re being a tiny bit possessive of your brother?”

Melissa huffed, “Is that even a thing? Azathoth above…” she winced again, and went back to her drawing. The plasma cannons were simple enough to sketch.

“Melissa, you’re with me on this, right?” Twilight demanded, much to the marine’s dismay, “You can see something’s weird, right?”

Melissa rubbed her face, and took a deep breath. “I...suppose.”

Twilight tilted her head in concern, “Are you okay? What have you been doing that’s been keeping you up? This isn’t like you.”

“Nothing.” Melissa went back to detailing the thruster tines. They didn’t look just right...

Rarity put a hoof on her paper to get her to look up, “Melissa, we’re your friends. If something’s wrong, tell us!”

“Yeah! Is it something to do with that super-secret mission?” Pinkie Pie asked.

Andrew spoke up, “I thought you’d be all over this sort of thing. Aren’t you gonna use your superior Earth knowledge to fix this?” he half-heartedly smiled.

Melissa inhaled deeply, “Weddings aren’t my forte.”

“But relationship advice is? The other day you dragged us up to Shining Armor to fix our problem. Why not this? Isn’t this sort of behavior...I don’t know, a sign of something?”

The marine slammed a fist down on the table, “Everybody shut up! I’m fine, damn it, I’m fine!”

The Maximal in her field of vision looked at her doubtfully, then nodded to Rarity, “Madam Rarity, I do believe she is lying.”

“Shut the fuck up, you traitor!” Melissa snapped, pointed angrily at him, “I thought we agreed!”

“Agreed on what, darling?” Rarity asked.

“Silverbolt--!” Melissa snapped, but he quickly cut her off.

“Melissa, do you not hear yourself? I recommend you take a moment to calm down. Remember what Dr. Wolf said.”

Melissa angrily took yet another deep breath, then rolled up her blueprint. After a visit to the bathroom to cool off, she was a little less angry.

The others were quiet as she approached the table again.

Andrew was the first to speak, “So...what’s this about a restraining order?”

Melissa tiredly waved it off, “Last month. Some dick was letting his dog take dumps in my yard, someone else kept harassing me...it took some sorting out. We filed restraining orders.”

Andrew relaxed somewhat, “That almost sounds reasonable. What’s the twist?”

“Do you always have to expect the worst of me?”

He smirked a little, his eyes narrowing.

Rainbow Dash butted in, “She didn’t hit one of those guys, but she did punch a hippogriff in the face!”

“Hippogriff? What, like those creatures in Harry Potter?”

Melissa nodded, “Yeah. Only more like a glorified pigeon and just as annoying.”

“Pigeon…?” Applejack muttered, “He didn’t have a yellow beak, brown feathers…?”

“...brown hindquarters...?” Twilight asked.

“...a white tail...?” Pinkie added.

“...and a white feather cutie mark!?...did he?” Fluttershy mumbled.

Rarity’s eye twitched, “Yes, he had all of those. Might I guess you know who we’re talking about?”

“...Silver Quill.” the Mane Six said together.

Melissa tilted her head, smiling a little, “I didn’t know all of you knew him!”

Fluttershy scrunched herself up, “Um...yes...we...know him.”

“Know him? That’s an understatement.” Twilight said with a toss of her eyes.

“I’ve taken him to court numerous times for harassing Ponyville residents,” Rarity explained, “He appears to be mentally unstable, and it takes days to find an impartial jury for him. It seems his hobby is harassing ponies.”

“This still doesn’t explain why you punched him in the face.” Andrew pointed out to Melissa.

“For the record, I punched him in the stomach, then I headbutted him in the face.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s an asshole.”

Andrew rubbed his face, “That cannot be the only reason.”

“He was on my lawn.”

“...And? What was he doing?”

“He was yelling a lot of stuff, but I wasn’t listening. I was defending my property though!”

“...he’s also known for his durability,” Rarity added.

“I’ll say. His scar tissue has scar tissue, it was like hitting an actual punching bag. Dude must visit the hospital more than Andrew.”

“Hey!”

The conversation was interrupted by someone approaching from a direction behind Andrew, Presumably it was a member of royalty, as the ponies bowed. It clearly wasn’t Celestia, Melissa got up and saluted. On the other hand, she’d stopped cursing out the queen recently, so it could have been Celestia...

Andrew couldn’t tell at all. His ears were ringing after an incredibly loud noise went off next to his head.

He turned around as he tried to clear his ears, and realized the cause.

Queen Luna was standing there, her mouth moving without a sound reaching his ears. She gestured to him and Melissa, asking a question.

“...a time? ‘We’ have classified information to discuss.” the ringing decreased enough for him to hear.

Twilight and Melissa agreed to whatever Luna had asked, and the queen of the moon seemed satisfied.

She looked at Andrew, “Are you alright, Mr. Shepherd?”

“Mawp...mawp...what just happened?”

Melissa was sticking a finger in her ear as well, “Well. Always wondered how that felt.”

“How what felt?!” he said loudly, still barely able to hear.

“Royal Canterlot voice!” she said, pulling him closer, “Come on! We are following her! Just the two of us, no Mane Sixers!”

“What for?!”

“Reasons! I don’t know! I don’t get paid to think! I don’t want to have to yell this shit across the city!”

They followed the queen out of the diner to a group of Luna’s guards, armed with Springbok rifles.

When asked, Luna replied, “I do not normally take a security escort with me. I feel it separates me from my subjects. ‘Tia-- Queen Celestia was quite insistent this time.”

The humans followed Luna across the city to Canterlot Castle itself, going deep into the lower levels, where newly-installed light bulbs burned.

They made their way through an underground complex filled with doors, vaults, chambers, and all sorts of things that made it look like a primitive version of Stargate Command.

Finally they stopped at a particular door, again similar to one from the SGC.

“S-13” was written in large white letters, but in cursive font. Instead of an electronic key lock like in most fictional underground bases, the lock embedded in the door looked like some sort of puzzle.

Luna turned around and dismissed her guards. Andrew noted Melissa’s breath quickening, and saw her reaching into her jacket.

Luna channeled energy into her horn, and pointed it at the lock. It rotated this way and that, clicking and clacking, before falling into place. The door lock shifted, and Luna pushed it open, the entrance splitting down the middle.

The double doors opened into a much wider and dark space. Melissa’s pistol was at her side.

“Behold,” the queen announced, “The deep archives of Canterlot! Well, Section 13 specifically.”

“There isn’t much to see…” Andrew commented dryly. He stepped out into the chamber.

Luna huffed a little at the hole in her drama, and she pulled a heavy switch to the side of the door. With loud clacks that rattled off further and further away, lights snapped on, row by row.
Andrew yelped and nearly lept out of his skin, falling on his rear when the silhouette of a massive warrior appeared holding a sword about ten centimeters away from his head, “Yagh! Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!”

Taking pleasure in a little revenge, Luna dryly pointed out, “It’s a statue, Mr. Shepherd.”

Andrew relaxed, embarrassed, and got to his feet. Dusting himself off, he did a double-take of the details of the statue.

It was a statue of a Roman legionary in full body armor. A human statue.

He was nearly deafened again by Melissa’s screech of “What the fuck?!”

Beyond the statue was a massive underground warehouse that stretched far into the distance. The rows of shelves that occupied the space were spread out to the left and the right, creating many aisles packed with artifacts, many of which were contained in energy fields to preserve them.

It was a warehouse of human artifacts

Thousands of artifacts from civilizations of bygone ages, ages spawned from Earth.

Earth.

Sol. Terra. Home. The distant mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam, that suddenly felt so much closer.

Andrew looked around, in a daze, “How...how did you get these?”

This was no ruined bunker with a meager handful of wreckage, this was a museum of intact odds and ends from everything humanity had produced.

He and Melissa began examining the closest artifacts; scrolls, boxes, furniture... historical junk, but priceless in their own right.

Luna explained, “They presumably came in the same manner you did. For the past thousand years, we have found artifacts of alien origin, and there have been legends of strange creatures like yourself who have appeared and gone on to help shape our history, for good or for ill. We have arranged them in chronological order, and by nationality as best we can tell. The closest are the furthest back in time, and arranged according to nationality.. They have appeared at random intervals and at no specific location.”

She paused, “...with one single exception. The start of these appearances. It occurred around the time of the Uncertain Years. That was a tumultuous time, the rise of Discord, the Sirens, Tirek, King Sombra, my...rebellion...a period of great chaos and destruction, with many records destroyed. What we do know is, a wide variety of humans from several different time frames, rather than a transfer from the point in your calendar that would match up with ours. There were heavier-than-air vehicles and spearmen for example. Curiously, after that initial transfer, all displacements matched up with the natural progression of time up until this point. Reports of spearmen increased, before all human activity began to decrease massively.”

Andrew scratched his head, still somewhat dazed, “So after the initial transfer, anyone who came over a thousand years ago would be from around 1066 or something? And anyone who came over now would from now back home?”

“Yes, and it has been theorized it would progress naturally from there. However, we have yet to encounter any living human specimens beyond yourselves, and unfortunately, most of humankind’s exploits here after their arrival have survived only in the form of legends.”

Andrew found a torn and tattered american flag, resting his hand on it. Where did you come from? From home, or were you made here?

He rubbed his eyes with one arm.

Melissa was silent. Her initial shriek had given way to shock. She couldn’t process it. There was a distinct amount of surprise, not merely at finding the human relics...but something else. A different emotion.

After several minutes, Luna nudged them along, trotting through the center corridor, and by far the widest. The humans followed slowly, looking around at the odds and ends of history.

Andrew fought back tears as he took in the room of humanity, examining racks of Roman armor displayed as a soldier would have worn the attire almost two thousand years ago.

“So this is where you were hiding everything, this was where everything went!” his voice was somewhat accusing.

Melissa's stance shifted suddenly, her boots scraping against the grit and dust. “Care to explain, ma’am?”

Luna looked to the side, “It was not my decision to do so, or to hide the evidence. My sister and I only recently agreed to allow you to see this gallery. It was only recently I was given access. Apparently, some members of the military and intelligence committee felt I was some sort of security risk.”

Melissa relaxed, somewhat satisfied. She picked up a gladius hanging by a belt from a Hastatus uniform, running her hands along the energy field that protected it from the elements and the oils of her skin. “It’s real,” she breathed, “It’s not a dream.”

The scabbard was battered and torn, the right side of the opening torn as though the user had pulled the sword out too fast. He must have been left-handed.

There was more. Zhou armor, Greek armor, loose equipment from a hundred nations. Some of the equipment was damaged, the back of one helmet was caved in, likely from a club.
Andrew inspected the fabric of one suit, contained in a glowing magical field and was amazed to find it wasn’t cloth or chainmail or what-have-you, but linothorax.
“The secret’s been lost for thousands of years, no examples have survived! Your highness, are you sure this stuff is real?”

She nodded, “As sure as we can be.”

Andrew reached out to touch it, but reluctantly did not. “An actual piece of linothorax...and it’s right here. We found it.”

Luna began to move on, but stopped, looking back and cocking her head, “Did you say thousands of years?”

“Yeah, this stuff is super old…”

“I think you are mistaken. The oldest of these artifacts are only a thousand. From the Uncertain Years, the time surrounding my...my rebellion, and the period of Discord and all the other creatures.”

Melissa raised an eyebrow, “No...we’re pretty sure. The Triarii armor is from at least 200 BCE, twenty-two-hundred years ago.”

Luna was puzzled, “How strange.”

Andrew waved it off, “Ah, it’s probably just a mistake. Your people’s archaeological dating systems are far less advanced than ours.”

Luna nodded slowly, a strange look in her eyes, “Yes...yes, that’s probably it.”

“Do you know how humans got here?” Melissa asked.

"Through some sort of portal," Luna said, "They were strangers to our world, but ingenious and tenacious. I never met any before they disappeared. They were healers, and doctors, and leaders and scholars and heroes of the land. According to legend, they founded great nations that could make even the dragons quake in fear, some earning the respect of even the griffins and the monsters of Tartarus. Some fought for good, others for ill. The stories vary wildly, but it was so long ago history turned to legend.”

“Do you know what happened to them?” Andrew asked.

Luna looked at the pair, seeing the pleading hope in their eyes, “We...don’t really know. As I said, from around the Uncertain Years, the greatest point of human activity, few records have survived. I was not lucky enough to meet any of your people in person. Some say they returned home, others say that they left on great ships to the stars, or...went extinct. All we know now is that we cannot find any surviving communities.”

She paused. With great reluctance, she added, “That is not entirely true. I am still finding projects and documents my sister neglected to release to me, and there are certain subjects I am not at liberty to discuss with you. I think she is worried about my connections with you two.”

“With us?” Melissa asked, “What about us? I’m just a combat engineer, nothing special. And Andrew is...Andrew.”

Andrew didn’t comment.

“You are humans, that makes you special. Don’t you see? You have confirmed dozens of scientific and historical theories, revolutionized our science! You’re legend in the flesh!”

“But...we’re…” Melissa was struggling with something, “We’re unique in our own way, but just because a few guys from the 21st century showed up a while back doesn’t make us gods. Us being human doesn’t make us gods. Anyone on a roughly-equal technological level could do what they had done, that’s what we’re doing right now! Our achievements don’t undermine your own!”

“I never said that, Corporal Foster, I was merely--”

“Humans are special in our own way, but that doesn't mean we're better than you. Don't forget that.”
Andrew coughed, “Um...I...so you don’t have a way back to Earth, then?”

Luna cast her gaze downwards, “...I am sorry. I am so very sorry.”

The humans stepped away from the alicorn, Melissa with a hand on her friend’s shoulder.

When it seemed that they managed to pull themselves together, Luna approached, “If you’re feeling ready, I have more to show you.”

Melissa glanced at Andrew, who nodded glumly.

As they explored, they found numerous artifacts that drew their attention.

There was ancient Persian armor, Egyptian, Chinese, a bunch of other nations neither human could recognize.

Among the artifacts were toys, personal effects, jewels, art, clothing, cutlery, furniture. Wooden chairs, tables with legs of ivory, stone slabs inscribed with information, parchment, depictions of gods and battles carved out of stone, the attire of warriors and kings, stretching across history.
As they followed the queen, the times began to change. More advanced materials appeared, newer concepts were developed. Swords were smoother, lighter and more powerful, art pieces rather than simple weapons, then went back to stab and slash. Fashions changed, from modest to grand and back again.
Newer types of spears appeared, armor became thicker and tougher.

They began to reach past the year 1000 CE, and clothing began to take a similar shape to their own. Not the same of course, but the general shape of shirts and pants entered the designs.

Western European memorabilia began to decline in quality, while other regions continued their development.
They started reaching out of the Middle Ages, into the second half of the 1000 millennium. Shakespearean attire, bows and arrows were more refined, armor quantity declined to more simple chainmail or cloth uniforms with iron helmets.
First Nation civilizations, who had maintained their quality for several shelves, suddenly spiked sharply downward. Ornate outfits turned to simple effective protection against the elements.
“Smallpox time, I guess. Their entire industry must’ve collapsed,” Melissa noted, and an expression of horror dawned on her, “Oh crap. Queen Luna, have there been any encounters with illnesses from any of these artifacts?”

Andrew jumped away from one of the shelves, holding up his hands, “Whoa! You’re right! They could have every deadly plague known to man in here!”

“We did have some accidents, yes, long ago according to records. We have isolated those artifacts found to be contaminated by disease. You are safe.”

Both humans relaxed slightly, but quickened their pace. The 20th century awaited down the line, with its wealth of vaccines and lack of flesh-eating viruses. Mostly.

Napoleonic-era clothes, and equipment. Tiny wooden replicas of soldiers, elaborate and beautiful furniture, paper skyrocketed. Books, now, arranged in alphabetical orders.
“No firearms…” Melissa noted, picking up a sword with cyrillic inscriptions on it; it looked to be from Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, judging by the French swords around it.

“No. All firearms have been placed in a separate archive for study.” Luna rolled her eyes, “Yet another archive that has lain dormant for decades. This whole project -- reverse-engineering all the advanced materials -- was considered unimportant for a long time. At first because some of it was too far beyond our own science, and then out of laziness.”

She scowled, “A great many sorrows could have been avoided if we had an understanding of some of your technology.”

“Well, clearly they were doing some research,” Melissa commented, “I was wondering how those scientists were understanding the architecture so easily…and some other stuff too...”

“That’s correct, some experimentation was done, but mainly on the items that were well-within our understanding. Reportedly however, some scientists working for Bureau 13 -- the unit responsible for securing these artifacts -- have been using some of your knowledge to unlock a few of these secrets. I can have the findings sent to you, I in no way approved of this and wish to improve our relations--”

Melissa nodded rapidly, “Thanks, that’ll be fine. Dickheads.”

Blue and grey uniforms, some with bullet holes or bloodstains, were passed. Cyrillic and Japanese scripture adorned sailor outfits.
The 20th century had come.

A very long section of the aisle was filled with World War I equipment. Uniforms, British and French, Belgian and German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian. Gas masks, shovels covered with spatters of blood and dented from rocks, Helmets of all sorts, pickelhaube, Adrian, and Brodie.

Andrew slowed down at one of the shelves of Brodie helmets, and reached out to inspect one. Melissa grabbed his hand, “There’s asbestos in there.”

“What.” Andrew stared at her.

“I’ve heard that It’s recommended that one does not pick up WWI helmets until someone more qualified comes along. With an airtight box. Don’t touch it.”

Andrew pulled his hand back, “Right. Wow.”

Photographs, tools, toys, and furniture from the inter-war years. World War II came around, and warfare returned.

The equipment was similar to the World War I gear at first, before shifting over. M1 combat helmets, Soviet uniforms, French canteens, tools and equipment from across the entire planet.

The Cold War appeared, uniforms less like sunday suits and more like casual wear. Jumpsuits, jackets, shovels, radios, boots…
Melissa’s eyes were purely on the military gear, but Andrew’s focus was on it all. Appliances, magazines, furniture, fashions decades apart. There were video games, there were rows of rolled up posters and blueprints and stacks of paper, there were toys, there were clocks, there were boxes of widgets, there were mattresses, there were towers of coins...
It would be an impossible task to name it all.

Melissa considered one shelf of video games, idly picking one up.

Andrew saw which one it was, its plastic cover glinting in the light, “No!”

With a blur of motion, Melissa had his wrist in an iron grip, “What?”

“It’s Final Fantasy X! Don’t you know what that does to people?!”

Melissa threw the box at him, “Holy shit, forget I asked!”

“Don’t give it to me!”

“Well, someone’s gotta reshelve it!”

Luna was that someone, giving the humans an odd look as she did so. “Is it some sort of dangerous artifact?”

Andrew laughed, “No, it’s just...it’s just a really bad game. It was kinda a joke…” his expression hardened, thinking of yet another thing from home gone. All the pain he’d had the first few months threatened to bubble back up.

“Ah...I am inexperienced with human humor. Please forgive me.”

They walked on.

Andrew halted to consider a shelf of binders and documents. Few were actually bound, most were stacks of paper stapled together in various ways.
Most were inconsequential. Receipts, letters, office documents, more than could be described.

Something caught his eye, though. Written hastily on a binder cover containing white paper he could just barely make out the words “Babylon 5” among the mess of illegible words that adorned the cover.
Investigating further, he found a series of notes outlining plot details from season 4...but far more extensive and drawn out than they had been in reality, and The Deconstruction of Falling Stars was missing. There even seemed to be elements of the fifth season, but different. They didn’t seem like notes from a fan…

On the inside cover, he found a signature, “JMS”.

Melissa peered over his shoulder. Her eyes widened, and she snatched the binder out of his hands. Flipping through it, her grin grew wider and wider, and she finally exclaimed, “Holy shit! Dude! Do you know what that is?”

“No...who’s JMS?”

“Dude!” she repeated, smacking her face, “I thought you watched Babylon 5! He’s the mastermind behind the whole thing!”

“Well, I don’t normally read the credits.”

Melissa shook her head, “Whatever. Don’t you know what this is?”

“Um…”

“Babylon 5 was meant to have five seasons since the start, but there was a cancellation issue during season 4, and had to cut everything short. It got all fixed, which is why we have the season-that-does-not-exist, instead of the proper season 5. However, we’ve been missing the structure for that lost season because JMS’ notes accidentally got thrown out!”

He processed the information, blinked several times, then gaped, “You...what...you’re saying...these are real notes from the show?”

“More than that, this was how the show was supposed to be!”

“I gotta admit, season 5 wasn’t that great…”

Melissa bopped him on the arm, “Haven’t seen it in years. Don't remember most of it, and don't make me remember.”

“Is this the only gallery?” Andrew asked Luna, moving along to consider an old Star Trek: The Next Generation model kit.

“No. There are others for weapons, human remains, food, and more like this one.”

Melissa noted Andrew’s point of interest, and looked at the pile of toys he’d picked it up from. She grinned, and dashed off into the darkness, shining her flashlight on several shelves.
A whoop of glee echoed through the chamber.

She came back grinning ear to ear, carrying a remarkably-preserved cardboard box. Luna pointed her light at it when Melissa held it up, to display an older style toy box cover. It displayed a long white boxy craft, flying over Earth. To the side, three spacesuited-astronauts stood in action poses, one pointing a weapon off to the side. Andrew recalled seeing the shape of the vessel, but didn’t know what it was. Huh. I’ve seen that a lot actually...
“Check it out!” She said, practically squealing.

The other two stared blankly. “Is it a...spacecraft?” Luna asked, hesitant.

Melissa laughed, “‘Is it a spaceship’...Andrew, tell her what this is!”

“Sure,” he nodded, “Love to. What is it?” Wisely, he stepped back.

She twitched, and her grin faded from her eyes. “Surely you know it. It starts with an ‘E’...”

“Enterprise?”

Her grin widened again, “Oh my god. You two are in for a treat.”

She went over to a nearby table, laying the box down, “This is the Eagle Transporter of Space: 1999, the modular vessel used by Moonbase Alpha after Breakaway. They’re the workhorse of the series, and one of the most iconic spacecraft in history.”

She furrowed her brow, and brushed dust off the sides, “Oh man, not just any Eagle, this is...This is one of the vintage 1976 Mattel Eagle 1 toys!”

“And that means...?” Andrew asked, and she whirled on him, seizing his coat.

“Are you kidding?! This might be the only remaining unopened one of these left! They haven’t been made since ‘77, and they sell for big bucks on ebay! This one is mine! All mine!”

Andrew raised an eyebrow as she cackled evilly, interspersed with occasional squealing. He asked “How old are you again?”

“Don’t change the subject.” She held Andrew’s coat at arm’s length, suddenly remembering that Luna was standing there, “Uh...Do you mind if...?”

Luna blinked, and shook her head, “Take it if it makes you happy. There are several similar boxes that we did not open. They didn’t contain anything of value, mostly toys.”

“It’s not offensive? Or theft?” Andrew asked, surprised.

“No, of course not. It’s not anything of military value anyway, and all of this is your people’s. It belongs to you.”

Melissa dropped Andrew, and snatched up the box, embracing it like an old friend she hadn’t seen in a long time.

“This is not all I have to show you. Shall we move on?” Luna asked.

Melissa put the box down, “Alright. I probably shouldn’t carry this around. I’ll get it on the way back.”

Once Luna started to walk away, Melissa grabbed Andrew’s arm. “Hey, I need you to do something.”

“What?”

She passed him four green plastic sticks. It took him a moment to recognize the items as glow sticks.

“Hold onto these until I tell you you can put them down.”

“Why--”

“Ssh!” Melissa took off to catch up with the Queen of the Night.

Andrew furrowed his brow, considered the glow sticks for a moment, then shrugged and put them in his pocket.

Luna led the way into a separate chamber, not as large as the first but no less densely packed.

“This section is where we store recovered vehicles,” Luna explained, pulling another switch and lighting up the room.
Carts, small boats, and sleds were arranged in the same way as before.

“What’s that big one?” Andrew asked, pointing to a long dark shape on the end. It looked like a pencil, with a pair of odd-looking rudders on the “eraser” end, and a small cupola on the top.

Melissa’s eyes widened, and she grinned. Rushing up to the scaffolding on the side, she reached into the barely-visible force field to wipe grit off the side. “USS” was written on the side. “Called it!”

She used her sleeve to wipe off more grit, to reveal “USS Alligator”, written in an older form of cursive.

“Is that theAlligator?” Andrew asked.

“It has proven quite useful for our navy. Our entire submarine service exists because of this vessel.” Luna explained, “One of the few cases of research that I mentioned before.”

Melissa’s face lit up with triumph, “I knew it! I fucking knew it!”

Andrew paled, “Oh...Is there anyone...in there?” He gulped.

“Don’t worry. The H.L. Hunley was the one that actually managed to do something. She’s in a museum back home, apparently got wrecked by its own torpedo.” Melissa said, but very hesitantly took the small light on her keychain and flashed it inside. “Still a bit damp, no rotting corpses though.”

“What brought the Alligator here?” Luna asked, and Melissa laughed.

“That’s a funny story actually. She was completely sealed and being towed around Florida to use against the Confederates. Ran into a storm, and they had to cut the line. Either she sank immediately, or the more likely candidate, drifted for a while because of all the air, before sinking.”

Her boot made a clang clang on the hull, “...Or before being brought here.”

“How is that amusing?”

“The submarine wasn’t lost in combat or anything, just sank while being towed. Trust me, it’s a lot funnier than the H. L. Hunley, the Confederate submarine.”

“That is not all we have recovered,” Luna stated, “Follow me.”

They moved on, passing more recent vehicles, mainly carts or boats. Unusually, there were no 20th or 21st century vehicles in the area.

“I woulda thought there would be tanks or planes or even a Willys jeep..” Melissa muttered.

Luna looked back at them, “The self-propelled land vehicles are stored in another archive, with the exception of the one we are about to see.”

“What vehicle?” Andrew asked.

“It is better to show you.”

They moved into another chamber, without lighting, and the queen moved over to a small silhouette nearby. It glowed with energy, then what sounded like gunfire resounded through the room, making Melissa jump behind the doorway. The bangs settled into a smooth droning sound.

“Warn me next time you’re gonna do that!” she shouted over the noise.

“My apologies,” Luna said, adjusting the motor that had been revealed in the light from several light bulbs arranged around the chamber, and the droning became quieter, “These generators produce a lot of noise. I don’t know how you humans stand it!”

“We manage, I--”

“Melissa…” Andrew mumbled, staring at the center of the room.

“Hold on a second, mommy and daddy are talking--”

“Melissa! Look!” he shouted, and Melissa did.

She blinked several times. “Is that--?”

“A Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser!” Andrew cried out, a smile breaking out across his face. Sure enough a large, beautiful shape known as a Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser space plane sat in the center of the room raised on landing gear. It was slanted forward, with its front landing gear battered, scratched, and the tires somewhat deflated, but that did not detract from the emotional impact.

It was a lifting body design with a pair of stubby upward-swept wings to either side of the delta-shaped fuselage. The upper hull was painted in white, and the lower hull in black, as per US spacecraft style. An american flag was painted on one side, with, strangely enough, a United States Air Force roundel placed where the Sierra Nevada company logo should have gone.

She was battered and scorched, but the space plane still was a sight to be seen. Windows set high up on the hull offered a near-180 degree view. Melissa and Andrew moved around it, examining the craft with glee. They found a pair of primary thrusters located aft, with a sealed hatch between them.

There were some modifications and differences that contrasted with the sleek images both humans had seen before. The belly, and some of the upper hull, was scorched and burnt as though it had gone through reentry. Upon closer inspection, they found several almost-melted rails on the wings and bottom of the center hull, that looked like hastily-added missile hardpoints. The cargo compartment was mostly welded over, scorched danger signs were painted at specific points, though what danger they meant couldn't be read. The remaining parts of the bay not welded over contained a pair of cameras-looking devices that broke up the smooth silhouette, pointing forward along either side of the craft.

There was something off about them though. No spacecraft like this needed cameras that big. Where have I seen these before? Melissa wondered.

“You recognize this craft?” Luna asked.

“Oh yeah…” Andrew managed to stutter.

Melissa opened her mouth, but then Andrew burst out, “It’s a space plane! A company in Colorado, my home state back on Earth, builds them! Once got a tour of their manufacturing place.”

“What?!” Melissa shrieked, glaring at Andrew, “You not only know what this beautiful lady is, but you got a guided tour of the goddamn factory?!”

“Yeah…?”

“I want to poison your next meal I’m so jealous you lucky bastard!”

“Can you tell me precisely what year it was from?” Luna inquired, ignoring the internal dispute.

“Kinda. They started development back in 2011,” Andrew answered, “They managed to get production going in 2014 a little while before I left.”

“What--but I--Ugh, you’re driving me nuts! I’m the spacecraft nut, you son of a bitch!” Melissa cried.

“Hey, what are those?” Andrew asked, diverting her attention by pointing to a pair of odd pipes, which were strapped to the wings, breaking up the elegant silhouette, “Those weren’t on any of the models I’ve seen…”

“Thank you! Something I can trump you with!” Melissa moved over to study the pipes.

“They look like exhaust pipes on a hot rod engine.” Andrew mused.

“What was the intended power source?” Luna asked, trotting closer.

“Batteries, I think.” Andrew answered again, “The engines were hybrids, they ran off of some rubber and nitrous--something for an oxidizer.”

Melissa cursed, “Dude, you are ruining me here! Go back to being useless!”

Smirking with amusement, Andrew directed his speech to Luna, “Why’d you want to know about the power source?”

Not answering, Luna drifted into the air, and hovered over the hatch above the windows. Andrew clambered aboard, watching as she slowly pulled the release from one side to the other.

He stuck his head inside the compartment, finding that it was more cramped than usual. Several seats, apparently pilot and co-pilot, remained, but the other four had been removed and replaced with a large rounded cylinder in the back of the vehicle. Beams, wires, and other connections held it in place precariously above the crawlspace that led to the rear hatch. Andrew’s eyes bugged out at the yellow and black symbol emblazoned at one end of the cylinder, above the words “Caution! Radioactive materials!”

“Holy crap…” he whispered, sitting up and looking at Luna in shock, “This sucker’s nuclear?”

“What?” Melissa demanded, crawling up the hull to see for herself, “Oh sweet Cthulhu…”

“It is indeed. We are not familiar with the elements involved, though this is not surprising given our lack of experience in the field of atomic research. However, from what we can gather from the documents and symbols we have discovered in this vehicle, we have found a symbol that matches one from your periodic table. Americium-241.”

“241?” Melissa wondered, pulling out her phone to check the periodic table, “Uh…”

“It’s a byproduct of nuclear fission, used as a kind of atomic battery because it gives off so much heat.” A flicker of a smile appeared on Andrew’s face for a brief instant.

“Explains those things then,” Melissa commented, gesturing at the pipes along the wings, “The batteries always need a lot of coolant. How’d you know about that?”

“My dad worked with nuclear technology. Fat lot of good that knowledge did up to now…” When Melissa didn’t interrupt him again, he continued, “Why stick it on a ship like this? The European Space Agency wanted to put this stuff in probes, but not manned ships. Well, there was a shortage of Plutonium-238 last I heard, but you’d only put this on here if you needed to power something very big…”

“Something big, such as weapons?” Luna inquired.

Melissa frowned, then looked back at the cameras. She jumped down, and flicked on a flashlight, peering into the gloom of the reflective tubes, “Big as in a pair of Laser Weapon Systems.”

“Two what?” Luna queried, drifting down to see what she was looking at.

“These aren’t gunpowder based, or railguns. I just remembered why these things are so familiar.”

She ran a hand along the barrel of one weapon, “A few years ago, the USS Ponce was issued a prototype weapon, the AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System, or LaWS. First directed-energy weapon on a US Navy ship. It was supposed to be put into production by...2021 or something! Ponce was the only ship in the fleet with one, let alone two on a platform this small! How advanced are these things? Cthulhu’s testicles, how advanced is this reactor? It can’t just be 241, RTGs don’t normally have the power output, there’s gotta be something else...”

“We shall find out.” Luna said ominously, and without warning used her magic to lift both of them up, “Please enter the craft.”

“Hey--!” Andrew protested, “What about radiation?”

“Dude, NASA’s not in the habit of killing its astronauts. Soviet space program is the one that does that. It’s gotta be shielded...Probably.” Melissa’s comment did nothing to help. “Please put us down.”

“Radiation?” Luna asked, her horn growing inactive and allowing the humans to land on solid ground, “We haven’t detected anything. You are perfectly safe.”

“Yeah, but you don’t have any nuclear experience! You can probably pick up some types of radiation, but you don’t have geiger counters.” Andrew pointed out.

“Actually…” she trotted over to several tables and shelves arrayed against a wall. They were absolutely covered in equipment, apparently recovered from the craft. They recognized maintenance equipment, flares, emergency kits, manuals, documents, water packets, life jackets, clothing, and much more. Some of it was in pieces, carefully taken apart. It was being analyzed apparently. Logos and insignia, many of which were NASA or USAF, covered the various objects and devices.

Melissa, digging through the equipment, took notice of several empty packages and vacant molds in some of the kits. Several were in the shape of ammunition magazines, and two were in the shape of pistols(likely SIG Sauer P226 by the shape, sidearms in air force issue). One of the cases was different, however. Slightly larger, and longer, and labeled “SU-16 Survival Rifle”.

Now that was odd. She recalled a rifle series called SU-16, but the air force hadn’t issued a rifle in their survival kits since the 70s, let alone this variant.

The empty case revealed no answers. All the maintenance parts, ammunition, and the weapon itself had been removed.

Luna searched through the loot for a moment. Apparently finding what she wanted, her horn began to glow, and from a nearby shelf came a utilitarian box. A probe of some kind was attached to the box at the end of a cord.

“Geiger Counter, USN Property” was written on the side, and a dial coated in various labels occupied most of the top.

“We have our own radiation measuring equipment,” Luna explained, “but they are not as able or as compact as this.”

“Oh.” Andrew mumbled, embarrassed. He took the device, and stuck it inside the hatch. There were a handful of ominous clicks, but nothing too bad.

“It is as I said,” Luna commented, and telekinetically nudged them closer toward the hatch again.

Regardless of their concerns, both lowered themselves into the craft, glancing around at the dark interior.

Melissa turned on her flashlight again, and found a panel labeled, “Emergency lighting” along the ceiling.

With a click, a handful of lights came to life, a few dozen electroluminescent lights sending out a blue glow across the cabin.

Looking around at the interior, Andrew found it decidedly military. Many of the friendly inviting lights and panels that were visible on that long-ago tour had been removed or were never installed. The acceleration couches looked like every over-engineered fighter jet seat he’d seen. Military labels, simple spartan environment, and a rush job too. The paint was spotty in places, and some welds looked poorly made. It was nothing like the one he’d seen back home.

“Ah, look at all this!” Melissa exclaimed in dismay, “What was wrong with them? It’s a rush job! Since when does NASA leave a ton of loose wires like this?”

She moved back to the battery, and found even more spotty welds along with a lack of paint, and other signs of a hurried job, “Jeez...just look at what they did to her!”

She crawled back toward the aft hatch, cursing all the way, leaving Andrew to check out the cockpit.

Sitting down in the pilot’s seat, he took in the control panels. Three darkened touchscreen displays were dominant, one for the pilot, one for the co-pilot, and one central screen. A central throttle, and joysticks were arrayed around the seats, while buttons, recessed switches, and knobs lined the areas around the displays. Their numbers seem to have multiplied since the prototypes, the Dream Chaser was supposed to be all digital. Redundancy perhaps?

Despite the temptation, Andrew tried to keep himself from touching anything in the atomic-powered spacecraft. Key word tried. All he did was tap one of the touchscreens.

To semi-relief, he found that they did not respond. No damage, they just seemed inactive. It must have been turned off.

Looking around, he tried to locate some sort of activation mechanism, peering around,, and poking his head under the console.

“What the--Hey, there’s an Xbox 360 in here!” He called, finding the familiar black shape hooked up among the rest of the equipment visible under the control console.

“What the fuck?” Melissa cried back, then murmured, while presumably stroking the machine again, “ Cthulhu, what did they do to you, girl?

“Are you familiar with this technology?” Luna asked, sticking her head in the hatch.

“Yeah…” Andrew muttered, reaching for an honest-to-god iphone plugged into the side of the console, and holding it up, “Pretty sure. Interface isn’t too different from what I’ve used before.”

“It is from around your time, then.” she concluded.

Tilting his head in curiosity, Andrew negligently reached for the throttle. Perhaps that would get something out of it, given that it was a manual switch…

Both he and Luna jumped in surprise at how quickly Melissa had virtually teleported over. Her hand was crushing his, and she had a cold stare on her face, “Don’t. Touch. Anything. Don’t you ever watch movies?”

“Yes...please let go of my hand I think you’re breaking it.”

“Miss Foster, please do as he asks.” Luna firmly said, wincing as she saw Andrew’s fingers turn white.

“You gonna touch anything else?” She asked through gritted teeth.

“No…Please let go, ow ow ow!”

“Okay then.” She released him.

“How are we going to know if the thing’s still functional, though?” Andrew inquired, rubbing his nearly-numb hand, “Nothing works in here!”

“That is what we found as well,” Luna agreed, “all attempts to activate this vehicle met with failure.”

Melissa rolled her eyes, “Doesn’t anyone know anything? ‘Scuse me, don’t answer that. Haven’t you ever seen the Tintin movie, Andrew? You don’t push buttons at random, you find the owner’s manual. If we’re gonna do this, we do this right.”

Minutes later, she had a pile of binders and manuals at her feet, as she carefully read through an electrical startup procedure.

“Didn’t you try this before?” Andrew asked Luna.

A little embarrassed, Luna looked off to the side, “I was not involved in the research process...though I believe that it simply did not occur to our scientists. We relied heavily on Twilight’s notes, but they were virtually useless in this area. Anyway, I was busy dealing with preparations for…” she halted, “Excuse me, that’s classified.”

Melissa wasn’t listening, “Battery on, standby power on, guard closed, lights on, fuel pumps off, that thing’s off, keep that other thing on, perform fire and extinguisher test...” she muttered, sending several sounds through the ship at certain points, “And...there!”

With a turn of a switch, The spacecraft smoothly powered up around them. There was no shudder of an engine, barely even a whisper from the batteries. Displays flickered to life. and the harsh red emergency light replaced with pleasant and warm lamps all around the cabin. The light revealed painted on the ceiling something resembling WWII nose art. A naked red-head anime woman sitting on a missile, with the word “SOPHIA” written below.

“Wow…” Melissa whispered.

“Cool.” Andrew muttered.

“Good work,” Luna congratulated, “By the stars, that’s further than anything we’ve been able to do! We thought it was non-functional!”

“Glad I know how to read a manual…” Melissa commented dryly, “Okay, fuel’s at 50%, hull’s intact, most systems seem to be functional. RTG’s got full integrity, LaWS--Hah! Called it--are operational…” she flipped through the touchscreen displays, slapping Andrew’s hand when he hovered it over something, “weapon hardpoints? Depleted, of course. All missiles launched.”

“What’s this thing doing with missiles? What’s it doing with laser guns? Hell, what’s it doing with a freaking atomic battery powering it?” Andrew demanded.

“I’m guessing none of this equipment was on the…’Dream Chaser’ you saw before?” Luna inquired.

“No, no of course not. It was just supposed to be a space taxi! Wasn’t even supposed to fly for another year or two.”

“So this thing’s only a few months into the future, parallel with the time I’ve been here--Hold on.” Melissa swiped the screen and brought up another display. “MISSION CLOCK”.

Looking at her watch and the display, she furrowed her brow and held her mouth open for a moment, “That’s odd. This thing’s a bit fast.”

“What?” the other two asked.

“My watch, there’s a time difference between what it says and what this mission clock says.”

“That is odd.” Andrew commented, “But what does that have to do with anything?”

“It means that combined with the months here... something could have happened back home. Something that necessitated quickly-made spacecraft, the best weapons we can build…”

Suspicious, Melissa abruptly stood up, and deactivated most of the systems aside from the lights. She retrieved the geiger counter, and moved out the door. The other two followed, finding her pointing the geiger counter at various parts of the craft.

“Hoo boy…” she muttered.

“You checking what I think you’re checking?” Andrew asked, his heart sinking.

“Yep. Not too dangerous, but there’s definitely radiation spikes. Smells like a nuke to me.” the counter clicked again, “...Several, in fact.”

“What? Radiation? Our scientists…” Luna trailed off, shaking her head, “Amazing.”

“So, back home…” Andrew considered slowly, “Nuclear spacecraft put together in a hurry, laser guns, nukes…”

Melissa rubbed her forehead, “Oh shit. Cthulhu and all the Elder Gods themselves…It was...”

“War.” Andrew finished with a grimace, “Some really big one.”

“That was what we’d feared,” Luna said, “I do believe you two were lucky enough to escape a massive war on your homeworld. A war that required the use of your race’s most powerful weapons. Do either of you know what might have caused this?”

“No...no, there was nothing! Nothing!” Melissa said, her voice distant, “At least nothing Earth-based, aside from Syria, North Korea, or Trump being president...He’d probably start a war over his hands.”

“Stop it,” Andrew barked harshly, “That’s not funny right now.”

“Sorry…”

“Think it was World War III? We’ve got all those satellites, maybe they sent it up to blast them…”

“No, that’s what I was saying! Even given how long we’ve been away from home, we’d know if there was a war brewing. Aliens, definitely.”

“You were invaded?” Luna inquired.

“Best option.” Melissa grunted, kicking the floor.

“Damn it...” Andrew walked away, rubbing his face.

“I...I am so sorry.” Luna said, “...That is all I can say. I am sorry.”

Melissa sighed, trying to remain calm. She didn’t know what to do next. What now?

Andrew, with haggard breath, came back. He still needed answers, he couldn’t keep going otherwise, “Uh...Where’d you find it?”

Luna closed her eyes briefly, sighing, “Months ago, there was a shooting star reported over Dodge City and several other southern desert cities, and a series of sounds like thunder, later identified as sonic booms. No impact was felt, but a scientific expedition was lead in the direction of where it went down, hoping to recover the remains of a comet.”

“And you just...found it?” Andrew asked.

“Yes. The happy couple, Shining Armor and Princess Cadence, led the expedition, and found the craft abandoned in a dry lakebed. I am sorry, but we found no trace of the crew. However, we did find In the area a several-day old fire, and evidence of a camp. Maintenance had been done on the craft, and in the survival equipment, we found several missing items. They apparently tried to walk out.”

“So, you have no idea where they are. They could be dead for all you know!” Melissa cried, her voice breaking slightly.

“Yes. I am sorry. The area they were in was very wide, any tracks were destroyed by the wind. They could have gone anywhere.”

“Great…” Andrew grumbled.

“Why’d you hide this beautiful lady from us anyway?” Melissa demanded.

“Well, we didn’t exactly understand it. We waited to tell you until we had some knowledge of its workings…”

“You were afraid of us?” the marine guessed.

“Perhaps that had some element to it, but as I’m sure you can understand, bureaucracy had a great deal to do with this as well.”

Melissa snorted with amusement, even as her sadness increased. They still didn’t trust her and Andrew. “Bureaucracy, tell me about it.”

“I’m sorry that I can’t offer more information. This is all we have…”

Melissa furrowed her brow again. “What is it?” Andrew asked.

“Maybe it’s not the only info we have. Princess--fuck, queen--dammit, your majesty-- did you recover any kind of big and orange box from...Sophia, here?” she gestured to the craft.

It took a second for Luna to understand what she was referring to was the ship, “No, we did not. Why?”

The human did not answer. Moving to the rear hatch, Melissa hauled it open. Climbing inside, she peered around for a moment, before turning around and reaching up to something on the ceiling. She had apparently found what she was looking for.

“What are you doing?” Andrew asked.

“Gimme a minute…” there was a clack, and a clunk, “Ow! Fuck!”

Nursing a thumb, Melissa emerged with a white and orange-striped box, and several flash drives, “Least this will help us find out what happened.”

“...And if we’re the last humans alive…” Andrew muttered gloomily. Holding up his hand, he stared at the iphone he held, retrieved from the Sophia.

“What is this device? Where did it come from?” Luna queried of Melissa, trying to distract and being genuinely curious at the same time. “We have never seen it.”

On the side was printed “Flight data recorder do not open”.

“They’re usually stored in the tail section of an aircraft, cockpit voice and flight data recorder. Designed to record information from the flight. Might be able to figure out what happened to them.”

“You deal with that.” Andrew muttered, “I’m gonna go.”

He wandered away aimlessly, back through the archives.

Luna and Melissa quickly caught up with him. He didn’t seem to react, his face haunted and gaunt and pale.

Along the way, Melissa stopped back at one of the shelves. The 21st century American military exhibit. She browsed through them until she found one in particular. A United States Marine Corps Enhanced Combat Helmet(ECH), desert MARPAT camouflage covering it.
Just like the one she’d trained with, lighter and more balanced than her fire department helmet. They called them K-pots(“K” for kevlar or kraut) or Fritz helmets due to their resemblance to WWII German Stahlhelm. She picked it up with reverence and care, turning it over. A simple piece of kevlar.
Recent arrival, the manufacturing date was 2007.

Melissa stared at the helmet. A simple piece of thermoplastic polymers.

There had always been something particularly sad that struck Melissa about helmets or other equipment that turned up like this, in fact or in fiction. It was a window into the past, once a dime-a-dozen standard-issue piece of equipment common to everyone in the army that manufactured it, but now possibly the only surviving example. A simple helmet.

Far from home, out of its time, it’s original designers far gone or far away. How would they have reacted to their legacy? How would the soldiers this equipment belonged to have reacted?
A simple helmet. Designed to protect a man or woman from shrapnel and light small arms fire.

A simple helmet that represented a history, a people, a nation, a military, a branch of service, duty, honor, technology, a culture, a type of conflict, a way of thinking, a history, a world. It was an anchor to days gone by.

It was so much more than a simple helmet.

A piece of history was what it was. It was an idol.

Melissa reverently turned it over, and placed the helmet on her head. It was a loose fit, adjusted for someone with a bigger head than her own.

She readjusted it, and put it back on. It fit like a glove this time, exactly like the one she’d been issued.

A bead of liquid dropped onto her hand. She looked at it, fascinated, before she realized it was a tear.

She touched the area under her eye, and found more moisture. She was crying.

What had hit Andrew hit her as well. The marine sank to her knees, making a low keening sound. More tears came, as she buried her face in her hands.

Chapter 15

Author's Note

There is some original text/dialogue in this chapter lifted from Hands that I claim no credit for.
Forewarning: said material includes some human nudity in this chapter, and some sexual references. Nothing explicit occurs, nor is it particularly graphic. It may actually be less explicit than the original. It’s fairly unavoidable. However, I feel I should warn my readers just in case. You have been warned. REPEAT, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Chapter 15

Sitting down with a meal at one of the long tables in the Royal Palace dining hall, Melissa glumly placed a worn and dusty cardboard box on the table. She opened her ILBE backpack and placed a ruggedized laptop on the table, with “United States Navy” stamped on the side. Binders and booklets from the Sophia labeled with USAF, USN, and NASA insignia were poking out of the bag. The large white and orange flight recorder was placed on the seat beside her.

Taking a bite of her sandwich, she took out a swiss army knife and cut the tape along the edge of the cardboard box.

As the smell of old canned air met her nostrils, she smiled sadly, and flipped open the flaps within, tugging on the large styrofoam blocks.

The Eagle was still as white as the day it was manufactured, wires holding in several parts and figures. Gently, she separated the restraints and organized the little parts carefully.

No decals to put on, unlike modern toys, but the thing was a lot heavier. Rapidly, she placed the command module and engines on either end as the instructions said, and began adding the extra little bits.

Three astronauts dressed in Moonbase Alpha’s orange came with the ship, helmets, control rigs and weapons available to them. Two she placed in the command module, the third in the center section.

Resting her chin on her wrist, she stared at the toy for a long time, recalling the episodes she’d watched with her father.

Is this all that remains of Gerry Anderson’s legacy? All his shows, his creativity, his worlds...down to a single lost toy?

She took off the K-pot she still wore, staring at it. Is this the last of the US Marine Corps? Am I? Am I the last of the United States Military? The ships, the men and women, the planes, the weapons, the inventions, the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame, our entire history...and it all comes down to me?

The helmet did not answer.

A penny, two quarters, and a nickel were in her pocket. Several dollar bills in her wallet, a fifty, some 20s, and change.

Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson(the nut), George Washington...is this all they are now? Faces on a few pieces of currency? Cthulhu, is that even Washington on the quarter? Is it Hamilton who’s on the fifty?

There was so much about Earth that was missing from her memory. Fragments were all that remained. She had never finished Xenophon, nor The Iliad, she hadn't even read all the Harry Potter books. She couldn't remember the name of George Lucas’ wife, the one who'd influenced so much of Star Wars. She couldn't remember the name of the CEO of Kenner, who'd dicated the size of action figures since 1977 with nothing but his thumb and forefinger.

She couldn’t remember the name of the famous Finnish sniper in the Winter War who’d scared the Soviets so bad they carpet-bombed him. She couldn’t remember who invented the first tank. She couldn’t remember who’d been the British king during the US fight for independence.

The great wars fought after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Byzantines and the Ottomans, all that they’d done. All the Qin Dynasty had done in the short time they’d existed. The Tsars. The Iroquois. Cultures in Africa she was ashamed to admit she couldn’t name. Australia. The cargo cults of the assorted Pacific islands. The Indus Valley civilization. The Inca, Mayan, the Aztec. The good times, the bad times, the revelations, the revolutions, the outbreaks of hysteria, the parade of scandals, promises and constitutions, and the occasional war...

Great wonders of the world, the technological innovation over thousands of years, only their names were contained within her Civ V game. No details.

Life-changing religions. Judaism, Christianity, Catholicism, Islam, Paganism, Hinduism, Buddhism, ...even Scientology. None deserved to be lost, no matter what one’s opinions on them were.

No one deserved to be forgotten.

Earth, and its people. Art, technology, music, film, epics of fiction, wonders, history, great victories, defeats, heroes and villains, great destroyers and paragons of good, countless religions and philosophies, culture and inventions...everything that contributed to the great civilization that ruled the pale blue dot drifting like a mote of dust in space. The civilization that reached out into the stars, to fill the great vastness of the universe with light...was it all lost forever in the dark?

Was all this, all Earth had spawned...was all of it for nothing? Destroyed by plague or an asteroid by alien invaders?

Would they end up like the Ikarran Empire, a great society reduced to a meager handful of doomsday weapons? Toxic waste was one of those things always estimated to last the longest.

Would Voyager, the Pioneer probes, or any of the spacecraft on their way out of the solar system be able to make it to another world before their data becomes unreadable?

Perhaps certain materials had survived. She had never liked documentaries that analyzed what would outlive the human race, but now wondered if that was the wrong decision. She could not name with certainty what efforts there were to preserve humanity that had been finished, and could survive...

No! Melissa snapped at herself, Goddamn it, no! You can’t think like that!You haven’t even reviewed the flight recorder, don’t jump to conclusions because of Andrew’s doom and gloom! What do we actually know? Why the hell would you come to that conclusion?!

Earth had to have survived. Someone had to be left besides them. It just didn’t make any sense. While there were relatively easy ways to exterminate the human race, with biological weapons or throwing asteroids at the planet, few of them would allow human technology to engage them. There wouldn’t be any time to develop new spacecraft. Likely the aliens were trying to invade Earth rather than destroy it, so they might be limited in their attacks compared to total annihilation. If they were trying to move in, they’d still want real estate.

While whatever attack involving the Sophia might have driven the aliens off, there was the risk they might take a page out of David Weber’s books, specifically Out of the Dark. If humanity gave them too much trouble, they might have decided to cut their losses and just wipe them from the universe with plague or orbital bombardment.

However, even with planetary-wide devastation using orbital bombardment, there were underground facilities built to withstand Tsar Bombas, submarines, and hidden bases. A plague would leave even more survivors, albeit few. Either way, they wouldn’t be alone.

Someone else survived. They had to. They had to.

With that depressing thought out of the way, the Eagle became not a sad reminder of a creator who’d died only a few years ago after a long life...but of family. Of a family lost far, far away.

He’d had one as a kid, her dad had told her. Lost years ago, but he’d watched every new episode with it.

Melissa smiled. If she ever made it home, she would have a gift for him. This thing was mint condition.

Rapidly, she did her best to return the contents to the box, sealing it with several strips of duct tape. She would have to find a crate to preserve it in.

There were other toys and fragments of her childhood down there. She’d have plenty of other stuff to interact with. She hoped to dig into the Star Wars: The Clone Wars memorabilia, perhaps she could even find an Ahsoka figure. Or maybe she’d investigate all the GI Joe toys. She felt the need for a bit of home. A distraction, to keep the world out.

The Clone Wars had been a big part of her childhood and teen years. GI Joe as well, but earlier. They were links to home. It wasn’t just distraction she wanted, she needed it for hiraeth.

The flight recorder caught her eye. First she needed answers.

She turned her attention to the laptop, booting up windows 10 and taking a long time to do so. As she waited, her mind wandered.

Melissa had stayed away from the members of the Mane Six, a little unintentionally, when she emerged from the archives.

Briefly she had tried talking to Andrew earlier, but a certain butter-yellow pegasus had beaten her to it.

The marine had hovered outside the door, unsure of whether to interrupt them.

"... You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," Fluttershy was saying to him, "I just... I think you might feel better if you did."

Andrew took a deep breath, then exhaled. There was a long silence. "... My dad told me once that, you have inside of you a box, a box that you put things into," I said. "The stuff you can't deal with right now. You keep it there because to deal with it all at once would just overwhelm you, drown you. You'd lose yourself to it. But as time goes on, you keep having to put away things in the box, more and more, just to get by. You try to find the time to deal with it, to work through it, but it just seems like there isn't enough time. That you can't face it. You put a lock on it..."

"... But as time goes on, there's just so much stuff that even a lock won't keep it back anymore," Fluttershy said softly. "Especially if you lose the lock."

Another pause.

"Don't look so surprised," Fluttershy said, "I... I know what it is to keep things locked up... Even when I shouldn't. You know that very well."

Melissa had shaken her head, and stalked away as quietly as she could. They have no idea. They don’t understand.

Silverbolt, whose presence was less noticeable over time, spoke to her. He seemed to only appear whenever she was stressed or anxious. Perhaps the magical implant was fading over time. “Maybe they would, Melissa. You never know. Remember the last time you kept your emotions bottled up.”

“That was different. This is a matter for the Temporal Prime Directive. I must not --cannot-- tell them anything.”

“It has not always been the correct path. How often has it been in Star Trek?”

“Keeping the timeline intact allowed them to win World War II, got the Bell Riots on the right track--”

“And to do that they had to interfere, at least a small amount.”

Melissa looked at Silverbolt, “What do you think I’m trying to do? I tried to make planes for them, I tried to make machine guns! I barely managed artillery, helmets, and cartridge-loaders!”

“But you could do more! Just tell Twilight, tell Andrew, tell someone…”

“Tell Twilight?!” she nearly shrieked, before slapping a hand over her mouth, and bolting.

Melissa snapped herself back to the present, as the computer finally booted up. The password was no problem, it was on a piece of tape stuck to the screen.

She inserted two flash drives labeled “Property of NASA”, and plugged the flight recorder into the speaker jack.

Several windows popped up. One was a collection of audio files, a second presented video files from internal and external cameras, a third instrumentation data, and more offered additional information.

At first, she didn’t know where to begin. She started poking around in the instrumentation data, figuring out what was what. There were many, many entries, as to be expected. Among the ones she focused on were timestamps for the release from the previous launch stages, thruster and main engine burns, when the lasers were fired, the missiles set off, etc.
There were several entries that made her curious. An unusually long main engine burn in between launch and reentry, the airlock being opened while there was no atmosphere outside the spacecraft, and geiger counters spiking during launch, up until the release of the main stage.

Stranger still, when she followed up on the unusual engine burn, the data on the audio logs, video, and instrumentation just...cut out, after a massive energy spike was detected directly ahead of the spacecraft, at about the right position lidar and radar records said another ship was located.

Making things even weirder, the ship wasn’t anything she knew of made on Earth. It was the size of a Wasp-class Amphibious Assault Ship.

Long range sensors picked up several more vessels, some equal to the Sophia in size, and some as big as Nimitz-class, one of the largest classes of warship ever built.

Restarting, Melissa carefully went through the records in chronological order. Sensors were activated at a certain point, then the countdown to ignition began. She pulled up the video from that time slot, and simply stared, dumbfounded at what she saw.

There was a video editing system available on the computer, and the marine quickly used it to stitch the camera footage and audio logs together, arranging them by date. She had to show this to Andrew. Even the little teases she could see were enough to give her hope. She could finish it later, but she had to show him at least something.

Melissa closed up everything, putting it in her backpack or stacking it on the Eagle box. She didn’t actually know where to stash the flight recorder and the Eagle. It might take too long to go to her house, who could she trust to get it there?

She spotted across the hall a group of Royal Guards eating their meals, wearing their khaki fatigues instead of their armor. One was a unicorn who had a light-red mane with a streak of lime-green in it, and a pair of Harry Potter-style glasses.

Melissa went over subtlety, casually, and tapped the unicorn on the shoulder. “Hey, Gambit! Wild Gambit!”

Royal Guard Private Wild Gambit glanced around, jumping a little upon seeing her, “Oh, Corporal Foster! Join us--”

“Sorry man, don’t have time. Listen…”

She paused, considering. “Our first gaming session. What interrupted it, what was happening, and how did I react?”

Wild Gambit scratched his head, “Uh...the first? You were arguing with Shining Armor about the rules of the game, then there was some yelling outside…”

He grinned, “Hey, guys, this is mare I was telling you about, the one who beat up Silver Quill!”

The other guards all began clamoring at once, congratulating her for doing something they weren’t legally allowed to do. At least when he wasn’t bothering the palace.

Satisfied with the answer, Melissa held up a hand, “Guys, I hate to break this up, but I need you to do something for me.”

She leaned in close, “This is an important mission. I need you to take these boxes back to my house, lock it up, and establish a perimeter around the place. Keep the garage protected too. Don’t let anyone inside. Keep an eye on each other, don’t let any of you out of at least one other’s sight. Come up with a few challenge questions only you guys would know, make sure the others won’t know the answer. Don’t tell anyone about this, keep it top secret. Got it?”

Oddly enough, they didn’t ask too many questions, not even when she gave them a sign/countersign to use on her. Though being Royal Guards for freaking Canterlot, they were probably used to all sorts of weird behavior and requests. Perhaps with the threat of attack, many others were taking similar precautions as well.

Burdened now with only a backpack, the marine searched the palace, looking for the only member of her species around.

Asking around led her to a mid-sized dining area that went out onto a balcony, in one of the areas reserved for nobility. That was where the Mane Six was located, along with several others, including Shining Armor, Andrew...and Cadence.

Melissa walked in the door, nearly run over by Rarity and Applejack, each dragging out Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie respectfully.

“Karabast...What’s going on? Dash, what did you do?”

“Why do you think I did something?” the pegasus demanded.

“I don’t, I’m blaming you and/or Pinkie Pie. You’re just slightly more coherent.”

Rarity released Rainbow, “Andrew, Twilight, Fluttershy, and the lucky couple deserved some privacy. Away from gossiping ponies!” she turned a stern gaze on the blue and pink ponies.

Melissa rubbed her face, relieved for some reason, “Alright, thanks…Oh, one more thing. Rainbow, I say Normandy.”

Dash blinked, then it clicked, “Beach?”

“Got it. Rarity? Hubble.”

“...Telescope.” Rarity replied.

“Applejack, barn?”

“Yard. Melissa, what is with these questions?”

Melissa turned to Pinkie, but answered, “Security. Pinkie Pie, dead…?”

“Deadpool!” Pinkie replied, then pointed at Melissa’s head, “Where’d you get the K-pot?”

Melissa jumped back, her hand reaching into her jacket, “How’d you know that’s what it’s called?”

“Six months ago, you were telling Rainbow Dash about standard-issue Marine Corps equipment, and you drew a picture of it and said it was a K-pot!”

Melissa thought back, “Rainbow, do you remember that?”

“Eh, kinda.”

Shrugging, Melissa let her hand down, “Good enough. I found it in a crackerjack box. Now if you’ll excuse me…”

Applejack stepped around to try and get in her path, “Melissa, they really needed some privacy--”

“What kind of privacy? Serious, soap opera, or they just needed the partiers out of there?”

“Um…”

“I’m sure I’ll be fine. Besides, I might need to rescue Andrew in case he says something stupid.”

Applejack opened her mouth to object, then shrugged, “Good point.”

Luck was on Melissa’s side when she opened the door. Apparently, the awkwardness was over with, those inside noted her presence did not protest.

The five inside seemed to be separated into several groups around a table. Fluttershy and Twilight were on one side close to Andrew, while Shining Armor sat opposite them a few seats away from Cadence. His expression was odd; happy, but vacant.

Andrew was talking to the so-called princess of love, and paused mid sentence at marine’s approach.

He realized one of her hands was balled into a fist, her eyes scanning every corner for something she apparently didn’t find.

When she saw Cadence, her eyes narrowed, and the open hand moved toward her shoulder holster, before falling.

“Go on,” Cadence said, bringing Andrew’s attention back, “What were you asking me about?”

“Oh, sorry. I wanted to ask you about the ship you and Shining found.”

“Ship?” Twilight and Fluttershy asked.

Melissa stepped in, “Wait, what? Ask her?”

Cadence turned her attention toward the marine. Andrew noted her eyes fixing on the helmet, scanning Melissa’s fatigues and combat boots. A look of disdain spread across the alicorn’s face. “Ah, Corporal Foster, was it? I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of meeting.”

Melissa took the princess’ extended hoof and shook it, “No, we have not.”

“I hope you have no intention of storming off for no good reason in the manner of a petulant child this time.”

“If you would refrain from insulting me further, perhaps I would deign to acquiesce to your request.”

Andrew rubbed his face, “Melissa...remember the last time you insulted royalty?”

Cadence withdrew her hoof from Melissa’s grip, shaking it a bit as she glanced at it in mild disgust, “Perhaps I was out of line. Regardless, we were having a discussion. Mr. Shepherd, you were asking about the...Sophia, was it?”

“Yes, that’s correct…” Andrew briefly tilted his head to look at Shining Armor, concerned. Melissa turned to look as well, taking a closer look at the unicorn’s vacant expression. His mouth hung slightly open and his pupils dilated. He looked completely stoned, to be honest.

Andrew watched Melissa wince. He wondered why she wasn't doing anything physical or verbal. She remained still and quiet. He had half-expected her to be giving the unicorn a medical check, not just stand there silently.

“The Sophia?” Twilight asked, drawing Andrew’s attention, “Am I missing something here?”

Cadence looked at the unicorn, and Andrew noted her expression. Even if she had completely changed since Twilight’s youth, there should have been some sign of recognition, something to indicate a history...but there was nothing. Pony body language was weird, he guessed that was the answer.

“Some months ago, Shining Armor and I discovered a human spacecraft in the dry lake near Dodge City. It was confiscated, though I did not know it was stored here in the palace.” her eyes took on a sudden intensity, fixing on Andrew. Melissa furrowed her brow, and returned the odd mare’s gaze. She moved to stand beside the archaeologist with her arms crossed.

“Really?” Twilight exclaimed, “That’s wonderful news!”

Fluttershy mumbled an unfortunate addition, “But...it might mean that they’re the last of their kind.”

Twilight’s brief happy expression shattered. One of pure shock was left, and she gaped.

“W...what?” she whispered.

Andrew rubbed his face, and Melissa cast her eyes down. “We don’t have anything conclusive, but it seems Earth has been attacked by a large-scale extraterrestrial invasion force with unknown capabilities. I have no frakking idea what happened. I’m still going through the flight recorder.”

Twilight looked at the humans in a mix of horror, pity, and general disbelief. Humanity...gone?

Hesitantly, the unicorn reached out to Andrew and hugged him around the midsection. “I... I don’t--”

“I know,” Andrew sighed, his voice cracking. He knew somewhat that if Earth had the strength to build space warships, that they may have survived, but the chances of a pyrrhic victory, massive casualties, or even the deaths of his family were all too real.

Melissa spoke up again, “There’s no confirmatory evidence that we’re all that’s left. There’s gotta at least be Cheyenne Mountain or something. That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about, Andrew…”

She trailed off, realizing that this wasn’t the time.

Eventually, Cadence gently pulled Twilight away from Andrew, “Fluttershy, you seem to understand what is happening. Would you be so kind as to fill her in? It may be best if the humans and I handle this…”

She paused, looking at Shining Armor, “...alone.”

The instant she said it, Shining snapped out of his stupor, “Oh…” he rubbed his head, then brightened up, “Must’ve dozed off there for a minute. Sure, I can leave. Come on Twilight, Fluttershy. We still need to catch up, right?”

Melissa sucked in a breath, “Um...uh...I...we have to do something, just remembered. Andrew and I.”
She abruptly gave a victorious expression to Cadence, “You people didn’t even know how to make a telegraph without my help. How could Fluttershy explain interplanetary warfare and diplomacy better than we could?”

Andrew suddenly pulled her close, and hissed in her ear, “The pilots! She might know what happened to them! I don’t like it anymore than you do, but we have to know!”

Melissa cursed, “Alright. We’ll stay for five minutes.”

Twilight looked at Melissa, concerned. The marine rubbed her face, and shrugged helplessly.

Andrew nodded hesitantly toward the door, “We’ll be alright.”

Unsure of what to do, Twilight left. Fluttershy lingered a moment more, but Twilight pulled her along and pulled the door shut behind them.

Melissa cursed again, and turned around. The room was deathly silent, the humans staring down the suddenly-smug princess across the table. She was sizing them up like pieces of meat.

Cadence casually leaned back in a chair, drawing a circle on the table with her hoof, “What did you wish to know?”

Andrew took the edge of one chair, pony furniture still not designed for bipedal beings. Melissa remained standing, her arms crossed.

“Well...how did you find it?” the archaeologist asked.

“Shining Armor and I were out on a romantic getaway to Dodge City, when there were a series of sonic booms, and there was a streak of light in the sky. It passed overhead, lasting much longer than a typical shooting star, and making controlled adjustments to its flight path. The scientists we joined believed it to be a simple meteorite, but we knew better.”

“How?” Melissa asked, “Lots of things in nature can appear to be controlled. Take binary stars for example. They transmit binary signals, as you can guess, which were thought to be artificial but in reality it’s only a natural phenomenon.”
Andrew facepalmed. He couldn’t remember if shooting stars could give off such an illusion, but he was pretty sure she was more interested in pissing the princess off.

Cadence’s mouth twitched, “I suppose we didn’t know for sure. It was really more of a guess. That is why we went on the expedition, after all. After several days of travel, we reached the landing site, and found the craft. It was abandoned, the hatches all sealed and the remains of a camp scattered around.”
She bowed her head, “I’m afraid the operator, or operators, must have walked into the desert in the wrong direction, and their tracks scattered to the winds. We found no trace of them.”

Now it was Andrew’s turn to curse.

Melissa had never looked more eager to leave, stepping up and grabbing Andrew by the arm, “Thanks for nothing, Candy, but we gotta get going. Human shit to do, you know how it is. Or you don’t. Whatever, goodbye.”

Cadence stepped around the table. She brushed up uncomfortably close to Andrew, “Wait! Tell me...where they are keeping the Dream Chaser?”

Melissa stepped between them and pushed the princess back, “Whoa, personal space, lady!”

Cadence seemed disgusted by the physical contact, “I am sorry...princess of love, and all that.”

“Don’t blame your behavior on your profession, dumbass. I could sue you back home for that!”

“And I could have much worse to you done here.” Cadence replied, smirking. Andrew didn’t like the look in her eyes.

Melissa pulled out Glamdring, holding it by her side, “I don’t see anyone else in here. I got a few clips of bullets and superior combat training. I’d like to see--”

Andrew grabbed Melissa by the shoulders, gently pulling her along, “Okay, she’s right, we have to be going now! Lots to do, lots to be depressed about, the usual stuff. See you later.”

Out of earshot, he demanded almost hysterically, “What on earth is wrong with you?! You’re going to get us killed!”

Melissa looked straight ahead, “Andrew, back home, if a man did that to a woman, it would be sexual harassment city. I’m trying to make sure that doesn’t become the standard.”

He stopped walking, shaking his head, “That’s different from threatening to murder her! Jesus, what is so crazy about this mission of yours that it’s driving you off the deep end?”

Melissa stopped as well, and looked down at her boots, remaining silent.

Andrew laughed without humor, “Jesus, really? What are you, six? Come talk to me when you grow up!”

He stormed off. Melissa cursed repeatedly, glancing around in a cautious manner before stalking off herself.

XXXXX

In his wandering around the castle, Andrew found himself halting at a window in a darkened hallway. It was a clear night, there was an amazing view of the landscape in the valley below the mountain, and he could almost make out the light of Ponyville in the distance.

He felt a tightening in his chest as he saw the town, and his face contorted. He felt a seizing feeling in his sinuses, and the archeologist rubbed at his nose.

Andrew looked up at the stars above. The majesty and scale of the great Milky Way hovered overhead, dozens of stars twinkling in the same way they had for humans since they climbed out of the primordial muck. No matter what happened down in the dirt, there was always one speck of safety, one moment of perfect beauty in the dark. He thought he might have even seen some shooting stars.

His dad had told him when he was a baby, that simply getting a good look at the stars always calmed him down. Andrew guessed there was some embellishment, perhaps it was the motion that did it, but he had to admit...a clear night of stars always helped him.

Perhaps the heavens, and their resemblance to Earth’s own stars, were what had kept him sane the long days after his arrival. The uncertainty, the anxiety, the fear, the pain…

Kept back those feelings that were all coming back.

Rubbing his face, Andrew tired not to think about Earth, about what might have happened.

It was strange how stars brought both happiness and misery to him; they didn’t bring to mind Earth per se, but in his attempts to blot it out of his head, the stars instead brought to mind Voyager 1. Their golden message in a bottle cast out into interstellar space.

Maybe someone would find it in a thousand years. Maybe they would learn about homo sapien sapiens, learn of their achievements.

He heard Melissa’s footsteps. No one else wore combat boots.

In the dark hallway, he could barely see her. She seemed so small now, her imposing presence had shrunk. She was looking out at the stars too, her combat helmet clutched to her chest.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Andrew croaked.

Melissa coughed, and said “Um...I’m sorry about earlier. I was mad, and she’s a massive bitch.”

Andrew took off his glasses, rubbing his nose, “Yeah, we were both mad, I guess. Still am.”

“And we’re both going nuts because of all this stress on us. Dude, I’m sorry. It...it has to do with the shapeshifters. I’ve gotta be careful who I talk to!”

“You saying you think I’m a shapeshifter?” He growled.

“No. I just don’t know if I can trust your ability to stand up under interrogation.”

Andrew grimaced, but his anger faded. He snorted a little, “Yeah...you’re right about that.”

Melissa scratched her head, “Heh…”

They avoided eye contact with one another, looking back outside.

“‘It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience...;’” Melissa quoted, “‘it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.’”

“Who said that?”

“Carl Sagan. Neil Degrasse Tyson of his day. He died in the 90s. There was a photo they took from Voyager 1 looking back at Earth from pretty far out, and all you could see was a little blue dot. ‘Every confident religion, every coward and hero, every corrupt politician, every peasant and king, every supreme leader...’ uh… ’every human being that has ever existed lived there, on the pale blue dot’...”

She cursed, “There was more. I can’t remember. It was a great speech, and…”

“And now it might be gone for good.” Andrew whispered.

Melissa shook her head, “No. It’s not. It’s written down somewhere back home; hell, it might be in our basement.”

“Uh-huh…”

Melissa looked him in the eyes, “I mean it. We’re not all that’s left.”

“How do you know?”

“We’re human, Andrew. We find a way. We’ve survived worse than a little alien invasion. I promise you someone has survived, and that we will make it home. I was trying to tell you earlier, I don’t think we lost the war. Earth may have been devastated, if at all, but we didn’t lose the war.”

“Why?” Andrew asked, “How?”

“Okay, you ever read the novel Footfall?”

“Yeah…?”

Melissa paused, “Wait, you have?”

“Yes. I think I told you this already.”

“Oh...good then. God, so few people have read it. From what I can gather, the Sophia was on a ship like the Michael, and they were dong some sort of operation to take back the orbitals--”

Melissa held up a hand suddenly, “Do you hear that?”

Andrew listened. Footsteps.

Around the corner, a dark shape leaned out, with a familiar mane, “Hey, you two!” Pinkie Pie called out.

“Pinkie--?” Andrew said, but she darted out of sight. Her giggling echoed in a most uncomfortable fashion. He turned the corner, only to see her disappear down another corridor. He thought something was off about her silhouette, and the way she was running…

Melissa grabbed his wrist, and pulled him, “C’mon! Stay behind me!”

“Where is she going?!”

“How the fuck should I know? I just work here!”

They sprinted after the pink pony through darkened hallways, passing eerie suits of armor and paintings with eyes that seemed to follow them. The darkness almost crept in on them as they ran, so much so that Melissa switched on the light on her sidearm. Pinkie was too fast for it to catch her though.

At last, they came to an intersection, their target lost.

“Damn, damn, damn it!” Melissa cursed, her laser sight scanning the shadows, “Check your targets!”

“I don’t have a gun!”

“I meant for me, idiot!”

“Over this way…” Pinkie Pie suddenly sang, and they saw her odd silhouette bounce around a corner toward whatever was spewing light onto the floor. The light disappeared, with the sound of an opening and closing door.

The two came around the corner, and could see light coming from under the door.
Melissa took out her magazine, checked it, and slammed it back in, “Fuck, fuck, fuck fuckberries. Oh, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuuuuck.”

“What?” Andrew demanded anxiously.

She rubbed her face, “God damn it.”

“What?!”

“What do you think, you pickled herring?!”

“...what?”

Melissa growled, and kicked the door with a mighty blow. Again. And again.

On the third blow, the door hinges creaked dangerously. The lock splintered and it flew open.

She stepped inside, to be met with a cry of “Surprise!” uttered by the wielders of the Elements of Harmony, surrounding them and throwing their arms up in the air with happy smiles on their faces.

Arms…?
“What the...fuck?” Melissa gurgled, her pistol still raised.

The Mane Six before her were not ponies. Not anymore.

The very human Elements of Harmony waved their arms up in the air, bearing human faces, legs, and assorted body parts. All were extremely...exposed, completely unaware of human social norms despite many opportunities in which they should have learned them.

“Oh...my…” Andrew croaked as he entered the room, his eyes as big as dinner plates.

Twilight smiled, “Well, after Fluttershy told us what happened…”

“We realized you’d all be super sad!” Pinkie Pie said loudly, “And we wanted to find a way to be good and supportive friends, so…”

"We decided to have Twilight turn us all into humans to cheer you both up!" Rainbow Dash said cheerfully, "What do you think?"

Melissa blinked, many many times. She wasn’t processing what the group was saying, as they admired their human appearances. She was still trying to process the situation as a whole.

The Mane Six were interesting individuals. Sometimes they could be very kind and understanding, and other times they pull stunts like this. Despite what one might think, especially with their teasing flirts with Andrew, it was not out of any sexual motivation that they did this.
They honestly cared about their friends’ well-being, and believed that this was the best way to help them. They’d gone to extreme lengths for their friends before, Pinkie Pie especially with her distinct lack of shame risking embarrassment just to make her friends happy.
I mean they haven’t done things exactly like this before, at least not yet. Motherfucker, Equestria is weird.

For the most part, the potion worked. Skin, hands, feet, general body shape was all spot-on, clearly homo sapiens sapiens. However, it was only for the most part.
Their skin, while human, was still the same color as their coats of fur in pony form, as did their hair match their manes.

The most glaring flaw were the elements pony biology that remained. In addition to human ears on the sides of their skulls, the Mane Six still had their fluffy pony ears(still with fur, thank god, flesh would just be creepy). Twilight and Rarity still had horns. Their hair reached down to behind the knees--likely a combination of the length of hair their manes had and their tails. The material transfer between the two forms recycled them into one unit.
Both Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash still had wings as well. Based on the fact that Dash was hovering two feet off the ground, and Fluttershy’s futile attempts to use them to cover herself, they seemed to be fully functional. Somehow.

All the former ponies seemed to be having trouble with motor skills, balance and coordination. Understandable, they’d likely had at best a few hours to figure it out. Their postures were all in varying degrees of “off”, hunched over or crouched, their arms crooked, etc.

And again, they still had no idea what pants or shirts were for.

There were other female attributes they possessed that Melissa was extremely uncomfortable with describing as anything other than...attractive? Somehow, all of them had picturesque enviable physiques, or would be so back on Earth. Melissa guessed it was due to their active 19th century lifestyle that made them fit and healthy in pony form also making them fit in human forms.
She was certain the drooling eggplant next to her formerly known as Andrew would have loved to describe their beauty. That was probably what his internal monologue was at the moment, extremely lewd descriptions of their sweet sensual--

Realizing what was happening, Melissa immediately clapped a hand over Andrew’s eyes, and stared at the ceiling herself. “Girls,” she began slowly, “Next time you do something like this...Ugh, I can’t even...Andrew, get outta here.”

“But wait, it was a surprise for both of you!” Pinkie Pie said. Not that Melissa could see her, the roofing tiles looked really interesting…

“Fine. Stick him in the corner, and for the love of god let’s find y’all some goddamn clothes.”

“No, I’m fine!” Andrew protested somewhat, trying to pull Melissa’s hand off his eyes.

“For the love of god, Andy! I am going to find some duct tape if you don’t shut up and keep your eyes on inanimate objects until I tell you otherwise!”

“But--”

“Speaking as the only authority on human female rules around here, what I say goes! So shut the fuck up and look at that goddamn wall like you’re in the Blair Witch Project!”

Shoving Andrew into the corner, she spun about, “The rest of you! For the love of every Elder God, do not start hitting on either of us! I will hit anyone who touches him!”

Melissa put her pistol away, turned around and fanned her neck, taking several rapid breaths.
Even for a straight female such as herself, this was a bit much. She’d run out of fresh porn months ago, and had been very...lonely.
“Just...just everybody stay on opposite sides of the room from each other while I have a panic attack.”

Andrew briefly glanced back to look at her, his eyes twitching in their efforts to both avoid and not avoid looking up. He was probably doing even worse than she was. A straight 20-something male without anything to tide him over...it was like feeding a starving man a feast.
Melissa leaned against him with one hand, rubbing her head, “Dude, I was prepared for the Middle East. I had porn stockpiled, but you said nooo...”

“I was afraid of what you might have! I'm not going to look at your porn, I bet it's really weird stuff! Get off my back!”

Melissa leaned over, hugging her chest and breathing more rapidly.

“Melissa, are you feeling alright?” Rarity asked.

“No, not really! Cthulhu, somewhere out there some furries are touching themselves inappropriately…”
Her stomach rolled uncomfortably as confusing emotions ran through her, “Oh god, you guys probably should’ve warned us about this…”

“Yeah…” Applejack muttered, “That seems like it would’ve been a good idea…”

“I tried to say something…about letting them know what we wanted to do, that is...” Fluttershy squeaked.

“Oh my god,” Melissa moaned, “maybe you should’ve considered the abuse we’ve taken. God, what my organs have taken recently...mineralization, stress, Chaos demon, poison joke, gluten contamination…”

“Wasn’t my fault!” Pinkie Pie shouted, “I didn’t know it would be a problem!”

“You put croutons in my goddamn soup you pink hydrocarbon!”

Twilight chuckled nervously, stepping over and succeeding in making both natural humans blush even more furiously, “Okay, everypony calm down--!”

Melissa turned away, and took a deep breath. She was a soldier, nudity wasn’t a taboo they could afford. We’re all adults here, let’s…
She snapped her eyes shut the instant she turned around. Then why do I feel like a sex offender? Cthulhu’s balls, let’s try this again.
The marine took a deep breath once again, and opened her eyes. A professional demeanor filled her, sealing her emotions off from her intellect.

“Twilight.”

“Yes?”

“Can you still teleport? To section 13?”

“Yes, of course,” Twilight replied.

Rarity added, “We were somewhat expecting a reaction to this, but…” she glanced at Applejack, “Somepony suggested it may not be a good idea to dig into human clothing until we have one of you two to explain social standards. There was also the chance that we would not be able to understand your clothing well enough and might damage something important, though that was more my reasoning than anyone else’s.”

Melissa was still looking at the ceiling, and squeaked, “Good thinking…”

Once they were in the warehouse, Melissa took charge.“Alright, everybody. 21st century aisle, let’s go. Andrew, you go ahead of me. You stare and I’ll court-martial you.”

“I’m not military!”

“Then I’ll punch you.”

Melissa walked through the group to lead the way, her hand still over Andrew’s eyes.

Leading the way to the 21st century aisle, she gestured around at all the shelves, “This stuff’s the most comfortable, and the most intact. Take things that aren’t delicate. First priority is underwear, please. Next, shoes. Human feet are more delicate than hooves, and I doubt you girls have any calluses anyway.”

Seating Andrew down in a folding chair and facing him toward a wall, Melissa gathered some random bits and pieces of attire, and passed them to who they seemed to fit. She didn’t bother with anything beyond t-shirts or pants, not in the mood to explain the concept of bras and other undergarments.

Most of the Mane Six took to their forms rather well, assembling outfits that fit their personalities. Disturbingly attractive outfits, most of the time. No taboos against nudity also meant that they had no sense of what was and wasn’t revealing.
Melissa deliberately avoided recalling what most of them wore at first. She got to Applejack’s extremely tight one-size-too-small plaid shirt before she gave up and simply ordered them to choose new clothing.
She’d be damned if she was going to let things turn into a porno.

Rarity was continually working with her fingers, opening and closing them, putting them into odd positions, and holding various objects she found after pulling on clothing. T-shirt and shorts under a cloak or robe of some kind made from polyester, “I hadn’t realized how different these would be from hooves...they feel far more flexible!”

Pinkie Pie grinned. Wearing a big coat over a shirt and pants, she lay on her back on the ground, trying to pull on a pair of shoes that were too small. She contorted her legs to pull her foot close to her eyes. Her incredible flexibility in pony form extended to human form apparently, “There’s a lot more on these bodies that are flexible! These toe things, these weird little ears, these two big--”

Melissa stuck her fingers in her ears and started singing for a moment until Pinkie finished.

Applejack, who didn’t seem all that bothered by the transformation of her physical form, was rubbing her eyes, “Pinkie, you’re embarrassing Melissa! Would ya please calm down fer a second! You’re gonna give the poor filly a heart attack!” She wore a plaid dress shirt and jeans, looking like every rural female stereotype.

Rainbow Dash, who had found pants but not much else, was busy hovering on the upper tiers of the shelves of human clothing, “Aw, it’s fine Applejack!”

The former pegasus zipped down to land in front of Melissa, a mischievous grin on her face, “You’re fine, right Melissa? What’s a little nudity to a soldier? You’re straight anyway, what’s the problem with seeing stuff like this?”
The notorious joker was apparently intent on breaking Melissa’s mind, what with the way she was moving and that never-ending grin of hers.

Melissa turned beet-red, looking Rainbow dead in the eyes to avoid staring at her breasts. Great. I had to make friends with the pathological teaser.

The marine screwed her eyes shut. She turned to a nearby shelf, and began beating her head against the support beam, “Why is my life a creepy fanfiction?!”

Pinkie Pie shrugged, “Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad! Not every story can avoid the cringy bits!”

“What--? Whatever...” Melissa shook her head then went back to beating her head.

“Hey, maybe we should experiment with Andrew…” Rainbow snickered, unable to resist going deeper.

Pinkie got it, “Ooh, they were saying he was without any mares for a good long while…”

And that’s when I shot them, your honor.

“Rainbow, Pinkie!” Twilight scolded, appearing from around a corner. Unlike the others who seemed to relish in embarrassing Melissa, Twilight had paid attention to the human social norms since they arrived. Thus, she knew exactly what to do. She found appropriate modest clothing that worked for protection against the elements, had all the necessary components, and dressed out of sight. She wore a long-sleeve shirt, jeans or pants of some kind, and sneakers. “Can’t you two be adult about this?”

“But Twilight…” Rainbow drew out the word, “C’mon! It’s just a bit of fun!”

Twilight was clearly resisting an urge to laugh, but rubbed her eyes, “Girls, an individual’s natural sexual instincts are sometimes a source of amusement, but it is also very embarrassing for the individual. Especially after going for so long without any sort of physical relationship beyond self-pleasuring. And I wish you wouldn’t hit on my coltfriend like that, especially considering you know about his problems! So would you please--”

“Oh, I don’t know Twilight,” Rainbow Dash said, zipping over to be millimeters away from Twilight’s face, “Maybe we could find a way for them to relax. Maybe...both of us could experiment with--?”

Applejack snatched Rainbow’s hair and dragged her back, “RD, they’ve had enough! Same for you, Pinkie! Rarity, good on you for not starting anything!”
Rarity nodded a little smugly, “A lady may discuss topics relating to matters of sex, but not in such...lewd manners. How childish of you two!”

Twilight sighed with relief, “Thanks you two. Now, Rainbow, can you find some sort of shirt?”

Dash got her hair out of Applejack’s grip, and grinned nervously. “Yeah, about that…”

Rainbow scratched the back of her neck in embarrassment; she stopped, and stared at her hand in amazement at the act before continuing with a nervous grin, “Mel...Can we cut some holes in shirts for our wings? It’s pretty hard to keep them under like this...”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Melissa asked, then caught sight of Fluttershy sticking her head around the corner Twilight had emerged from, still attempting to cover herself with her wings. It seemed as though she’d figured out exactly how much shame she “needed” to have, and was responding in a typical manner for her.

Melissa inhaled sharply, but replied with a curt “No. I’m sorry. We have to keep as much of this stuff intact as possible. The fabrics alone are important. I’m okay with tonight’s little romp, but we have to keep as much of these things untouched as we can.”

“I told you she wouldn’t...” Fluttershy muttered.

“I wasn’t--No, I can fix this. I think I got an idea.”

She scanned through the shelves, and found a few items. She came back with two pairs of coveralls, one lime-green, and the other dark olive-drab green.
“Try not to rip these. I figure there’s enough room for you to stretch your wings in these things without getting stuck, but don’t try fully extending them. If you wanna do that...oh my god, talk to me about that later.” Karabast. Bra conversation earlier than I thought.

Fluttershy’s outfit was a lime jumpsuit green with white highlights, but otherwise nondescript. Otherwise, it seemed to fit her personality, oddly enough. Modest and didn’t really attract the eye.

Rainbow Dash’s coveralls didn’t exactly attract the eye either, but while its colors were bland, it was functional. It was covered in zippers and loops and strips of velcro, with “US Army” stamped along one breast.
“Who did this belong to? If it’s army, it doesn’t look like your gear.” Dash asked as she pulled the suit on.

“Well for one, I’m a marine, and for another, It’s a aviator flight suit, for pilots. It looked about your size, and I figured you’d like it.”

Rainbow zipped it up, “Oh yeah! flyers? Say no more! This is what your military wears?! It’s the most comfortable thing I’ve ever worn! No itches at all!”

“Drab, unfortunately.” Rarity said, walking over and studying it, “I thought the United States used that pretty camouflage on their uniforms.”

“The Air Force never does,” Melissa said, “Dunno why. Seems a little stupid, thinking about it. The Army’s flight suits followed the same pattern, but these got phased out in 2005 so I hear. Their new gear is all camouflage.”

“Well, it’s not all bad, at least. What’s this?” Rarity pulled at one of the shoulders. Attached to one of the velcro spots was a patch.

“Squadron insignia, normally.” Melissa’s curiosity was piqued, “What’s it say?”

“‘1-101 Aviation Regiment, expect no mercy’.” Rarity read out, and smirked, “I see certain military traditions are alike all over.”

The inscription was in a yellow and white red border, in line with six yellow stars. Inside the border was an AH-64 Apache helicopter in the foreground, while in the background an eagle loomed on the right side, and an american flag on the other.

“That’s a rotor head regiment, obviously. Never heard of…” Melissa trailed off, something distant in her memory sparking.

“...So what happened?” Douglas Foster asked, his voice trailing out of the office and into the hallway. The blonde-and-red-haired nine-year-old outside halted in her tracks, nervous to pass in front of the open door down the hall.

“I reported the position, made a few passes to keep the ragheads off ‘em and returned to base. Rescue party found the helo, a total write-off, but the crew was missing.”

“What’s so weird about that? They’ll probably turn up for ransom at some point, or…”
Melissa peeked in the door, seeing her father grimace and not finish his sentence. He looked back at the Dell laptop on his desk, scrolling through something. Her mother, Air Force 2nd Lieutenant Elaine Foster leaned against the back of his chair, making a similar expression, as if she knew what he was implying.
“That’s what I thought too, but no one knew where they were. The ground-pounders couldn’t find them, observation flights couldn’t see anything, the locals didn’t know anything, it’s like they just vanished.”
Her mother, still dressed in her USAF uniform since coming home a few hours ago, gestured to the screen, “ Look at how big that street is! There should have been a dozen different sources who saw them, satellite, army, locals, someone! But I was the last person to see them!”

Douglas pointed at the same image. Melissa could barely make out an Apache helicopter sitting lopsided in the dirt, “El’, there would’ve been a ton of dust. They would have been easy to miss. Maybe they ran off somewhere and took a wrong turn. You know the locals wouldn’t say anything that would get them in trouble with the insurgents. They must’ve gotten grabbed--”

“Doug, the way they were headed was right toward friendly forces. I told them what way to go myself. They should’ve been home-free!”

“There’s a bunch of buildings between them and the friendlies. Even if you thought they were empty--and they may have been when they crashed!--they could have a lot of tunnels down there.”

Elaine rubbed the bridge of her nose, “I don’t know, this whole thing feels fishy to me.”

Melissa shook her head, coming back to the present. She couldn’t remember if that Apache had been with the 101st. Weird things happened all the time in war. There was no guarantee that it was the same unit.
Coincidence, yeah, just coincidence. Not every big disappearance is connected to a fantasy planet.

Returning to the present, Melissa found Rarity stretching out a bewildered Rainbow Dash’s arms and measuring them with a metric tape she’d procured from the refuse of human civilization.
“Highlights, perhaps? Yes, some more color along the legs as well. What are these here for? I could--”

Melissa pulled the tape measure out of Rarity’s hands, let it retract fully into the case, and handed it back, “US Army equipment on loan to a member of the Equestrian military. I can’t quote the regs, but I’m pretty sure you can’t do this.”

“But Melissa--”

“But nothing.” Behind Rarity, Rainbow was mouthing the words ‘thank you’, “My hands are tied.”

Pinkie appeared at Melissa’s shoulder, her reality warping powers still functional, “They are? Is it like invisible tying--”

“It’s an idiom. Rarity, there’s very little I can do to customize my military-issue equipment, and I don’t know how the army is on this. So I am going to assume they are the same until told otherwise.”

Finally freed from his time-out, and having (mostly) recovered his cognitive faculties, Andrew gulped as he took in the humans around him.

Fluttershy went over to him first, and gave him a hug. Twilight approached next, and smiled, “Are you better now?”

“Well, the nudity was...um...nice, but--” he noted Fluttershy’s expression, “But I’m guessing it wasn’t meant to last.”

“No one’s foolin’ around tonight, matey!” Melissa called out, “No experimentation, and keep your hands to yourself! We’re not doing anything tonight without consent, or ground rules! I know the first one’s obvious, but I don’t know if we’re going to...to...”

“Spawn new sexually-transmitted infections?” Twilight asked.

Melissa grimaced, and nodded, “Yes. yep.”

Andrew looked at Twilight, “Okay, why are you so calm about talking about this kind of thing? Is this just you, or is all of Equestria really comfortable with...certain topics?”

Twilight raised an eyebrow, “What do you...oh!”

She laughed, “I thought it was just something with you, Andrew! Melissa, are all humans so ashamed to talk about natural--”

Rainbow Dash laughed, “Oh man, I’m sorry! I thought you two were just playing along! By Celestia, do all humans act like kids when it comes to sex?”

Melissa’s cheeks burned, “Yes and no. Americans are notorious prudes, we’re kind of famous for that. I guess that’s another area Equestria is ahead of us with.”

“Being adult about intimate topics?” Twilight asked, “Apparently we are.”

With the group now in proper attire, they spread out amongst the warehouse, investigating the “alien” culture.

Before joining the others, Andrew went over to Melissa. Tensing up nervously as he spoke, he asked, “Are you gay?”

Melissa glanced at him, raising an eyebrow, “No, I’m straight! By Cthulhu, Andrew, just because we're the only humans around and I haven't slept with you yet doesn't mean--!”

“What? No, I'm just curious! You seemed real into Dash earlier!”

“Oh please, who wouldn't bang her after a few drinks?! Why don’t I judge you for being extremely happy to see them?!”

“That’s all you have been doing!”

“Well...then how about you slip into something more comfortable? Like a coma?”

They soon joined the rest of the group in exploring.Andrew was busy explaining the plot of The Hobbit and a few other novels to Twilight and Fluttershy, while Melissa spent her time keeping the other four from breaking things.
Well, Applejack wouldn’t touch anything, hopefully, but curiosity could still kill the cat.

“Rarity, I don’t care how shiny it is, ya don’t touch the sensitive parts of CDs, DVDs, laserdiscs, microfiche, microfilm, or whatever optical storage or film reel type thing that’s here with your bare hands!”

...or Melissa would kill the cat.

Aside from the main warehouse, there were several smaller areas separate from the main one, devoted to specific materials such as books, firearms, industrial equipment, vehicles, computers, and alternative storage mediums. It made sense, the weaponry was volatile, and the books extremely prone to damage; compartmentalizing the areas meant that even if one sector went up the rest would survive.

There was even a morgue, also serving as a crypt.

In the storage medium chamber, there were containers of VCRs, Betamax, DVDs, CDs, and floppy disks from the 60s all the way up to the 2000s. Whoever sorted it seemed unable to tell the difference between film storage, image storage and computer systems. The sections were stored quite close together and mixed up. Massive film reels, hung below stacks of NES games, cassette tapes, or even wire from the 1890s.

There were many recognizable and unrecognizable films, TV shows, film, news records, it was like a garage sale, but in more ways than one much like the rest of the archives.

As with most of the areas, while there were common items, such as MASH VHS and DVD box sets, and copies of Men in Black, there were also precious artifacts that couldn't be found back home. Artifacts long-thought lost. Lost films, such as the first film adaptation of The Great Gatsby, pieces of the Blues Brothers movie, all sorts of materials that were so significant to history but had been destroyed back home.

“What’s microfilm?” Rarity asked, finding boxes upon boxes with dates from around 1900 all the way to the 2000s.

Melissa was busy pushing a DVD back into its case, one with some language she didn’t recognize, when Rarity asked her question. She glanced over.

“It’s images stored on tiny strips of...like, film reels or something. I dunno what the material is called.”
“Celluloid!” Andrew supplied, his voice echoing through the aisles.

“Thanks!” she called out.

“Intriguing,” Rarity commented, “What is it for?”

“Saves space, reduces weight compared to paper, and preserves newspapers and stuff like that. Lot of libraries have them.”

“What an excellent idea! Could you make that work for our own libraries?”

Melissa shrugged, “I dunno how to make celluloid. I don’t know much about that part of film history. I mean it’s probably within your technological range...”

Rarity frowned, “Perhaps somepony is developing it on their own, like that internal combustion engine prototype you recovered. Maybe we can acquire the patent.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. Microfilm lasted nearly a century. Only problem is getting people to convert to digital storage, so we may want to be careful with that one.”

Melissa realized she hadn’t checked on Rainbow Dash in the past five seconds, and glanced over to where she had seen the blue...person go. The computer area.

Entering the chamber, the marine found that the ponies had mixed up this one with similar artifacts like they had the film area. Typewriters as well as communications equipment were mixed in with the computers; radios, telephones, a few telegraph keys, basically anything above morse lamps.

However, be they communications gear or computers, so much of the gear was horrendously damaged. The ponies had done the best they could to preserve what they found, and had managed to find quite a collection, but there was so much that was damaged beyond repair. Reel-to-reel players and game boys, or at least the shattered remnants and melted piles of plastic they left behind. Hulking calculators and small 90s laptops burned to a crisp and snapped cleanly in half.

it broke her heart to see such machinery, some of the most powerful assets on this world, reduced to a pile of plastic and shattered motherboards.

She walked through the sector, looking up and down the tall Home Depot-height shelves, and sighing. A lot.
The marine took a glance at an enigma code machine, or at least, the waterlogged, rusted, and mud-covered remains of one.
Melissa peered at it, behind the magic bubble that kept it separate from the air that would destroy it. She’d seen one back home just like it, one that the German soldiers who owned it had attempted to destroy to prevent capture. After numerous attempts to smash it, including hitting it with rifle butts, they threw it in a lake.
This machine looked far worse. It was nearly unrecognizable, as evidenced by the fact that it was placed in the typewriter section, but hadn’t been nearly as beaten up. It simply looked older. Much older.

How odd. This must have been one of the things Luna was talking about that had been brought through a thousand years ago all at the same time; traveling through space and time instead of just space. By comparison, there were typewriters nearby also from the 40s, but looked the appropriate age.

Of note was the fact that much of the destroyed equipment had signs of scuttling and deliberate sabotage. Most of the equipment not in its original packaging had bullet holes, boot prints, blunt force damage, or the prints of various animals. Another mystery.

She turned the corner and found Rainbow Dash fiddling with an Atari Jaguar. Somehow finding not only the console, but the CD-ROM module(the one shaped like a toilet), the pegasus had also figured out how to plug it in, had found a music CD, and was trying to close the lid.

Not to Melissa’s surprise, the Jaguar had no damage whatsoever, despite being out of its packaging.
Dash was growing increasingly frustrated with the lid, opening several times and trying to push the disk further down, “There’s not enough room for this thing! What’s wrong with it?!”

Melissa stepped over and removed the CD, “For one, wrong disk and system. For another, you’re right. There isn’t enough room.”

“Then how--”

“It’s a design flaw. It closes too tightly on the disk, the motor burns out like crazy, and there’s a whole lotta other stuff wrong with it. If we didn’t need electronics, I’d take a dump on this thing like the Angry Video Game Nerd did and smash it to pieces.”

Rainbow Dash laughed, “Why’d he do that? Also, who is he?”

Melissa gestured at the trash can sometimes known as Atari’s dying gasp to save their company in the 1990s.
“He did it because this thing is a piece of shit, why would adding more change anything? And he…”

She paused, “There’s gotta be something about him around here.”

The marine raised her hands to her mouth, and called out, “Hey Andrew! You find anything on the Angry Video Game Nerd?!”

From somewhere in the area of the books, he replied, “What are you talking about?! What even is that?!”

Melissa slumped, “...Never mind! Keep your hands to yourself by the way!”

“Yes, mother!”

“What was that?”

“Nothing!!”

Suddenly, the most random thought popped into her head. Melissa spun about and seized Rainbow Dash by the shoulders, “where's Pinkie Pie?!”

Rainbow furrowed her brow, grunting “I dunno?”

“She’s unsupervised! In a room of human stuff!”

Rainbow scoffed, “Aw, it’s not that bad! How much trouble could she--oh sweet Celestia--Pinkie!!”

Melissa called out to the rest of the warehouse, “Someone find Pinkie!”

The rest of the group dropped whatever they were doing and fanned out, fearing the worst.

Melissa finally spotted the pink pony--person--thing in the aisle of not-rotted food, holding a plastic orange bag.

“No!!”

She tackled Pinkie to the ground, groping for the single white, purple, and orange pod in her little pink fingers.

“Hey, what’s the big idea?!” Pinkie demanded.

“Don’t fucking eat that you pink pain in my ass!”

“Why not?! It looks delicious!”

Melissa was hauling on Pinkie’s arm with all she had, but Pinkie’s hand was still traveling toward her mouth.

“I know, it always does, they always do! But it’s not a gummy thing, no matter how much you want it to be!”

“Then why did they make them like that?”

“Because they’re idiots! Also, because you don’t eat something with the label ‘laundry pods’!”

Pinkie glanced at the label, squinting, “Well, it actually says ‘Tide pods’...”

Melissa finally pried the bag out of her fingers, and was trying to pull the intact one out of her other hand, “Pinkie, for the love of Cthulhu….just, just don’t touch anything, don’t look at anything, don’t breathe on anything!”

“But maybe just a taste…!”

Andrew, Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack caught up with them.

Applejack rolled her eyes, and crouched down. Quickly and easily she removed the pod from Pinkie’s hand, and peered at it.

“What is this thing?”

“Laundry pod,” Andrew said, taking it and making sure it hadn’t been punctured, “Little kids...and I guess very naive adults too, have eaten them. Super toxic.”

Rainbow squinted, looking doubtful, “Really? But--”

Melissa got herself untangled from Pinkie Pie, looking at the bag, “I know, right? They’re so freaking colorful!”

“Why don’t they make them...brown or something? A kid wouldn’t eat that!”

Twilight stared intently at a few pages of notes taped to the spot on the shelf the bag of pods should have been, before recalling she didn’t have telekinesis at the moment.
She picked them up, scanning the contents, “Looks like this has happened numerous times.”

Twilight held it up, revealing several warning signs, words underlined and written in bold, such as “DO NOT EAT”.
“Did you not read the notes?”

Pinkie shrugged, “Skimmed em?”

Melissa scratched her head, “Wait, there are notes?” she hadn't had the chance to properly examine the archive.

“Yes! This is an archive, of course there would be! There’s a filing system near the entrance!”

The marine nodded, “Huh, okay. Good. I gotta see those.”

She was about to run off, then paused to grab a bag of tootsie rolls off the shelf. “These are mine.”

Pinkie reached for some other snack in a wrapper, and Applejack swatted her hand back.

Making her way to the front of the warehouse, Melissa found aisle after aisle old filing cabinets, filled with yellowed paper.
There were more extensive notes on every artifact in the room, and references to the other chambers.
Melissa still had to investigate those.

The notes recorded not just descriptions of the artifacts, but incidents, experiments, and recovery details.
For example, there was a Cold War-era portable nuclear reactor, labeled as a “Mobile Atomic Engine”, recovered from a lake near one of Equestria’s few fishing villages. Fish were coming in mutated, and ponies were falling ill. The reactor itself was recovered, but buried after Bureau 13 personnel began to fall ill at a much faster rate, with several expiring after losing fur, manes, and coughing up blood.

There was a tale of a “doll of red felt, wild eyes, with an orange nose” that produced “irritating sounds” and was incinerated as a precaution. Must’ve been an elmo doll...

A round “clever cleaning engine” that moved as if it had a mind of its own, at least until someone hit it and flipped it over. The Roomba was housed in a box until its batteries ran down.
There were some notes on just weird things, mostly gadgets and toys ranging from silly putty to Skymall catalog junk.

One of the more interesting ones was a “wireless war engine”. It was a machine described as a “rail-less armored locomotive on ”caterpillar tracks”, powered by a “virtually smokeless engine utilizing kerosene” equipped with some sort of “thin-barreled 3-pounder gun” and a “rifled breech loading magazine-fed firearm”. It had driven in a straight line through a village, eventually stopping when it hit a hard enough wall but still kept trying to drive further. The hull shook off everything thrown at it, and spun its tracks for two hours before the engine died.
There was a sheet describing the incident, with time stamps attached to each note.

Object B-1495 spotted moving along country road by flight from No. 39 Squadron of Royal Equestrian Air Force. Followed for several minutes by air. Object B-1495 did not engage. Maintained straight and even course regardless of road terrain. B-1495 did not deviate from trajectory, even when the road curved.

Object B-1495 followed by section of 3rd Light Dragoons from this point onward. Verbal challenges elicited no response. Object B-1495 did not deviate from course, sustained light damage to continuous tracks from hitting potholes.

B-1495 encountered at Ash Road 12 miles from Acorn Village by local farmer. Farmer nearly run down. Object maintains straight course.

Object B-1495 is fired upon by 3rd Light Dragoons. Damage is insignificant. B-1495 does not return fire.

B-1495 is fired upon by B-Battery of 3rd Royal Artillery. Damage is insignificant. B-1495 does not return fire.

No. 39 Squadron attacks with gravity munitions. B-1495 sustains light damage. One track wheel damaged.

Town of Acorn Village is evacuated by 24th Regiment of the Foot. 24th Regiment, 3rd Light Dragoons, and A, C, D Batteries of 3rd Royal Artillery set up defensive positions. Armed forces opened fire. Observers report hatches on object B-1495 blown open, items strapped to hull catch fire. Course of object altered by two degrees. B-1495 does not return fire.

B-1495 shifts off the street and passes through buildings. Observers note strained sounds from engine whenever larger obstacles encountered.

B-1495 hits the cast-iron frame of a train station and becomes unable to progress further. Corner of the building is stuck between the two “horns” of its track mounts. Tracks continue to spin. Object does not engage with approaching units.

Object B-1495’s engine becomes strained, tracks continue spinning.

After two hours of continuous spinning, engines die. This is assumed to be from lack of fuel. After an additional approximate forty minutes, Bureau 13 personnel approach B-1495, and inspect the vehicle. No crew is found, but positions found for driver, commander, and gunner. Gunner and commander positions, along with significant portions of the interior, occupied by a high-level mechanical operating system* mounted on suspension. System is apparently designed to manipulate gunner and driver controls remotely.

Object B-1495 retrieved by Bureau 13 personnel, and shipped to Canterlot by rail. Object is classified as water tank to maintain secrecy. Acorn Village residents signed non-disclosure agreements and were paid off. Additional details in attached documents.

*based on information provided by Cpl. M Foster, system is some sort of mechanical control mechanism built utilizing high-level technologies of a sophistication beyond Equestrian manufacturing capabilities as of this writing.

“What is this, the SCP Foundation?” Melissa muttered, and was a little irked that they had used her once again.

The vehicle was a TT-26, a “teletank” of Soviet origin from the Second World War. It was a vehicle that was designed to be remotely-operated from another tank. Likely it had been left at full speed ahead by the operators before it fell through the wormhole, and just kept going without any command to stop. The vacuum tubes operating it weren’t all that complex. From the drawings, this was a flamethrower variant with a DT tank machine gun. She was glad it wasn’t one of those carrying chemical weapons or explosives.

She dug into the inventory charts, in particular, documents, books, vehicles, and weapons.
“Bolt-action, cartridges, rapid-firing weapons, artillery...there we are.”

Making sure the others weren’t around, she put a number of sheets into a binder and tucked it under her arm.

Through several small accessways, she found her way to a warehouse about a quarter the size of the first.
Mounted in glass cases, upon racks, in crates, and in varying degrees of completion, were the staple of Earth militaries. It was like walking through the NRA Museum.
She passed the older relics quickly, matchlocks and other terrible firearms. It was an area she knew relatively little about. Passing flintlocks, percussion caps, pinfire cartridges, there were a few she recognized as being famous. Moving past the Napoleonic section and into the middle part of the 1800s, she recognized the Prussian Needle Gun, a handful of American revolvers, various muzzle-loaders, Allin conversions, and Springfield Minie Ball guns.

Artillery was everywhere depending on the section, though she recognized those even less. Four-pounders and Napoleons were the best she could tell, before she got to the area of the 1850s and 60s.

She slowed at the Victorian section, finding some of the better quality weaponry on tables, a few in a trash bin mangled after being taken apart badly.
A Maxim gun and a French 75 were being examined, and it looked recent. Little dust had formed, and writing devices had been left as if the owners were going to come back in a few days. Likely, they’d been given a vacation for the wedding.

Damn it, Snowglobes, Melissa thought, You may have doomed us all. The Maxim gun, and other gatling guns, were a skippable step in weapons development, as they would make switching over to single-barrel guns that much harder, but they would’ve at least given them a chance. Celestia giving the researchers a vacation might have just cost them.

The Equestrian Army lacking anything like a French 75 was even worse. It was seen as the first modern artillery weapon. It much better at absorbing inertia than previous weapons, thus allowing it to be more accurate because it didn’t need to be readjusted every time it was fired. It was also capable of practical indirect fire, and had several naval derivatives. The cannon could have revolutionized everything…

Melissa sighed, and glanced around. There wasn’t much available ammo for either the Maxim gun or the French 75. At least not enough to wage a battle and have enough left over to reverse-engineer. They’d have to dig through all the other artillery ammo, and any other weapons in the same caliber as the Maxim.
Though she knew she was biased, she felt the American weapons in the archive were her best bet. She knew more about them than anything.

She had no idea how events were going to play out with the current alterations to the timeline. They would need every advantage they could get.

If she could have grabbed some of the vehicles stored in another warehouse, she would have. Unfortunately, they were far too maintenance intensive, and their fuel had to have gelled in the tanks a long time ago.

There was weaponry from the First World War, front line gear to experimental prototypes, legendary and infamous. Browning Automatic Rifles, Springfields, Mosin-Nagants, Lewis Guns, and, of note, a handful of Ross Rifles. She shuddered at the last one.

Digging through the early 20th century gear, she found the supply of ammo was all over the place; either there was not enough, it was missing, or there was ammo for weapons that weren’t there. Sometimes there might be enough ammo, but there could be too few weapons of certain types for her purposes. Cannibalizing the other areas would have to be done.

Melissa jumped when an echo-y scratching sound reached her ears; guitar and drums playing an unfamiliar tune.
“Hey everypony! I found a record player!” Pinkie Pie called out distantly, “Let’s party!”

Melissa didn't recognize the song, and rolled her eyes. She continued digging through the area.

There were many weapons that caught her eye in the WWII section. M1 Garands, German MP40s, Lee Enfields, Thompson Submachine Guns, anything you could casually pick up in a Call of Duty game. There were also the less exciting guns that never made it into those games, like the artillery, and crew-served weapons.

She took particular interest in the M3 “Grease Gun” submachine guns, and the M1 Carbines. Small, reliable, and should be easy to get into production.

Her hopes faded. No time. Not enough time for any of this.

She had to get something together quickly. Perhaps she could assemble some sort of unit that she could command for maximum effectiveness, with equipment she knew well…

The Cold War collection would have to be it, then.

AK-47s, M16s of all sorts, and many FN FALs. A modern Call of Duty game collection of equipment. She made a mental note to select one as a personal weapon.

Melissa noted several boxes that contained a total of 30 Japanese Howa Type 64 rifles, all from the same location, unit, and with most of the same serial numbers. They even came from the same armory. JGSDF Oita Prefecture Garrison. There were other boxes of firearms of course, but this was weird. Few were all from the same place, unit, and time.

Walking among several glass cases, Melissa paused, seeing a small wooden box in one case, under a rifle she had mistaken for an unloaded M16.
It was brown, and unassuming, with no labels and only a single latch. Melissa opened the case, and withdrew the box, undoing the latch.
On the inside of the lid was a silver oval plate, with “MBA-- Gyrojet Rocket Pistol” written in red letters.
The box was lined with velvet, an unusual handgun lay on the right side.

Melissa had seen videos, seen the ones in the NRA museum, but...she’d never expected to actually hold one!

She smiled, slowly reaching out to pick up the weapon. A real 1960s-era MB Associates Gyrojet Rocket Pistol, part of the Gyrojet family. The rifle above it was of the same type.
There were ten rounds set into the left side of the pistol box, on a wooden disk with a bronze bust of Robert H Goddard in the center, the father of modern rocketry.

“Intriguing concept…” A certain Maximal aviator commented, appearing beside her, “Much like our own weapons, propelled by tiny rocket motors instead of by expanding gases.”

With a wistful sigh, Melissa put the weapon back and closed the lid. The ammo was more valuable than the weapon itself, there were so few left back home.
“Yeah, my brother was a nut about these. He always wanted to fire one, but they stopped making ammo in the early 70s. Half of that remainder been worn out by time. Costs a hundred bucks a pop to fire. It’s a pretty interesting idea though. Garrett was always trying to figure out ways for it to function better. From magnetic acceleration to a powder charge, he had a whole file of notes on his phone about it.”

Silverbolt looked at the Gyrojet rifle, “A shame it never went beyond that initial phase. At least its legacy survived in Air Force flare launchers.”

“Yeah,” Melissa sighed, putting her hands in her pockets, “I know why you’re here. I’m still not gonna do it, Silverbolt.”

He glanced back at her. Melissa didn’t look well. She had bags under her eyes, she was leaning on the glass case for support, and her helmet was low over her brow.

“Melissa, please. For everyone’s safety, you must. There is little more than a week before the wedding. If you don’t tell them, you’re putting them all in great danger! You chose me to keep you on the right path, and I must fulfill that duty. Do not dishonor yourself by risking the innocent people in this city!”

Melissa looked at the Cybertronian, his orange eyes without pupils, but conveying emotion; empathy, chivalry, and hope.

She looked at the ground, tapping her foot. She stopped, realizing it was in tune with the music coming from the primary warehouse. Something called the Ballroom Blitz.

“Please...you know it’s the right choice. Everything’s changed already, might there not be a need for the Temporal Prime Directive anymore?”

Melissa shook her head, “That’s not my job. We’re supposed to maintain the timeline as much as possible--”

“Might I remind you that you are a United States Marine Combat Engineer, and not a member of Starfleet? May I also remind you that had Dinobot stayed his hand and followed the Temporal Prime Directive, humanity would have never existed? These things may not be supposed to happen, but they have. We’ve altered the timeline already, but so did my crew, and it turned out for the best.”

“Minus a shuttle and nearly Prime and Megs’ souls…”

Silverbolt took a deep breath, “Melissa. Your oath is not to the timeline--”

“Nor is it to them! My oath is to the constitution!”

“Yes, but is it not a violation of some rule to not tell an ally of the United States that an attack on their capital is imminent? The CIA is not a model to follow in many, many circumstances. It is both legally and morally the right thing to do.”

Melissa put up her index finger to make a statement, but Silverbolt kept talking, “Furthermore, it may be too late to repair the timeline. If that is true, attempting to stay to the proper path may result in disastrous repercussions that you never anticipated. How do you know telling them would not be for the better? From what you’ve been doing, you don’t think the battle is going to play out quite as it did the last time. We know that certain details here are different from the show itself, as well. We don’t know much about Changeling technology, tactics, or troop dispositions.
“In addition, your attempts to hide your knowledge may cause something even worse. I know you intend to help fight them off, but do you have any intention of rescuing Twilight? She is going to be in mortal danger far earlier than the rest of the cast. How will she, or Rarity, or Rainbow Dash react, to the fact that you knew what would happen, and didn’t raise a finger to stop it? You might end up alone again. For good, this time.”

Melissa felt a tingling in her nose, and rubbed at her eyes.

“Melissa, forget the Temporal Prime Directive, or at least don’t follow it so closely. Events don’t have to be identical, they just have to follow the same path. That’s what you’ve done so far, correct? For all we know, it’s a variation of a predestination paradox. Following your heart may result in the outcome you desire!”

“But Silver,” she protested, “Telling them isn’t flowing in the same path, that’s stepping around the path! Everything might be thrown out of balance! The Crystal Empire, Discord, Trixie...even freakin’ Babs Seed or whatever her name is, and...and…”

She glanced around the chamber, devoid of life besides herself and her imaginary friend, but nevertheless added in a low whisper, “And the uh, MA Larson thing.”

Silverbolt stepped back, crossing his arms and nodding, “Alright then. If these are such problems, let us discuss them. Right now. Let us assume that the enemy is lethal. Telling them of the threat will save lives, prevent destruction of the city, and earn us trust. Now, what will happen if we don’t tell them? Great damage, loss of life, loss of trust, and they could even lose the city to the invaders. Monarchies don’t do well if they’ve lost their capital. It could ruin the entire future, the lives your friends have earned for themselves destroyed! Melissa, you hold so much power in your hands, think of all the good that might come if we do tell them!”

Scowling, Melissa snapped, “Wasn’t half your show about maintaining the timeline? We don’t know what might happen if we do or don’t tell them!”

Silverbolt flinched at her tone, but remained calm and cool, “The timeline is important, but at what point does this end? The show has not. Are you going to do this for the rest of your life? Are you going to be a slave to it, or are you going to be a master of your own fate, and do what you know is right?”

He considered briefly, before quoting, “‘These disks I hold, are they a record of what will be, or only what may? For if the future is indeed immutably foretold, then my demise is but moments from the confirmation. For I could not live if not the master of my fate! But if the future can be changed, if these disks record merely one path of all the myriad ways the cosmos might conform, then their power is infinite! And yet, still limited, for they could be used but once and in that change be rendered fiction forever more. I could destroy them! But no... it would be a coward's answer. I will know the truth instead. Then, it will be either them or me that face oblivion…’”

Silverbolt exhaled, “A good friend of mine said that. You are at such an impasse as he was. We must make a decision. Will it be you or the timeline facing its end?”

Melissa felt a tremor run through her. Calculations, projections, estimates ran through her mind, dozens of alternate timelines that may result from this one small change.
Lauren Faust’s creation, it was fiction, wasn’t it? And yet here events seemed to be playing out in the right way. She’d made it here on blind luck alone…

Not alone. She’d had friends behind her. Friends who’d forgiven her for all she’d done.

Would they forgive her if Equestria fell to the invaders, because one stupid marine thought she knew what was best? Not best for the country, but best for six individuals?

It wasn’t that simple, though. They were vital to the survival of the planet, they had(and would continue to) saved the world a dozen times over. If they didn’t go quite on the right path, it could prove disastrous.

Or it could be for the better.

She could be the master of her own fate. She hadn’t come here on purpose, and the timeline was already altered. She’d improved the livelihood of the ponies, hadn’t she?
How could she betray them like this? Betray her friends, betray her beliefs, betray everything she held dear for an ideal timeline that may not even exist?

This clearly wasn’t the show she knew. Two humans present was enough evidence of that.
What right did she have to interfere?

What right did she have to act like the damn CIA and manipulate an entire nation?

All her life she’d cursed those fools, the ones responsible for many troubles, for all the destruction they wrought in their never-ending pissing contest with the Soviets, and who had caused the death of hundreds of thousands over seventy years.
How could she threaten to do the same thing here?

How could she try to interfere, how could she threaten to steal away the lives her friends had earned for themselves?

Was her knowledge too dangerous? Would it be better if she just left?

She contemplated the weapons around her. Enough explosives from across the centuries to crater the moon.
Would it be better to end it all? End humanity’s influence on this beautiful race of kind people, and end herself?
No. Even suicide and total destruction of the archives wouldn’t solve anything. That would still be playing god. Refusal to help was just as good as interference. That was something about the conventional Prime Directive that always stuck in her craw.

She sank to her knees, leaning against the cabinet holding the Gyrojets.

Bringing out her wallet, she stared at the photo inside, at her family.

Hiraeth. She wanted to go home. She wanted to be back where she belonged.

The things she could do with the power she held. The weapons and knowledge at her disposal. She could rule the planet, she could emplace a democracy, she could…she could…

She couldn’t decide.

“Silverbolt, let’s say I tell them. How do I do it without coming across as insane or paranoid? And what about the rest of the season? Do I tell them about that?”

Silverbolt looked off into the distance, “That...feels like a much more delicate subject. There comes a point when ‘precognition’ stumbles into the territory of ‘insanity’.”

“Then there comes a point when saving lives turns into manipulation. Am I helping by telling them, or am I stealing their lives from them? Remember in Axis of Time, the historical figures who lost their lives, had their achievements produced before they ever got the chance? The lives they’d earned lost forever?”

The Maximal raised his eyebrows, “The only way to truly avoid that is not to be here in the first place. We are here, and we are here now. I ask you, will you continue to be a slave to the timeline, continue the ultimately futile goal of following a timeline that may not have even existed in the first place, or be your own person, and use your knowledge to help them? You don’t have to inform them of much, just enough to do the right thing. Find the right time to tell them of the rest of it, but for now, please, by the Allspark, tellthem about the oncoming storm.”

Melissa hung her head, looking at the photo in her hands. Somewhat to her surprise, she didn’t break down, she didn’t panic, there was no rush of anxiety. There was simply a feeling of cold stability.

Getting to her feet, the marine closed the Gyrojet cabinet, and put her hands in her pockets. Back through the archives she went, moving through the side chambers instead of the primary warehouse.

The music was still there, but there weren’t anymore sounds of partying, and the music itself was subdued rather than energetic. It seemed she’d managed to survive not attending one of Pinkie’s parties.
She made her way into the library section, a warehouse this time almost as big as the primary one. There were scrolls, stone tablets, newspapers, and books. Hundreds of thousands of books. Scanning the contents of the shelves, she found that only the late 19th century onwards were organized by fiction and nonfiction. Roughly around the time when they started printing that information on the spine of the book.

Applejack was standing in one alcove, squinting at the text of a book in the low light offered by the light bulbs. To the marine’s relief, she had finally found a coat of some kind. Plaid of course. She glanced up, “Hey, Melissa! Where ya been?”

“Around.” she replied quietly, “Thinking.”

Applejack raised an eyebrow, but neglected to comment, “Well, you missed one heckuva party.”

“I would’ve come, but I’d rather not spend my evening keeping everyone’s sex organs under control.”

Applejack snorted, “It wasn’t quite that bad. Just Pinkie and Dash.”

“I expected that, but you guys should do more experiments with this before you do something like this. Human and pony hormones vary wildly. Ever seen Rick and Morty…?”

Politely, Applejack shook her head until Melissa smacked her forehead and recalled where she was.
“...Never mind. Hormones are extremely unpredictable even with creatures that belong to that species. I have no idea if their behavior was natural or the result of human horniness. I don’t know how your, ehm…reproductive systems function.”

Applejack shrugged, “It’s not too hard to understand. It’s probably a lot like your own--”

Melissa held up her hands, “Nope! Nope, I was not asking for an explanation!”

The former-earth pony squinted, “What’s the big deal? It’s just--”

“Yes, I know, I know, I know! Americans are just like that! We’re massive embarrassed prudes!”

Applejack grinned, “I know. Ah was just teasing ya.”

Melissa gave a mock-growl, then smiled, “Man, Equestria’s such an interesting place. 19th century tech, but a socially-enlightened utopia. One minute I’m homesick, the next I’m wishing home would come here. I haven’t gotten hit on in the grossest way possible even once since I got here!”

Applejack looked puzzled, “...You feeling okay?”

Melissa coughed, and looked at the book Applejack held.

Her eyes widened, “Oh, hey! Tintin! Oh, I read all of them a hundred times! My mom was a huge fan, we used to read them together!”

She glanced at the shelf nearby, running her hand along one until she came to several editions collected in protective bags and spells, “Holy shit! Destination Moon, Flight 716, Secret of the Unicorn... they’ve got the magazine versions, the regular books, the collections...ooh boy, they’ve got Tintin in the Congo. Best to forget about that one...”

Melissa gently pulled a 70s copy of The Crab With the Golden Claws off the shelf. She couldn’t see the actual book itself, the cover had been traced onto the outside of a parchment wrapping protected by a spell, but it was still enough to flash memories of her mother’s collection.

“Captain Haddock was always the best. ‘Billions of blue-blistering barnacles’! Spielberg’s movie was great--I wonder if they have it here…”

Melissa twitched her fingers at the flap of the comic she held, yearning to open it and take a stroll down memory lane, but slowly curled her fingers back. The hiraeth struck again.

Applejack raised an eyebrow once again, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine. I…”

She rubbed her eyes, wavering unsteadily on her feet.

“Sugarcube, you look like you could use some sleep.”

“Course I could. I’ll check in with Twilight and Andrew, and I’ll go...do the thing…”

She started to walk away, then added, “Turn back into a pony before you go to bed--before you sleep I mean-- please. I do not want to have to deal with one of those stupid plots when...never mind. Full stop.”

Applejack somehow raised her eyebrow even further than before, “Mel, are you sure you--”

“Hey, Melissa!” Andrew called, thankfully interrupting the farmer.

The corporal glanced over, and still felt a massive twinge of uncomfortableness seeing Twilight walking beside Andrew as the pair approached.

Twilight smiled a little, “You missed a Pinkie Pie party. How’d you manage that?”

Melissa furrowed her brow, “Y’know, I wondered the same thing myself. Don’t jinx it.”

“I dunno, that seems like a good question. I’ve never seen anyone evade Pinkie as much as you have…” Applejack commented.

“I think I may have put it in her head that Melissa has a heart condition…Keeping her away from you while you were recovering...” Andrew scratched his head, mumbling.

Melissa squinted, then realization struck, “That explains a bunch of the mail I’ve been getting. Diabetes on a plate and apology letters.”

The marine abruptly noticed the iphone held in Andrew’s hand, the one recovered from the Sophia. “You’re being careful with that, right?”

Andrew glanced at it, “Oh, yeah. Was just showing Twilight the Dream Chaser stuff. Hey, Melissa...I was wondering, did you get anything from the Sophia’s flight recorder?”

Melissa nodded, “Oh, I got more than that! I got video, audio, and sensor data! I was trying to show it to you earlier today, but we got caught up in everything, and...I guess it slipped my mind!”

“Can we see it?” Andrew asked excitedly.

“I’ll get my pocket projector!”

She glanced at the temporarily-not-ponies, “Did either of you want to see it, or…?”

Applejack straightened up, “Ah gotta turn in with the rest. Human bodies are really exhausting! Twilight, you gonna see this...recorder?”

Twilight nodded, “Of course!”

Melissa winced as she added, “One more thing; Twilight, please go back to normal.”

“What? Why?”

Flushing, Melissa grumbled, “To be honest, this whole thing kinda makes me uncomfortable, and...I don’t know if I can trust you two to keep your hands off each other.”

Andrew’s face went red, and his voice faltered, “You really think--”

“Andy, shut up. I’m in charge of the flight recorder viewing session, and I’m the only other American human around! I can tell when some people are feeling...oh, when people are feeling horny, alright?!

Applejack and Twilight glanced at each other. This human prudishness they would never understand.

Chapter 16

Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.

Chapter 17

When Andrew finally was able to open his eyes, there was nothing but utter blackness around him. He sat bolt-upright, and waved his arms in front of him, unable to see a thing.

In a brief moment of panic, he thought himself blind, but found once his eyes adjusted, that it was simply very, very dark.

“Twilight!” he cried in rage, groping about, and carefully getting to his feet, “Melissa! Where are you!?”

With no answer, he started reaching out, and swinging his fists as well, trying to do something. He hurt himself several times, punching smooth rock and smashing into several walls. Wherever he was, it was some sort of circular chamber. He didn’t venture farther from the one wall he could find for fear he couldn’t find it again.
Andrew finally calmed down when he tripped and fell right on his nose, his glasses flying off and bouncing away with a tinkle.

Snorting angrily, he got on all fours, “I feel like Velma…”

He felt his hand brush over one of the end pieces, and anxiously checked for any cracks. Finding none, he sighed with relief and made sure the elastic holding them was tighter than it was before.

“Hello?” he called out, hearing his voice ringing in the space, “Anyone here?”

“Ah, I see you’re quite done with your tantrum,” a familiar venomous, evil voice chuckled, “Don’t hurt yourself, my pet.”

“Fuck you! Where the hell is Twilight?! Where the hell am I!?” he demanded, looking around despite the dark.

“Language...You’re in the caves under Canterlot, once home to greedy unicorns who sought the gems that could be found inside. Now it’s your prison. Don’t strain yourself, no one can hear you.” Another laugh, “Ha, they won’t even think to look for you. Most of those primitives have forgotten about these caves, making them an ideal place to put those who would try to interfere with my plans.”

“You won’t win!” he cried, sounding braver than he actually felt, “Twilight will stop you! Melissa might help! Earth stopped you, and so can the ponies!”

Chrysalis laughed again, “Is that what you really think? My my, were you dropped as an egg?”

“What's upsetting about that is I don't think you know that's wrong…” Andrew murmured, ignoring more of her taunts. He began searching for a light, slapping his clothes, trying to find the small packet. “Matches, matches, matches...where…?” Coulda sworn I packed…

”Hello, what’s this...? Oh!”

His hand met several cool plastic rods. Please let it be what I think it is, please please please...

Andrew took one rod out, and holding it in both hands, bent it to either side. The snap was the most joyous noise he could have heard. A green light began to emerge from within the glow stick. More bending and vigorous shaking brought it to full strength.

“Thanks Melissa…” he muttered, “Your paranoia has paid off, finally. Oddly specific, though.”

Looking around the room for the first time, he held the glowstick high. It was a fairly large chamber, stalactites and stalagmites growing around the extremely reflective rock that comprised the walls.

Placing a hand on the wall, he walked along, knocking on it every once in awhile. It worked in Doom, and it might work here!

“Don’t judge me.” he muttered aloud. He paused for a moment to shake his head, Who am I talking to?

He started to walk again, then doubled back, knocking again. There was an echo.

Knocking again, there was a bit of a vibration. With little else to do, he kicked it. A crack formed. Kick. The crack grew larger.

Throwing his shoulder into it, Andrew continued to hit it, making a dent in the wall.

Finally, he made an opening, his shoulder bruised and arm hurting any time he moved it. He reached through the hole and pulled at the rocks and shattered mirror-like stuff.

“Yes!” he cried, throwing the glow stick through and squeezing through the just-barely-wide-enough opening.

It may have been a little too small.

“Oh no, no no no…” he moaned, anxiety washing over him like waves, “Why why why why!? Move, dammit, move!”

Desperately, he looked around for something to pull himself through with, but could barely see. Still glowing in a friendly manner, his glowstick lay some distance away. There was some other light source farther than that, but it didn’t offer much illumination. What it did expose was a large silhouette, that stood over the green plastic rod, peering at it.

“Oh shit!” he tried to crawl back inside his chamber, which suddenly didn’t seem quite as bad anymore...

He was too slow however. The shape stumbled its way over, and hovered over him.

To Andrew’s surprise, hooves grabbed him under the arms, and pulled. “Hold on,” a female pony voice said, “I’ll get you out! Don’t worry!”

Relieved, he started pushing again from his side, coming loose with a crunch, and a cloud of dust, spilling out onto the fairly large pony helping him.

“Thanks,” he said breathlessly, getting off her, “Thought I was gonna be stuck in there.”

“It’s no problem,” the pony said, getting to her feet as well. She looked him up and down despite the gloom, and inquired in a surprised tone, “Are you a human? What are you doing here?”

Glancing at her with surprise, he answered, “Yeah, I’m human. My name’s Andrew Shepherd. I’m probably here for the same reason as you.” He stooped to pick up the glow stick, “Though I suppose even if I didn’t know about her plans I’d have been put down here for existing.”

“Interesting name...are you the pilot of the spacecraft?” she asked, “Or are you one of the two humans we know about?”

“No, I’m not the pilot. I’m one of those two--wait, how’d you know about the Dream Chaser?”

Andrew’s heart sank as his light revealed the other figure. A battered and beaten Princess Cadence.

“Oh shit!” He screamed a second time, and began scrambling away.

“No! Wait!” she cried, her tone unlike anything he’d heard her use before, but the archaeologist was too busy running away, “Wait, there’s a--”

He face planted, again. His glasses stayed on but his glowstick clatterered away.

“...hole.”

The footsteps of the other creature came closer, and Andrew curled up into a ball, eyes squeezed shut, If I can’t see her she can’t see me can’t see her can’t see me…

A green glow appeared through his eyelids, and he opened one eye to see her lay the glow stick in front of him.
“Did you hurt yourself?”

Reaching out, he grabbed the glow stick and rolled away, crawling up a wall and holding it out in front of him like a shield.

“S-stay back.” he told the exhausted-looking supposed-princess. For the first time, he was able to get a good look at her.

Now that’s odd. The way she held herself was different. Normally, the Changeling queen would stand with the forward part of her body raised slightly upwards, looking down at most ponies. Now though, she stood with a more level and natural stance, her back straight instead of at an angle.
In addition, there were other slight differences in facial expressions. Chrysalis normally had a hint of anger in her eyes, probably from having to maintain the charade for so long, or perhaps she always looked like that when looking at humans.
This person on the other hand looked surprised, sad, sympathetic, and a little angry, but nothing like the burning hate that existed in the queen. In a few seconds, she had acted more like the mare Twilight had described than the queen had in several days.

“Please, I’m not her!” she pleaded, “I’ve been imprisoned like you! That other princess is an imposter!”

Despite his misgivings, and hesitation, there was only one conclusion, “I believe you.”

She blinked, and stared at him, “What? That easy?”

“You’re the real Cadence. That’s fairly obvious, actually. No supervillain is this stupid, at least not without any grunts around. It doesn’t make sense for you to be her.” Andrew lowered the glow stick, at least to a non-threatening level, “Why would you leave yourself at my mercy if you were her? Why would she be so terrible at acting like you in public and then in private be ‘correct’? It doesn’t make sense.”

She breathed a sigh of relief, “I always heard humans were intelligent…”

Cadence didn’t know why he suddenly grinned and aimed his fist at the ceiling, middle finger extended.

“What’s happened? How’d you get down here? Where’s the other human?”

Andrew shrugged, “Twilight, Melissa, and I found out the bug queen’s plans, and we got separated.”

“Twilight?” Cadence interrupted, “Twilight Sparkle? How is she?”

Her eyes widened, “Wait a minute, you’re the first human, right? The friend of Twilight’s Shining Armor spoke of!”

He coughed, “Yes...you could say we’re friends.”

“Or you could say he’s sleeping with her!” Chrysalis’ voice cackled from elsewhere in the cave as her upper body appeared on a reflective rock nearby. Must’ve been a hologram. Though it could have just as easily been magic.

Andrew didn’t even know how the rock got in his hand, or how many of the mirrored rocks he had to ruin before she shut up.
“Okay, for the record, we’re just dating!” he shouted.

“Just keep telling yourself that!” Chrysalis laughed, disappearing again.

He realized Cadence was staring at him.

“What?”

“Nothing! We need to get out of here!”

He forgot the conversation immediately, and raised the glow stick again. “Alright then...uh,” Andrew winced, “What do I call you? Your highness?”

“I am Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, but you can call me Cadence. What is that thing, anyway?” she asked, pointing to the glow stick, “a wand of some kind?”

Andrew looked at it for a second, “...Kind of. Melissa would probably go on about some sort of chemical reaction, specifically not magic. It’s a technological device that glows, that’s all I can say about it.”

“Not magic? Like those special light bulbs in the spacecraft?” She inquired.

“Not exactly. Melissa can probably explain it better, but we probably should get out of here first. Any idea where to go?”

Cadence shrugged, “I’ve tried to find my way out several times. It’s been slow-going, however. It’s easy to get lost.”
She gestured at the surrounding chamber, where Andrew now noticed were many different passageways, branching out into darkness.
The alicorn stepped over to a rock nearby, one of the reflective ones, upon which a crude map had been drawn. The basic structure of the map was scratched into the surface with a sharp rock, while details and notes were added with some sort of chalk.
“Some of them are dead ends, others just keep going for a long while, and some I just couldn’t follow, seemed far too likely to get lost.” Cadence explained.

Andrew nodded, and glanced around, finding the remains of a small fire. The cave was illuminated somewhat despite the fire being cold, but he couldn’t tell where the light source came from.

Crouching near the ashes of the fire, he began digging through his duster’s pockets, “Okay, if we’re going to do this, we do it right.”

“Do what right?”

Dumping three inactive glowsticks, some half-eaten snacks, a handkerchief, and a packet of matches on the floor, he replied in a roundabout way, “I’m an archeologist. I have to go into caves as part of my work, and as part of my job, I was taught how to escape caves. First step, remain calm, assess the situation, and take inventory. What do you have on you? I don’t have much food...”

Cadence shrugged, “Not much. A handkerchief, pocket watch, and some matches I used up a while back. We’re good for food and light. I’ve got my horn, and there’s flint and steel.”

“And by food, you mean…?”

“Grass, mostly. I know it’s not much, but it’ll keep us alive.”

Andrew flinched unconsciously, realizing that he was waiting for Melissa to make some expletive-filled comment.
“Yeah, that won’t keep me alive. Humans don’t eat grass.”

Cadence became alarmed, “By Celestia, what--what can we do? What do you need?”

Andrew grimaced, “Don’t worry too much. I can always eat cave mushrooms or...ugh, rat.”

Cadence tilted her head, her mouth open, “...Excuse me?”

Andrew continued taking inventory distractedly, checking how many of the matches had been crushed, “It’s fine, soldiers in World War I made a sport out of it. Dunno how many actually ate them, but it was probably better than those crackers they were eating…”

Cadence began to back away, “Eat rat? Are you...what is wrong with you?!”

Andrew stopped what he was doing, and recalled exactly who he was talking to. Me and my big stupid mouth…

He got up and put up his hands. As he stood up to his full height, he realized that the alicorn was a head shorter than he was.
“Okay, let’s take this slow. What is the problem?”

“What’s the problem? What’s the problem? You just suggested eating another living creature for Celestia’s sake!” Cadence’s horn flared with magic briefly.

Andrew rubbed his face, “Okay, I am not going to eat you. I would never eat any pony. I would never even remotely consider eating anything that talks even if it was five days dead. Back home, no one…ehrm, at least no one in the United States eats horses. I don’t think. It’s some sort of taboo. Forget about it, anyway, we don’t eat anything that talks, not since the Donner Party.”

Cadence relaxed slightly, “Donner Party?”

Andrew sighed, “You don’t want to know. Anyway, I can’t eat grass, and rat is just about one of the only options for good protein! I am sorry, if there were any other plants to eat, I would! I don’t actually know what kind of mushrooms I could eat!”
A light bulb went on in his head, “Wait a minute…that’s exactly what it’s here for! The grass!”

Cadence realized it too, “Oh, and I call myself the Princess of Love...of course! How could I be so apathetic?! It’s a trick to turn us against each other! She leaves me the only food you can’t eat, and leaves you the only food that would drive me crazy!”

Andrew hesitated, then nodded, “Oh yeah...that was totally what I was thinking.”

Taking some flint and iron nearby, Andrew set the fire ablaze.

“What are you doing?”

“You’ll see--aha!”

The flames began to flicker, and Andrew used a piece of charcoal to mark the direction they seemed to lean toward.

“You got any torches anywhere? Or sticks, or something?”

Cadence raised an eyebrow, but brought out some sticks from somewhere.

Andrew lit one with the fire, and began following the direction given by the flames.

“What are you doing?” Cadence asked, “Is it some sort of spell?”

Andrew shook his head, “Nope. It’s just wind. Cave entrances bring in new air, and shifting air will come from that direction.”
Proceeding down the tunnel, he reached an intersection. “Huh...now that’s a problem.”

The smoke wasn’t going in any particular direction. Just moving this way and that.

Shrugging to himself, he made marks for the most likely directions, then picked one at random. They’d have to check out each of the passages.

Following him, and uncomfortable with the silence, Cadence asked, “So...Mr. Shepherd. I’ve never met a human before. What’s your world like?”

Andrew cast his eyes downward. Gulping, he coughed, “There’s over four thousand years of written history on Earth. You may have to be more specific. And you can call me Andrew.”

Cadence said, “Okay. Tell me about yourself then. Or, better yet, what you’ve been doing all this time that you’ve been here. I haven’t heard anything specific.”

Andrew sighed, “Well, that’s...gonna be an odd conversation.”

“Well, I doubt there’s much else to talk about.”

“Point there. I came here, I saw, I got beaten up a lot. Made some friends, did some odd jobs, started dating Twilight and Fluttershy, then took a backseat to my own life a few months ago when a marine showed up.”

Cadence tilted her head, “I think I’ve heard of her. Corporal Foster, wasn’t it? Is that this Melissa you keep referring to?”

Andrew nodded, “Yep. ‘Corporal Melissa Foster, United States Marine Corps’, that’s how she always introduces herself. Can’t she introduce herself like a normal person?”

“What’s so wrong about that?”

“Nothing... It’s all the other stuff she does that bothers me. She’s this brilliant tough-as-nails soldier who knows everything, can build anything, except pens, Legos, and plastic. She’s one of my best friends...somehow, and yet everything we do drives each other nuts. Also, she’s awesome at combat, but terrible with people.”

Andrew smiled a little, least I’ve got one thing over her...

“She sounds...interesting.” Cadence commented, “I hope to meet with her.”

Andrew felt a tightening in his gut. “Have you seen anyone else down here? Has there been anyone else thrown down here? Maybe my friends--”

Cadence shook her head, “If they are, I have no clue. I’ve only seen more of those...those monsters, Changelings. Are they from your world? Do you know anything about them?”

Andrew shook his head, “Not really. They’re not from Earth. They actually invaded us, according to the queen. She said they’re what’s left of the force that tried it. She really, really hates us. Said she threw me down here as some sort of plaything.”

“She said the same thing about me,” Cadence commented, “I guess she picked you because you were the least threatening.”

“Yep, that’s me, Mr. Non-threatening…” Andrew grumbled.

“Do you know why they hate your people?” asked Cadence.

“Something about us fighting them or something, I dunno. We need to find my friends, we need to get out of here and raise the alarm!”

“Do you remember anything before they grabbed you? Any hint of where they might have taken them?” Cadence asked.

Andrew shook his head, “No, I don’t. All I remember is her making a distinction between what would happen to them and what would happen to me.”

He sniffed, and rubbed his nose. “God, I hope they’re okay. Wherever they are.”

XXXXX

Having one's nerves assaulted by a pulsed energy projectile is a bad enough shock, but Twilight Sparkle couldn’t tell what was worse; being shot by the projectile itself, or the shock of those same abused nerves being thrown into pitching frozen water from six meters up. In the dark.

Struggling back to the surface, Twilight spewed out a mouthful of water. After several gasps, no small amount of coughing, and many grunts of pain, she looked around. She was surrounded by darkness.
With immense effort, she got her horn to spark, sputter, and finally, produced a consistent low glow.

Now, she properly assessed the situation...finding nothing but the ocean around her. There was nothing below her, nothing for as far as the eye could see but lightly pitching black water.
Oh, Celestia… ”Andrew! Melissa! Somepony!”

A few meters away, a blue light appeared and turned in her general direction.

“Twilight, over here!” Melissa called out. A weaker light replaced the first, a green glow this time.

Twilight turned off her own and wearily swam over; running a human body had left her exhausted even after changing back.

Melissa was clinging to her backpack, which, to Twilight’s surprise, was not only floating, but buoyant.
Humans. They still found ways to surprise her.

In one hand the marine held a glowing green rod, and reached out with the other to pull Twilight to the pack.
“If we alternate, we can each take a rest--” she began, but Twilight, through chattering teeth, shook her head.
“N-N-No, I’ve g-g-got something b-better.”

Her horn lit up, sparked, sputtered, and died.

“Urgh!” Twilight snarled, “Why won’t you work, stupid horn!”

An emotional outburst made the horn collect energy, but it still died.

She snarled again, and started hitting the side of her skull with a clenched hoof. Melissa strapped the green glow stick to the pack and began digging around in the pockets above water. She withdrew a pair of battered plastic packets containing some sort of bar. On one side were the words “Soldier Fuel” printed in bold. It was apparently chocolate flavored.

Twilight recognized them as aesthetically similar to the chocolate bar wrapper Andrew had in his pocket when he first arrived, or the dozens more that had been found in Melissa’s car.

“How can you be eating at a time like this?!” she demanded.

Melissa tore open one of the packages, and broke the bar in half twice. “It’s not just for me,” she growled, and shoved a piece at Twilight’s face, “It’s also for you. It’ll help get your magic back, I hope.”

Twilight reached out for the fragment, rocking the pack in the process and nearly knocking the remaining energy bars out of Melissa’s hands.

“Watch it!” Melissa barked.

“Sorry!” Twilight snapped back, picking the fragment out of the water and chewing it.

About a minute later, she felt energized. Almost an adrenaline rush. Like she’d taken a bite of one of Pinkie’s special rainbow cupcakes.
She attempted to power up her horn again, only for it to surge with almost too much energy.

Wasting no time to dwell on the confusion, Twilight closed her eyes and focused her mind on subtracting the heat from the water.

She could hear ice cracking, expanding, and forming...

“Holy shit!”

...and with that, she knew her deed was done.

Melissa gaped in astonishment at the purple(!) ice raft that now lay beside them, circular with a little rim to keep water out and a downward slope inside. It was a bit similar to aircraft emergency rafts.

Without hesitation, Twilight pulled Melissa over to it, heaving the backpack inside with great effort and clambering on herself.

Melissa pulled herself out of the freezing water. Panting, she croaked, “Thanks…I’ve been working on a theory that your magic comes from either a D&D style limit or it's physically tasking. Heck of a time to test it, but I guess it’s the latter.”

She reached for her pack and opened it, pulling out random items from a multitool to an inoperative GPS device. She noted that she’d forgotten all about it.

There were only a handful of things she really needed from the pack at the moment though. She piled up gloves, a poncho, a poncho liner, a boonie cap, spare socks, a personal hydration system, a lighter, the remaining energy bars, and a few MREs. All items a veteran had once told her were a must for Afghanistan. They would serve just as well here.

She pulled the poncho over herself, pulled on the gloves, then took the poncho liner and wrapped it around Twilight. To Twilight’s confusion, she was also passed the cap and spare socks.

“Pull the socks over your hooves and put the hat on,” Melissa ordered, “Any protection is better than no protection. Trust me, frostbite sucks.”

As Melissa carefully wrapped up the open energy bar, and checked the water container, she felt Twilight’s gaze burning into her shoulder.

When she spared a glance at the pony, Melissa was a little surprised to see a look that was more of betrayal than just anger.

“You knew this would happen.” Twilight whispered.

Melissa didn’t answer. She slowly sagged down, and rubbed her face, “...Kinda.”

“If you knew something, you should’ve told us!”

Realization dawned upon Twilight, “This is what you’ve been hiding, isn’t it? Why, blast it, why?! Don’t you remember--”

“You think it was an easy decision?” Melissa snapped, turning around to face the unicorn, “Going through daily life, acting like everything’s okay, when I know some sort of invasion is just down the line?! Why do you think I’ve been drinking? Why do you think I haven’t been getting any sleep?! Doing this has been going against everything I stand for!”

“Then why did you do it?” Twilight demanded, “For Celestia’s sake, what is wrong with you?! My home, my coltfriend, everyone I know might be enslaved!”

Melissa’s angry expression grew even further, and she inhaled deeply, “Oh boo-fucking-hoo! You got teleported a few hundred klicks away, and might be freezing to death!It could be worse, you could have lost your entire fucking planet you fucking asshole! Your entire family, life, country, planet, and everything you ever knew could be gone! Yeah, it could be worse! Slavery’s reversible, extinction is not!”

Twilight snarled, “Did you come here deliberately? To escape the Changelings? Were you lying all this time? Why did you do this? You could have given us the chance your world didn’t have! Why?!”

“No, I didn’t know about it! The invasion hadn’t happened! I didn’t know! There was no way to know!”

“What do you know then? Why didn’t you tell us?!”

Melissa hunched forward tensely, “Because I couldn’t! I didn’t know! I thought it would work out okay!”

“You thought an alien invasion by love-consuming monsters would turn out...okay?!”

Melissa threw up her hands, “I wasn’t thinking, obviously!”

“What were you thinking?! That we would just accept this?! Why did you think this would work?! What is the matter with you!?”

“I was preserving the future!” Melissa screamed, months of anxiety and bottled-up pressure releasing, “The temporal prime directive...I had to...but I didn’t know it was going to be like this! Christ, I didn’t know! I didn’t know, there was no way to know!”

“The future?!”

“I know what’s going to happen in the future, okay?!” Melissa looked Twilight in the eye, her wavering voice sincere, “I know the future.”

“Precognition?” Twilight asked, “I thought humans--”

“No, you remember that ‘psychic connection’? It wasn’t just up to the present. I know what’s going to happen in Equestria for...possibly the next year! I don’t know how, but that TV show from back home laid out your entire society, and even future events! I’ve known what’s supposed to happen ever since I arrived! Everything I’ve been doing has been to prepare for this invasion!”

Twilight stared, random events and behavior suddenly making sense, dating back to the dragon migration, “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I...I wanted to preserve the timeline! I had to follow the temporal prime directive! Your character growth! The butterfly effect could’ve spun out of control!”

“‘Our character’?” Twilight demanded in disbelief, “Our character? You know we’re real ponies, right? Your ‘show’ actually happened to us! What gives you the right to--”

“I’m sorry! I’m so fucking sorry!” Melissa’s voice cracked, “I didn’t know any better! I thought I knew what was best for everyone, and I fucked up, and I doomed the planet! Fuck me, fuck my goddamn life! I fucked up just like I’ve been doing ever since I got here!”

Her fluctuating tone stabilized somewhat into deep derision, “Well, I guess those chickens have finally come home to roost, the universe finally decided to stop fucking me over and just decided to kill me! I hope you’re happy you get to finally watch me die! Which do you think, hypothermia or thirst?!”

Twilight’s anger shifted to horror, “Melissa! That’s horrible! How could you say something like that? I don’t want you dead!”

Melissa shifted over to a side of the raft, her legs crossed and her head hung low, “I’ve doomed your planet. Everyone would agree to my execution as a fuckin’ war criminal, and you’ll be happy because I’m finally gone. Just kill me now. Get it over with. More supplies for you, and you won’t have to put up with my shit.”

Twilight moved over to her, “Melissa…I never said anything like that! Why would I want you dead? What’s the matter with you?”

“Because I just about doomed this entire planet, for fuck’s sake! If I hadn’t been there, maybe things would’ve played out right, but no. I fucked things up again.” she slumped forward, trying to control herself even as she openly wept for the first time in a long time.

Twilight was taken aback. She was mad, sure, but…no, she couldn’t even comprehend it. Why would someone have to be killed for a mistake?

“Melissa…” she said softly, “Why do you think these horrible things? Why do you keep thinking the worst of us? You have to know us better than that. Didn’t you look up to us?”

Melissa glanced at the pony, “I looked up to you.”

“Why do you think I hate you?”

“We always argue, you’re super suspicious of me, you keep accusing me of lying…”

Twilight put a hoof on her shoulder, “Melissa, I’m sorry I haven’t been very clear about this. I don’t hate you. I feel like we could be friends, and I think we are. Sometimes ponies who argue the most are also the most similar to one another. But we’ve been letting small things get to us for too long. If we let this happen, the magic of friendship can be turned into something else. I didn’t know you had all this bottled up...why didn’t you tell me?”

Melissa sniffed heavily, “I couldn’t, I was scared. I didn’t know what would happen, or even if anyone would believe me. I wasn’t concerned for your character exactly, I was just afraid that I might steal the life you’d earned by just being here. I didn’t want you to lose what you deserved. I thought I knew best. I thought I could bear the burden alone…”

“But that’s what friendship is for! Making it so that we don’t have to suffer alone. And with what’s going on, we need friends more than ever!”

Melissa wiped her eyes on her soaked sleeve, “I guess so.”

“I appreciate what you were trying to do, and for talking about this. Such knowledge must be a terrible burden.”

Melissa nodded, “It’s like knowing about Abraham Lincoln or JFK a week before it happens. You can’t tell anyone, because no one would believe you until it’s too late.”

Twilight patted her on the shoulder, “Well, it’s not too late. You’ve convinced me, and we might be able to stop them.”

The softness of her voice, the lack of serious anger she expected, renewed Melissa’s tears for a time.

After a few minutes of composing herself, Melissa gave the unicorn a sad smile, “So, hatchet buried then. Friends. Yay…!”

Twilight gave a little laugh too, “Yeah...we’re still stuck in the middle of the ocean on a block of crystal.”

She scooched back from the edge of the raft, and began to shift around to the other side. Arms grabbed her by the waist and Melissa pulled her into a hug.

“Ack!”

Melissa felt her eyes brimming with fresh tears again, but didn’t care. Humans are social animals. Every once in awhile one needs some affection of some kind.
“Thanks for everything, Twilight. Just...everything. Even the stuff you don’t know about.”

“Um...you’re welcome? You’re squishing me…”

Melissa released her, somewhat, and sheepishly said, “Sharing body heat is necessary in survival situations.”

Twilight laughed a little, “of course it is.”

“No, seriously. Pretty big part of survival training.” the marine had a tough time resisting the urge to make any sort of lewd joke.

Twilight snickered a little more, but didn’t shift away. “Can’t argue with that I suppose. So... what’s going to happen now? Or next, rather, in your precognition.”

Melissa shrugged, “I don’t know exactly. Events haven’t been playing out as I thought they would, and the whole alien invasion thing…”

“Then go off what you do know. Every little bit helps.” Twilight pointed out.

When the marine hesitated, Twilight said, “Melissa, whatever you’re worried about, I’m sure it will turn out fine. How have events played out so far?”

“Well, not exactly the same, but the end result was right…” she blew air out through her cheeks, “Okay...so Cadence is probably still alive, just in the mines under Canterlot. Chrissy’s gonna keep playing along until the wedding.”

“What happens then?”

“Well, in the show, you got sent to the mines as well and found Cadence. Then you fought your way out, stormed back in, the Changelings attacked, and you and your friends tried to fight your way to the Elements of Harmony, and failed. Luckily, the big black bug threw you in with Cadence and Shining Armor, and you freed her to get Shiny to turn the shield back on.”

Dejectedly kicking at the water, Melissa grumbled “Don’t know how we’re gonna get to that now. Our chances of being found without radio, a GPS, or anyone knowing where we are in any meaningful way are next to nothing.”

“We’ll think of something,” Twilight said, gazing out into the night, “We have to.”

XXXXX

Hours later, the pair were still alive. They were freezing, Melissa more so, but alive. For now.

Despite the protection offered by her pack’s clothing, in addition to her helmet, jacket, and fatigues, her lips were blue and teeth chattering.

Twilight huddled close to her, somewhat warmer due to her fur but sharing body heat was necessary.

Cracking open salt-encrusted eyelashes, Twilight squinted out at the horizon, “Sun’s rising…” she mumbled, “What time is it?”

Melissa coughed, “S-s-s…” she coughed, and simply held out her watch.

“6:30…” Twilight observed, “Maybe it’ll get warmer soon.”

“If it’s anything like the Atlantic, probably not…not for another ten hours.” the marine commented, “Andrew tell you about the Titanic?”

Twilight shook her head. She abruptly furrowed her brow, then looked off into the water.

“Do you feel that?”

Melissa payed attention. A vibration in the water. Ripples, not currents, moving in an odd direction, headed toward them.

With a trembling hand, Melissa patted herself down for her knife scabbard. Her ka-bar fell onto the ice, and she barely managed to grab it before it could slide off the side.

“P-probably sharks or something,” Melissa stuttered, “Don’t get any blood in the water and we’ll be fine. Are there any other predators you know of around here?”

Twilight furrowed her brow, “No...it doesn’t feel like a sea serpent.”

She took a deep breath and leaned off the ice raft, sticking her head under the water and looking around.

Melissa held Twilight’s rear end to keep the exhausted pony from falling off, but didn’t have to wait long.

Twilight jumped back, making the raft rock dangerously, “I think it’s a whale!”

Melissa scrunched up into a ball, looking around to the sides of the raft, “Ah, shit. Are you sure?! Are whales carnivorous here?! Are you sure it wasn’t one of those meat-eating plesiosaurs?”

Twilight shook her head, “Those are farther north, there aren’t too many of them. It was too big to be one! I’ve never seen a whale for real!”

Melissa relaxed somewhat, “Are you sure? Big whales still give me the creeps.”

“Really? Your job is to handle explosives and you’re afraid of a big sea mammal?”

“I’m not afraid of them! I just said they give me the creeps!”

“Do you have your camera? There haven’t been any photos of live ones!” Twilight said excitedly.

“You do realize we’re still stranded in the middle of the ocean, right?”

“That’s no excuse to forget our scientific duty!” Twilight retorted with a hint of amusement, “What did you do when you first got here?”

“Fair point,” Melissa admitted, and pulled her phone from her jacket pocket, thankfully intact with its otterbox.

The water began to vibrate more, and there was a deep rumbling sound that reached their ears.

Wait, that sound… Melissa realized. It wasn’t just the sound of something massive shouldering thousands of tonnes of water aside, there was another sound. It was a sound that was hard to describe, a repetitive wub-wub-wub-wub noise.

Twilight’s grin grew as she watched a shadow appear on the surface of the water, then her jaw completely dropped when the massive dark shape emerged.

Tons of water spilled off the thing, the rising sunlight glinted off the damp surface of the conning tower that just surfaced.
An instant later, a teardrop-shaped hull emerged underneath it and a single tall rudder rising from the stern broke the surface, the final wub-wub-wubbing of its screw finally winding down.
The numbers “584” were written in white on the bow, and on the conning tower, under the pair of dive planes mounted to either side.

It was a submarine. A human submarine, that had risen out of the sea.

Melissa was gaping in disbelief, but Twilight was utterly flabbergasted.

“What--what?! What?!” she choked out, “What is---”

Melissa rubbed her eyes to be sure she wasn’t dreaming. She looked at it again.

“Melissa, that’s...those are arabic numerals! What is it? What is it doing here?!” Twilight squeaked, “It’s, it’s just not possible!”

Melissa searched her mind for anything related to the number “584” in her mind, anything from the countless United States Navy ships she’d googled over the years. She couldn’t remember any specific number, so she took another hard look at the submarine.

The submarine. The honest-to-god American submarine that had just come out of the ether to rescue them.

Against all odds, they’d been found.

She and Andrew weren’t alone.

“It’s a United States Navy ship!” she shouted to Twilight, crying tears of joy, “It’s a submarine! It’s rescue! Hey! Hey! Over here! Help us! Help!”

Figures were emerging from the hatches on the conning tower, and spotted the pair waving and yelling a few dozen meters away from the ship.

The figures moved about a bit, one of them waving back as if to acknowledge them. Several went back below decks.

Within minutes, more had emerged from another hatch on the hull, and removed a cover from the side of the ship.

Shoving it into the water, its sides rapidly filled with air, exposing its nature as a Rigid-Hulled Inflatable Boat(RHIB).
Bipedal figures, several clearly wearing life jackets and two frogmen in wet suits, clambered into the boat, and began paddling over to them.

Melissa struggled to flex her cold fingers, trying to form a grip around her ka-bar.

“What are you doing? We’re being rescued, right? Aren’t those your people?” Twilight asked.

“Can’t be too careful!” she hissed back.

The RHIB drew up a few meters away, and came to a halt. They were clearly distinct now. Human beings, wearing orange life jackets and uniforms with USN stamped on them.

Melissa noted something was off. They weren’t modern Navy Working Uniforms, they wore pure navy blue coveralls of some kind. Even weirder, some of the uniforms weren’t US Navy at all, and were instead labeled with the symbols of the Deutsche Marine, the German Navy.

They also didn’t seem surprised by the ice flow the pair were floating on, apparently they’d decided to treat it like a raft.

“Either of you injured?” One of the frogmen called out.

“Negative!” Melissa replied, grinning happily, “At least not as far as we can tell! I’m not certain though! We’ve been out here for a few hours and we’re wet! At risk of hypothermia!”

The other frogman swung his legs over the side, and slid into the water, while his companion shouted, “Stay calm! We’ll get you!”

The frogman paddled over to their raft, and peered at the both of them through droplet-spattered goggles.
In a german accent, he said to Melissa in a very slow and calm manner, “Miss, I am going to get you out first,” he looked at Twilight, “then I will come back for you.”
Likely he was trying to keep them both calm, survivors tended to panic if they didn’t know what was going on.

Melissa became alarmed, “Wait! What about my pack? It contains vital United States military data that we cannot lose!”

The frogman glanced doubtfully at the heavy-looking pack.

“It’s buoyant! We can pull it with us!”

Looking between her and the bag, the frogman reluctantly nodded.

Having her roll onto her back, he grabbed her under the arms and pulled her off the ice float.
Slowly, but steadily, they moved back to the boat. Hands grabbed Melissa’s shoulders and pulled her up the squishy rubber side of the RHIB.

“You’re alright, we got you.” a variety of voices uttered, and variations thereof, helping her to one side of the boat. She stared around, her eyes glimmering as she took in the humanity surrounding her.
Melissa suddenly reached back, “Wait, my pack!”

“It’s here, just stay calm.”

She was wrapped in several blankets and towels, while a medic(presumably) looked her over.

Twilight was brought in next, swaddled in blankets like Melissa was. She stared around at all the human faces, at all the uniforms, equipment, and technologies she’d never seen before.

The boat turned around and paddled back to the submarine.

The marine shook the hand of one of the frogmen, along with several other individuals, and eventually embraced one of her rescuers.
“Thank the elder gods!” She said breathlessly, “Thank whatever force guides the universe! I’m not alone!”

The rescue party seemed glad to see her too. They spoke in excited tones, asking too many questions to follow.

A man with a silver oak leaf on his collar, wearing a US Navy cap and a life jacket pushed his way through the small throng, “Settle down everyone, settle down! Don’t overwhelm them!”

He looked at Twilight, “You alright, miss?”

Twilight nodded numbly, unable to form coherent sentences as she stared at him.

The lieutenant commander glanced at Melissa, “And you, ma’am?”

Melissa was slumped forward. Out of danger, wrapped in warm blankets and towels, exhaustion had just crept over her.
“Ma’am?”

She looked up at him, “Lieutenant Commander, sir! What...what year is it? On the Gregorian calendar?”

The officer blinked, and told her the date. The current year as Melissa knew it.

Melissa shook her head, trying to clear it, “But...but that’s...that submarine class...Barbel! That’s a Barbel-class attack submarine you got there! Where are we? Who the hell are you people? Where the hell have you been, and where did you come from? Do you know--”

The officer put up his hands, “Miss, calm down. I’m Lieutenant Commander Richard Owens, US Navy, executive officer of the TAS Gudgeon. We’re with the Terran Alliance, though I doubt you know who they are yet. As for where you are…” he scratched his head, hesitating.

“Are we on Earth?” Twilight asked.

Lieutenant Commander Owens seemed taken aback that the unicorn was the one asking the question, “No…”

“So we are still on my planet then?”

“Yes--”

Melissa, having recalled that she had just spoken very obnoxiously to a superior officer, spoke up in a (barely) restrained manner, “Sir? You said the ‘Terran Alliance’. What is that?”

“All in good time, miss…?”

Melissa inhaled through gritted teeth, and raised her hand in a salute, “Corporal, sir. Corporal Melissa Foster, combat engineer, United States Marine Corps.” She tugged out her dog tags, shining in the morning sunlight.

The lieutenant commander smiled a little, and returned the salute, “At ease, corporal. Once we get below, we can answer all your questions.”

They made it back to the submarine, and were escorted down the ladder.

Climbing off the tall last steps of the ladder, Twilight looked this way and that, utterly bewildered at the steel tube she had found herself in.
“All personnel secure from rescue operations.” a voice echoed through the ship from several speakers, barely able to be heard over the sound of the massive propellers starting up again. A human male with dark skin replaced the mike he’d used back on the wall, and went back to monitoring his display.
The control room was unlike anything Twilight had seen before, outside of the bridges of the ships in Melissa’s movies and shows.

Unlike the primitive tiny hoof or magic-cranked submersibles Equestria possessed, this Gudgeon submarine was massive, run by electricity, and far, far beyond pony manufacturing capabilities--or anyone else on the planet for that matter.
The chamber was cramped, filled a dizzying array of control stations, buttons, displays, dials, and valves. Two tall columns were arranged one after the other in the center of the control room, with folded handles to either side and eyepieces that seemed wider than they needed to be for humans.

Humans. There were over a dozen in the room, seated at consoles, doing maintenance, or whatever tasks they had about them that were beyond the poor disoriented unicorn. They were different in shapes, skin tone, and appearance. They were as different from one another as ponies were to humans.
Twilight did note that most of them seemed to be around Melissa’s height, but she could’ve sworn average human height was between her and Andrew...

Someone pushed her roughly out of the way, “‘Scuse me, coming through!”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Twilight squeaked, but realized that the crewmember who’d passed her was a pony!

In fact, there were several crewmembers who weren’t human. At least four individuals were ponies. Several wore the Equestrian flag on their uniform, but two wore German or American flags on their uniforms.

Melissa came down the ladder behind her, pulling off her soaked poncho and pulling her blanket tighter over herself.
“Barbel-class submarine,” she explained to Twilight over the noise of the ship getting underway, “They were decommissioned in the early 90s. I don’t remember all their names, but I know there weren’t any named Gudgeon.”

“So where did it come from, then?” Twilight asked, half rhetorically.

The hatch above them clanged shut, and Lieutenant Commander Owens ushered them along, “C’mon, the captain’s in the radio room.”

As they shuffled through, avoiding men, and surprisingly, some women, ponies and humans, moving back and forth, Melissa got a good look at the German flag some wore.

It was three lines arranged atop one another horizontally, black, white, and red.

That wasn’t right. The German Federal Republic flag was black, yellow and red.

Black, white, and red. That was the flag of the German Empire.

What the hell is going on here?!

They were escorted to a radio room. A man, presumably the captain, was inside, speaking with the dragon operator. The captain wore a classic uniform, with peaked cap, black greatcoat with eight bronze buttons, and on either shoulder, four horizontal yellow bars and a small golden crown symbol.

He glanced up upon their arrival, and nodded to them. “Our castaways, I take it? I’m Captain Stern of the German Imperial Navy, commander of the TAS Gudgeon.”
The captain spoke evenly in a light German accent, sounding friendly but had only a neutral expression.

Melissa straightened to attention as best she could in the confined space, and saluted, “Sir. Corporal Melissa Foster, US Marine Corps, 2nd Combat Engineering Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, Ground Combat Element of the II Marine Expeditionary Force. This is Twilight Sparkle, personal student to Queen Celestia of Equestria.”

The captain returned the salute, and Melissa stood at ease. Stern nodded to Twilight, and shook her hoof in greetings.

“You’re really Twilight Sparkle?” he asked.

“Yes, yes I am.” Twilight replied.

Stern grinned, “Even in the Alliance we have heard of your exploits. The incident with Nightmare Moon drove our astronomers nuts. Our scientists and magic technicians couldn’t agree what the cause was, but I’m just glad your people were able to do something about it. Ach, but there is plenty of time for that later. There is much to tell you.”

He turned to Melissa, “Combat engineer? You? In frontline combat?”

Melissa blinked, but replied evenly, “Yes sir. Sort of. I was going to ship out before I got pulled here.”

He made a puzzling expression, “Interesting... I apologize for not meeting you under better circumstances. We frankly did not expect to find anyone so far out here. One of our ships saw an anomalous radar contact in this area, and we were sent to investigate. Did you come off a sinking ship, or…?”

“We thank you for the rescue, Captain Stern,” Twilight interrupted, “I doubt we would have lasted much longer out there. If you don't mind me asking, where did you come from? Did you come from Earth? Why have we not heard from you? Equestria hasn't had any contact with humans up until very recently. What's this Terran Alliance you're part of?”

Stern patted the radio operator on the shoulder, “Shall we have this discussion somewhere more private? The wardroom is down the hall.”

Lieutenant Commander Owens lead the way to the wardroom, chasing out some sailors who hadn’t been fast enough to get the message.

While his executive officer went off to find warm beverages, the captain took off his hat and placed it on the table.
“Now...Corporal Foster, you were born on Earth, I take it? Have you been here long?”

“Native US citizen, yes sir. I’ve been here a few months, give or take, but I think my watch might be a bit off. I’ve been living in Equestria all that time. Sir, please, what is going on? The German Imperial Navy has been gone for a hundred years.”

The captain replied, “I’ll explain everything. It's good that you've been here a while, that will make this easier.”

He leaned back and withdrew an envelope from his jacket. It contained a white official document, with a speech written on it. The way he sighed and began to read indicated that he’d given it several times.

“We represent the Terran Alliance. After being lost to our homes and our world, representatives of various nations have banded together for mutual defense and sharing of resources. Our great coalition was formed in the early 1800s by three ships of the French Republic, and since then has incorporated ships, aircraft, and individuals who have arrived from nations across Earth. My own ancestors came aboard SM U-143, a U-Boat of the Imperial German Navy.”

“Wait, what?” Melissa interrupted, “A U-Boat? Jeez, didja bring Doug McClure with you?”

Captain Stern shook his head, “I’m afraid not, but I’m sure he would have been highly valuable. However, there were a few British prisoners from a recently sunken transport…”

Melissa shrugged, “A shame, I guess they’ll have to do. Go on, sir.”

“There have been small arrivals every once in awhile --known commonly as ‘Hestons’--, but less often are the significant arrivals. After the French and U-143 came the Dutch destroyer Philips Van Almonde in 1942, next a British and American hunter-killer task force in 1945 led by the carrier HMS Suzerain. Afterwards was a Soviet Krivak-class frigate, the Sarkastičeskij--or Sarcastic as our English-speakers call it--in 1979, and our most recent significant arrival, the USS Chesapeake Bay, in 1991.”

Melissa furrowed her brow, “Chesapeake Bay? She was a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, right? Went down during the Gulf War with all hands, no one found her.”

The captain smiled, “Evidently she did not. In fact, she, and several Iraqi and RAF aircraft were brought here. The Terran Alliance, while we are not one single entity, does share mutual defense out of staffing necessities. Most of our ships are commissioned in various navies, but we cannot man all of them with the personnel from those nations--thus some have mixed nationalities. Others, such as my own Gudgeon, do not belong to any one nation and are crewed by a mixture of personnel.”

His speech seemed designed to answer many questions doubtlessly others had had before.
“Current Terran Alliance society is made up of independent and sovereign nations that each possess a certain amount of territory. While we are separate, there are some mutual laws we agree upon. Our alliance possesses gender equality and racial integration, including human ethnicities and the other species on this planet who have chosen to stay with us. We accept all species and races. At present our ranks include dragons, equine races, griffins, and many others.”

“Babylon 5 was right, Melissa. Your people really do make communities wherever you go.” Twilight commented.

The captain started again, “Since our formation, we have remained hidden from the nations of this world at large, until the time is right. In the past, we have unfortunately been forced to go to great lengths to preserve this secrecy. The representatives of the species and nations of this world either are or are descended from those who have stumbled across our operations. While we don’t imprison anyone who does not wish to stay with us, we will discredit any who will not stay silent.”

Melissa sighed, “Suddenly a lot of stuff has started making sense. This explains the wealth of human stuff, but no humans except for the dead! Do you know how much trouble you’ve caused?!”

“I’m sorry if we’ve caused you problems, corporal,” Stern said, “I had no part in these decisions, they were made centuries before I was born.”

“How have you discredited ponies who won’t stay quiet?” Twilight asked.

Stern started to say it was classified, but Melissa interrupted, “Obviously they must have agents all over the place to make sure some things get lost, and they probably dump survivors of shipwrecks off the coast. When they start talking about all the advanced tech the Alliance has, they probably just sound crazy.”

She turned her gaze on the captain, “Wait a minute. If you have agents...how have you never found us? Andrew and I are pretty big in Equestria, y’know!”

The captain replied, “I can neither confirm nor deny any information about that subject. I’m also not privy to all of the Alliance’s clandestine operations. May I continue? We can answer more questions afterwards.”

While phrased like a question, Stern held power behind the words. Melissa knew to shut up.

“Individual nations, on their own soil, utilize the majority of the same laws they have used back on Earth, but out of necessity, some have been modified. The United States territories for example, utilize the Constitution, but do not condone segregation or sexist business practices.”

He glanced up, “Your profession as a frontline soldier comes as a surprise to us, Corporal Foster. Female soldiers, American or otherwise, are a matter of necessity here, but we were somewhat under the impression that the United States back home still operated under certain practices of military recruitment.”

“Female grunts have been accepted...kind of. It’s all over the place, at the moment, but hopefully gender equality should be getting along fine...or it should have…” Melissa trailed off, looking down at her backpack.

The captain seemed to ignore it, “How did you end up in the middle of the ocean? Were you on a ship?”

Twilight spoke up, “No. We don’t know what happened exactly. Captain Stern, as grateful as we are to see you, and as interested as I am in learning more about you and your people, we need your help.”

“Of course,” Stern nodded, “What do you need?”

Melissa hauled her pack up onto the table, and pulled out the laptop from the Sophia. “Captain, this planet is in great danger. Earth was invaded sometime within the last year, after I left, by a race of shapeshifters known as Changelings. Earth beat them off, barely, but some of their forces made it here, and in six days, are going to attempt to wrest control of the Equestrian government and use their resources to launch an invasion of all the surrounding nations with the intent of taking control of the entire planet. We discovered this after we found a flight recorder from a human spaceship involved in the Earth counterattacks, that got brought here, and myself, Twilight, and another human, Andrew Shepherd, were incapacitated and captured. I guess they tossed us out here figuring we’d drown, their queen seemed to love torturing people. Andrew is currently MIA, and we don’t know how Chrissy’s plans have been compromised, so they may have been stepped up, we’re not sure.”

Stern stared at her, his confident demeanor cracking a little. “...Excuse me?”

Twilight said, “Captain Stern, there is an army of alien invaders bent on enslaving us all to feed off of our emotions! They want to take our whole world, and have already taken dozens, including my coltfriend! If we don’t stop them here, this entire world will fall! Don’t you have ships, weapons, armies?”

She looked the captain in the eyes, “Please...we need your help! My entire people are at stake here! This entire planet is at stake! Help us, please, on behalf of the entire nation of Equestria.”

Captain Stern sighed, looking between the two of them for a long time, “You can understand I’m skeptical of such a claim. Do you have evidence of this?”

Melissa nodded vigorously, “Yes sir. This laptop has it all. Trust me, I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t been shot in the chest by one of these fuckers with a freakin’ phaser, then kicked in the gut by that overgrown cockroach.”

Stern nodded, “I understand. If you’ll excuse me, I must consult with my superiors. This is a grave development. My executive officer will answer any further questions you have.”

He passed Lieutenant Commander Owens on the way out, who was bearing several steaming cups.

The captain paused to have a conversation with his executive officer before departing for the radio room.

Owens demeanor had shifted to confusion. Setting the cups on the table, he took a seat himself and looked at the pair of castaways.

“We’re going to meet up with one of our milk-cows in a few hours. We have to continue on our patrol, but they should be able to transfer you--”

“Milk-cow?” Twilight asked, grasping one of the cups and finding it filled with hot chocolate.

“Resupply submarine, right? Type XIV sub?” Melissa asked, picking up one of the cups herself.

Owens shook his head, “Resupply, but not a Type XIV exactly. TAS Pacific, the first of our Pacific-class boats, biggest we’ve ever built. Nuclear-powered resupply sub, keeps all our boats and boomers chugging.”

Doing a spit-take, Melissa coughed, “What?! You--you’ve got nukes?! ICBMs, and SLBMs?!”

Owens looked at the stain she’d left on the cabin wall, and glanced back at her, “Yes, we have nukes…”

“Holy shit...what else do you have? What’s your tech level? What have you guys been doing, where have you been?”

Owens put his hands together, “The alliance holds a collection of islands, maybe the size of Sicily, or a bit larger. We’ve got it divided up among all the nations that are with us. Technology was up to about the 50s when the Soviets were…” he paused, grimacing, “Uh, well there was this incident in ‘94--um…”

He chuckled a little, “There’s a lot of catching up you might have to do. At the moment, we’ve got roughly the same technology and weapons we had in Vietnam.”

Melissa grinned, “Great! Excellent! The enemy only has maybe a battalion’s worth of troops, probably a little more. I'm just guessing, I don’t know the exact numbers. All I know is they’ve got enough to lay siege to a city. If you have an MEU, airborne units, special ops, anything, we need to get them to Equestria fast. We need everything you got.”

The executive officer leaned back with an odd look on his face, “Uh, Corporal Foster...have politics changed since the Chesapeake Bay was lost?”

Melissa gritted her teeth, “You could say that, sir.”

“I’m only asking because...well, I’m sorry, but we can’t guarantee any action, especially not in a week. You must know what the Powers That Be are like, it takes them a month to figure out if they need to take a dump or not!”

“But--but sir! This...this threat is massive. I can assure you, if we don’t stop them here, they won’t stop. They’ll be able to use the people in Canterlot for a feeding ground, while they use the Equestrian military to overrun everyone else. Then, when you kick the asses of some innocent ponies, they’ll try and drown you in troops. They tried to conquer Earth, for god’s sake!”

“I understand, Foster, but the alliance has been in hiding since we were first established. The significant arrivals only ever have a few thousand people at best, and the French were absolutely terrified when they first came through. It was them against the world! They didn’t have the population or industry to hold out in a major war, and they had to stay hidden! We’ve stayed hidden for generations, and built up pretty well, but I don’t know if they’re going to be willing to break that tradition because--”

“Because of a threat to the entire planet?” Twilight demanded, looking more confused than angry, “What kind of people are these…’powers that be’?”

“Politicians and high-ranking officers.” Owens spread his hands helplessly, “You would not believe how long it takes them to do anything. Look at how long it took the US to join World War II. Threat to the entire planet and they refused to do anything for a long time. They may refuse to even believe you, let alone help you. That’s what they’re like.”

Twilight shook her head, “I don’t believe that’s the case. Ponies--individuals, excuse me, are not rational actors, but states are. If we explain our case logically and calmly, I’m sure we’ll be able to convince them. While a worldly threat may not convince them, a threat to the entire planet from elsewhere with visual evidence and documentation will surely convince them to break this isolation thing.”

Owens didn’t look convinced, “I hope you’re right.”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, clearly overwhelmed, “Corporal, Ms. Sparkle...I’m not the one you have to convince about all...this. It’s my superiors. If we’re going to declare war overnight, you’re going to need to talk to Admiral Curtis. His battle group is the closest.”

“Alright, Admiral Curtis it is then. Who is he?” Melissa asked.

“He was the Tactical Action Officer aboard the Chesapeake Bay during the Gulf War.”

Melissa nodded, “Great! Maybe he’ll listen!”

XXXXX

Hours later, they approached the rendezvous point with their underway resupply submarine.

The original Type XIV submarines they were based on were an ingenious solution to a dangerous problem. The Nazi Kriegsmarine could not operate traditional submarine tenders, but with so few resources, they had to find a way to extend the range of their submarines and try and damage the Allied war effort. The milk cows could resupply their wolf packs with fuel, food, spare parts, a few extra torpedoes, and even freshly-baked bread.
However, there were two major problems. The first problem was that the ships could only resupply on the surface, not at speed, and thus were extremely vulnerable. The second was that in feeding entire wolf packs with supplies, they were extremely high priority targets and could cripple the squadron if destroyed. Once the Allies caught wind of these problems, all were destroyed. No Type XIV's ever survived the war.

While the second problem could never be helped, the Terran Alliance could certainly do something about the first.

The Pacific-class was nuclear powered, making room for extra cargo space and access tubes for the transfer of personnel and fuel. The submarine was designed using knowledge of underway replenishment several of the more modern personnel possessed, and the tubes could be connected beneath the waves at low speed. Water would be pumped out of the hoses and transfer of supplies done.
The Pacific-class and its submarines rarely surfaced as a result.

They were escorted to the hatch by a harried Chief Petty Officer Williams, a woman about Melissa’s height with a texas drawl and even worse patience. The hatch was roughly at the ship’s beam, or at least the personnel transfer one was. Twilight looked at the iris-shaped hatch, still sealed, with doubt.

“Are you sure that thing’s safe? How do we know it won’t just tear apart and drown us?”

A German engineer checked a dial near the hatch, and the pair of lights above it. The red one was still lit, while the green one was dark. “Do not worry, ma’am. This particular docking tube has not failed for…”
He cleared his throat, and hesitated, “As I said. Do not worry.”

Twilight raised a concerned eyebrow, and looked to Melissa, “Your assessment?”

Melissa shrugged, “Dunno, man. I just work here, and there’s a reason I didn’t join the submarine service. My uncle didn’t either, but boy did they try...”
Upon seeing Twilight’s face she added, “I mean...it looks sound. I’ve just never heard of docking tubes on submarines. Sounds like something out of Seaquest…”

To their immense relief, the docking tube held, and the hatch opened. Despite Twilight’s apprehension, they were able to make it across.
“No, no, I’m good! I’ll just stay over here!”

“Twilight, it’s five goddamn meters!”

“Five meters through a space with nothing but rubber between us and the water! No thank you!”

“Hey, Chief Williams, would you mind grabbing her legs? We’re kinda on a time schedule.”

...It was not easy to get across, but they eventually made it.

The nuclear submarine immediately went underway. As they moved closer to their destination, Melissa and Twilight were taken to the Pacific’s medical bay. Unlike USN submarines back on Earth, this medical bay was fairly extensive, albeit compact. It was a submarine tender after all, and thus had to provide for an entire pack of ships. There were twelve beds, an operating room, two doctors, ten corpsmen, a laboratory, pharmacy, and even an x-ray machine.

They were treated for minor hypothermia and frostbite by the head medical officer, a short red dragon. Blood tests were also done. Hair samples, swabs of skin tissue, saliva, and even x-rays were taken.

The 190 cm-tall dragon adjusted his glasses, and flipped the page on his clipboard. He spoke with a Welsh accent, “You both look to be healthy aside from the obvious, and appear to be who you say you are. Are there any other medical conditions I should know about?”

“I have Celiac Disease.” Melissa said, rubbing her arm where a band-aid had been placed, “Do you guys know what that is?”

The doctor rolled his eyes, “Yes, we know about Celiac, corporal. We’re not quacks around here. We don’t use leeches, or whatever it is Equestria uses. I should be asking the questions here, such as how does a person suffering from Celiac get into the United States Military?”
Melissa replied calmly, “Sorry, sir. There were some legal things that changed back home. I don’t know what, but I signed up immediately when it meant I could. I have low gluten sensitivity to boot, and they had some experimental drug treatments they were road-testing, but I got pulled here before I got involved in the program. It’s been hard here, but I’ve found ways around it.”

The doctor sighed, and wrote down something.

Twilight smiled sheepishly, “Um...excuse me, where are you from? Judging by your accent, I'd have to guess you're a Welsh dragon, but obviously you’re not from Earth Wales…”

The doctor muttered something under his breath in Welsh.

“Doc! Would you say that to your nana?!” a nearby human corpsman asked, also with a Welsh accent.

The doctor grunted angrily, “Quiet, ensign. Miss Sparkle, I don’t have time to answer your questions. I have to get you people up and out of my sickbay ASAP.”

“What did I say?” Twilight asked innocently, looking between the angry doctor and Melissa, who had her hand held tightly over her mouth and making spitting sounds as she tried not to laugh.

The doctor finally asked, “Any magical ailments, mental trauma, anything else we should know about?”

Twilight thought for a moment, “I don’t have any current ailments I’m aware of. Melissa here though does have an alienist.”

The dragon glanced at Melissa, “How’d you manage that?”

“Got thrown in jail, sir. There was a case of mistaken identity, and I was imprisoned for several days.”

“For what?”

“Whatever charges the bitch they mistook me for did, plus some other junk.” Melissa said, “I was possessed by Discord--”

She realized what she’d said. The doctor took a step back. The human corpsman inched his way toward an alarm. Williams put a hand on a sidearm.

“You were possessed by Discord?” the doctor asked.

Melissa put up her hands to keep them in plain view, “Um...yes sir. There is no longer a threat, I have been examined through all known magical means, or so the doctors told me. There is nothing left of him in my brain. Ask Twilight!”

Twilight nodded, “Yes, yes! She’s safe! We know how she was possessed, and we managed to stop it!”

The doctor and corpsman looked at each other, and the latter nodded to the former.

“Alright,” he sighed, “All your physical tests turned out well, as did what magical ones we could, but we don’t have an MRI, psychiatric personnel, or any non-magical means of verifying this. We’re going on Miss Sparkle’s word, but I’m going to recommend you visit one of our psychiatric facilities to double check this once this whole mess is dealt with.”

Melissa and Twilight breathed sighs of relief, “Thanks, doc--sir!”

“Let’s just get this over with. I have other stuff to do.”

The rest of the examinations passed with little incident, and the submarine eventually surfaced. The pair of former castaways were escorted by Williams up onto the upper hull of the Pacific.

Forward of its conning tower the Pacific possessed an aircraft hangar for a pair of Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King helicopters.

As Twilight was brought on deck, she caught sight of the vehicle. Her jaw hit the floor.

The massive flying machine was being readied for takeoff, crew boarding and running system checks, the engines beginning to spin up.

As the rotors slowly increased in speed, Twilight looked on fully agape, and chuckled nervously, “No...that, that thing? That’s...no, that can’t fly. That can’t fly.”

Melissa was grinning ear-to-ear, “Oh, you better believe it, Twily. You wouldn’t believe what we can make fly.”

“Well I’ve seen the pictures you’ve drawn and shown, but...but...just to see it…”

Melissa nodded, “I know. We’re an amazing species. We made a thing that can not only fly, hover like a hummingbird, but it can float too.”

“It floats?!”

“Oh yeah,” Melissa replied casually, “Sea Kings are the only sea helicopters I know of.”

“It floats? On water?” Twilight squeaked.

“Yeah, yeah,” Chief Williams grunted, pushing both of them along, “It’s amazin’ and all. Just get on the damn helo already, we’ve got a schedule to keep.”

They approached the aircraft and two figures approached. One was a pilot, and another a member of the deck crew.
Melissa barely remembered to salute the pilot before she was handed a life jacket and a headset, which Twilight also received…

Then the corporal did a double-take at the pilot.

“Whoa! sir, why are you blue?! Are you alright?” she demanded before she could stop herself.

Twilight slapped her face with her hoof, and Chief Williams facepalmed.

The Sea King pilot, from a distance, could be mistaken for a normal human. However, what was very distinctive about him was the color of his skin, being a color not normally associated with human beings. His epidermis was a shade of blue.
It didn’t seem an unnatural shade oddly enough, just...extremely weird.

Nevertheless, the pilot growled and started to step forward, but the deck officer held his arm.

“Easy, Frank...Hey, jarhead, do ya have a problem with people of color?”

“What? Oh my god, no! Of course not!” Melissa went to attention, “Excuse my behavior, sir. I have just nearly gotten frostbitten, and I might still be in survival mode expecting such...appearances to be unhealthy. And I am really, really not used to seeing people I don’t normally see on Earth and I overreacted! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be racist! Sir!”

The pilot huffed, “Fine. Apology accepted. Just get on board, we’ve got a schedule to keep.”

An embarrassed Twilight and Melissa were released from Chief Williams’ custody, and followed the pilot onto the helicopter. There was another pilot already up front, and a flight officer who helped the passengers strap in.

Melissa tapped the officer on the shoulder, and both switched on their headsets so they wouldn’t have to yell over the engine. “What’s with the pilot’s skin? Sorry, I’m not from around here if you couldn’t tell!”

The officer chuckled at that, “He’s a chimera! And kind of a dick, but don’t tell him I said that!”

Twilight managed to get her mike on, “A chimera? But--!”

“Oh, not that kind of chimera. They’re hybrids with parents from two different species. Frank’s got a human mother and pegasus father.”

“Ah,” Twilight nodded, “I’ve heard of those--well, not involving humans, but with some other races.”

Melissa’s jaw was hanging open, and blinking rapidly, “But...but...wait, that’s impossible! How--well I mean our ancestors interbred with neanderthals, and there’s probably ways to fertilize eggs...but...that’s just impossible with what technology you have!”

“Who said it had to be technology?” asked Twilight, “Magic is just as much a part of science as technology.”

Melissa blinked again, “But...magic doesn’t cover genetic manipulation! How?! How?!”

Twilight shrugged, “I don’t know, it just does!”

Just then, on the internal communication system, Melissa caught a fraction of conversation from the pilots.

“...Freakin’ Hestons, man…”

“Nah, freakin’ leathernecks.”

She put a hand to her headset, “Hey, squids, I think there’s a malfunction in the helo’s communication system. Your mikes are hot.”

She heard something about “sticky keys”, then the co pilot said, “Sorry about that, our comms act up sometimes. You hear things.”

“I hear squids are alike all over…” the corporal said grinning.

Minutes later, the helicopter lifted off.

Melissa’s heart soared as she gazed out the open hatch, the wind whipping through her hair. The helicopter climbed higher and higher.

It felt like years had past since she’d been in the sky. That was one of many things she’d missed about home. A fully-conquered natural world, the ability to navigate virtually any environment.
Up here, it was majestic, it was serene, it was magnificent.

...and across from her, opposite the door, Twilight’s eyes were bugged out, and she was making several gagging motions.

“Uh, Twi’,” Melissa laughed nervously, “You okay?”

Twilight shook her head rapidly, covering her mouth with both hooves, “Stomach...stomach does not like...”

Melissa laughed, “You’re airsick! Oh my god, you’re airsick!”

The officer in the compartment with them passed over an airsickness bag, laughing a little himself. “Lotta people do that up here, miss! Don’t feel bad!”

Twilight gagged again, breathing heavily, “But I’ve flown in airships tons of times! What’s wrong with--”

Her lunch finally decided to vacate.

Melissa continued to laugh, as did the flight officer. Even Twilight giggled a little, in between puking. There was little else they could take comfort or pleasure in, with the threat hanging over their heads.

Chapter 18

The gunshots rang out over and over, pounding into her skull like a drum.

The screams tormented her even as she covered her ears.

Distant figures surrounded her.

Discord’s laugh filled her ears, drowning out the gunshots.

“You did this.” he whispered, “It’s your fault. Weak. You were too weak.”

“No! It’s not my fault! It wasn’t my fault!” she screamed, not in despair but in anger, “I didn’t do it, damn you! It wasn’t my fault!”

“Your fault...you failed in your mission…” a chorus of voices swirled around her.

“No, I didn’t! I haven’t! I can’t do anything about the past, but I can do something about this! Stay in hell and leave me alone! Go the fuck away!”
The figures came into view. They wore United States Marine Corps uniforms of the mid-2010s, bloodstained and shredded by gunfire. No...not gunfire. Plasma fire. A strange hodge-podge of reality and burns from the Halo games.
They were members of her platoon. The platoon she’d lost when she’d lost Earth.

“You’ll fail, and run away. That’s what you did. Just like last time.”

Melissa shot to attention as The Lieutenant approached from the darkness. A chunk of his head was missing, eerily similar to a Union lieutenant from The Passerby.

“You ran away from your country, Corporal. You abandoned us.”

“Sir, I didn’t. You have to believe me! You know me! I wouldn’t abandon you fellas! I didn’t abandon you! It wasn’t my fault! I didn’t run away! I didn’t run away!”

“Who are you trying to convince, Foster?” the LT asked ominously.

“Sir! I didn’t run away, and I won’t do it this time either!”

Melissa looked down at her boots, her hands curling into fists. She found herself fully equipped wearing her modern UMSC uniform, an M4 carbine hanging off a clip on her vest.

“Who are you trying to convince?” The lieutenant’s voice was gone. Melissa looked up to see his head had been replaced by Discord’s.

She stepped away, raising her M4, “I’m not trying to convince anybody!”

“Sure you aren’t. You can’t beat Chrysalis. Deep down you know you’ll fail, you know you’ll lose and you’ll run away. And they'll never forgive you.”

Melissa gulped, closed her eyes, and squeezed the trigger.

Chunks of DIscord’s skull flew off as he fell backwards, the fragments laughing duplicates of his head.

More copies of Discord appeared, her squadmates replaced by human-sized versions of him.

“Leave me alone!” Melissa roared, and fired. She swept the tracers around at the apparitions, each one shattering into innumerable fragments when hit.

All except one.

The first apparition stood back up, the lieutenant’s appearance vanished to be replaced with a full-size replica of Discord. He towered over the 160-centimeter tall marine, almost as tall as an Elite from Halo. Maybe 262 centimeters.

“Chrysalis’ people invaded your homeworld, and obviously swept your ‘glorious’ military aside. You know what Project Orion does to the land below it. They had to destroy your world to ‘save’ it. You don’t even have heavier-than-air aircraft here, what can you--”

Half a magazine of 5.56 NATO rounds fired into his chest. The bullets pinged off a flickering blue field around him.

Discord moved forward and swept his arm at Melissa’s head, clutching a glowing blue object that she immediately knew was dangerous.
Ducking, Melissa raised her M4 to fire again, but Discord swept his arm back and the energy sword flung her carbine out of her grasp.

Giving a fantastic battle cry she swept under his arms and grabbed him by the midsection, using her momentum to send both of them to the ground.

He tried to turn his head, but she punched it aside and pinned down his right arm. She pulled out her pistol and put five rounds into his hand. The energy sword fell from his grasp and deactivated.

Discord’s other hand pulled her over to his other side, and punched her in the chest, knocking the wind out of her.

Coughing and sputtering, she rammed her boot right into Discord’s crotch.

She didn’t know if he had anything to hurt there, but kicking a squishy bit like that on any creature was bound to hurt.

As he collapsed, she rolled on top of him and kept hitting him. She punched him in the throat, in the eye. She kicked his chest, hitting his arms when he tried to grab at her.

The demon tried to fight back, but Melissa was too strong. She jumped up and down on his throat, “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck! You! You ugly! Alien! Bastard!”

She seized him by the scruff of his fur, glaring into his deep yellow eyes. One was purple and bleeding, nearly closed, the other alert. Alert for someone who's been badly beaten.

“Listen here you goat-raping pig-devil, leave me the hell alone! Get out of my head! Go away, just go the fuck away! I’m calling the shots now, Harvey! I’m calling the shots! I’m not gonna fail, I didn’t fail, I didn’t run away! Go!”

The marine punched him.

“The fuck!” she kicked him.

“A--W--A--Y!” she drew the word out and knocked out two of his fangs.

She kept hitting him even as the strength drained from her limbs, even as the target showed no signs of moving.

A silver metal hand touched her shoulder and she nearly punched whoever it was.

It was Silverbolt. His armor was unstained and untarnished, while her entire front and arms were covered in...she didn’t even know what.

He pulled her up, and she slouched against him, weakly hugging the Maximal, much to his surprise. Her breath came in short ragged gasps, struggling not to cry. He awkwardly and hesitantly returned the gesture.

“I did it,” Melissa whispered, “I did it!”

XXXXX

Melissa inhaled sharply and sat up with a jump. The dream and its details quickly faded under the barrage of sound from the twin turboshafts spinning above her head.

“Hicks is awake!” commented the flight officer sitting across from her.

Twilight fixed her friend with an odd gaze, “I can barely concentrate on this thing, and you fall asleep?”

“That’s why she’s Hicks!” The flight officer said, “Haven’t you seen Aliens?”

“Uh…” Twilight looked confused, “I am seeing aliens...are you okay?”

“Forget about it, Twilight,” said Melissa, “How much longer till...we’re wherever we’re going?”

The officer merely pointed outside.

Outside the Sea King’s single closed hatch was ocean, stretching all the way out to the horizon. Taking up a portion of the view was a wing of…
“You’ve got an entire Expeditionary Strike Group out there!” Melissa cried.

Firepower Melissa had desperately wanted to see again rode the waters of a world they did not belong to.
The helicopter hovered over a Midway-class carrier, a warship class that only had one surviving member back home, a floating museum.

The carrier here was fully manned, operational, and covered in aircraft.

Twilight, still somewhat airsick, inched her way over to the hatch, “What’s an Expeditionary Strike Group?”

“It’s a United States Naval formation, for rapid deployment of naval and amphibious power. This is better than we could’ve hoped for! A fleet like this could kick over a third world country in ten seconds flat!”

Twilight’s expression was...odd. Unsettling.

Melissa’s smile weakened slightly, “Twilight, we can win the war with these guys! If they’ve even got a fraction of the capability of the groups back home…”

She glanced back at the flight officer, “Any clue what this outfit’s equipped with?”

“It’s a little less than what they had in the Gulf, and a pretty rich mix. We’ve got Skyhawks and Corsairs with Seahawks, and Pattons with LAVs.” The flight officer then asked, “Win what war?”

Melissa froze, “Uh…”

The officer waved it off, “Ah, never mind. Just weird you two get an express ticket right to Curtis’ group. I’ve been in the Navy five years and I ain’t seen any Hestons get this treatment.”

The corporal shrugged, “Sorry, can’t say a thing.”

Twilight tapped Melissa on the shoulder, “Do you recognize any of these ship types? They look like more primitive models of some you’ve shown me.”

Melissa pointed out the window, “Yeah, they look like some of the ships from the 60s and 70s. Those two look like Oliver Perry-class frigates, there’s...that looks like a Charles Adams, but…”

The flight officer glanced out the window, “That’s the Sellers. Walker-class. They’re like an Adams on steroids, they’ve got a VLS and helipad. The frigates are Evans-class, a basic version of the Oliver Perry with fewer capabilities. They have VLS though. We don't have Arleigh Burkes or actual Oilver Perrys but what we've got is good enough. Cheaper to operate at least.”

“I can see that. Whoever picked a VLS was a genius.”

“Well, all our experts served on a Ticonderoga-class--”

“Cheaper? Really?” Twilight interrupted, disbelieving, “They’re bigger than our armored cruisers!”

Melissa spotted three ships larger than their escorts, “If you think they’re big, then don’t look at those. That Tarawa-class is twice the size of the HMS Dreadnought.”

Twilight squinted at the ships. One looked vaguely like the aircraft carriers Melissa had shown her, or the carriers used by the Royal Equestrian Navy Fleet Air Arm. The other two warships possessed a more conventional superstructure with a flat aft section. They were huge, from the look of it bigger than the largest Equestrian dreadnought.

“What are they?”

“The flattop is a Tarawa-class amphibious assault ship, the other two look like an Austin-class Landing Platform Dock, and a Whidbey Island-class. Most of them have been decommissioned back home, except the Austin-class, and those are being replaced by the San Antonio-class.”

The flight officer looked at her, “San Antonio? Oh boy...that LPD down there is called the San Antonio!”

Melissa laughed, “If we ever get back in contact with Earth, that’s gonna drive half the navy nuts.”

“But what are they?” Twilight asked, “They’re massive!”

“Oh! They’re an Amphibious Ready Group, ARG. They’re transports that carry a Marine Expeditionary Unit(MEU). See, they work with the carrier group--ah, Carrier Strike Group, CSG, it’s formation of warships centered around an aircraft carrier. That’s what the rest of the ships are. They provide escort and air power to the ARG.”

“A Marine Expeditionary Unit, can you explain that?”

“The smallest marine air-ground task force available to the corps. It’s a quick-reaction expeditionary force designed for extremely rapid deployment to respond to natural disasters or combat missions.”

“Right, I think you told me about this...” Twilight muttered, “What are those larger ships? The ones bigger than the destroyer, but smaller than the carriers? Cruisers, I assume.”

“Yorktown-class cruiser, and a Ticonderoga-class.” The flight officer said, and glanced at Melissa, “You know your 60s ships pretty well. For a jarhead at least. The Yorktown-class is kind of a mix between the Albany and the Spruance-class. Yorktowns are our best cruisers aside from the Chesapeake Bay.”

“Wait a minute,” Melissa said, “You’ve got the Chesapeake Bay here?”

She looked out a window and spotted it. Just ahead of the Sacramento-class supply ship lagging behind her, was a battered Ticonderoga-class cruiser. “74” was printed on the side of the hull, short for CG-74.

It looked exactly like it had when it disappeared.

She’d read about the ship over the years, the first US cruiser lost to enemy fire after WWII. Another tragedy swept another the rug like the Stark before it and the Cole after it.

A niggling doubt that had been plaguing the back of her mind since rescue was gone. There was no way anyone trying to trick her would use a twenty-five year old cruiser.

The Terran Alliance was the real deal.

“How’d you keep all this stuff hidden?” Melissa asked.

“We have radar. We can just move over the horizon anytime anyone gets close.”

Twilight’s thoughts were elsewhere.

Growing up as the sister of the future Captain of the Royal Guard, and as the personal student of the queen of a nation, she was fairly-well versed in military technology and tactics.
Thus, despite the potential for aid, the fleet now before the unicorn was terrifying.

When Andrew had explained 21st century warfare to her, Twilight never completely believed it. When Melissa arrived, she’d confirmed everything he’d said and more.

The frigates outside were unassuming at first glance, with but a handful of deck guns, and tiny ones at that. They didn’t look armored, at least not much. However, she knew looks were deceiving. One of these frigates could decimate an Equestrian Naval squadron and not even be seen.
Conventional naval technology was useless unless they somehow got within point-blank range, and somehow managed to avoid the alliance’s submarines. Magic was virtually useless as well. Most spells meant for combat still required line-of-sight to have any effect. They'd have to invent whole new spells.
If this was what their navy looked like, she shuddered to think of what their ground forces were like. Melissa had given the Equestrian Army inventions decades ahead of their time, and they still wouldn’t stand a chance.

If they even managed to score any victories, there would always be the threat of thermonuclear weapons.
Any attempt to engage the Terran Alliance in combat would result in extremely high casualties with little to no chance of victory.
When--if-- they defeated the Changelings, until they could match the humans in technology, they would have to maintain positive diplomatic relations.

However, despite the threat from them, Twilight could not be helped but be fascinated by the Terran Alliance. It was a much bigger sample size of humanity, with much more knowledge than Melissa or Andrew possessed.
The potential of what they could do if they started working together would be enormous. The entire planet’s scientific understanding of the universe could leap centuries ahead.

Humanity’s violent tendencies might even be moderated with Equestrian aid.

That snapped Twilight back to reality. A war was about to start in six days. We need humanity’s violent tendencies, and we need them now!
The Changelings had invaded Earth. They might have even destroyed it. If they had the strength and technology to do that, Equestria wouldn’t stand a chance.

There was only one group who would have a chance at winning, and that was the group who in times of peace prepared for war.

The Sea King settled onto the deck of the aircraft carrier with a whump.

“Welcome to the USS Andrew Jackson,” the flight officer said, “Please fold your trays--”

“With respect sir, that’s as outdated as ‘why’d the chicken cross the road’.” Melissa commented.
Crew members approached the aircraft. They helped Twilight down but Melissa waved them off and jumped onto the deck herself.

The deck was littered with aircraft from four different eras. A Douglas KA-3B Skywarrior aerial tanker, one of the longest serving carrier aircraft in history, was being towed toward one bow catapult on the foredeck. Taking up the space over the second bow catapult were half a dozen F4U Corsair piston-driven aircraft of World War II fame.
Arranged toward either side of the aft deck were a handful of 1950s-era A-4 Skyhawk jet fighters, out of the way of the area of the arrestor cable.
The area of the waist catapults, just out of the way of the landing deck, was being used as a helicopter landing zone. The Sea King was being refueled behind an SH-60 Seahawk of the 1980s, which leapt into the air seconds later.
They were escorted to the flight control tower, in front of which were a pair of 70’s-era E-2 Hawkeye AWACS aircraft. Between them was an F8U-1P Crusader photo reconnaissance aircraft.
Behind and to the left of the Hawkeyes, next to the tower were a handful of piston-driven A-1 Skyraider attack aircraft. An anachronism in the jet era even back home, they were unable to see service in World War II, but lasted from Korea to the end of Vietnam.

Twilight was barely able to understand how aircraft without propellers and such odd wings could fly, let alone understand all the weapons and sensors around her. What she did know though was the rule with human war machines. The sleeker the vehicle was, the subtler the weapons, the better.

They were escorted into the ship, climbing several levels and passing humans, ponies, griffins, hippogriffs, dragons, and more chimeras. Melissa paused in the hallway when a creature she could only describe as an anthropomorphic cat walked by, returning her gaze with confusion.

“Oh, she’s an Abyssinian cat!” Twilight said with fascination, “I’ve read about them, they’re from…”

“Abyssinia, I assume. Geez, more furry wet dreams…”

Finally, they were escorted to a briefing room of some kind, with a long table and a dozen or so chairs.

One of the guards said, “The admiral will be with you shortly, there’s some snacks around, help yourself.”

He shut the door.

Melissa glanced around, finding Twilight investigating the snack table. There was a water dispenser, a coffee dispenser, on a table also occupied by a pile of...donuts.

“Great. Now I’m gonna go hungry.”

Twilight gingerly picked up a donut, sniffed it, and took a bite out of it.

“Do you think these people stand a chance?” Twilight asked Melissa, “Honestly, please. I know how much they must mean to you, but...the Changelings attacked Earth! Aren’t propeller aircraft obsolete? You’ve talked at length about the aircraft your people have, you’ve drawn them! These look much older. They look to be from the era of that...that Vietnam War!”

The grin Melissa had held since leaping off the Sea King faded. She got herself a cup of coffee and sat down, “Honestly? I have no idea. I don’t know much about the capabilities of the Changelings. Up until the other night, I didn’t…”

Melissa stopped, and glanced about, looking for security cameras and recording devices. Not spotting any, she still coughed, “Uh...my knowledge of their capabilities is pretty limited. Still, old Soviet junk was able to take down Nighthawks in the Gulf War, and an F-16 over Bosnia. We’ve at least got a fighting chance.”

There was the distant sound of an aircraft landing, and Melissa shivered with pleasant goosebumps, “Man oh man, I forgot how much I love that sound! Jet engines, whoo!”

“That shrieking sound? You enjoy it?” Twilight asked.

“Why does everyone always say that? It's a comforting sound!”

The door opened.

A tall man dressed in the Alliance’s working uniform and wearing a khaki combination cap stepped through the hatch, closely followed by an aide. On the front of the cap was a US Navy insignia, and four silver stars were on either side of his collar, the insignia of an admiral. He took off his hat to reveal greying hair above a somewhat boyish face, courtesy of spending his 20s deep in the bowels of a Ticonderoga-class cruiser Combat Information Center.
Admiral Winston Curtis still had some of the enthusiasm that a young lieutenant commander fresh from the Gulf War once had, with the way he grinned as he saw them and stepped over.
Melissa shot to attention and saluted. Twilight didn’t know what to do, and briefly attempted to salute herself but Melissa waved her off.

Curtis returned the salute, still grinning, and shook her hand, “Corporal Foster, wasn’t it? At ease. Glad to see another face from the land of the free! Last guy who got here was Italian, couldn’t understand a word he said. Hey, who won the World Series in 2015?”

Melissa stood at ease, “I don’t know sir, though I could find out for you if you agree to our proposal.”

“You don’t know? But it’s the World Series!”

“Yes sir. I don’t follow sports, sir.”

He furrowed his brow, “None? No NFL wins or anything? Nothing at all?”

“No sir.”

Curtis looked disappointed. He scratched the back of his neck, “Ah, that’s a shame. Hey, who won the election in 2012?”

“President Barack Obama, sir.”

He nodded, “Hah! I was right!”

Turning to the aide, he said, “Make a note. Tell Admiral Thornton he owes me 50 bucks adjusting for inflation, and tell Group Captain Giovanni he owes both of us $100. Also in today’s cash.”

Grinning, he looked back, “And for 2016?”

Melissa coughed, “Um...with all due respect sir...you won’t believe me. Sir.”

“Oh, c’mon, corporal, it can’t be that bad!”

“Well...honestly, sir, I’d rather not answer.”

Playfully, the admiral smirked, “Don’t make me order it out of you corporal. You only just got your job back, don’t want to lose it because you got a severe reprimand like this.”

Melissa smiled nervously in reply, “Uh...sir, the President of the United States as of my last contact with them is Donald Trump.”

Admiral Curtis’ smile vanished. “...Who?”

“President Donald Trump is our commander in chief, Admiral, sir.”

“Who is he? I...don’t…” Curtis frowned, “Sounds familiar…”

“Uh...he’s the guy with the spray tans, the awful hair piece, numerous sexual harassment lawsuits, minor TV star, um...owns Trump tower?”

Curtis nodded, “Oh, right! Never watched any of his shows... that's, ehrm, interesting. How’s he done so far? I wasn’t a big fan of Reagan...”

“I don’t know if I should discuss this sir. It is an extremely sensitive topic, and we are somewhat pressed for time.”

Curtis nodded reluctantly, “From what I understand, that we are. Please, take a seat.”

“Uh...with all due respect sir--”

Twilight, her patience wearing thin, snapped, “Admiral Curtis, I apologize, but we have no time for further questioning and other nonsense! My entire country-- no, the world-- is in danger, and the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good beings to do nothing. We need to talk to someone in charge, and get--”

Curtis held up his hands, a little alarmed, “Oh, Ms. Sparkle! I’m sorry. Someone must not have told you. Damn grapevine spreads faster than the speed of light except when you want it to...Giles Tyler, governor of New Texas, is flying out here right now.”

“What?” Melissa burst out, then coughed, “Uh, sorry sir. Permission to speak?”

“Granted.”

“Could you explain New Texas, governor, and...everything?”

“Governor Tyler is governor of New Texas, the territory owned by the United States as part of the Terran Alliance. Apparently, a bunch of spooks didn’t know whether or not to believe your story, but The Powers That Be were willing enough to believe your evidence that Giles himself is flying out here for you to personally brief him on what the hell is going on.”

“They...they believed us?” Melissa breathed.

“I told you!” Twilight said, nudging her.

“Yep. Astonishing, I know. The US government making the right choice. But when it’s a threat as big as you say it is, Giles had to at least investigate.”

“Do you know him?” Twilight asked, “You speak very in a very familiar manner.”

Curtis nodded, “Known him for...oh, maybe thirty years, I think, since 1990. He was the XO aboard the Chesapeake Bay. Retired fleet admiral in 2005.”

He took a seat, and the other two quickly followed suit.

“Sir, if you don’t mind me asking, what happened to the Chesapeake Bay?” Melissa asked, “Official Navy records are kind of spotty about it. They listed her and those RAF fighters as lost with all hands to those Iraqi planes. They didn’t actually have witness to what happened, but scans showed her getting hit by missiles.”

“What happened next on the records?” Curtis asked, “How’d they explain us vanishing? I’ve heard a few stories about how these disappearances have been explained. The Suzerain’s battle group was listed as hit by a U-Boat wolf pack, and the Sarcastic...well, the Soviets just shoved it under the rug.”

Melissa scratched her head, “Well...as I said, the records are weird. After the missile hit, electronic sensors started malfunctioning, they blamed it on the storm. Satellite coverage was bad too, blamed the storm.”

“Malfunctioned how?”

“One second there’s half a dozen contacts on the board, the next they’re gone. They figured there must’ve been some sort of system freeze, and that you rolled over. Whole thing kind of got swept under the rug like the USS Stark or the Cole.”

“The Cole? The destroyer?”

“Yes sir. Bombed in 2000 by the same guys who did 9/11…” she paused, and grimaced, “There’s a lot you guys missed, didn’t you?”

Curtis made a face as well, “We know about 9/11, don’t worry about that.”

He was silent for a moment, putting his fingers together, “They wrote us off did they? Well, that’s military intelligence for ya.”

His aide, silent and unnoticed, brought Curtis a cup of coffee, “Thanks, Tom. Those navy records were partly right, we did get hit by those missiles. Iraqis were insane to fly in that weather, but they did. Anyway, only one of the warheads actually went off. They did some damage, but all it really did was inflict casualties, set fires, and screw with our systems. We were still combat-effective for the most part. Then I saw everything but our RAF cover and a nearby Super Stallion vanish off our screens, and about three dozen unknown contacts appear on our screens. We didn’t know what they were at first, but they were subsonic, and after they attacked our helo, we thought they were Iraqi prop planes or something. They hit the bridge and killed the captain, head navigator, several other personnel, and gave Giles third-degree burns over half his body. He was unconscious for weeks.”

“It sounds like you were attacked by dragons,” Melissa said, “Geez, what a welcome to this planet.”

“Yeah, but once we got the missiles working again, who’s to say it was worse for us than the guys blown out of the sky by freakin’ Sea Sparrows?”

Twilight furrowed her brow, “Wait a minute, admiral! Do you know the identity of those dragons?”

Curtis scratched his head, “Uh...oh! Sorventh. That old dragon leader, Emperor Sorventh.”

Melissa’s jaw dropped, “What?! Sir, that event created a dozen myths! Some dragon kid was telling it to his friends as a campfire scary story! You mean to tell me that you caused it?!”

“Apparently so,” Twilight said.

“And suddenly their fear of us makes all the more sense…”

Curtis didn’t know what to do beyond continue with his story. “Well, from what I hear, he wasn’t a great guy. We wiped out his unit, bagged the Iraqi survivors, found a way to save the RAF planes, the Sea Stallion, and started poking around. We found the Alliance, and the rest gets a bit complicated.”

He looked at his drink, “Giles is a good guy, but he had a much worse adjustment than the rest of us. Admiral Thornton--then he was our chief engineer on the Chesapeake--took over as senior officer while Giles was in the infirmary. Once he got better though...poor bastard must’ve felt like he’d gone to sleep on Earth, and woke up here. Giles was the senior officer aboard ship with a bunch of ponies, Soviets, dragons, and Imperial Germans running around.”

Melissa was silent. Compared to what these people had been through, her troubles seemed so...minor by comparison.

“How did you stay hidden from us for so long?” Twilight asked, “Humans are legends in Equestria, and campfire stories elsewhere! Captain Stern mentioned you have some island holdings somewhere, how have we not found them?”

Curtis glanced at Melissa, “Have they discovered the doldrums? I’m not up to date on pony science.”

Melissa shrugged, “Twilight, do you know about the equatorial calms?”

Twilight nodded, “Of course. Our sailing ships can’t penetrate very deep into them, there’s no wind. Even pegasi have trouble, and our airships don’t have the necessary range--”

Realization dawned, “You’re hidden in the equatorial calms! A perfect hiding place! No one would think...oh, it’s so obvious!”

Melissa raised her eyebrows, “Yeah, that’s a great spot. At least until they invent good enough steam engines.”

Curtis nodded, “That’s why we’re off the trade routes, and what the guns are for.”

Soon, Twilight and Melissa were politely interrogated by intelligence officers repeatedly, getting full details on where they were from, and what they’d been doing recently. Melissa’s dog tags, wallet ID, and background information was double and triple checked. They asked her many questions about the technical data she’d given the Equestrians, the politics, and pretty much every little detail about everything since she’d gotten there.

They were interested in her transition through the wormhole as well, asking about everything from atmospheric conditions, to the weather, to smells.

Some time later, hours after a PA announcement that a plane had landed with the governor aboard, the hatch opened again.

In stepped two marines decked out in full combat gear of the 1990s, who scanned the room as if expecting Saddam Hussein himself to bust in through non-existent windows.

The wide splotch patterns of their woodland Battle Dress Uniforms(BDU) contrasted with the more minute patterns of the woodland digital camouflage on Melissa’s modern Marine Corps Combat Utility Uniform(MCCUU).

Their Personnel Armor System for Ground Troops(PASGT) helmets were virtually identical to Melissa’s Enhanced Combat Helmet, but she could tell their body armor and tactical vests were several generations older than those she was used to, wearing the full PASGT suite.

Melissa noted that instead of M4s or M16A2s, --the first now standard-issue in the modern corps, and the latter issued during the Gulf War-- they carried what looked like M16A4s. They lacked the carrying handle and fixed stock of the previous generations of America’s favorite assault rifle.

Following the marines was someone Melissa and Twilight presumed to be Governor Giles Tyler.

Tyler was about the same height as Curtis, and wore a navy blue suit with a red tie. Melissa struggled to hide her expression as she saw his face.
His left eyebrow was shorter than the right one, the left eye slightly closed by flesh healed years ago, but never quite back to the way it was. The entire left side of his face, the top of his head down to his neck, was covered in the outlines of old burns. Third-degree burns to be exact.
As he raised both hands to shake Curtis’, the others could see his left hand bore similar scars.

“Hey there, Winston.” Tyler greeted calmly, “How’s it going?”

Curtis replied with a shrug, “Oh, the usual maneuvers before this SNAFU. Oh hey, do you remember that guy Trump?”

“The...weird rich guy? Yeah.”

“You remember him? Huh. Well, turns out--”

The governor peered past the admiral at the pair standing behind him. One awkwardly at ease, the other unsure of how to stand.
Tyler stepped over, looking them over.

He peered at Twilight, “Ms. Twilight Sparkle. Great to meet you.”

They shook appendages, and Twilight smiled weakly, “Uh...thanks.”

He stepped over to Melissa, and shook her hand, “Corporal Foster. We haven’t had a Heston belonging to the US military in years.”

“I will take your word for it, Governor Tyler.”
He nodded, “Let’s get down to business. Ms. Sparkle, Corporal Foster, according to all our data, you are who you say you are, and appear to honestly believe what you’re saying. You’ve got the entire Alliance intelligence network in an uproar about a major threat to the entire planet. I sincerely hope you are telling the truth. If you are, we will do whatever we can to help. If you aren’t...I will leave that to your imagination. Please, explain to me in detail the background of the situation, and what you know of the enemy’s plans.”

Melissa was a little taken aback at the straightforwardness of the governor’s statement.

She dug into her backpack and removed the USN ruggedized laptop, along with her pocket projector.
Curtis’ aide, virtually invisible in the room, moved to pull a screen down on one wall for the projector.

Melissa activated the electronics, and found the presentation made from the Sophia’s flight recorder data, the laptop’s intelligence files, and Starbuck’s IPhone.

The lights dimmed, and she began speaking, “Several days ago, myself and the only other known human in Equestria were shown an archive of human artifacts by Queen Luna of the Moon. Among a multitude of other equipment was a United States military spacecraft, a modified Dream Chaser ship known as the Sophia. Upon recovering the flight recorder and other documentation from within the ship, we discovered that…”

She explained what she knew about the war on Earth, showed the highlights of the battle, as well as the intelligence data contained within the laptop, which wasn’t much.
She also explained what she knew about the current enemy troop dispositions.

“The enemy only has enough combat strength to attack one minor city. Exact numbers are unknown. Their transport, I'm guessing is designed to carry troops to new planets, it's about the size of a Wasp-class Amphibious Assault Ship. It could be just a troopship, or an attack transport more likely, but it could just as easily be a space-based equivalent of an amphibious assault ship. However, while the troops it held are here, I don't know if the ship itself has stayed. Based on the size of the ship, but without much knowledge of the inner workings, I'd say it could hold one or two battalions.”

“Jesus, on one ship?” Curtis coughed.

Melissa grimaced, “Yes sir. They have small arms likely equal to an M16 or an AK-47, they look like FAMAS crossed with P90s. They also have sidearms with unknown capabilities, as well as pulsed energy projectiles --basically stun guns. I don't know if they even have a ground vehicle capability, or what their air support is like beyond their wings, but they likely have some sort of means of transportation between the ship and the surface. The Sophia's black box didn't show any parasite craft belonging to the Changelings, but that doesn't rule out exo or endo atmospheric multipurpose aircraft.”

Twilight got up to offer her two cents as well, explaining what little she knew, and making an impassioned plea for assistance.

“Your people are the only ones who can beat these Changelings,” she said, wrapping up, “Hiding won’t help you this time, and innocent ponies will die! Please, on behalf of the entire nation of Equestria, as an official representative of Queen Celestia, I am officially asking the Terran Alliance for aid. Help us. Please.”

The governor got up from his seat. He put his hands behind his back, and walked up to the projection screen. On it was the intelligence file on the captured Changeling soldier.

“Back home--in New Texas, I mean--I’ve got a family. My wife is Equestrian, born and raised. We’ve got three girls almost all grown up. My eldest, a human chimera, she’s in the air force. If we refuse to help, my wife will never speak to me again, and my daughter will most likely die.”
Tyler turned back, “Ms. Sparkle, this planet is as much my home as it is yours. Not only would it be negligent to ignore a call for aid from a nation in peril, but to ignore a threat to the entire planet, one that the United States is at war with as of our last contact with them, would be foolish and illegal respectively.”

Looking to Admiral Curtis, he said, “Winston, you are to move at best speed to Equestria. We’ve got a planet to save.”

XXXXX

Deep under Canterlot, in the old mine shafts, a number of Changeling soldiers were gathered in a circle. They were readying weapons, and occasionally glanced around at the shadows dancing through the tunnels.
“The captives have escaped,” the Changeling NCO in charge explained, “The lieutenant wants us to recapture them immediately. Spread out, two by two. I couldn’t get any electronic sensors, so we’re relying on instincts only.”

The guards all made noises of affirmation, but one spoke up, “Squadron leader...we’ve all heard the rumors. We’ve all seen her...eh, tantrums. The queen--the air marshal is breaking dozens of regs with these prisoners just by keeping them down here. I think we can guess what she intends to do with them.”

The others glanced at one another, and between their commander and the other Changeling.

The squadron leader fixed his subordinate with a stoney gaze, “What of it, legionnaire?”

“Well…” nervously, he clutched his rifle in both claws, looking at his boots, “Maybe, maybe...Oh, sir, even savages don’t deserve what she might do to them. Maybe...well, we don’t have good sensors down here. Our equipment’s been failing, it wouldn’t be our fault if they just...got away.”

The squadron leader stalked forward and seized his subordinate by the collar, “Legionnaire, you will banish all disloyal thoughts from your mind this instant! Do not forget who it was who saved us from those damned apes! Out of a score of ships from our swarm alone, only ours survived! Out of the fleet with us, we survived thanks to our air marshal, and don’t you forget it! I will not have mutiny, you scum!”

He hit the soldier, knocking him to the floor, “As for the rest of you, continue to do your job without question. The queen will see us through. If any of you dare to even think of mutiny, I will shoot you myself. Move out!”

The legionnaire got to his feet, checked his rifle, and glanced around. Changeling night vision was better than that of humans, but they didn’t have total night vision. They still used technological aids.
Switching on a flashlight, he proceeded into one of the many tunnels in the massive underground complex, checking in with the rest of the squadron frequently. While he heard idle chatter from the others, he did not partake. He wanted to be alone.

Though many initially took him at first to be the stereotypical rookie soldier, the legionnaire knew enough to keep his head down when needed. He hadn’t had much experience on Earth, but he’d engaged in a few skirmishes. He’d been stationed on the edge of London, while his fellows had been stationed mainly around California. It made some of the other Changelings doubt his experience. Guerillas were much worse in the country with firearms behind every blade of grass, but the United Kingdom still had its fair share of insurgents. He still had bragging rights.

Glancing around the tunnel, he found no sign of a human or one of the horses.

Mutan culture encouraged absolute loyalty to their superiors, no matter what happened, but over the course of the Earth campaign, that faith had been badly shaken.
The air marshal had regained that faith when she got them out, but after all this time, the legionnaire --and he suspected there were others-- did not have the same belief. They were tired, the ship was a wreck, and they wanted to go home. They--

XXXXX

Andrew swept the metal bar down onto the alien’s thorax, sending him down like a sack of potatoes.
Cadence grabbed his rifle before it could fall to the floor, found the switch for the flashlight, and helped to drag the Changeling back into cover.

“Man, this guy’s heavy!” Andrew muttered, “what do they eat?”

“Love!” Cadence hissed, “Why are you surprised he’s heavy?!”

“Forgot who I was talking to...”

They dragged him into the hidden tunnel they’d ambushed him from, and Andrew pulled out one of his last remaining glowsticks, dimly lighting up the area.

“Let’s see what this guy’s got on him…” he muttered, and began rifling through the bug’s pockets.

He noted the Changeling uniform was slightly different from those he'd seen earlier, with a combat helmet and a flak jacket of some kind for supplies.

Cadence lifted up the rifle the Changeling had held, furrowing her brow in utter confusion. “There’s no flint, no ramrod…”

“It’s a modern gun, kinda. Don’t touch the trigger.”

He pulled a pistol out of the Changeling’s hip holster and peered at it. It was segmented between the grip, and its four barrels. He checked the grip, and curiously, found no magazine, but it appeared to be loaded…

His thumb came down on some sort of switch absentmindedly, and all four barrels, as a single unit, fell off the end.

“Whoops!”

“Did you break it?” Cadance asked, the corner of her mouth turning up a little.

“N-No! No! It was like this when I found it!”

He tossed the handle aside and continued rifling through the alien’s pockets, only to find several pouches containing...more pistol barrels?

Andrew picked the barrel up off the floor, and felt the weight. It was far heavier than he expected it to be, a little less than that of a loaded gun.
Cadence held out the Changeling rifle, “If you’re just going to stare at it, can I try to figure it out? I can’t make heads or tails of this...thing.”

They swapped weapons, and Andrew furrowed his brow at the newer one. It looked like the P90s from Stargate SG-1, right down to the magazine on top of the weapon and the rotating feed system.
He found out about the latter when he ejected the magazine while holding the gun upside down.
Weirdly enough, Andrew couldn’t find any breech for shell ejection. He may not be a soldier, but he had some gun experience, and knew that every gun needed a breech. How did it fire?

Curious, he pulled one of the cartridges from the magazine.

“How does a square peg fit in a round hole?” he muttered, baffled.

“What?” Cadence looked up from her attempt to put the barrel and grip back together.

He turned the cartridge toward her. It had a conventional bullet tip, but the case itself was square.

Cadence blinked, and chuckled a little, “That...ha...um...what? How does that work?”

“Search me. I don’t know how this thing fires without ejecting the cartridge, and I was thinking maybe it drags them along--”

“I-It’s caseless m-munitions.” A scratchy and somewhat feeble voice spoke from below.

“He’s awake! Hit him again!” Andrew hissed, looking at the large eyes of the alien in fear.

“You want me to kill him?” Cadence demanded, “He’s a prisoner!”

“Of course we’re not gonna kill him, just knock him out! He’s a bug! Their exoskeletons can take it!”

“He’s also a person, and I’m sure you wouldn’t appreciate getting smacked in the head repeatedly!”

The alien looked from one or the other, expecting nothing but death. He knew savages weren’t as bad as they said, but he still had a pretty low bar.

He raised a claw, “D-do I get a say in--”

“No!”

“Andrew, don’t yell at him.”

“His people kidnapped you, tried to take over my planet, and you want me to be polite?!”

“I mean don’t yell at him because you’ll get the other ones over here!”

Andrew paused, his mouth open, “...Oh.”

Cadence sighed, then used one hoof to hold the Changeling soldier down, “Okay. What did you say the ammunition was?”

“It’s caseless.”

“Meaning…?”

“Emperors above…” he whimpered, “I...I don’t understand it myself! Please don’t hurt me, I’m just a drone!”

Cadence held up both hooves, “No one’s going to hurt you! Why would you think that?”

He pointed to Andrew, “Uh, the ape?”

“Okay, that’s racist!”

Cadence face-hoofed, “Andrew, you’re not helping.”

“But--”

“Ssh!”

Cadence turned back to the soldier, “We need you to tell us some stuff, pretty much everything you know.”

“I’m just a drone! I don’t know anything about the plan!”

Andrew held up the two pieces of pistol, “Can you tell me why this is broken?”

The drone blinked, “Uh...can you show me what’s wrong with it?”

Andrew looked at the alien like he had two heads, “...It’s in pieces?”

The alien gave him an equally perplexed look, then glanced at Cadence, “Is there something wrong with him?”

“That’s it, I’m hitting him again!”

Cadence magically retrieved the crowbar and rifle to keep them out of Adnrew’s hands, “Changeling, can you show us how to operate that weapon?”

The Changeling did not reply immediately. He fidgeted with his claws for a moment, “I...look, I’m kind of on your side. I won’t report you to my squadron leader, but if I turn up without my weapons, he’ll beat the tar out of me! They’ll shoot me if they find I told you anything!”

“If you tell us this stuff, we might be able to win, and we could protect you!” Cadence proposed.

“And if we lose, we’ll tell the xenomorph upstairs about what you did.” Andrew added.

The soldier looked between them. “So...living on this primitive world, or death.”

Cadence threw up her hooves, “Sorry it had to be you, friend. We had to pick somepony.”

“Even if I told you, it would only delay the inevitable! You can’t win.” the soldier mumbled, “It’ll take them time to get another fleet together, but once the courier gets here, the queen-- the air marshal will tell them everything, they’ll send reinforcements. Not that they’ll need them, this planet can barely manage electricity. Even with your ability to control energy, even more advanced than our own, you won’t stand a chance.”

“Our what?” Cadence asked, “We don’t have anything like that…”

The soldier groaned, “By all the emperors…Mr. Human, do you know what I’m talking about?”

Andrew scratched his head, “Controlling energy--? Do you mean their magic?”

The alien breathed a sigh of relief, “Yes. Sort of. I would think even your people would have a better term for it though…we call it telekinesis. That’s about the only similarity between your abilities and our own.”

“Whatever, go on.”

He shook his head, “I can’t! Even talking to you like this might get me killed!”

Andrew sighed, “Look, if you don’t tell us anything, a lot of people are probably going to die, including your friends. The ponies may not have much, but they do have gunpowder.”

The soldier grimaced, “Exactly. If I tell you anything, you savages will kill my friends. The air marshal may be insane, but the rest of us aren’t! We’re here to help you!”

“Help us?” Andrew snapped, “Why are you invading us, then? Why’d you invade Earth?!”

The Changeling looked to Cadence, “Your people are living in such squalor and primitive conditions, we can fix all that if you help us!”

“Don’t listen to him,” Andrew insisted, “He’s just another imperialist dickhead.”

“What do you mean you’re here to help us?” Cadence asked, curious.

“We can give you electricity! We can give you luxuries beyond your wildest dreams! Medicine! We can take you to the stars, we can teach you new laws, new languages! The air marshal is insane, but we’re not!”

“What does this have to do with the humans?” she asked.

He looked at Andrew fearfully, and she put an arm between the two, “I need to know, friend.”

“W-we were just trying to help them. They’re stubborn and barbaric, and violence is all they understand. They were all at war when we came in! We had to put them in their place, they refused to settle down.”

Andrew turned away, rubbing his face.

Cadence furrowed her brow, confused at both, “They don’t seem like barbarians to me.”

“Well, you wouldn’t. Your people are on the same level.”

Cadence blinked, “What?”

He fidgeted again, “You may be less technologically advanced, but you’re all barbarians on the same level. The Mutan Empire spends significant amounts of money and lives to civilize primitive worlds such as yours.”

“Civilize? Primitive?” Cadence coughed.

“And there you have it.” Andrew muttered.

“Have what? Soldier, what in Equestria are you talking about?”

“It’s a great service to the universe to participate in a campaign...at least that’s what they told me. They said we couldn’t let any world suffer without our guidance. I don’t know about Earth though. We should’ve waited until they thinned out their numbers. Our agents could’ve easily triggered a nuclear war.”

Andrew gestured to him, “Y’see!? Why don’t you put on a red coat and a pith helmet while you’re at it?!”

Cadence was befuddled, “B-but I don’t understand. Why? Why do we need your guidance?”

Andrew rolled his eyes, “It’s called imperialism. My planet was ruined by this crap.”

“Well, you savages--”

“Can it, bug!” Andrew snapped again, “Don’t try to blame inherent inferiorities, or racial insanity! We know all your excuses, you...you bastard!”

He fumbled around with the pistol, and finally got it to snap back together. He was more sleep-deprived than he thought.

Noting a switch on the side, Andrew started flipping it. He recalled pistols back home having roughly two fire selectors, but this one had three. Odd.

He pointed the weapon at the Changeling, “You’re going to tell us how to operate that rifle of yours, then you’re going to give up your vest.”

“Andrew!” Cadence cried.

He rested red and exhausted eyes on her, filled with fury.

“I don’t know exactly what these settings do, bug. Shall I test them out?” he hissed.

“No no no, please!” he started pulling off his vest, “Look, I’m cooperating, see?!”

“How do you use the guns?! This one first!”

“T-t-that one, it-it-it’s variable lethality! You can switch between flexible baton rounds and normal ammo!”

“And the machine gun?!”

“Caseless! You load the magazine in the top of the barrel, it loads the round through a rotating...thing, and it uses electricity to fire the round!”

Andrew pulled out the magazine, and put it back in as the Changeling instructed him.

“Alright. Now get up.”

The enemy soldier slowly got to his feet, his claws spread wide, “Please, don’t--”

“Run.”

He gestured with the alien rifle, “That way. Now. Don’t tell anyone we were here.”

The Changeling looked between the hall and him.

“10...9...8…”

The soldier started moving. He tripped, got to his feet again, then ran down the tunnel, and out of sight.

Andrew lowered the rifle, simmering with anger. All the rage he’d felt had boiled to the surface, and he fought to force it back down.

“What is the matter with you?!” Cadence demanded, “Why did you do that?!”

He didn’t answer.

“Andrew, you nearly killed him, and now he might tell them where we are!”

He turned back, and passed her the sidearm, “Well, now I have a machine gun. Let’s get out of here.”

Andrew slung the rifle over his shoulder, and emptied out the vest. It wouldn’t fit either of them anyway. He stuffed everything he could into his pockets, making sure to leave anything that looked like personal items inside. There was something that looked like a radio he took as well. Once he was finished, he neatly folded the vest and placed it on a nearby rock, placing several weights on top to keep it from being dragged away.

Despite his anger, there were some depths he would not go to. He’d not even put his finger in the trigger guard when the alien ran away.

XXXXX

With military intervention confirmed, the Jackson’s battle group came about, heading full steam toward Equestria. A constant Combat Air Patrol was put in place, and the fleet went on high alert.
Proposals were assembled, intelligence officers coming and going. They consulted with Melissa and Twilight on geography, military capabilities, comparing them to their own estimates.
Much planning would have to be done.

Strategic Sealift Ships carried supplies to the fleet, replacing some of the marine ordnance with missiles instead of the unguided all-purpose recoilless rifles and similar equipment they'd been expecting to use.
Perhaps the Changelings had tanks, perhaps not. They weren't taking any chances. Some units still utilized Carl Gustaf recoilless rifles, just in case the missiles were unnecessary, and it was a world winner anyway.

For the most part, their gear appeared to be mostly Vietnam-era with some 70s and 80s influences. That wasn’t as much of a problem as one would expect, as the US Military had been using similar balances of equipment right up into the 90s. Modern radio networks back home even still had the capability to integrate with radios built during Vietnam.
They might not do well against the Changeling equipment, but if modern Earth could hold out, they’d have a fighting chance.

Twilight was fascinating by their equipment of course, their science and knowledge, but also by their social structure. While perhaps 60% of the personnel were human, the remaining percentage were a mix of the three pony species, griffins, hippogriffs, Abyssinians, and dragons. Equestria was among one of the most tolerant nations of immigrants, but not to this extent!
On the surface, the Terran Alliance appeared to be made up of kind and generous people. On the surface.

The pair were given medical examinations once again to be sure they were fit for duty. Melissa had a particularly noteworthy experience with the carrier’s dentist.

“Corporal, I’m going to guess that dental care wasn’t at the top of your list of priorities while you were in Equestria, but surely you could’ve taken better care of your teeth than this! How much stuff do you have between your molars? Equestria might be primitive, but I know they have at least some advanced dental capabilities. What happened?”

Melissa looked off to the side for a moment, grimacing, “Uh…”

“I said back off!”

“Miss, just put the scalpel down and--”

“What the shit is this doing in a dentist office?! Get away from me! What the hell’s wrong with you? My teeth do not need sharpening you malpractice-demanding-fuck!”

“It...could’ve gone better.”

To top it all off, they were fed actual Earth food. It was an odd contrast, seeing Melissa's plate of potatoes, rice, corn, and a massive steak next to Twilight's extremely vegetarian meal.

Finally, after several days, a strategy was assembled.

The leaders of the fleet met back in the Jackson’s briefing room, along with Melissa and Twilight. Admiral Curtis was there obviously, but they also met with the Carrier Air Group(CAG) commander, the fleet ship captains, and the officers in charge of the MEU, several captains led by one Colonel Waters.

Colonel Waters obviously had a vested interest in Melissa. As other officers filed in, he walked up to her, returned the salute she gave, and shook her hand.
Looking her up and down, he raised an eyebrow, “Interesting uniform, corporal. what’s changed since we’ve been gone? What kind of weaponry is the corps packing these days?”

“Much the same as what you had, Colonel, sir. We’ve replaced the M47 Dragons a while back. I’ve heard word of replacing the Harriers, but considering the F-35’s reputation, I don’t know how that’s going to go over. Especially considering the alien invasion...correction sir, I do not know what the corps is armed with at present, but I do know what they had when I left.”

The colonel nodded in satisfaction surprisingly, “Good. If they managed to hold out with gear like ours, we should do fine at the very least.”

Melissa didn’t know how to respond, and settled for staying silent.

Twilight stepped over, and greeted the colonel. She noted an interesting symbol on a chain sticking out of his collar, knocked out somehow.
She recognized it as a small metal medallion, carved into the shape of Queen Celestia’s cutie mark.

“Colonel Waters, what is the meaning of that symbol?” she asked, pointing.

The colonel looked at it, and tucked it back inside his shirt, “Oh, I’m a follower of the Celestial Faith. I thought Equestria used them as well?”

Melissa broke into a smile, “Holy crap, that’s a thing?! Do they have one for Luna?”

Twilight glanced at her, “You do know where you’ve been living for the past few months, right? Canterlot has the first of the places of worship for both queens commissioned.”

Melissa made a face, “I’ve been busy!”

Once everyone was in place, Curtis, with the CAG and Waters off to one side, stepped up to the plate at the front of the briefing room.

On an overhead projector, a map of the Equestrian nation appeared.

“In case any of you have been under a rock, we're going to war within the next 48 hours,” Curtis began, “the Terran Alliance is going to break out of its shell and aid the magic horses. We are to land on Equestria’s Western coast, disembark our jarhead ballast, and offer any support we can.” he pointed to the aforementioned coast with a yardstick.

His aide swapped out the large map for a smaller one, this time focusing on the land between Canterlot, helpfully labeled and positioned on the right side, and the open ocean on the left side.

“As I'm sure you've all been briefed on our foe, I won't waste any time explaining them. They're the bad guys. We know little about how their force is equipped, but we know they have limited numbers, only a regiment at most. According to our experts, as they have not overwhelmed the planet yet, they are likely are cut off from support. That does not mean they are helpless. Their munitions were good enough to take on Earth. It's obviously not hopeless for us either, though. We're not going up against Martian Fighting Machines and heat-rays. Earth held out for a while with nothing but lead and blood against their entire military as it always did. We'll be just fine against a few stragglers.”

He turned to the screen, “Now then. We're the only major force in the area who can respond to this threat, at the moment. The the Woodrow Wilson is en route with reinforcements, and the HMS Prince of Wales is on her way with her battle group and a battalion of Royal Marines. Airborne units are being assembled back home, and will be flying the longest flight for an airborne operation ever seen on this planet. However, for the time being, we are on our own, and we must be prepared for the possibility relief may not come. We must count on surprise, shock, and every advantage we have to overcome the enemy’s superior numbers.”
Curtis stepped forward to the overhead, taking a dry-erase marker and drawing a circle on the map along the coast. “Ship captains, our job is to get the MEU here, and cover them so they can offload their cargo and get ashore. The Chesapeake Bay will work with the Jackson to coordinate our efforts. You will rely on her instructions, she’s just about the only thing in the sea that can probably match the enemy’s sensor capabilities if our intel is correct. The Jackson will provide air cover, of course,” he drew arrows from the circle across the landscape, “She doesn’t have many modern planes or jet aircraft, so fellas, we’re going to have to prioritize. The marines get first dibs, because if they’re gone, we’re all dead. The colonel will now explain the next phase of the operation.”

Colonel Waters stepped up to the projector, “According to intel, the enemy is going to focus most of their efforts here, at the Equestrian capital,” he pointed, ”they have small numbers of troops inside the city, but the majority of their force lies outside it, concealed somewhere our aerial recon can’t detect. The bugs inside the city might give us trouble, but we’ll still have time to prepare.

“We have planned a risky maneuver. We’re going to use the majority of the 27th’s organic air support assets to move Alpha Company, and additional assets to the city in a ship-to-objective maneuver. They’ll ferry in as many supplies as they can, but you won’t get many vehicles. Captain Hansen...” he gestured to the man who was Alpha Company’s CO, “...will be tasked with defending the city for as long as possible until Bravo and Charlie Company can arrive for relief.”

He drew an X on a beach some distance north of Las Pegasus, “We’ll disembark Bravo and Charlie here with most of our heavy equipment. This will be designated Utah Beach.” From the beach, he drew a line that led along a river east, passed northward over Ponyville, and ended at the city, “Once our position is secure, from there, a convoy consisting of our tanks, AAVs, and troop transports will drive pedal-to-the-metal to relieve Alpha, with our LAVs providing flanking cover. We’re hoping that the enemy will concentrate most of his forces on Alpha. They’ll slow the bugs down and bleed them, so that we’ll be able to swoop in with fresh troops and hit them where it hurts. This little surprise of fresh troops should be enough to break them. They likely don’t have enough troops to hit us both with equal force, so they’ll need to commit them somewhere. If they focus on Bravo and Charlie, we’ll hopefully be able to catch them outside the city on a more equal footing and Alpha can come down to help us. Either way, he can’t go toward one area without being hit by the other. It’s also why we’re trying to hold a city with just a reinforced infantry company; the enemy’s forces are roughly equal to our own in size.”

The colonel pointed to Melissa and Twilight, “Corporal Foster and Ms. Sparkle will be flying in with Alpha Company, but will make several stops in any nearby towns to attempt to contact Equestrian military authorities and inform them of the situation. However, their army will likely be slow to move, and infiltrators are a risk. We can’t rely on their help, at least outside the city.”

A marine captain raised his hand, “Colonel sir, what’re the rules for dealing with the locals?”

Waters looked at him, “You will all be given briefing packets on exact etiquette to follow, but I’ll give you the basics. The Equestrians are likely to be extremely confused by our presence, technology, and especially by certain individuals,” he gestured to the dragon captain, “they will likely be frightened at the very least, and hostile at worst. For Bravo and Charlie, you will try to limit your interactions with the locals, and above all else make the best possible time to get to the city. You must not delay. If you are fired upon, fire back, but do not get bogged down. Alpha, your troops will run the most risk of conflict with the local authorities, so I’m encouraging him to work with them as best as possible. If they get in the way, you will do what you can to accommodate them, but don’t let that get in the way of the city’s defense. Is this clear?”

“Clear as crystal, sir.” Hansen called out.

Waters then added, “One more thing. Further details are available in your briefing documents, but we have a possible future hostage situation on our hands. One human male, Mr. Andrew Shepherd, was last seen in the city apprehended by Mutan forces. We are to assume he is still in their hands. While security of the city is paramount, this is also a vital secondary objective, as he is known to the locals and a potentially valuable asset. Any and all rescue attempts must be made if at all possible. We don’t know if he’s in the city, or if he’s been taken elsewhere, it is something we must be aware of and to inform your subordinates of.”

Curtis stepped in again, “That’s a wrap for this briefing, everyone. You’ll break down into your respective units and brief your subordinates. Exact details as outlined will be provided to you. Good luck.”

Twilight and Melissa got up with the others, and found themselves approached by Captain Hansen. He was dark-skinned, and taller than Melissa, but not all that much. He appeared to be in his late 20s.

Melissa came to attention and saluted. Hansen returned the salute, and nodded to Twilight, “Looks like we’re stuck together. We’re going to transfer over to the Randolph. You’ll need to get yourselves equipped, but we’ve got time for that.”

He looked at Melissa’s uniform, “Corporal, you may want to change into fatigues that don’t make you stand out quite so much. It might work back home, but here you’ll stick out like a sore thumb.”

“Yes sir.”

XXXXX

Hours later, in a briefing room on the Amphibious Assault Ship, the senior officers of Alpha Company were assembled.

Both dressed in BDUs, Twilight and Melissa sat off to the side. Melissa's hair had been cut down all the way back up to her hair, the hairstyle she'd started out with when she first appeared in Equestria.

“Would you stop fidgeting?” Melissa hissed, trying to stifle her laughter at her friend.

Twilight was tugging on the collar of her new outfit, “It’s the jacket, it doesn’t fit right! It...it itches and it doesn’t! It crawls!”

“How could it be itching?! Your fabrics should be…” Melissa thought for a minute, “Wait a minute, your fabrics should be more itchy! How come all the clothes I made here don’t itch?”

“Because Rarity makes them. And the fabric isn’t the problem, it just doesn’t fit! It’s too tight and too loose all over the place!”

“At least you’re not going into a crash course on a field promotion!” Melissa hissed back, and tugged at her collar. Three chevrons sat there, instead of two. “I’ve got a dozen books to memorize in two days!”

“Why did they promote you, anyway?” Twilight asked, “The colonel called you to his office, and when you came back you had the stripes.”

Melissa shrugged, “I’m one of their best combat engineers simply by virtue of being from the future from their perspective. I also know the most about the city, its defenses, and other stuff. I guess they didn’t want anyone pulling rank on me because they thought they knew better.”

The chatter in the room began to taper off. Hansen was at the front with another overhead, and once he was sure everyone was there, he activated it.

On the screen appeared a map of the pony capital.

Canterlot was a mountain city, built out of the side of several peaks on a sort of gully. It was divided into several sections. While the castle itself was built on the edge, higher up than the others and connected by bridges, the two “wings” of the city stretched out to either side, one curving around the mountain to the north and the other further back into the peaks to the southeast. The northern side was less developed due to its precarious nature, and served as a more upper class area, with a slight New York Central Park feel to it. Separated by a lake from the castle, the southeast wing of the city was much more developed, the heart of the city’s commercial and residential areas. Further along the mountainside, separated from the residential sector by a steep ridge, was the industrial sprawl. Mines for coal and other heavy elements were in the area, as well as factories and train yards.

Up the mountain above the lake, nestled in the hills behind the castle, connected by several footpath tunnels and one road, was another smaller lake. It was a fed by by melting snow and the interior of the mountain from points higher in altitude. Waterfalls from it fed the larger lake below, that also formed the castle moat and the center of the city’s water supply. The upper lake had an amount of flat land around it, and thus was home to a critical area. The airship landing fields.

A few small bridges and tunnels on the furthest edge of the industrial area connected the city to the train tracks that led to other parts of the Equestrian Kingdom. It was a way of keeping an enemy out, but also had the problem of potentially trapping their people inside. A few were tunnels designed to be blocked off easily, but the bridges were the largest routes.

Hansen began speaking, “This is Canterlot. It’s one of the most defensible positions on the planet...or at least it was. It has few avenues of entry for a purely foot force, is difficult to reach with cannon, and any airships attempting to land will probably be shot down. Massed swarms by enemy flyers pose a threat, but the city is well-defended with its own swarm. However, against modern technology, it is vulnerable. There are no missile defenses, obviously, and their weapons are primitive. This is part of the reason we’re deploying.”

He pointed at the map, “It is our job to protect this city and its population until Bravo and Charlie company, or our airborne support can arrive to relieve us.”

He pointed at the few avenues of exit, as well as the sheer cliff faces and mountainous terrain, “Our company, and with some of the locals, are going to have to defend against at least a battalion of enemy troops. We can’t afford to mount a defense outside the city, with our numbers disadvantage. The enemy also has unknown weapon capabilities beyond our own, and we’re going to use any advantage we can get to undermine his long range fire. Thus, we must concentrate our defenses in the city itself. We’ve got a potentially-friendly population though, and a lot of historically significant buildings, which complicates things. It can’t be helped, but we’re basically defending London here, troops.

“We will have our organic air support, as well as support from the fleet, in the form of fast-movers and helos. We don’t know what the enemy’s anti-air capabilities are, so be prepared to lose air support at any time.”

Pointing to Canterlot Castle and the upper class area, Hansen said “This is sector 1, we’re putting only a few assets here. It’s too vulnerable, and far too likely to be compromised. From what we know, the enemy is going to land most of their troops here.”

He pointed at the airfield, “This here will be sector 2, and will be where the majority of our air defenses will be. It’s vulnerable, yes, but it’s also the best place to land large aircraft, parachute in troops, or deploy armored vehicles. They’ll likely be restrained in their attempts to bomb it. So we’ll get a wide field of fire for our Stinger surface-to-air missiles, and we’ll stick some of our howitzers and supply areas there.” he drew several squares representing surface-to-air missiles, as well as squares with black dots in the center to represent the artillery.

“2nd platoon’s first and second squads will work as a tactical combat reserve force. You’ll get a TOW and a heavy machine gun. You’ll get squads from the light machine gun or assault sections, so that also gives you two M240s and two Carl Gustafs to work with. You’ll have at least one LAV with you, and transportation of some kind for rapid deployment.”

Hansen pointed to several streets on the map. The older sections of the city were a mess, medieval zig-zags meant to defend against invaders mixed in with industrial-era gridded roads cut straight through.

“This is sector 3, the core periphery, residential sprawl, and commercial ribbon of the city. The enemy is heavily reliant on air assets, and we’re going to assume they’ll attack from the west, the direction of the sector 1, instead of the mountains to the northeast. They’ll come in from the west over the castle, and land in sector 1 and the northern section of sector 3. We’ll block off the roads here and here, to canalize the enemy into the road here. Second squad of 1st platoon will defend those streets with half a machine gun squad and half an assault squad. You’ll have only one M240 and one Gustafs to work with, sorry. You’ll be falling back in waves, to this plaza here...”

Hansen drew a square around a large intersection of main roads, “...where third squad will be waiting. A heavy machine gun will be with you, along with a TOW and the M47s. We’ll also place two of our 60mm mortars with you guys. The ponies will hold the flanks as long as they can, but I don’t think their cannons will do well against tanks. If you can’t hold, you’re going to keep falling back in waves toward the tunnels in sector 4.”

The captain drew arrows toward the ridge separating sector 3 from the industrial sector. He put Stinger markers, and squares with a black symbol in the center that looked like a turkey baster-- the symbol for mortars -- along the ridge. “This is sector 4. We’ll try and put some of our heavy mortars up here. They can cover both sides of the city and they’re harder to hit. We’ll put a Stinger up with them so they can cover either side of the ridge, though they’re in for a rough ride. We have a few drones to provide targeting data, but you all know what they’re like. They ain’t infallible, or particularly effective at all. Observers will have to carry a lot of the burden.”

He pointed at the industrial sector. It didn’t have the same zig-zag problem the residential area had, and was instead a logical grid formation, “This will be sector 5. Our last assault and light machine gun squads, along with our last mortar, will be with 2nd platoon’s third squad, and a squad from 3rd platoon to defend the sector with the ponies. You’ll have a strongpoint here,” he drew a square around a plaza, “to the rest of sector 3. You’ll have fewer Stingers, but the industrial sector is full of smoke and aerial hazards, so it’ll be harder for their air power to drop in on you unannounced or to give accurate fire support. Your goal is to defend key sectors of industry and the rails. We will need a way out, as will the civilians.“

Finally, he drew in symbols around the bridges, “This will be sector 6. We’ll position 3rd platoon’s second squad, along with another M240 and a Carl Gustaf, to protect these two bridges. Third squad will take some combat engineers and work with the local authorities to seal the tunnels. The only way in will be the bridges. If the rotorheads bring enough vehicles in, we’ll see about getting you guys some. You’ll support sector 5 as much as possible, but your priority is the bridges. You’re the key to half the operation. Those bridges are vital for getting our reinforcements in.”

The captain drew in some positions marking out Equestrian Army positions, “We will get help from the local military. You are to use them as you see fit when possible, to help offset our numbers disadvantage, but be careful relying on them. They don’t have the training or the technology to match our capabilities. They also are probably going to have trouble with our instructions.”

The captain pointed out several large open spaces on the map, circling them, “Keep an eye on these areas. The enemy won’t be able to launch mass air attacks without getting shot, but these are perfect LZs. Our remaining Stingers will try to suppress them, but we need to remain vigilant. The enemy may also have infiltrators, though not many of them, hidden among the populace. Watch for snipers, watch for mines, anything you’d do they’ll probably do only twice as hard. These are bugs we’re fighting, people. They’re smaller and probably faster than you, and can fly. Watch the ceilings.”

He sighed, “Now, you’re to keep falling back in waves regardless of what happens. If we get pushed back faster than we expect, or reinforcements take longer to arrive, or anything, you’re to fall back in an orderly fashion, keep falling back by sector to the bridges. The bridges are the only way for our armored vehicles to get in, and for us to get out. They must not fall.”

Hansen drew a flag in the industrial sector, close to one of the pony barracks, “The company CP” he referred to the command post, “...will be here, along with the company hospital. We’ll have medevacs coming in and out, and aid stations positioned around the city.”

“How can they expect to defend an entire city like this?” Twilight whispered, “There’s maybe 300 of them!”

“This is our job,” Melissa said, “Even if it seems hopeless. We can’t just abandon the city like that, it’s too key to your kingdom, but we also can’t afford to lose time by going overland. Anyway, urban combat is notorious for allowing a handful of soldiers to bleed the enemy. We’re not expecting to win either, just hold out long enough for reinforcements to arrive.”

“And if they don’t?”

Melissa gave her a look that told the unicorn all she needed to know.

Hansen pointed out areas to deny the enemy, and buildings not to blow up for cultural, economic, or habitability reasons.

A Second Lieutenant Stacy Cole, the commander of 1st platoon, raised her hand, “Captain sir, what will the rest of my platoon be doing?”

Hansen nodded, “Thank you, Lieutenant. Some of you have probably been wondering what a civilian and an enlisted engineer are doing in here,” he pointed at Melissa and Twilight, “They are the people who brought us this info, but you might also be wondering if they should they be in battle.”

Hansen pointed at the castle, “Our assets deployed in sector 1 will be a significant escort in the form of first squad from 1st platoon. They’ll be escorting Ms. Sparkle and Sergeant Foster into the castle, in an attempt to apprehend the enemy commander. She is impersonating one of their leaders at a wedding affair, which we’ll probably arrive right in the middle of, hence why we’re bringing these two along. They are the most recognizable to the locals, so they won’t shoot us on sight, and can destroy the castle if the need arises, but they also know who to and who not to shoot in there. Once the enemy commander is apprehended, they will pull back to the HQ and await further instructions or evac. Sergeant Foster also knows much about the locals’ military capabilities, and we might need her if we run into anything unexpected.”

Lieutenant Cole glanced over doubtfully, “Captain, with all due respect, are you sure this is a good idea? I assume the sergeant can hold a rifle, but bringing a civilian into this…”

Hansen held up a hand, “Lieutenant, trust me, I had the same concerns. While Ms. Sparkle is not trained in combat, I have it on good sources that she’s a capable asset, and is also the queen’s protege. Even if she wasn’t capable of fighting, we’d need her. They need a friendly face to keep them calm. How do you think these people will react to a bunch of monkeys showing up waving guns around and yelling about shapeshifting aliens from outer space?”

“Give us bananas?” someone suggested.

Hansen snorted, but shook his head. He put his hands behind his back, “Marines, I won’t lie to you. We’re probably going to go through the brunt of the storm here. There’s only a handful of us against an enemy force several times our size. If all goes well, we’ll only have to hold out a few hours and we’ll all be able to make it home alright, but Murphy’s with us as always. Few of us have ever been in combat, let alone the modern combat the colonel and any other old hands went through. The Terran Alliance has been in hiding since its founding, and this will be the first time in a long while that we’ve deployed our conventional troops. This isn’t a light decision. The world is watching. We’re going in to a country that may well try to shoot us down when we try to help them, up against an enemy we know little about. We’ll have air support and artillery, but we don’t know what capabilities the enemy will have. We do know that we’ll probably be outnumbered and outgunned, we won’t have much time to prepare or rehearse, and we’re going to lose people. Three-hundred plus a few thousand outdated soldiers isn’t a lot.

“However, this is what we do. We run toward the sound of the guns to help our allies and anyone in need. We’ve trained for this since enlistment. The corps is one of the best on two worlds, and it’s been through worse than this. We must remember the 27th Marine Regimental heritage. We were at Iwo Jima, in Vietnam -- we were the first regiment to fly into a combat zone. This regiment survived through thick and thin against the Japanese without medevacs, guided munitions, or M16s, and we survived against Charlie when he tried to break us. We didn’t back down from Hussein, from Mao, from Stalin, from Hitler, or Tojo. You might think we’re outnumbered, that we’re a few hundred defending a city against an alien menace, but that’s not the case. The aliens are invading a city defended by the United States Marine Corps.”

Hansen pointed at the map on the projection screen, “We are going to get to that city, and we will defend those ponies, those people, those mothers and fathers, those sons and daughters, from the bastards who would try to enslave them. We will live up to the reputation Earth set before us, and we’ll drive them back into space just as they did. Everything is counting on us, marines. We’re bearing the brunt of the storm because we’re all that stands between victory and defeat for this entire planet. We cannot fail.”

There was applause and shouts of agreement, and they were dismissed to brief their subordinates.

Second Lieutenant Cole approached Melissa and Twilight. Exchanging a salute with Melissa, she jerked her head toward the hatch, “I’ll introduce you to first squad.”

They began walking out, and Cole addressed Melissa, “Sergeant, I’ve heard you were big back in Equestria, but I need a useful engineer and combat asset more than I need a...whatever you were. Can I assume you still know how to hold a rifle?”

“Yes ma’am. I am still fully qualified as a rifleman and an engineer. I’ve been making sure to maintain all marine standards as much as I could, since my leave expired a few days after showing up and technically I was supposed to return to duty--”

“Good. I’m surprised, I thought the ponies were all about friendship and rainbows. What needed marine skills over there?”

Melissa glanced at Twilight briefly, “...as I was saying, I was supposed to return to duty and if I didn’t maintain certain standards I probably wouldn’t be able to get out of charges of being AWOL if we ever made contact with the US government again. Though that’s beside the point. You’d be surprised what can happen over there, everything from timber wolves to manticores to--”

“Well, I’m sure the Changelings will be the worst of it.” Cole made a rather concerned expression at Twilight, “Miss, are you qualified in firearms?”

Twilight made a so-so motion with her hoof, “Eh...no, not really.”

Cole didn’t seem surprised, “Uh-huh...I mean no offense, but you could be a liability in the field. We may wish--”

“Sir, permission to speak?” Melissa asked, “She is a unicorn. One of the most powerful I’ve seen. She may not be trained in firearms, but she has other ways of helping, and even if she runs out of magic juice, she learns fast.”

Twilight nodded vigorously, “Yes, extremely fast!”

Cole blinked, “Right. Magic.” she sighed, “I’m gonna regret this... I’ll see if I can find someone to train you in a sidearm at least.”

Twilight grinned, “I’ll do my best to learn...sir.”

The lieutenant sighed again, “Don’t ‘sir’ me. Or whatever. Just refer to me by name or rank, got it?”

They made their way up to the ships troop marshalling area. A large portion of the infantry battalion occupied the wide echoing space, doing exercises, managing equipment, nothing really noteworthy.

Cole led them to a squad off to one side, a group of marines that matched a lot of the demographics of the Terran Alliance. There were two hippogriffs, three griffins, an Abyssinian, one earth pony, seven humans, and a dragon with sergeant’s stripes.

He was a little taller than Melissa was, perhaps 170 centimeters or so. Slightly below average height, for humans at least, but perhaps not among dragons. He had a short snout, a sawtooth crest of spinal fins, and orange scales. Like the rest of the marines, contrary to most of the planet, he wore a full uniform with boots and gloves. Of note was the fact that he had no visible wings at all.

The sergeant turned to look at the group as they approached. His thin and tall pupils narrowed at them, in particular Cole.

Cool and calm, he nodded to her, “Lieutenant. These are the Hestons?”

Cole grimaced slightly, “Yeah, Vaughn. I’m assigning them to you.”

The sergeant nodded again, “Understood.”

The ironically icy dragon stepped over to Melissa, and extended his hand, “I’m Sergeant Bedwyr Vaughn, you are Sergeant Foster I presume?”

“I’m Sergeant Melissa Foster, yeah.” Melissa didn’t hesitate to take his hand, shaking it vigorously with a friendly grin. She was somewhat excited.

He glanced at Twilight, “And you’re Twilight Sparkle?”

The unicorn nodded, and shook his hand.

Glancing at the spelling of Vaughn’s nametag above his right breast, Melissa commented, “That’s a Welsh spelling, isn’t it? Where you from?”

“New Washington.” he said, “Yes, before you ask, it is spelled correctly.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything. Is your family Welsh? Mine is, third generation immigrant.”

He looked doubtful at her name tag, “Are you now?”

“I know, I know, but really, I'm as Welsh as they come! Well, as Welsh as Americans come anyway. My grandmother moved to the US from Cardiff when she was a girl and the family changed their name.”

Vaughn’s entire demeanor shifted, thawing as he grew an interested smile, “Oh! Cardiff? Really? My grandfather was from there! What’s the place like nowadays? Probably changed a lot...”

“Aw, man, sorry! I haven’t got a clue! I’ve always wanted to go. My nana died when I was a kid, but we still have family there. Closest I got was London when I was studying abroad.”

“Bloody English…”

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe what they’re doing right now. There was this thing recently called ‘Brexit’...”

“Wow! Vaughn, never seen you lit up like this around other dragons!” Cole commented.

Vaughn's coldness immediately returned. “Was there anything else, ma'am?”

The second lieutenant’s eyes widened slightly in annoyance, but she didn’t comment. ‘No, Sergeant Vaughn. If you could give the unicorn training in firearms, that’ll be nice.”

“Yes ma’am.”

The lieutenant walked away, and he shook his head with a rough sigh, “The lieutenant’s such a--”

He froze when he caught sight of Twilight, and cleared his throat, “So...Ms. Sparkle, Sergeant, uh...”

Having been silent until now, Twilight jumped slightly at being involved, “Sergeant Vaughn, is there anything we can do for preparations?”

Vaughn raised an eyebrow, “I’ll get Corporal Ceres to show you the ropes of a .45.”

He raised a hand to his mouth, “Hey Ceres! Get over here!”

“Sergeant, you know I haven’t met many dragons outside of a friend of mine,” Twilight commented, “He’s my assistant, though really more of a member of the family…”

She trailed off, looking into the distance. Spike…

Images of her friends, of Andrew and Spike flashed through her mind.

Everyone back home. All in danger. The entire country. Everyone she knew.

She shook her head, and gulped, trying to maintain her train of thought, “...I...hatched him when I was a filly. We have no idea who his parents were. Did you know your parents? I mean, were they dragons, or…?”

“My parents were dragons, yes. I knew them.” the coldness returned, but it wasn’t quite the same. “Miss, you okay? You kinda drifted off there for a minute.”

Twilight coughed, “Yes...yes I’m fine. Fine. Totally fine!”

She sat down on her rear breathing heavily and hugging her tail. “Fine...Everything’s...fine fine fine fine…”

“Twilight…” Melissa said, crouching down beside her, “You don’t look fine.”

Twilight tried to hide it, but tears were brimming at the edges of her eyes, “N-no, I guess n-not.”

She leaned against Melissa, sniffling and trying not to start bawling. The marine embraced Twilight awkwardly.

“Hey, hey, hey. It’s okay...Twi’, it’s okay…You’re okay...”

Melissa glanced at Vaughn and motioned for him to keep the others away.

“I...I don’t understand it!” Twilight gurgled past sobs, “I’ve faced worse than this before! Discord, Nightmare Moon, even my final exams...why now? Oh, Celestia I’m such a...a…”

“Hey, I’ve dribbled plenty of snot on your fur since I got here, it’s only fair to my laundry bill…”

Twilight chuckled weakly, “No...no...I’ve had worse before and I haven’t melted down! Why now?! Why now…?”

“Probably because of spending several days under constant stress in a new environment and a war with global implications on your hands while also dealing with physical and mental injuries?”

“But...I’ve been through that! Nightmare Moon!” Twilight sighed with a tremor, “But that was only for a few hours...not days. You’re right…”

She had a renewed bout of controlled sobbing.

“It’s fine, Twi’, just let it out. We all understand. Better out than in, right?”

“Urk…I don’t think my stomach’s gotten better since the helicopter…”

“...Oh god that quote’s more accurate than I thought. Tasing and stress probably doesn’t help. I’ll see if I can find a sick bag or something...”

A marine griffin with two chevrons on his collar approached Vaughn. He had a military-style cut to his mane, which was navy-blue with gold-tipped feathers. His coat was the same color as his mane, except his underside, which was a white downy color. His wings were dark blue.

He peered at the two the squad was to be escorting, a little confused.

“Took you long enough, Corporal.”

Corporal Ceres grumbled, “You called me out from halfway across the room full of 600 goddamn marines. It took a while. What’s going on here?”

“Nothing, Ceres. Go find a bucket in case the unicorn gets sick.”

Ceres rolled his eyes, “What, she got an upset tummy--”

“Corporal I swear to…!”

“Yes, Sergeant!”

Chapter 19

“What?!” Melissa snapped, “Are you fucking kidding me?!”

The flabbergasted and somewhat terrified telegraph officer sent the signal again, “Ma’am, I--I--I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong! I’m not getting any signal! It should be working--”

Melissa tried to smack her forehead, but hit her goggles instead. “It’s just like all the other towns, damn it! The lines have been cut from here to Vanhoover!”

The marine leaned over and picked up her M16A4 assault rifle from where it leaned against the wall. The word “Orcrist” was carved lightly into the stock.

She tried to stand up, but the telegraph station was somewhat cramped, recently built and for ponies to boot.

Hunched over somewhat, Melissa rolled her shoulders back, shifting the weight of her light Alice pack. She still wore the k-pot from the archives, along with locally-made goggles, knee and elbow pads, gloves, packed pockets and a full PASGT vest over her BDUs. Her gear was stuffed full of supplies and ammunition, to keep her rifle and the Colt M1911 in a holster at her side running.

Slinging her rifle on her shoulder, Sergeant Melissa Foster glanced at the shocked mayor of the little Equestrian town the station belonged to, standing by the door with Twilight Sparkle.

Like Melissa, Twilight wore a combat vest with her utility uniform, but it was much less packed, and she only had a pistol in a holster.

“The telegraph network has been crippled,” Melissa reported hurriedly to the mayor, “Everything from here to the west coast is cut off. Send someone out to fix it, or get someone to find someone who can fix it!”

“But--what--who would do this?” the mayor sputtered, confused, upset, and afraid. He looked on the verge of a heart attack.

“It’s an invasion, Mr. Mayor,” Twilight explained, trying to keep the stallion calm, “There’s an alien invasion coming here. You need to get in contact with everyone you can, and get these messages out! Direct any military assets to defensive positions, and let them know that the humans aren’t the enemy. There’s more details in this folder, but we can’t stay. We need to move!” she handed a manila folder off to the mayor and rushed outside.

Four marines stood outside the entryway, their weapons relaxed but ready to rise up at the slightest hint.

One was a human, a second was an Abyssinian, lance corporal and private first class respectively. A third was a male pony, a lance corporal, and the fourth was Corporal Ceres, who lead the fireteam.

“Same as the others, Sergeant?” he called out.

“Yep! Fellas, we gotta move!” Melissa barked, and pointed down the street toward the edge of town.

The rest of the platoon was spread out across the small village like a spiderweb, stretching out from the Boeing Vertol CH-46 Sea Knight parked in the field just outside of town.

It was a fairly standard town, just a little smaller than Ponyville.

Most of Vaughn’s squad was arrayed around the town square. Vaughn himself, lurking near an apple cart, spotted them emerging, “Alright, leathernecks! Move out! Double time it now, let’s impress the locals!”

Melissa squeezed the control of the PRC-68 radio strapped to her vest, and spoke, “Oscar Lima 5-5 to Warden 1-6, this one’s gone too. Recommend we notify Warden 6, and move on to the city.”

Her earpiece replied, “Copy that, Sergeant--”

Another voice broke in the channel, “This is Yankee Papa 1-2 to all squads. We’ve got unknown aerial contacts inbound. From the northeast! Looks like flyers. Not aircraft, repeat, not aircraft.”

The marines all swept their gazes upward, jogging over to bits of cover and scanning the sky for targets.

Melissa pulled Twilight by the shoulder behind a nearby cart, waving to the owner, “Get down!”

Across the street, Vaughn poked his head up and shaded his eyes against the sun’s glare.

He could see the targets coming in now, they were…

“Oh jesus!”

Vaughn grabbed the shoulder of the hippogriff next to him --the squad’s radio operator-- and tugged her over. He pulled the handpiece off her PRC-77 manpack radio, and barked into it, “This is Warden 1-1 Actual. Hold your fire! We’ve got visual. They’re Equestrian Royal Guards! That’s Queen Luna’s guards!”

Twilight’s eyes widened, “Oh no!”

“What?” Melissa demanded.

“She doesn’t know about us! About you!” Twilight cried, “The Changelings-- they might have told her things! Agh!”

She rushed out of cover before Melissa could grab her.

Vaughn leapt out of cover as well, “Sergeant, where the hell’s she going?!”

“Working on it, Vaughn!”

Melissa glanced at Ceres and his team, “Well come on then! Move it you apes --er, people!”

Twilight was out in the open, on her hind legs jumping and waving. “Queen Luna! Luna! Queen Luna, down here! Hey!” She went back to all fours, and fired off a flare from her horn.

High up above, just below the cloud layer, was a V-formation of pegasi, or at least similar-looking creatures, lead by a fairly large specimen of the pony species. Queen Luna was here.

The Queen of the Night could see much of the village from this altitude. Even a thousand years hadn’t done much to change the height of the average town’s buildings, though that would likely soon change.

Luna was not a fan of large formal events, especially not one with as many uncomfortable undertones as Princess Cadence’s wedding. So when there came word that there was some disturbance in the western sectors, with several telegraph stations going dark, she jumped at the chance to investigate.

It had been some time since she’d left the city, and more than a thousand years since she’d led troops on exercises. Equestrian Army doctrine had changed and didn’t allow such members of state to directly command armies anymore. It was too risky, they had said. No matter how much power the queens had they were still vulnerable to many of the same frailties as any other soldier.

They’d intended just to send somepony out for repairs in a few days, but with the potential threat to the capital, there’d been a bit of paranoia going around. They’d planned to send out a team to investigate, but Luna overrode their selection. She would personally lead a squadron of her own guards. It would be impossible for any known army to destroy so many stations so quickly anyway, so it was probably a technical foul up. Luna really just wanted to get out of the house for a while, so to speak. Still, their advisors were concerned. More units were being dispatched to the area by road.

Imagine her surprise to not only encounter a foe, but with far more advanced technology than any contemporary army. She saw vicious-looking flying machines of metal that streaked at high speeds across the sky, easily outpacing even her. She couldn’t even get close enough to see exact details. There was no way to identify them.

The guards were with her, willing to continue on into the dark zone. There was no one else to provide intelligence.

They approached the first village in the dark zone, only to see a large flying machine parked on the outskirts. Tall creatures, like minotaurs, dotted the streets, brandishing advanced firearms. Several were noted to be gryphons, dragons, cat-like creatures, there were even some ponies wearing their same uniform.

What has happened? Have we really been invaded?

Before she could decide anything, she spotted a figure in a uniform of the interlopers on the outskirts.

Even at this distance, Luna recognized a familiar mane style, one burned into her memory from uncomfortable times.

And right behind Twilight were four of the trespassers pursuing her!

Luna looked to her wing-stallion, “Captain, follow my lead! Form up in a volley line to either side of me!”

An instant after the stallion nodded the queen was already gone, streaking toward the ground. She powered up an energy shield to form a bullet point, directing all the kinetic energy she had into the ground between Twilight and the enemy.

Melissa was running toward Twilight one instant, the next she was flung back several meters as something hit the ground.

She landed back hard on her back, groaning.

The sergeant picked her head up, and her eyes widened.

Twilight was goggling between Luna and the marines scattered around the area. The queen now stood in a small crater of her own making, energy crackling and sizzling the air around her. Her horn was charged, and she glared around at the soldiers.

“You shall not harm these ponies, interlopers!” she cried in a defiant, powerful voice, “What is the meaning of this intrusion into our land?!”

Two pair of bat ponies dropped down to her left and right flanks, raising breech-loading rifles and prepared to deliver volleys on their queen’s command.

Ceres was the first one up, raising his M16. “Stupid fucking ponies--”

“Hold your fire!” Melissa yelled desperately, waving with both arms, “Hold your fire, Corporal! That’s an order!”

Twilight rushed back to Luna, “Queen Luna, what are you doing? There’s been a terrible mistake!”

Luna seemed baffled, her words shifting back and forth between contemporary and historical grammar, “Twilight, there are intruders in our lands! Communications have been knocked out! I saw these interlopers from afar, and assumed they were the enemy! They were chasing you! I have not seen you for days, I assumed these beasts had captured you! Is that not why you are wearing that...that...outfit?”

“No, no!” Melissa cried, getting to her feet, “We’re not the enemy! Luna, it’s alright, it’s just us! You know me!”

Luna narrowed her gaze at the figure standing before her, “Who is that who speaks in such a familiar tone?! Doth thou not know who thine speaks with?”

Melissa growled in frustration, “Argh! Luna, it’s me! Melissa!”

Figuring it was her equipment, she pulled her helmet off, snagging her goggles uncomfortably on her earpiece before she could get the rig off.

“It’s me!”

Luna gasped, “But--but--This is impossible! Impossible! Thou art a liar! I just left--there cannot be two of you! Guards--”

Melissa held up her hands, one palm out and one a raised fist straight up. She had to stop the bat ponies as well as her own soldiers, “Wait! No, no! Your highness, wait, please! It's me! Ask Twilight! We're here to help! Please, the entire planet’s in danger here!”

Luna’s eyes widened as something processed. She turned, putting Twilight and Melissa to either side of her, “...how do I know you are the real Twilight Sparkle? We have been dealing with shapeshifters!”

Twilight was taken aback, and grimaced sadly, “but...Queen Luna, I am Twilight!”

“How can I be sure?! You wear their uniform! There is one who looks like Corporal Foster standing there, and another back in Canterlot!” The queen was growing increasingly distressed, her escort’s weapons selecting targets.

Twilight made an uncomfortable expression, and began blushing furiously, “Ooh...Fine, I’ll prove I’m me!”

She leaned up and hissed something rapidly in a low voice.

Luna’s entire expression changed. She began flushing as well, “Oh...thou art definitely Twilight!”

“What?” Corporal Ceres barked, his M16 still fixed on Luna’s captain.

The bat captain added, “What was that?”

“Yes, it is definitely her, let us move on!” Luna said, chuckling a little nervously, then clearing her throat and snapping back into a professional demeanor.

She stepped forward toward Melissa, “If you really are Melissa Foster, tell me something only she would know!”

Melissa began pulling her helmet rig back on, “Uh...shit, um...give me a second…”

“Sergeant,” Ceres called out, “With all due respect--”

“Corporal, give me a second I said!”

Melissa grunted, holding her head, C’mon, c’mon, remember! There’s gotta be something…

She did not have the MLP wiki at her fingertips. She hadn’t seen the episodes in so long, and she was drawing a blank on...on…

Wait.

There was a flash of memory.

Months ago.

72 hours after arrival.

A dream. A nightmare that had tormented her.

She did not remember many specifics, only recognizing a color. A mane.

Her nightmares had subsided afterwards, at least her sleeping ones, just for a little while. It was something she hadn’t considered.

Melissa stared at the Queen of the Night with a hint of betrayal in her eyes, and whispered, “After I came here, you...you walked into my dreams. You...why didn’t I realize it before? You were in my dreams, and you saw my nightmares! You saw my cockatrice nightmare!”

Luna inhaled sharply, her eyes widening, “I...I...yes...Corporal, I’m...I’m sorry if I offended…”

Melissa scowled, “Is that proof enough for you? And I’ve been promoted, your worship, I’m a sergeant now.”

Realization suddenly dawned on Luna, and she gasped, “But--Oh my, that means--”

Twilight looked at Melissa with concern, but looked to Luna, “Yes, there is a copy of Melissa wandering around Canterlot! My brother is getting married to a Changeling!”

The bat pony officer in charge of Luna’s escort stepped forward, “What in Equestria are you talking about?”

“There’s an invasion!” Twilight snapped, “There’s an invasion of Equestria going on, and these people are here to stop it, stop trying to shoot them!”

“An invasion?” Luna repeated, “Does this have anything to do with the telegraph stations?”

She looked at the marines, noticing the humans among them for the first time, “Wait a minute, more humans? What is going on here? What have you two gotten yourselves into?!”

Melissa activated her radio, “5-5 to Warden 1-6. We’ve made contact with Luna. We’ll bring her over.”

Luna furrowed her brow, “Have you somehow gained contact with the human homeworld?”

She glanced at Ceres, “I thought Earth didn’t have griffins…”

“They’re here to help, Luna! Please, just come with us! We will explain everything later!” Twilight insisted.

Sprinting back the way they came, the party ran back into the rest of the squad.

“All sorted out, Foster?” Vaughn called out.

“Yeah, everything’s fine, Sergeant!” Melissa snapped.

“A dragon?” Luna muttered, “And he wears your uniform as well?”

“Later, your highness, later!” Twilight said.

They quickly approached the Sea Knight, and Lieutenant Cole.

The lieutenant turned away from her platoon sergeant, widening her eyes a little at the approaching monarch.

Luna looked around at the soldiers, still in shock at seeing so many humans. They stared back with equal shock and curiosity. There were whispers and murmurs from several of them.

They seemed to know who she was, and seemed to hold respect for her, though none of them appeared to even remotely consider bowing.

Not that she minded, of course. It was refreshing, in fact, yet it struck her as odd.

Lieutenant Cole approached the queen. Luna eyed her, looking her up and down. Obviously a mare of authority, but there was no clear sign. Her uniform was just like the rest, with no flag, no decorations...the only mark were two flat brown bars, one on either side of her collar.

Hesitantly, Luna asked, “You are the commander of this unit?”

“Yes, ma’am. Second Lieutenant Stacy Cole, United States Marine Corps, Terran Alliance Command. I apologize for not standing on ceremony, there’s a risk of snipers.”

Luna nodded, “I understand, Leftenant. Sergeant Foster explained there was some sort of invasion?”

“That’s correct,” Cole replied. With Melissa and Twilight’s help, they gave a condensed version of what the invasion entailed.

“We’re en route to Canterlot to provide reinforcements.” the lieutenant finally finished.

“Excellent, I shall accompany you. No doubt you will require all the assistance you can get.”

Cole made an odd expression, “Ma’am, with all due respect, I don’t think my superiors could justify allowing such a significant...eh...asset--er, head of state to go into combat.”

Luna tilted her head, “Your concerns are noted and appreciated leftenant, but I am obviously not bound by either your authority, or your superiors. I am my own authority, and go where I please.”

Cole resisted the urge to roll her eyes, and took on a tone as though she were talking to a child, “Okay, your highness. Look, the modern battlefield is very dangerous, not for the--”

She furrowed her brow, “Wait a minute. You’re the queen of the moon.” there was the slightest hint of a smirk, “Couldn’t you just wipe them out? Can’t you throw the moon at them?”

Luna was growing somewhat agitated, and this mare was giving off a very odd feeling of superiority. She had the perfect way to turn this around, “You could wipe them out as well. You have your atomic weapons, you could destroy this enemy force quite easily. Why don’t you? Or rather, why don’t your commanders?”

Cole’s eyes twitched, “I--well...oh...I--”

“Do you understand now?”

“But--but ma’am! You don’t understand. You may not be in our chain of command, but you’re a head of state--”

Luna narrowed her gaze, and walked closer to the marine, “Leftenant, I understand perfectly well. I am hundreds of years older than you. I have fought in battles with weapons more primitive than your own but no less brutal, and no doubt I hold seniority in at least the quantity of fighting I have done. However, I understand my value as a leader and head of state. Nevertheless, At least 95% of the forces at my disposal are unavailable, the capital of my nation is going to be under attack, and from what you’ve told me, even with your troops what little we have gives us only a slim chance at victory.”

She swept an arm in the direction of Canterlot. Her voice increased in volume and went down an octave. Her presence seemed to increase. A dominating manner, but not a negative one. More the domination of a leader than of a tyrant, “My nation can survive the loss of one of its leaders, or Canterlot. It cannot lose both. I cannot afford to hide. It’s easy to be cautious when we have plenty of resources at hand, but when we are limited to but a handful, we must take risks. My life matters little if it means we lose. Now I could play it safe, and risk defeat, or I could take a chance. If it means saving the capital, I will gladly give my life. I am going to protect my people, with or without your approval. Do you wish to help me, or just get in my way?”

Cole looked surprised, and a little embarrassed, “Yes ma’am. I will let command know.”

“I appreciate it, Leftenant. Be sure to inform them that I am taking full responsibility for my actions, if they also believe I am that naive.”

Melissa and Twilight stood off to one side with 1st squad, all watching the exchange with wide eyes.

“Whoa...she’s kind of scary sometimes.”

“Oh, you should’ve been here when she was Nightmare Moon. If you stood close to her it was colder than a winter night.”

“Guess I understand why the colonel converted…” Ceres murmured, scratching his head and glancing at the rifle that now felt tiny in his claws.

XXXXX

The first portion of Alpha Company, aboard half of the Marines’ air wing, took off from the Amphibious Assault Group ships as they approached the Equestrian coast. Harrier jump jets leapt into the air, sensors scanning the land and the skies for any sign of the mysterious invaders.

Landing craft were already deploying from the transports, combat air patrols took off from the Jackson.

Fighter jets soared over landing ships of several varieties.

Some were Assault Amphibious Vehicles, AAVs. Built like a standard Armored Personnel Carrier, the AAVs were vehicles that could drive right from the ship into the sea, up onto the shore, and become armored vehicles. They could attack with grenade launchers and machine guns, and were completely sealed against Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological(NBC) threats.

The trip into the sea was nerve-wracking. The AAVs were good at their jobs, but the problem with a vehicle barely big enough to fit the crew and passengers, with enough armor to completely enclose the crew, heavy weapons, tracks, and the engines needed to propel them, is that it tends to hang low in the water.

As each one drove out from the belly of the Houston and the Randolph, the instant they hit the water they descended alarmingly fast, the water rising almost up to the top of the vehicle. They would then seemingly defy the laws of physics by floating, and then propelling themselves toward shore.

The conventional transports were not much better. They were direct descendants of their World War II ancestors. Basically a big box with a ramp on the front. Though far more sophisticated than the Higgins boat of D-Day, all the marines wished for the air-cushioned landing craft the corps back on Earth possessed. To ride along the water smoothly, nothing but air underneath…

The feeling of the boats plowing into the sand jarred away any thoughts of that fantasy, banging down their ramps with an almost aggressive tone.

Humvees, a smattering of smaller jeeps, trucks, and infantry spilled out of the vehicles.

Two mighty war machines, M60 Patton tanks, roared onto the beach. Four smaller Light Armored Vehicles, LAV-25s, charged out as their ramps were dropped.

AAVs, their crews ecstatic to be back on land, rolled out of the surf to take up positions with their brethren.

More landing craft came and went, carrying supplies back and forth.

The tank platoon, Light Armored Reconnaissance(LAR) company, headquarters company, and the first elements of Bravo Company of the 32nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, were all ashore.

It looked like the Cold War had puked all over the beach. Colonel Waters and the headquarters company began setting up their equipment, coordinating the troops and communicating with the ships. Stinger Surface-to-Air missile positions were set up on nearby hills.

The Battalion Aid Station deployed in full view from the air just off the beach, making sure to keep the red cross symbols visible.

With additional LAVs arriving, two platoons of eight LAVs drove out into the landscape to do reconnaissance.

The three UH-1N Twin Hueys attached to the battalion worked overtime as utility helicopters, carrying equipment to the beach, lifting scouts from the beach to a location here or there, loosing Force Recon upon the land.

The first elements of the Bobcat convoy(named for Bravo and Charlie companies) began to move out, a pair of tanks leading the first section of four AAVs. They were accompanied by humvees and trucks carrying plenty of soldiers and equipment.

Kilometers away, as 1st platoon’s Sea Knight lifted off from a no-name town, it joined a flight of other helicopters passing by overhead.

Six of the battalion’s twelve Sea Knight helicopters formed up with each other, followed closely by two Sea Stallion helicopters. All moved sluggishly, loaded down for bear with ammunition, equipment, and a portion of Alpha Company’s combat strength. The two 155mm howitzers were being readied with the two remaining Stallions back on the Randolph, and some LAVs were being prepped on the beach to be carried inland.

It was far too risky and impractical to risk all their strength in one go, so they’d have to make several trips. A Hawkeye had gone out ahead of them to scan the area over and over, Skyhawks were hovering somewhere in the vicinity, and if one looked carefully, they’d be able to see elements of the flights of Corsair fighters.

Even with all these precautions it was a gamble.

“‘I see a red door and I want it painted black…’” Melissa started humming, peering out through one of the portholes on 1st platoon’s helicopters. Not that she could hear anything aside from her headset. The din was extremely intense. Eighteen turboshafts flying in formation and carrying hundreds of tonnes of helicopter were not quiet.

It was an amazing sight, like Black Hawk Down only no desert. At the same time, it was jarring.

For one thing, flying at the head of the formation was Luna leading her escorts. The helicopter pilots likely would’ve tried racing her had the situation been any different. And they weren’t afraid of accidentally hitting her with their rotor blades.

For another, the landscape below was Victorian, with pony versions of Mccormick Reapers pausing in the fields to see the flying machines overhead.

Figures ran about as they passed over another village. One of Luna’s guards peeled off to dive down below and keep the locals from trying to shoot the marines with cannon.

Melissa turned back in her seat to face forward. The Sea Knight was filled to the brim with more than twenty marines, loaded down for bear.

Even with all this big green firepower...could they win? Against an alien force that was able to beat the snot out of the US Military and the rest of the combined forces of Earth?

She looked down at Twilight sitting beside her, digging through her equipment vest trying to figure out what all the stuff was.

These had to be the most adorable creatures in the universe, with those big eyes and fluffy tails. So tiny, tough and full of love and affection, these little equine creatures, seemed so innocent, so peaceful, so unlike humanity…and yet so similar.

Just because ponies were peaceful, it didn’t mean they were pacifists. Just because they lived in a fairy-tale land didn’t mean they were weak.The instant a threat had risen, Luna and Twilight were up to the task, ready to respond in kind. They just needed someone’s help technology-wise.

The sergeant felt a warm grin on her face, and Twilight looked up.

“What?” she asked, or Melissa guessed that was what she said.

“Nothing!”

She looked around the cabin, at the humans alongside dragons, griffins, more ponies, and Abyssinian cats.

They were far more alike than they realized, whether or not they’d been raised as Americans. All these species and cultures knew war, and pain.

This was no safe fairytale, sanitized for modern life. They lived in a world unconquered and untamed. A world where you didn’t travel far without a weapon, and everyone understood how to use them. A globe as vicious as the Earth humanity had conquered.

They’re soft? No, we’re soft. Us with our locked and monitored and safe planet, where the biggest fear is other sentients. These guys have hydras! They’re not wimps, they’re hobbits. Able to survive a hostile planet, peaceful until they pick up a rock, then you better run.

They weren’t alone in this. It wasn’t just humanity on the line this time.

They had to win. To save these unique species. To save their friends.

XXXXX

Air Marshal Chrysalis had a hoof to the spot on her head below and behind her ear, pretending to scratch it as she offered an ingenuous smile.

The little equines around her for this frivolous charade chattered away endlessly, attempting to manipulate the blasted dress she wore. Only humans were known to waste more resources and time on irritating rituals like these. They were practically asking to be conquered.

“My leader, the human forces are on the move,” the voice in her subcutaneous transmitter said, “The equines can’t possibly hope to hold them for more than a small amount of time. Our air component is prepared to drop, but it’s going to take up a significant portion of their fuel reserves to adjust the plan. Either that, or we’re going to need to change our orbit.”

“I don’t care, we must eliminate them.” she subvocalized. A subcutaneous transmitter implanted at the base of her neck picked up vibrations in her bones caused by the comment, transmitting the words as clearly as if she was speaking right beside the captain of her starship, but utterly inaudible to the ponies around her.

She winced at her own words, “See if we can buy some time with the pufferfish units. Adjust the orbit as much as you can without burning excess fuel, but above all, I want effectiveness above efficiency. Are we clear?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“What’s the status on the prisoners?”

“Um…”

“Commander Thorax, you do not wish to make me unhappy, do you? I will not hurt you. I simply wish to--”

“We still haven’t recaptured them ma’am.” he said rapidly.

Chrysalis’ face twitched.

“Something wrong, your highness?” one of the blasted equine attendants asked.

“Oh no, nothing’s wrong!” she said in a normal voice through gritted teeth, “...However I believe I need a moment to myself right now. Would you three mind leaving?”

They looked at each other hesitantly. Under Chrysalis’ stern gaze, they wilted and retreated out the door.

“Should we come back later? Your dress--”

Chrysalis slammed the wooden door shut in their faces.

“They pay these cretins for these services…?” she huffed, then tapped the hearing piece of the transmitter under her ear, “How can you lose two idiots in an emperor’s-damned mine shaft?!”

“Uh...ma’am, they haven’t been able to get any equipment down there--”

“I know that!” she shrieked, “You shouldn’t need scanning equipment! Are you sure those are mutan soldiers down there and not birds? This is like a fish unable to find something in the ocean!”

“Well, ma’am, they-they captured one of our soldiers, and forced him into giving up some information--”

“Take him and throw him in the brig!”

“Their squadron leader has reportedly already punished him, but even he says they’re shorthanded down there--”

Chrysalis inhaled sharply, “Tell me at least that the equine warriors are in position.”

“Y-yes my leader.”

“Well, at least something has gone right today.”

She tapped the control again to end the conversation.

Another line chirped, “Air Marshal, morale is at critical levels already. Even more personnel in the brig could lead to further disloyalty.”

“Colonel Pharynx, I do believe you were eavesdropping. And I feel as though you're trying to imply something.”

“No ma'am. I am implying nothing.”

“Good. I would hate for your loyalty to come into question. How are the troops?”

“Angry, wanting action. You should've seen their faces when we briefed them on the type of humans we'll be facing.”

Chrysalis smirked, “excellent. We shall have these apes destroyed quickly.”

There was a slight pause, “Yes my queen.” He cut the transmission.

Chrysalis nodded in satisfaction, then moved to look out the large windows of the chamber she stood in.

It was such a ghastly place, this planet. So primitive, so barbaric. Savages still worshipping their sun, still believing in democracy or...she shuddered, monarchies. Even the humans had foregone that for the most part.

Humans…

She looked to the west. Their helicopters would be coming from that direction.

Humans. “Marines”.

Monsters. Killers.

The air marshal knew she was hard on her soldiers, but that wasn’t her fault. It was them. Those blasted apes. They’d forced her to this. Desperate times called for harsh measures. She kept them alive, hadn’t she? She’d make it up to them eventually.

They could never see, they just couldn’t see. Why not?

They’d brought peace, superior technology, and civilization. Barbarians never could understand. The humans even more so. They weren’t just stupid, they were stubborn. The worst kind of foolish.

They’d studied the humans for nearly twenty years, watched them, monitored them, impersonated them. They thought they had them locked down. Only to realize that they’d missed something crucial.

Chrysalis didn’t even understand what that was herself. A species locked at the bottom of a gravity well should have been easy to beat. Certainly they had a surprising amount of technology despite their equally-astoundingly awful space program(fifty years to invent reusable spacecraft, what a joke!), but it was a conquest that would be in the bag.

All the work needed to exhaust Earth’s standing armies spilled no Changeling blood. They spilled each other’s.

They’d required shockingly little manipulation to play against each other. A mortar attack here, a stealth fighter strike there, in no time at all they’d erupted into a Third World War.

High Command thought, they knew, that the humans would be too divided at this point to reunite. There would be no Allied powers this time, they believed. Too much hate between them all.

Yet they’d forgotten the crucial lessons about human nations. They always hated each other, and, as the Americans would say, “no one fights better than family”.

Who would have guessed that after a century of post-colonialism, the old “friendships” shattered as nations got out from under the heels of the others, that the humans would ever be willing to band together in such a way that mattered ever again?

Oh, there’d been exceptions of course. The racists, the xenophobes, those the Changelings had supported in subtle ways, but they somehow lost all the traction they’d gained over the years. Also there was North Korea.

Mexican soldiers defending Americans who would’ve spat on them before. Japanese F-35s shooting down transports heading to South Korea. Egyptian soldiers rescuing downed Israeli pilots.

American F-16s engaging Changeling fighters over Cuba? Taiwanese Navy ships bombarding enemy bases in China? The Irish aiding a retreating British Army?

A century of blood, hate, insanity...you’d think they’d have been begging for unity, for peace. You’d think it would be impossible for them to band together on their own. Yet they fought with rabid aggression to defend their world and one another. Impossible.

The commanders of the invasion fleet had ignored her recommendations. They’d had the ability to wipe out the entire planet’s defenses with kinetic orbital strikes. They could’ve even destroyed a few cities, just to make an example.

“Our research tells us that never worked when they bombed civilian populations, Air Marshal. Kinetic bombardment strikes are to be limited at all costs. We must show them there’s no chance of victory by destroying their military forces.”

How would it not work? The soldiers cared about their families, did they not?

Well, they were barbarians. No one ever expected them to be logical. One would expect them to know when to give up, though. When to recognize superiority. An animal could see that!

In the areas Changeling forces controlled, they healed the wounded POWs, replaced fossil fuels, and kept the streets clear. They kept the people in their areas of control happy. All their simulations insisted they’d put out plenty of emotional feed.

They restricted the internet, of course. They got rid of dissidents. They got rid of those who would protest and undermine authority in doing so. It was all in the name of security, why couldn’t they understand?

In some areas, they did. In some areas they obeyed. A surprising amount of Americans did so. Odd, given their total lack of control over sedition, but perhaps there were some brain cells in them after all.

Obviously they were a minority. In every country, in every city the Changelings captured, there were insurgents. The blind refused to see.

Military units were destroyed, yet the humans always pulled out more. Despite the best efforts of their bombing campaigns, the Changelings still couldn’t cut the resources of the human militaries completely. There was always something more.

How could they have hidden their starships so well? Better yet, how could her commanders have been so blind? They’d insisted on playing nice with the humans. Still insisted that the best way to get them to surrender was to defeat their military. They may have been just barbarians, but civilian casualties played into the equation when it came to discussing terms.

They were part of the human war machine. They were valid targets. Their family members had hurt her soldiers, why shouldn’t they hurt what they cared about?

Chrysalis shook her head. Earth was behind her. This world was in front of her.

She looked out at the tacky, tiny city. At the equines going about their petty little lives.

How humans got here was beyond the frame of reference she bothered to care about. All she had to do was destroy them.

A few rocks dropped on their heads at mach 10 would destroy the islands they owned. And thus would go the largest threat to her small force.

After that, she would take this city completely, and capture the leadership. If all went well, and none figured out the truth, the Equestrian Armed Forces would be under her control. She could use them to wage war on the other nations, to bring them into the fold until a large enough Changeling force could be created, or for reinforcements to arrive. Then, without anywhere near the effort it took to take Earth, they could begin to civilize these people.

All she would have to do would be to sit through this wedding.

“Emperors above, give me strength…” she murmured.

XXXXX

The first wave reached Canterlot. All the pilots were on edge, ready for contrails to rise up toward them from the city.

Yet nothing happened. They approached without incident.

Luna took them to a point in the city’s energy shield, close against the cliff face. With a charge of energy through her horn, a hole was opened, big enough for the cloud of aircraft to pass through.

The Queen of the Night streaked toward the airship landing field, sending her guards out to the various barracks of the Household Division. Each one was followed by one or two of the marine helicopters, the first wave of Terran Alliance infantry deploying.

The guards had a tough time convincing the officers at each barracks not to shoot down the strange flying machines arriving, or the ugly beasts that spilled out of them carrying all manner of bizarre armaments.

With the largest number of initially deployed marines in the industrial sector, shooting nearly started. Luna had to put up an energy shield to separate them.

In total, the Household Division consisted of three infantry battalions of about 800 pony infantry, one cavalry regiment of 900 soldiers, one regiment from the Royal Horse Artillery with thirty-six guns, a handful of fixed heavy guns in certain positions(all but useless against a modern opponent), and an entire air wing from the Equestrian Army Air Force, six squadrons of 120 pegasi. There were also sixteen airships from the same military service, but were of little use.

The ponies bought everything pretty well, all things considered. They treated the marines without much special treatment, just the same old civilians angry at the soldiers showing up, or the same tension one would see in a cooperative military exercise. The word of the Queen of the Night was powerful.

Merchants and small businesses complained as Royal Horse Artillery deployed and unfolded barricades.

Aristocrats whined as marines unfolded barbed wire and filled sandbags.

Equestrian Army soldiers forced civilians out of the parks to make room for trenches and defensive emplacements.

Utility workers mutually facehoofed as their protests went unheeded when a marine attempted to make room for a landmine in the pavement by ramming a pickaxe into a sewer line.

There was too little resistance. Everything was too neat and tidy. The Changelings should’ve attacked by now.

Something was afoot.

Alpine 1, the Sea Knight carrying 2//3rds of 1st platoon, dumped half its load near the tunnel between the city and the airship airfield. It immediately lifted off again to approach Canterlot Castle.

Luna and a small squadron from the Equestrian Army Air Force accompanied the aircraft. The second wave of reinforcements from the Expeditionary Group had just arrived, and an AH-1 SuperCobra attack helicopter escorted them. Everyone expected an attack here…

There was nothing. Only the noises of the Queen’s Guards as the Sea Knight descended.

They got into firing ranks and had raised their Springbok carbines before Luna and Melissa could get them to calm down.

Once appraised of the situation, they followed the marines inside, deferring to their orders and falling into defensive positions.

The marines moved quickly, but carefully. They hugged the walls to avoid silhouetting themselves against the windows. Pairs of troopers moved up at corners and intersections to clear them.

Finally, they reached a long hallway that lead to the wedding chambers. Several t-shaped hallways were off to either side. A potential threat, each one.

At the first intersection, one marine hugged the left wall, a second hugged the right. The one on the left hissed, “Ready!”

The second hissed back, “Move!”

They swept out to either corridor, scanning for targets. One didn’t spot anything, but the one on the right did. “Contacts!”

The rest of the team approached quickly as the marine shouted, “Drop your weapons! Drop em, right now!”

“What the--” a male voice squeaked from around the corner, “Who the--”

“Drop your weapons and put your hands in the air! I mean it! One! Two!”

Several weapons clattered onto the stone as several more marines approached to cover the hallway. “Okay, okay!”

Melissa and Twilight, heedless of their escort, ran around the corner.

In the center of the hallway stood Andrew, hands high in the air with arms straight up, looking utterly filthy. An odd-looking rifle lay on the ground before him. He stared wide-eyed at the Marines, “who the-- what the-- Melissa! Twilight! You’re alive!”

Twilight's eyes narrowed, everything blocked out, as she peered at the battered and scruffy Princess Cadence standing beside Andrew.

The air where Twilight had been buffeted Melissa and the other marines as the unicorn took off at high speed, right at Cadence.

The alicorn was barely able to get off a cry of “no no no” before she was hit.

Andrew balked at the sight of Twilight assaulting his companion, screaming incoherently. His attempt to pull her off only resulted in getting elbowed in the chin and falling flat on his back.

The marines rushed forward and pulled the unicorn off,

“Jesus, lady!” Ceres cried, “What’s the matter with you?!”

The griffin avoided Twilight’s fist as she shrieked, “Let me go! It’s the queen! It’s the queen!”

Melissa pulled Andrew to his feet, and yelled, “No!”

“It’s not her!” Andrew insisted.

“It’s the real Cadence!” Melissa added.

The alicorn spat out a bit of blood, checking to make sure her teeth were all still there, “Twilight, it’s me! The queen just impersonated me!”

“Prove it!” Twilight snarled, “Prove you’re the real Cadence!”

Cadence sighed, and got to her feet. To the surprise of all present, she began the first little jaunt of the secret handshake only she and Twilight knew.

“Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake. Clap your hooves…”

Twilight’s eyes widened, and finished off the last line, “...and do a little shake! You remember me!”

They embraced. “Of course I do!” Cadence said.

As the reunion continued, Sergeant Vaughn walked up, “Sergeant Foster, what’s going on? Isn’t that--?”

Melissa pointed, “Found the real person the imposter was impersonating.”

Andrew stood up straight, brushing himself off, “I’m fine too, thanks for--”

“Stargate.” Melissa snapped, grabbing his collar.

“What?” Andrew tried prying her fingers off him, to no avail as per usual.

“Tell me the answer. Stargate?”

“...SG-1?”

Melissa released him and grinned. She spread her arms briefly as if to embrace him, but stopped and settled for punching him lightly on the arm, “You’re alive, man! I can’t believe it!”

Andrew returned her smile, then winced and rubbed his arm, “I see you’re still breathing too. Also, couple things, not too important. Who are these guys, where’d they come from, and what’s going on?”

“US Marines from the Terran Alliance, not from home unfortunately. They’ve been here a while and came from various people who showed up over the past 200 years and made a big coalition. No idea why they haven’t shown up already, but they’ve got guns and shit and they’re gonna help us take down the queen!”

“Sergeant, who is this man?” Vaughn asked.

Melissa turned back to him, “Oh! Sorry, Vaughn! this is Andrew Shepherd, the man we’ve been looking for.”

Vaughn’s hand was still on his rifle grip, “Are you certain?”

“Don’t worry, I know him.”

Andrew did a double-take, and gaped at the dragon sergeant, “Uh...uh…”

Vaughn’s hand remained on the grip, “You looking at something, mister?”

Andrew immediately looked at the ceiling, “Uh...nope. Just...interesting ceiling tiles, aren’t they?”

Melissa grimaced at Vaughn, “Don’t mind him. He’s more socially awkward than a dodo bird.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Vaughn asked.

“I dunno, actually. Just sounded funny in my head.”

Twilight galloped over to Andrew, leaning back on her hind legs to hug him, “I thought you might be dead!”

“Glad to disappoint,” he replied, “Do you have any food that’s not made of rats?”

Corporal Ceres slung his rifle and picked up the firearms Cadence and Andrew had dropped. He trotted over, “Hey, what’s with these things?”

Andrew gestured, “Oh, we mugged one of the bad guys.” he turned out his pockets, holding out ammunition magazines, a radio, and other objects.

“Nice work, Andrew,” Melissa said, taking the radio, “We might be able to monitor their communications with this. Probably not much, but it’s something.”

Vaughn took the alien rifle from Ceres. He pulled out the magazine, and checked the action, “Foster, did the G11 get anywhere back home?”

“Got cancelled after German reunification, been pretty much dead ever since. Why?”

“What’s a G11?” Andrew asked.

Vaughn passed the Changeling rifle to Melissa, and said, “Look at this thing. Caseless ammunition, rotary breech…”

She nodded, “Yep, certainly looks like one. Wonder how they got past the heat problem…”

“What’s a G11?” Andrew repeated.

“Oh, prototype for a caseless assault rifle that NATO was working on during the Cold War,” Melissa explained distractedly, turning the weapon over, “...it doesn’t look electrically fired and it has a firing pin...how do they get rid of the heat?”

“Oh, if you think that’s weird,” Andrew commented, then took the alien pistol from Ceres and placed it under Melissa’s nose, “Explain to me how this works!”

He showed her the detachable quad barrel, and lack of a firing pin.

“I don’t know how this thing works, but--”

“Oh, this one's easy. Looks like a VLE gun, like the one Metal Storm made.”

Andrew resisted the urge to make some sort of annoyed gesture, “of course you know that. What's Metal Storm, pray tell?”

Melissa strapped the pistol to the webbing on her vest, “Another form of caseless ammunition. They stack the ammunition in the barrel like a Roman candle, but more controllable. Uses an electrical signal to set off each round. That's why the barrel's so heavy, it has all the ammo inside. Also, it's variable lethality, that was the VL in VLE, so it can fire lethal or non-lethal--”

“Yes, we figured that out,” Cadence said, trotting up, “Andrew here desperately wanted to figure out what each type of ammunition did.”

Melissa’s eyes widened, “Princess Cadence?”

Cadence nodded, “Yes, are you...You’re Melissa Foster, right? I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Melissa grinned, and stepped forward to shake her hoof, “Yes, Sergeant Melissa Foster, United States Marines. I don’t think we’ve met before. I insulted your duplicate a lot though.”

“It did get kind of excessive…” Andrew muttered, “Also, since when did you become a sergeant?”

“Promotion. How else?”

Cadence looked around at the soldiers, “Did I miss a telegram or something? Since when have there been more than two humans?”

“Community of humans isolated from your society who we happened to run into.” Melissa said, “So does the pistol shoot some sort of bean bag round?”

“Two broken bug ribs say 'yes’,” Andrew deadpanned, “Can I have a gun now?”

Vaughn eyed him doubtfully, “no offense, Mr. Shepherd, but are you qualified in a firearm?”

“Yes!” Andrew snapped indignantly, “I am a freaking gun nut, thanks to this place!”

“Pfft. Poser.” Melissa chuckled, “I’m a Vermonter! I once knew a guy who had a fucking M60 from Vietnam stashed in his backyard!”

“Is this really the time for this?” Twilight demanded, “why are you standing here talking about guns?!”

Queen Luna finally caught up with the group. She spotted Andrew and Cadence, “Excellent, we have replenished our ranks somewhat. Do we not have a schedule to keep, everyone?”

“You heard the lady,” Vaughn shouted, “Move it you apes!”

Andrew moved alongside Melissa, “Seriously, did you guys get me a gun? Any of mine? My Browning Hi-Power?”

“Andrew, I didn’t have the time to--”

“Can I have a gun?”

Melissa sighed, “Ceres, give him your .45 and let’s get moving!”

“Why me?” the Griffin demanded, trying to strap the Changeling rifle to his backpack as he moved.

“Because I like to pick on you? Don’t make it an order, Corporal.”

Ceres passed over his sidearm, and sneered a little at Andrew, “You know how to use that, four-eyes?”

“Easy, tiger.” Melissa snorted at Andrew’s scowl.

“Stay behind us,” Twilight said, “and try not to get shot.”

“Keyword try!” Melissa added.

“Jesus god, leave me alone, ‘Colonel O’Neill’! It’s been five minutes since we’ve met and you’re already messing with me!”

“Just play your part, ‘Dr. Jackson’! This is how it goes!”

Cadence looked at Queen Luna, “Are they always like this when they’re?”

Luna suppressed a laugh, “It’s better than before.”

Nearly two dozen marines and royal guards, two civilians, and two members of royalty approached the massive doors of the chapel.

Odd. There were no door guards.

The marines stacked up against the massive entrance, and Vaughn ordered, “Fix bayonets! And someone get me some flashbangs!”

“No!” Melissa protested, “We’ve got dozens of civilians in there, and soldiers, be they friend or foe, who will just start shooting blind!”

“Then what do you suggest?” Vaughn asked, “Grenades? C4? Satchel charge?”

“Opening the doors manually?”

They burst through the doors, Twilight, Melissa and Luna leading the way. Immediately, the surprised guards leveled their weapons, and the marines raised theirs, shouting at one another.

The chamber was much like a throne room, long, wide, and tall with a flat area between the door and the marble stairs leading up the dais. There were dozens of ponies seated in a grid formation, two squares on either side of the chamber, with a red carpet between them.

The Mane Six, or five at the moment, stood by the steps. There didn’t seem to be any Andrew or Twilight imposters, but the Melissa imposter stood at the back of the crowd, wearing a human pant suit obviously pilfered from the real Melissa’s belongings.

Celestia, Shining Armor, and the insane military commander of an alien invading force stood at the altar, or whatever they called it around here.

Everyone stared in shock and astonishment at the marines crashing their wedding.

“What--? Twilight, who are these people?” Celestia demanded.

“Stop the wedding,” Twilight roared, pointing at the disguised Changeling queen, “That is an imposter!”

For Melissa, time seemed to slow down. Her eyes locked on those identical to her own. As if of its own accord, Orcrist hovered into firing position. The double raised a familiar Glock 17. Melissa flicked the fire selector to “burst” and...

…
…
…

Melissa held her fire.

Across the room, Chrysalis’ look of shock turned to one of rage, “She and Luna are trying to overthrow the crown! They’ve sided with those...those monsters! Guards, take them down! Kill them!”

The guards looked at each other, then to the marines.

The remaining Mane Six looked at not-Cadence, astonished.

Applejack trotted forward, “Twilight? Melissa? Andrew? What’s going on?”

Rainbow Dash zipped across the chamber to stop before Melissa and the double, “What--? Who--? How can there be two of you?”

“‘Kill them’?” Celestia demanded, shocked at the vicious order, “Luna, what’s going on!?”

“Sister, that is not the princess! She’s an imposter!”

Not-Cadence looked at Celestia, “Your highness, they are simply trying to confuse you! Order the guards to kill them, now! And those horrid beasts with them!”

“No!” the real Cadence cried, stepping into the room, “Don’t listen to her!”

Chrysalis gave a growl, “You escaped too?”

Andrew stepped forward, “You’d be surprised what happens when you stick someone with an archeologist!”

Celestia narrowed her gaze upon the imposter beside her, “Who are you? What is this all about?”

Melissa pulled out a taser and shot her double with it.

The creature spasmed and contorted, its shape distorting and tearing at the suit it wore. A distinct shape began to form as it collapsed. Finally the Changeling underneath was revealed, its uniform visible through the remnants of Melissa’s pant suit.

The guests in the row nearby hopped to their feet, crying out in fear and surprise.

Rainbow Dash took a step back, “Melissa, what the hay is going on?”

Melissa offered a savage grin to her friend, “Setting things right. I say Normandy…?”

“I say beach!” Rainbow said, somewhat frustrated, “I...what’s happening?!“

Melissa retrieved her beloved pistol and hauled the enemy agent to their feet. “Queen Celestia! This is an agent of the Mutan Empire who impersonated me and helped to try and kill myself, Twilight, and Andrew!”

“They’re a race of creatures that feed off of love!” Cadence cried.

“Silence!” Chrysalis shrieked, “Guards, I am your leader! Kill them!”

Sergeant Vaughn spoke into his radio, “Ripsaw 1, we need some help here. Move around to the cathedral window.”

A deep whirling met everyone’s ears, and everyone turned to look out the stain-glass window, overlooking one side of the city.

Blocking the view was their SuperCobra escort hovering a few dozen meters away, its 20mm gatling gun fixed squarely on the unusual heat signature next to the other extremely unusual heat signature. The sound of its engines were muted by the thick construction of the building.

There were many gasps of disbelief, and most of the crowd backed away from the window, but not too far for fear of colliding with the marines.

Vaughn aimed his M16 at Chrysalis, “Surrender! We’ve got you surrounded!”

“Guards,” Luna ordered, “Arrest that imposter!”

For a moment, there was utter silence.

Not-Cadence smiled, a smile with eyes of hate, “I see you have all your bases covered. I’ve lost, I suppose. However, you forgot to take a few things into account. Let’s even the odds a bit, shall we?”

Suddenly, several of the royal guards trained their weapons on Celestia, Luna, Twilight, and the real Cadence, creating a domino effect as the soldiers aimed at each other, demanding that the other drop their weapon. The imposters were in the ranks.

The Changeling queen raised an arm to her ear, “At your leisure, Vulture 1.”

Ripsaw 1’s tail rotor exploded. A helicopter aircraft that looked like a combination of the Eurocopter Tiger and an RAH-66 Comanche zipped by.

The appearance of guests and guards alike in the crowd began to shimmer and shift. Several dozen Changelings made themselves visible. Weapons were turned.

A burst of weapons fire.

Gunshots from Springbok carbines.

People began screaming. The crowd surged. A marine screamed and fell to the floor.

Ripsaw 1 collided with the window.

All hell broke loose.

Chapter 20

Ripsaw 1 had carved a furrow in the marble with its nose and cut up the floor tiles with the rotors, throwing up a cloud of dust that obscured everything.

The aircraft was leaning against the raised platform at the front of the wedding chamber. Flames spread from its leaking fuel containers. Some of its rockets had cooked off, knocked down several pillars, and blasted a few holes in the structure. Rubble had dropped in, and the roof was partially collapsed.

It was virtually impossible to see more than a few meters in front of one’s eyes, and the entire room had devolved into a massive brawl.

Changeling soldiers who were mixed in with the wedding guests fought hand-to-hand with royal guards or groups of civilians.

A group of marines tried to wade into the fray, but were flanked when even more enemy contacts dropped on them from the ceiling. The brawl ballooned outward in size, bayonets clashed with vicious teeth and fangs.

The cloud of dust and the fires made it impossible to tell which way to go, and difficult to tell friend from foe.

Rainbow Dash was tackled from behind by one of the bugs. Melissa shot it, and pulled her friend up.

Andrew ran over, taking wild shots at anything in the dust that looked remotely hostile, “We need to find the rest of the gang!”

Rainbow picked up a discarded carbine, “I think they’re still near the whirlybird!”

They made their way around the edge of the room, taking advantage of the rubble and lack of visibility.

Right as the helicopter had crashed, Chrysalis took advantage of the distraction to quickly disable Celestia with a pulsed energy projectile.

Luna took flight, climbing up and over the riot to land in front of the alien officer. Cadence followed her, and both charged energy shields in anticipation of another attack.

Chrysalis peered at them, then gestured to her soldiers, “those shields don't stop light. Let's test their limitations shall we?”

Two Changelings fired their stun devices at the monarchs. The shields did not stop the blasts of plasma, they may have even amplified them.

Cadence went down without a sound, but Luna’s energy field collapsed, leaving her shaky on her hooves.

She tried to charge her horn again, but it sputtered and flickered hopelessly. The queen of the night roared with rage, and tried to rush Chrysalis only to be hit with two more stun blasts.

She collapsed at Chrysalis' feet, still feebly trying to reach her.

“Grab all three,” Chrysalis ordered, “and take them to the throne room!”

After that, despite Twilight’s best efforts, the monarchs and insane military commander had completely vanished.

Across the room, Applejack bucked the jammed canopy of the crashed SuperCobra. The fiberglass gave way, and she turned around to pull out one of the pilots.

“Keating…” the man moaned, coughing and pointing at his co-pilot.

Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy appeared beside Applejack, reaching in for the unconscious co-pilot.

Rarity came over to help. She charged up her horn and leveraged an opening in the canopy..

“That fuel could explode at any second!” Applejack cried, using her teeth to pull the first pilot away, “Move it!”

“Won’t be but a minute, darling…” Rarity said distractedly, concentrating on keeping the opening from collapsing in on the co-pilot.

“Fer cryin’ out loud, what do humans eat?” Pinkie Pie demanded, nearly pulling the wounded man’s arm out of his socket.

“Pinkie, be careful…” Fluttershy said, “he’s already hurt!”

Just as they managed to pull him out, a Changeling dropped down on the canopy.

All three mares cried out and stumbled backwards. The conscious pilot pulled out his Colt sidearm, only for it to make a clack sound.

Applejack picked up a guard’s revolver and shot the Changeling square between the mandibles.

“C’mon, let’s get them out of here!” she cried, lifting the first pilot onto her back.

They met Rainbow, Andrew and Melissa halfway across the room, and somehow managed to make it all the way back to the double doors. Most of the squad had already retreated through, along with a large number of civilians and royal guards. The remainder were just barely avoiding being overrun, taking cover by the door.

“We’ve gotten as many out as we could,” Ceres told Melissa, “Waiting for Sergeant Vaughn! He’s still rounding people up!”

Two more marines emerged from the dust as if to punctuate his statement.

Twilight was nearby with the rest of the Mane Six, as well as Andrew, “Everyone’s accounted--wait a minute. Where’s Spike?”

The others glanced around, “I thought I saw-- didn’t he…? -- I lost him in the confusion--”

Twilight became alarmed, “Spike!”

Still in the ceremonial hall, Spike was doing his best to avoid getting killed. Right as the shooting started, he’d done what he’d known to be right; direct every one of the guests to a way out, be it the door, a secret entrance, or the holes in the wall.

Now he couldn’t get out himself.

Was the door over there, or behind him? Wait, no, that was a window. He couldn’t even see the helicopter.

Something told him to hit the ground, barely steering clear of something flying over his head. A burst of machine gun fire rang out, and he hugged the ground, protecting his head.

He tried to rise, but his legs wouldn’t respond. He was frozen. Everything was so loud, so big and dangerous and terrifying…

Where should he go? What was he supposed to do?

Everywhere he looked there was nothing but dust, flashes of gunfire, humans, ponies, and Changelings shouting and running. He saw horrid sights that he would question for the rest of his life whether or not they were real, so strange and alien they were.

A shadow fell over him. A Changeling soldier.

It grinned it's horrible alien grin, and raised its rifle.

Spike inhaled, trying to build up some flame to try and defend himself, but nothing came. His chest was tight and constricted, there was so much dust…

A burst of gunfire sounded out, and the Changeling flew backward, screeching.

“Ulp!” Spike gasped. Somepony had scooped him up, tucked him under their arm facing backwards, and began running for the door.

Spike tried to struggle, tried to insist he could run himself, but all that came out of his mouth was a mound of dust and a few sparks.

“C’mon, quit moving, kid!” his savior shouted over the din, “I gotcha!”

Spike couldn’t get a good look at his savior, facing behind as he was, but caught sight of a tail. A dragon tail!

A dragon tail around a human uniform. And no wings.

The dragon fired a pistol back at the Changelings, still running at full speed.

They reached the massive doors, but did not slow down. The dragon soldier sprinted around a corner, passing a pair of human soldiers who fired at unseen targets back around the bend.
They fell back through the castle in neat order. Soldiers suppressed the pursuing foe while their fellows moved back.

Once they had run a certain distance, the retreating soldiers falling back stopped and took up suppression while the first group started moving back.
A human soldier running along as part of this movement caught up with the dragon soldier, and glanced at Spike, “Sergeant, what the hell are you carrying?!”

“Shut up and keep moving!”

Down a spiral staircase they ran, into some sort of storeroom. Almost two dozen people were in the chamber, a mix of Alliance soldiers, Equestrian military, and random civilians.

A loud boom resounded from up above, and the room shook.

Three humans rushed down the stairs, one of whom was Melissa.

“I think we lost them, but we’re gonna need to move soon, Vaughn,” she said to the dragon soldier, “If we--”

She leaned to one side, “Spike? Sergeant, put him down!”

The dragon sergeant looked at his cargo, as if noticing him for the first time, “Huh? Oh! Sorry about that!”

He immediately set Spike down. Spike rapidly stepped away, brushing himself off, “Thanks for the save...uh…” he looked up at the pair. The dragon sergeant was surprisingly short, almost shorter than Melissa.

The sergeant nodded at him, a small smile on his face, “Just doing my job, kid. You alright?”

Spike coughed, spewing more dust out, but tried to retain his dignity, “Uh...yeah! I’m fine! Totally! How...how are you?”

Melissa crouched to Spike’s level, “Hey, Spike, you seen Twilight anywhere?”

“Spike?” a voice called out from the crowd.

Twilight pushed her way through the throng, followed by Andrew, Fluttershy, and Applejack. Twilight dove upon Spike with a tight embrace, “There you are! Oh thank Celestia you’re alright!”

He hugged her back, “Twilight!”

“He was getting some people out of that hall,” Sergeant Vaughn explained, “I grabbed him before a Changeling did.”

Twilight’s eyes widened, “He did? Really! Good thinking, Spike, I’m proud.”

He smiled a little, “Aw, it was nothing…”

Corporal Ceres trotted up, “We lost Franklin and Demeter. I don’t know if they’re dead or the bugs got them.”

Vaughn scowled, “I saw Demeter get clipped in the wing. I’m guessing he’s captured.”

“I lost track of Franklin in the dust,” the radio operator spoke up, “Didn’t even see him go down.”

Ceres grimaced, then asked, “What’s the game plan? We’ve gotta get back topside!”

“There’s some tunnels that lead to street level,” Melissa said, “we should be able to get out through there and link up with the rest of the platoon.”

“How many more guys do you have?” Andrew asked.

“An infantry company. They’ve got reinforcements on the way, and air support, and we’ve got the help of the Household Division.” Twilight released Spike and stood up straight as she spoke.

“Where’s the rest of the group?” Melissa asked Applejack, “Did we lose anyone?”

Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie emerged from the crowd.

“The nerve, to attack a wedding!” Rarity was grumbling, “After all the hard work we put into it!”

“Nopony even had time to try all my baking…” Pinkie Pie whined.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get some payback,” Rainbow Dash said, hovering a meter off the ground and shoving a new cartridge into her carbine, “Right everypony?”

Twilight looked around, “We lost Celestia, Luna, and Cadence...we need to find the Elements of Harmony.”

Vaughn nodded, “I agree, I don’t know if our forces will be enough. We need all the help we can get. Right now though, we need to get back topside and back in the fight.”

Melissa nodded, “Right. We’ll get the guards to escort the civilians to a route out of the city, while the rest of us head toward the CP.”

“What about the wounded?” Ceres asked, “We’ve got one wounded rotorhead, one shaken up, and then there's a bunch of minor injuries in the civilians. I don’t know if we should move any of them.”

The squad’s corpsmen, an african-american Petty Officer 1st class, stepped over, “That your medical opinion, Corporal? Sergeant Vaughn, Sergeant Foster, I’ve stabilized Keating, and he’s awake. Captain Pelayo’s shaken up and can barely stand, but other than that he’s fine. We can send them with the civilians. I treated the rest as best I can, not too many serious injuries. They’re good to go.”

He tried not to notice the ponies staring at him.

Vaughn nodded, “Thanks, Santiago. Foster?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Twilight crouched down near Spike, “Spike, the girls and I are going to go with the marines, but I need you to go with the wounded.”

Spike was distressed, “But--”

“Spike, I need you to do this! You know the underground better than they do. You remember all the times we explored down here?”

He reluctantly nodded, and gave a little salute, “I’ll get them out. Stay safe, Twilight. There’s a lot of big humans around, and I can’t lose you.”

While the civilians got to safety, Melissa looked over the other members of the Mane Six. Rainbow Dash and Applejack held weapons recovered from the hall, Pinkie had her party cannon, and Rarity was busy trying to stow what was left of the dresses she’d designed for everyone in a chest to protect them until later.

Melissa walked over, “Rarity, how are you with firearms?”

Rarity looked up at her, “Oh, I’m afraid that’s one of my failings, darling. I possess many skills, but I am unqualified in firearms...Wait a moment, why haven’t you asked anyone else?”

“Because I don’t ask questions when it comes to Pinkie Pie, I think Dash, AJ, and Fluttershy’s answer would be obvious, and Twilight has magic.”

Melissa rubbed her face, “So...there’s gonna be a lot of bullets flying around, and--”

Rarity waved dismissively, “Oh, don’t worry about me, dear. I’ve been through my share of scrapes, and…”

Her smile twitched, “I do believe I need to...explain to the Changelings exactly how hard I worked on this. Trust me, I’ll be fine.”

Melissa was about to argue, but something in her friend’s eyes made her back away slowly.

“Okay then…Andrew? You want a carbine, or you gonna stick with the Old Slabsides?”

It took a moment for him to realize she was talking about the Colt .45 he held, “I-- no, if those are my options, I'll stick with the pistol. It’s the only thing right for my size. How come I don't get a machine gun?”

“Because you call an assault rifle that.”

They directed the guards and civilians through the right escape tunnel, while the rest of the group prepared to go out another.

The Mane Six inspected the fourteen marines around them, wearing odd clothing, carrying unfamiliar weapons, and entirely unfamiliar individuals.

Several races working together with none of the characteristics of their normal culture.

The dragon sergeant walked over to the hippogriff radio operator. Calmly, without a barking order or a threat, just a request, he asked for the handpiece. Obediently she pulled the component off and passed it to him.

A meek hippogriff? Well, none of the ponies had met a hippogriff, and the stereotypes were nothing to go on, but it was still a shock.

The griffin corporal spoke with the other humans in similar manners and accent. There was no sign of the usual greed, or rudeness. Well, not griffin rudeness at least. He behaved as the other soldiers did, partaking in friendly teasing and vulgar humor.

None of the creatures here were like anyone they’d met before. They acted like humans.

Applejack took Twilight aside, “Twi’, where have y’all been? Are you alright? Did they do anything to you? What is going on? Who are these humans?”

“What? No! Of course not! The Terran Alliance are a bunch of human nations with a bunch of other species all together who’ve been hiding in the Western Sea. They saved our lives! Melissa and I were dropped into the middle of the ocean, the Terran Alliance submarines rescued us, we asked for their help, and they gave all they could!”

“Why are you wearing that uniform?” Rarity asked.

“Is this really the time to care about that?”

“This Terran Alliance,” Applejack said slowly, “Can we trust them to help us? Are you sure they’re sending help?”

The room rocked again.

“Does that answer your question? I would hardly think they’d send 300 of their soldiers to their deaths!”

Applejack shrugged, “You have a point. Who else would help us anyway?”

“Hooray!” Pinkie cried, “New really weird friends!”

With that, the unit went down the tunnel in the storeroom. It would allow them access to the underground tunnels and sewers under the city.

“God, I hate sewer levels…” Andrew muttered, taking a deep breath before following the rest of the group.
XXXXX
The battle on the surface was not going well. As predicted, sector 1 around Canterlot Castle fell immediately after the shield collapsed.

Out of the west had come four Changeling helicopter gunships the troops would nickname vultures. Ripsaw 1, along with several Sea Knight helicopters and two Skyraiders were knocked down immediately. The Vultures were armed with weapons generations ahead of what the marines had, and incredible speed. They looked like a cross between a Eurocopter Tiger and an RAH-66 Comanche, powerful helicopters with stealth technology, high agility, and advanced sensors and weapons. A challenging opponent to say the least, even for a helicopter from the 2010s.

And a massive threat for aircraft designs fifty years older.

Quickly following the four vultures out of the west came a pair of massive transports, shaped like Thunderbird 2(deemed “cockroaches”). They landed in wide fields near the castle, and the northwestern edge of the residential area. The one in the residential area dumped three massive tanks that looked vaguely like smaller versions of the Maus tank. Smooth, massive bricks with turrets mounted on the back of the body. They were like giant sneakers.

Eight Armored Personnel Carriers(APCs) were dumped out from the other transport near the castle, along with dozens of Changeling soldiers. The APCs were built much like the human AAVs, with turrets armed with heavy weapons, and equipped with six wheels instead of tracks. Any remaining Equestrian soldiers in the area of the castle or the upper class sector were quickly overwhelmed.

Four aircraft, large flying saucer-types with a bulbous underside(nicknamed junebugs), settled down next to their bigger counterparts and emptied out even more soldiers.

The cockroaches took off once again to gather more reinforcements, generating a constant stream of soldiers and equipment.

The vultures, along with a number of junebugs, tore over the city, dropping laser-guided munitions into pony strong points, barracks, and supply depots. Two pony gun batteries were annihilated, lines of communication were cut, and casualties were sustained.

While trying to cross the bridge between Canterlot Castle and the residential sector, an APC was destroyed when the bridge exploded underneath it. It slowed down the other vehicles, forcing them to take an alternate route, but it was not the delay the defenders had hoped. Destruction of bridges worked better when the enemy infantry doesn’t have wings.

The Changeling troops advanced swiftly into the city, their tanks moving straight in while half the APCs took the right flank around the cliff edge of the city.

Stinger surface-to-air missiles arced skyward, succeeding in destroying one junebug, and damaging another, along with a vulture.

Artillery barrages made the enemy pause, as did house-to-house fighting. The marines and ponies engaged, then detached and fell back as planned.

The Changelings advanced slowly and cautiously, unsure of enemy numbers.

Attempting to use the airship landing fields as a landing zone failed as the Marines had planned. Stingers and a LAV Air Defense(LAV-AD) vehicle were there to keep the enemy back. Artillery blocked the roads that led straight from the castle to the airfield, and harassed them every step of the way. They’d have to go in the hard way.

Through every millimeter of space the defenders would make them fight for.

The bridges connecting the western part of Canterlot to the rest of the city were blasted, and surprise attacks with anti-tank weapons and IEDs made it difficult for the Changelings to send in their heavy tank support.

The Changelings knew how tough urban combat was, however. They’d expected this. This was why they sent in a certain type of specialized tank specifically designed for urban combat. They hadn't performed well on the advance to the airfield, but pure cities were their element.

XXXXX

First squad emerged from the underground into a deserted section of the city. They could hear the artillery booming, and ducked when an aircraft tore overhead.
“Anyone see insignia?” someone asked.

There was a fireball in the direction the plane had gone.

“Doesn’t matter now.”

The marines continued moving in the direction of where the CP was supposed to be, staying to either side of the tight street.

“Does anypony feel that?” Applejack suddenly asked.

“Feel what?” Rainbow whispered back, scanning the rooftops for targets.

Fluttershy, firmly rooted to the ground unlike the blue pegasus, started trembling, “I feel it…”

“Feel what…?” Andrew asked.

Clomp. Clomp. Clomp.

The other marines halted one by one.

“What is that?” Andrew demanded.

“How the hell should I know?” Melissa hissed.

She crawled forward to the next intersection. A private was sitting on the corner, using a mirror to peer around it.
“Enemy walker!” he said, “Some kind of big bug mech!”

Melissa peered around herself. She chuckled a little when she saw it...then froze.

“Sweet Mother Teresa on the hood of a Mercedes Benz...Retreat!” Melissa screamed in a most undignified manner, pulling the private up and shoving him back the way they had come.

With a dramatic roar, and an agility that should have been impossible for a vehicle of that size, the massive Changeling battle mech rolled on wheels mounted to its six legs. It rolled onto the street with the speed of a car, sideways like a crab.
The thing was the size of a van, with six legs attached around a central thorax-like area, with a pair of arms on the front that had three clamping fingers each. Between the arms, beneath a twitching sensor node, was a large cannon. It looked like a giant ant, only mechanical, jet black, and armed with machine guns in the center of the fingers.
The arms raised, and with a mechanical whine, the machine guns mounted to them opened up on the retreating squad.

The Marines scattered like cockroaches, diving into doorways or behind blocks of rubble. One man was cut down before he could reach safety and fell without a sound.

Melissa ducked into a doorway, followed by Andrew and Fluttershy.

Melissa patted down her vest, and found her phone, using it as a mirror to see around the corner.

To Andrew’s mild shock and horror, she began giggling.

“What is it now?” he moaned, clutching his pistol tighter.

“It’s a Tachikoma! Those cute little tanks from Ghost in the Shell! Well, it’s missing the big fat pod on the back, and it’s shaped more like an ant, but--”

A rocket shrieked past, exploding down the street.

“Not so cute now! Why does everything we run into remind you of something else?”

“Because that’s my thing, and how I keep calm while people are dying around me! At least now we know how to disable it!”

Fluttershy was on the ground with her head covered. She glanced up, “How does knowing what it resembles help us--”

“It’s an ultra-efficient design! Most realistic sci-fi could have real world applications, remember the Starfuries?”

She shouted to the others, “Target its feet! It’s got wheels for feet! Feet, and its forehead! There’s a camera there!”
Melissa hoped her intelligence was spot-on. Unlike in the anime, the Tachikoma didn’t have convenient blue and white coloration to separate out vital areas. It was painted black. And this was reality, not an anime, obviously. There could be all sorts of differences. It was designed to be manned by a Changeling, not a human.

She shook her head, Now’s not the time. It looked right. She had to trust herself.

Leaning out of cover, switching Orcrist to single shot, Melissa aimed right for what she believed to be the camera, or sensor node.

As the marines unloaded around him, Andrew stayed in cover, unable to get out and shoot.

He saw Corporal Ceres stand up out of cover, tossing a pin away from a grenade. The marine placed one of his hind legs on the rubble serving as his cover, and leaned back to throw it.

A burst tore through one of his back legs. Ceres screamed and collapsed backwards, his pineapple grenade still clutched tightly in his hand.
Fluttershy popped her head up, and despite the danger, immediately tried to get up and help, only for suppressive fire to send her right back into cover.

Andrew watched Ceres try to get up, only for his leg to give out, his screams unable to be heard over the sound of battle. The grenade’s spoon was still held in place, but it was only the soldier’s weakening grip keeping it there.

Before he knew what he was doing, Andrew was out of the doorway, diving across the gap between him and the pile of rubble.
He went prone, crawling forward, ducking to avoid falling debris.

The griffin spotted him, and tried to pass the grenade over.

It slipped from his hand, the spoon falling out as the pineapple rolled towards the archeologist.

Andrew snatched up the device. Aiming in the general direction of thumping feet, he hurled it and flattened himself as best he could against the ground.

His fillings shook with the force of the blast.

“Doesn’t anyone have an M72?!” Vaughn roared, ducking behind a low rock wall.

“Jefferson had one, Sergeant!” the radio operator beside him shouted, and pointed at the prone man in the middle of the street.

“Where’s Ramirez? We had four of the things!”

“Here, sir!” a man rushed over, low under the wall.

“Get to work, Private!”

“Yeah, yeah…” He unlimbered a long olive-drab tube from his bag, and put his M16 on the ground.

Ramirez readied the M72 Light Anti-tank Weapon(LAW), flipping out the sight and putting his hand near the trigger.

He stuck his head up, putting the crosshairs onto one of the legs of the black tanks.

“See you in--”

An explosion sounded out close by, jostling Ramirez as he clamped down on the firing button.

The rocket lit off and shot down the street.

Just barely passing the Tachikoma’s left legs.

“Oh shit…” Ramirez whispered.

“Oh, fuck!” Vaughn shouted.

“Oh nuts.” The radio operator said.

The main cannon of the Tachikoma aimed in their direction, its arms tilting.

“Hit the deck!”

The rest of the squad opened fire, the last man with an M72 stepping out of cover to take aim himself.

At that moment, Rainbow Dash shot out of cover like a bullet. In a flash, she’d reached Jefferson, pulled the LAW off his back, and shot forward at high speed between the legs of the spider walker moving barely a few centimeters above the ground.

Screeching to a halt in midair, her wings beating like a hummingbird, she twisted the weapon around to face the rear of the Tachikoma.

She punched the button, and fired the rocket. It rammed into the machine’s radiator. At such close range, it passed through the ammunition storage and right into the pilot’s exoskeleton before detonating.

The sensor module on the front of the thorax blew out, spewing flames and shrapnel.

It stumbled and fell forward, collapsing with a tremendous sound.

“Holy shit, that was awesome!” Melissa said, stepping out of cover.

“Everyone sound off!” Vaughn called out.

Members of the squad reported. Including the sergeants, there were thirteen marines left.

“Jefferson’s KIA.” a human corporal said, “I’ll get his tags.”

“Uh...we need a medic over here!” Andrew said loudly, “Fluttershy? Someone?”

Fluttershy shot up from where she’d been hiding, “Andrew?”

She spotted him crouched near Corporal Ceres, hands covered in blood.

The pegasus rushed over with uncharacteristic speed, and immediately grabbed his hands, “What happened? Are you alright?”

“What? Yeah, I’m fine!” Andrew said, looking at her like she was crazy.

Ceres spoke through a gritted beak, rocking back and forth as he held one of his lion legs, “Doc, he’s fine, that’s my blood!”

Fluttershy winced and cringed, “Oh...uh...sorry! Shot in the leg, right? Did the bullet go all the way through?”

Petty Officer Santiago finally arrived, pulling his pack off and opening it, “Ms. Shy, I doubt you’ve had experience with high-velocity gunshot wounds, but I assume you know how to bandage and splint.”

Melissa looked around for the rest of the gang. Rainbow Dash settled down near her, “I’m fine. What do I do with this?”

She held up the empty tube of the LAW.

“Regulations say to destroy it. The VC used to use them as boobytraps.”

Rarity popped out of somewhere, somehow clean amongst the dust, “I can do that.”

She used her magic to crush the LAW into a long pancake shape. “No one will make a dastardly trap out of that, surely.”

Pinkie Pie appeared, “Not unless they paint it brown and put it on a rolling board and someone mistakes it for ginger bread and try to bite it and really hurt their teeth!”

“I don’t think anyone would be willing to go that far.” Twilight said.

“Everypony alright?” Applejack asked, scanning the area with her carbine at the ready, “There might be more of those things around.”

“Tachikomas,” Melissa said, “That one was ahead of the pack I think. Without infantry support it’s vulnerable, which is why tanks don’t normally do that. Must’ve gotten lost or something.”

“What a coincidence, so are we.” Twilight deadpanned.

“No we’re not.”

A smoke cloud bloomed in the distance, and a Harrier jump jet zipped across the sky.

“See? That way’s the strongpoint.”

Melissa glanced over at the dragon sergeant, “Vaughn! Everyone is accounted for!”

“Right. Let’s move out!”

“Hey, little help here?” Ceres asked, his hind left leg bandaged.

Santiago pointed at Andrew and Fluttershy, “You two will help me with him. Two of us will carry him and we’ll swap out.”

Andrew hauled the griffin up onto his remaining hind leg, pulling one arm around his neck while Fluttershy floated on the opposite side holding the other arm.

The unit moved down the street toward an alleyway, intent on avoiding the major roads. They kept the wounded in the center of the formation.

“You know, I could carry him if you wish.” Rarity spoke up when Fluttershy swapped out with Santiago.

Ceres’ eyes widened, “Nope! No, that’s okay! I’m good with the human crutches over here!”

“Darling, it’s no trouble, you’re injured--”

“Oh, what a shame, they’re already carrying me, too late!”

Rarity huffed, “Honestly, you’re worse than Melissa when she had the flu!”

Vaughn glanced at Melissa, “You have a problem with magic flu cures too?”

Melissa snorted, “Yeah. I’m all for snapping my fingers to make the flu go away, but man does magic make me nervous.”

“My mom never understood that. Other kids hated shots, I hated magic cures. Terrified of it exploding in my face.”

“Really? I always had a problem with shots.”

“Oh, me too!” Rainbow Dash said, hovering above them.

“I don’t like the needle, but I like the injection!” Pinkie said.

The other three looked back at her.

“Should I…?”

“Don’t even ask.” Rainbow moaned.

They reached the vicinity of the plaza 1st platoon was supposed to be holding out in. The alleyway they were in gave a good view of the plaza. The plaza was a large intersection centered around a large grassy park. There were a few buildings nestled in the center of it, including one of recent construction that had sustained heavy weapons fire. It was the building the rest of the platoon seemed to be holding out in. They could see riflemen and crew-served weapons poking out of fortifications. In other areas they could see the khaki uniforms of the Equestrian Army, as well as some of their cannons. It seemed elements of a few pony companies, and one of their gun batteries, were mixed in with the marines.

“Holy shit, they’re in The First Hipster!” Melissa whispered, putting down her binoculars.

“The what?”

“Nothing. Looks like they’re in trouble.”

Groups of Changeling soldiers were arrayed near the main road from the castle emerged from the buildings, coming from the direction of the castle. A pair of Tachikomas were helping them suppress the defenders.

One of the pony guns boomed, throwing up dirt near a Changeling heavy machine gun.

Closer to the position of first squad, a Changeling APC accompanied by a dozen or so infantry was emerging from a side road seemingly unnoticed by the defenders. It was circling around to try and flank them.

“Private Wagner, front and center!” Vaughn barked.

The hippogriff radio operator crept forward, passing the handpiece of the PRC-77 to the sergeant.

“This is Warden 1-1 to Falcon group. Do you copy? Requesting immediate air support on the following coordinates.”

He passed the handpiece back, “Alright. Foster, Sparkle. Air support’s coming in. They’ll knock out the walkers--”

“Tachikomas.”

“Whatever. They’ll suppress the enemy while fireteams Alpha and Bravo flank them, while Charlie team will knock out that APC.”

Twilight crept forward, “What about the rest of us?”

Vaughn looked at her, then to Melissa, “Foster?”

Melissa grimaced, “Twi’...”

Twilight’s gaze narrowed, “We won’t just guard the non-combatants. Andrew and Rarity can do that. You’ve got four able-bodied ponies here, and I note that ‘Fireteam Alpha’ consists of one injured griffin, and one earth pony.”

She pointed to the pony carrying an M16 further down the line for emphasis, “where do you want us?”

Melissa smacked the side of her helmet, “Screw me, I’m an idiot!”

She turned and called down the line, “Someone pass up the last M72!”

As the weapon was passed up, Melissa looked at Rainbow Dash, “Dashie, you take the LAW and sneak over to a rooftop near that APC. Pinkie Pie, you follow her with your cannon. You’ll be with me and fireteam Charlie. Twilight, you and AJ can join the other fireteams.”

“What’s the plan, Sergeant?” Vaughn asked.

“We keep with your idea, we just make sure that APC goes down. The armor’s gonna be weaker on the roof, so the LAW can take it out if we hit it from the top. Pinkie can use her…” Melissa sighed, “I can’t believe I’m saying this-- she can use her party cannon to distract them and maybe even screw with the turret until it blows.”

“Hopefully they’ll appreciate the cake,” Pinkie smiled, “At least before they explode.”

They carried out the plan rapidly.

A Harrier jump jet flew overhead to deposit a few cluster bombs right up the Changeling tail pipes.

It came back for another pass, halting in midair to spray the Tachikomas with machine gun fire.

Rainbow managed to hit the enemy APC right on target, blasting it apart before anyone could respond. When the survivors attempted to rally, Charlie Team sprayed them with machine gun fire.

Both groups of foes, when they could take no more, took off toward their own line at high speed, carrying any wounded with them.

The squad suffered some injuries, as well as another man killed. A lance corporal from fireteam Bravo.

When the shooting stopped leaving the squad in cover, Vaughn and Wagner crept up to the strongpoint.

The grass had been churned up by hoof and footprints, as well as shovels. Marines and ponies had dug shallow foxholes and firing pits. An M47 Dragon anti-tank missile launcher crew was dug in behind a low rock wall. A mortar was positioned nearby. All pointed their weapons at the pair of marines approaching.

“Texas!” someone called out.

“Star!” Vaughn replied, “We’re first squad! Just took care of those bugs for you!”

A human stuck his head out of a foxhole, “Hey, Vaughn! Where ya been, man? We didn’t think you guys would get outta there!”

Vaughn looked at the sergeant in charge of third squad, “We’ve taken casualties, Wilson, but otherwise most of us are fine. Can the rest come forward?”

Sergeant Wilson nodded, “Sure. We’ve been waiting for second squad to come back and bring hell right with them. Could use all the hands we can get.”

Vaughn waved to the rest of the troops, and they ran across the plaza toward them.

As Vaughn checked each soldier, as well as the Mane Six, for any signs of problems, one of the third squad sentries popped up out of cover, “Hey, Sergeant Wilson! Shouldn’t we double-check all their guys?”

Wilson narrowed his gaze, “What do you mean, private?”

“Well, sir, we’re fighting Changelings, how do you know all their guys are who they look like?”

Wilson nodded, “Good point. Vaughn, any ideas?”

Melissa spoke up, “The Mane Six over here are all who they say they are. Maybe we can just ask questions we know the others will…”

As she spoke, she glanced over the rest of the squad nearby, and trailed off. Her eyes picked up on something the human corporal in charge of fireteam Charlie had on his belt.

“...that the others will know.”

As the others quizzed each other, Melissa lowered her rifle and stepped over to the corporal. He hadn’t approached anyone else.

“Corporal, what’s that in your belt?” she asked calmly.

He glanced at her, “Ma’am?”

“What is that on your belt?”

He patted his belt, “Uh...ma’am…”

“That’s a gameboy.”

“Yeah…?”

She abruptly snapped up her taser, “Put the rifle down, turn back to normal, and put your hands on your head.”

Muskets and M16s leveled at the corporal.

He laughed nervously, “Uh...guys, I’m not...no! You know me! I’m...I’m…”

“What’s your name, bug?” Melissa sneered, “It’s a pretty simple question.”

“Uh...uh...Jonesy?”

Melissa tased him. The Changeling twisted and contorted before shifting back to normal, dropping the rifle and falling to the ground limply.

“Holy shit!” someone yelled. Several pony troopers rushed up weapons at the ready.

Applejack trotted over, her carbine raised nervously, “Is he…?”

“He’s gonna have a hell of a headache, but he's alive. Little bastard must've grabbed the real corporal...hey Vaughn, who's this guy supposed to be?”

“Corporal Shephard,” Vaughn said.

“What?” Andrew said, grunting with the load of Ceres.

“Not you!” Vaughn poked the unconscious foe with his boot, “I thought he was being fishy…”

“Corporal Shephard, huh? More like Corporal 'dog meat’ to me.”

“What?” Andrew repeated.

“Coincidence, Andy! Different spelling! Only one ‘e’!” Melissa turned back to look at the prone foe, “They must've gotten him in the wedding hall.”

She turned to Sergeant Wilson, “Better check there's no more of these guys in the ranks.”

“How’d you know, Foster?” Vaughn asked, “You don’t know the guy.”

Melissa crouched near the Changeling, who moaned softly. She plucked what looked like a PDA off his belt, “Score...None of y’all have Gameboys.While the Chesapeake Bay probably had a few hundred, I assume you can’t replicate them. Aren’t they like a military resource, with all those computer chips? Douchebag Mcgee here knows what Gulf War soldiers look like, but he doesn’t know what you guys carry. Also he may have been quoting Dr. McNinja.”

“Good point. You’d better bring that with us, we gotta go see the lieutenant.”

Melissa nodded and stood up, “Twi’! C’mon, we gotta report in!”

Pony soldiers dragged the prisoner away, while the rest of the squad spread out to offer what aid they could.

Andrew passed Ceres off to Santiago, and jogged up to Vaughn, Melissa, and Twilight, “You guys need me for anything?”

Vaughn grimaced, “No offense, Mr. Shepherd, but I don’t think we will.”

Andrew’s eyes widened, “Uh…’kay...Melissa? Twilight?”

Melissa looked at Twilight. He noted an odd exchange in their eyes.

“Guys?”

Melissa rubbed the back of her head, “You’ve been out of the loop man, and you’re not a soldier. Maybe check and see if Santiago needs your help.”

Twilight shrugged at him.

Vaughn pushed the two along, “C’mon, they’ll be mounting another attack soon.”

Andrew scowled slightly, and walked off.

They entered the remains of the restaurant, finding a M2 Browning machine gun position near the entryway. Inside a handful of soldiers, Equestrian and US, along with a number of terrified civilians, milled about inside. They passed injured soldiers and civilians in an improvised infirmary.

Twilight’s expression was disturbed, seeing the missing limbs and intense amount of blood.

Is this what Earth is like? Explosions, injuries, maiming, insanity...I can’t tell if it’s any better or worse than our world.

They approached Second Lieutenant Cole, speaking with her platoon sergeant.

“First squad, reporting in, Lieutenant.” Vaughn said cooly.

“We’ve got a few wounded, two in need of CASEVAC, ma’am.” Melissa said.

Cole nodded to her platoon sergeant, “See to it. You two, where have you been? Mission status?”

“We weren’t able to capture the commander. We rescued a group of civilians and the crew of Ripsaw 1, they’re in the tunnels headed for the HQ. We also grabbed the Mane Six.”

Cole gestured at her radio operator and squinted at Melissa, “Who?”

“The ones who made the sky go all screwy a while back.” Vaughn said.

“And…?” Cole asked.

Twilight coughed, “Excuse me, lieutenant, my friends and I are this…’Mane Six’. We control the Elements of Harmony.”

Cole grimaced, “That might work against one angry alicorn, but probably won’t work against an alien force this big.”

Vaughn sighed, “Yes ma’am. What are your orders?”

Cole glanced at Melissa, “Sergeant, you can still do demolitions, right?”

“Ma’am, I’d--”

“Good. I need you to help strengthen our defenses. They’ll be launching an attack pretty soon. Vaughn, get your troops to help hold down the fort. Second squad’s gonna be back soon, and they're going to be bringing hell with them. Corporal, what’s the status on the Bobcats?”

The human radio operator she spoke to was listening intently to his headset, “Sirs, we’ve got a problem!”

XXXXX

Kilometers away, Baron Flight 1, a formation of two US Navy Douglas A-1 Skyraider attack aircraft, suddenly broke left and right.
Four blurs streaked through the space the pair of planes had previously occupied.

As Baron 1-2 rolled over a streak of light shot upward from the low hill he was above, and struck the underside of the aircraft.

The engine seized up as the pilot peered out his viewscreen in astonishment-- the nose was coated in blueice!

The propeller shattered the ice smoothly formed over it with its momentum, but the engine itself had had it. It had melted the ice, and was now filled with slush.
“Fucking unicorns!” the pilot roared, wrestling with the control surfaces, “Longbow, this is Mayo, going down! Repeat, Baron 1-2 going down!”

While his wingman went gliding downward, Baron “Longbow” 1-1, continued jinking around, accelerating and climbing in altitude.

Suddenly a pegasus in an Equestrian Wonderbolts uniform slammed into the canopy. Just like that. A bug on a windshield.

Her orange mane whipped about in the wind as she slid back along the canopy. Longbow could see her flight goggles were cracked, and they locked eyes with one another for an instant.

The pegasus’ eyes widened in concert with the aviator’s, both recognizing the person on the opposite ends of the proverbial --or in this case, literal-- gun sights.

The moment vanished. Longbow waggled his wings when it became apparent she was trying to hold on, and pulled up.
The Wonderbolt slid back along the fuselage and barely managed to grab the tail.

She dug at a holster pinned to her side and the pilot noticed too late that she had taken out a revolver and pointed it at him.
Three rounds pinged off the canopy, one catching him in the shoulder.

Longbow sent his plane into a spiral to try and throw off her aim.

One. Two. Three more gunshots.

Then there was the explosion.

The pilot was thrown forward against his restraints. He hit his head. Shrapnel flew everywhere. He could hear the sound of something beginning to burn somewhere in the plane. Time shifted somehow. Nothing was moving right. Something hurt in his back and his leg. He could feel something trickling down the inside of his flight suit.
Black smoke filled his vision, and he realized there were several bullet holes in his controls. The damaged altimeter was frozen at a descending angle.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday! Baron 1-1 transmitting in the blind! Going down! Am hitting the silk!”

His controls weren’t responding. Longbow pulled the canopy ejection mechanism and the bubble of plexiglass vanished in the wind.

He reached down to his side, pulled the ejection lever, and...nothing happened.

Longbow leaned for the alternate system under his feet. He felt intense heat against the torn glove, and bent over as far as he could.
He could see light reflected along the floor panels; something behind and below his seat was on fire. Something in the ejection system was damaged. Perhaps the pegasus had clipped the rockets. Maybe that was what exploded. Or it was fuel. Or it was any one of the elements that made up the 3.6 metric tonnes worth of explosives under him.

Longbow’s head swam. Darkness in his vision. Heat against his back. He had to get out. He grabbed the sides of the cockpit, trying to pull himself up and out into the slipstream. His arm burned. He couldn’t get himself out. Something was stuck.
Longbow’s could see the ground rapidly approaching. He pulled and tugged and yanked in terrified frustration, begging and pleading with the blockage to let go let go let go!

He felt pony arms grabbing him around the waist. The Wonderbolt was there beside him, barely maintaining contact with the plane by holding onto him.
She used a knife to cut through his restraints and their connection to the halfway launched ejection seat.

With a mighty heave, the Wonderbolt pulled him free of the dying Skyraider.

Something in his ejection system finally worked, and the parachute shot upwards. As it unfurled the Wonderbolt found herself caught in it. Somehow the harness took both their weight.

Below them, the Douglas A-1 Skyraider nosed downward, clipping the treetops of the valley below and slowly descending. Fragments blew off in its wake. It dropped through a clearing above a lake, bounced off the surface of the water, and slid into the dirt on the other side.
There were a series of explosions in it's trail, it's ordnance going up. A blast shook the plane and rolled it over, separating the fuselage from the starboard wing.

Longbow pulled open his oxygen mask, panting as his heart rate decreased. It was so quiet all of a sudden, almost deafening. The air was cold and sweet, a breeze rippled through the parachute above him. The beautiful landscape stretched out far around him. It felt like he'd spent years in that burning cockpit.

“That was close,” a husky female voice gasped, also out of breath, “Another few seconds and we'd have been toast.”

Longbow glanced up at his passenger, still caught in the parachute lines and balanced precariously on the risers.

“You alright?” She asked, pushing up her damaged goggles. There was a hint of confusion and shock in what little of her face he could see, but her voice was calm.

Longbow furrowed his brow, taking time to process what had happened, “Why...why did you save me?”

She looked at him like he was the crazy one, “It wouldn't be right to let a stallion die like that. Especially not another aviator. I'd be a disgrace to my uniform if I did that. Are you sure you're alright?”

Now that she asked, Longbow felt like crap. “Not really. I hurt my back, right leg, and my right shoulder.”

“Well, my ground crew's a few miles away, and we can probably find your wing buddy to help. You'll be alright. I'm Commander Spitfire, REAF Wonderbolt. Who are you, and why are you attacking us?”

Elsewhere, the first section of the Bobcat convoy, led by two tanks and four AAVs, were presently holding off an ambush.

They had advanced into a valley. It was mostly forest, running uncomfortably close to the road. Perfect place for an ambush.
And that was exactly what had happened.

An AAV commander near the head of the convoy had been standing up out of his top hatch, reclining somewhat and enjoying the sun. The aliens were in the city, not out here, and the ponies were equipped with antiques. Why should he worry?

Bang. A minie ball clipped his helmet. He ducked down back inside his vehicle as a tremendous racket like hail pelted his amtrack.

A massive array of firepower opened up from the forest. Gatling guns, rifled cannon, Springbok rifles, and 12-pounder smoothbores carried by Equestrian Army soldiers poured onto the marines.
The Equestrian Army soldiers had opened fire on orders from Canterlot, personally signed by Princess Cadence. They had to stop the dastardly intruders into their lands, with their smoking ironclads and snarling flying machines.

Results were unsatisfactory.

Their cannonballs and low-velocity bullets similar to those of the American Civil War bounced off the armor plate intended to stop Soviet anti-tank weapons. Even the trucks and humvees proved to be extremely resilient.

The AAVs in the convoy pulled off the road, finding a covered position between the ambushers and the convoy. They suppressed the enemy, and dispensed smoke.
The trucks and humvees, as per convoy doctrine, took off at high speed out of the ambush zone.

A quick response force arrived to aid the convoy escort elements in escaping under the smoke. The 2nd and 3rd LAR platoons of eight LAVs, protecting the flanks of the convoy, moved to protect the vulnerable elements that sped on ahead.

The next wave of the convoy, with the other two tanks, advanced into the ambush zone to lend a hand.

“What do we do about the ponies?!” demanded the commander of Charlie Company, artillery booming in the background as he radioed Colonel Waters, “You want us to just let them pick off our infantry one by one? Colonel, those guns can’t touch our vehicles, but leathernecks aren’t exactly bulletproof!”

Waters looked down at the map table he stood in front of, tracing out every route to Canterlot. This was the fastest. There was no other way.

He sighed, and picked up the radio, “Captain...minimize casualties as much as possible, but above all, prioritize getting to the city. Don’t fire upon any forces that haven’t fired on your own, and take whatever means are necessary to protect the convoy. Hansen needs these reinforcements, and we can’t afford any delays. Do what you can, but don’t let that get in the way of the mission, understood?”

“Understood, Colonel. We’ll be careful.” The captain cut the transmission.

The Equestrian Army bought even less time for the Changelings than expected. With their pawns of Equestrian foot soldiers useless, it was time for another trick.

Observing the carnage from a range of a few thousand meters, atop a hill was a Changeling soldier lying camouflaged under a small tent. His rifle lay to his side, and he lay on his belly typing on a computer screen. The hill had a great view of the valley. He raised a pair of highly advanced binoculars to peer downrange at the clouds rising in the distance.

On his computer was an overhead view of the valley, with the road outlined. Several large red squares were on the road, and more were on the hills to either side. Several dozen red diamonds were scattered around them.

The soldier reached out and touched the screen, selecting groups of green symbols arrayed all around the road at varying distances. One by one a status indicator for each group appeared on the soldier’s display.

Alien script scrawled out, and the Changeling typed rapidly. He pressed his version of an “enter” key.

Immediately he hopped to his feet, packing up his equipment and took off at high speed.

The first line of code reached a nearby rack of two six-barreled weapon systems, swept forward and mounted on a rotating platform.

There was no loading system, no ammunition belt. The munitions were stacked on top of each other in the barrels like a roman candle.

The soldier didn’t hear a dramatic boom, but instead a sound like a warning buzzer. He paused to look back at the mortars, as their first salvos launched away faster than the eye could see. On the hills around him, more “buzzers” rang out, and a barrage of death rose into the air revealed only by the distortions they left in their wake.

The autonomous systems could take care of themselves from now on. They were disposable. He was not. The heat released by the weapons would make them a great big flare on any enemy infrared scanner, and a clear target.

This was standard procedure, the soldier was part of the Pufferfish units. Similar to their namesake, these units were trained to make themselves appear larger than they actually were.

Make a dozen soldiers seem like an army.

An Equestrian private was dug in to a trench just within the tree line, and ducked to avoid a burst of enemy fire. He popped back up, and aimed his rifled musket at one of the lighter enemy vehicles.

The land ironclads they couldn’t touch, but the trucks looked vulnerable.

As he squeezed off a shot, the truck exploded. The troops around him all ceased fire, as did the enemy.

The pony line sent up a cheer, and the private peered at the tip of his musket, wondering what had happened. Had he somehow hit something vital?

At that moment, there was a piercing shriek, like that of a load of roundshot, before a hail of fire exploded against one of the smaller ironclads.

Flames erupted from the vehicle’s turret, squashed against the hull and perforated with shrapnel.

It continued rolling forward as humans spilled out of the front and rear hatches, halting when it bumped into a tree.

At the same instant, dirt was thrown in the air by another rain of fire hitting the gatling gun dug in to the private’s left. The stallions and mares around him hit the dirt on instinct, hearing more screams from Tartarus’ fury raining down on the gun positions further up the hill.

The private stuck his head up, looking to the gatling gun. There was nothing left but burning wreckage, nothing remained of its crew.

“Move, move, move!” the sergeant shouted, “Out of the trench! Up the hill! They’ve got our range!”

A fusillade of bullets came out off the curve in the road up ahead, cutting down infantrymen taking cover near the lead Patton tank, nicknamed Drunken Carnage. They fired back with rifles and a grenade launcher, but the gun still fired.

It was a terrifying and strange sound, not like normal bullets at all. It was more like the densest cloud of hornets anyone had heard, or an electronic buzzer.

Carnage’s commander called out, “Gunner! Target left!

“Identified! Range, 150 meters!” the gunner cried.

“Fire!”

“Coax on the way!”

The tank fired the machine gun mounted beside its main cannon and tore through the unseen target. A small reparation for the dead and the dying.

Another gun opened up, bullets pinging off the hull-- from the port side this time. The commander could see it through his periscope, a metallic turret that appeared out of nowhere in the middle of a farm field.

It wasn’t a normal gun, it was shaped like a hexagon, and the short side facing him had a shape like a plus sign. He recognized with horror the dozens of recessed gun barrels that made up the white sign. Every time the “buzzer” sounded, a dash of dust spewed out from each barrel.

More bizarre than the design of weapon, there was no sign of a gun crew. It rotated entirely on its own.

“Enemy machine gun! Left side!”

“Identified! 200 meters!’

“Load HE!”

“Up!”

“Fire!”

“On the way!”

Another shell shrieked away, impacting the ground beside the weapon. It was blown to pieces.

“Break break. This is Ogre 1 to convoy. Meeting heavy resistance. Indirect fire. Autonomous, I say again, autonomous machine gun positions. Unable to verify if indirect fire is autonomous. Requesting orders.”

The tank abruptly surged forward, turning off the road and driving into the fields off to port.

“Driver! What are you doing?!” the commander demanded.

“Getting us out of the way of those mortars!”

The commander popped up out of the turret only for his goggles to be splattered by whatever was in the wagon they ran over.

He wiped them off in time to see a puff of smoke and a muzzle flash on one of the higher hills. There was another shriek of mortar fire and the tank darted to one side, allowing a shell to explode where they just were.

“Ogre 1 requesting air support! Grid coordinates! 10-6 by 8-0-6!”

The convoy escorts and quick reaction force scattered, looking for any sort of cover and concealment, all the while their armaments scanned the region for targets.

Infantry ran with the vehicles, some leaping aboard to get out of the ambush zone. Others dove into ditches, into craters, a few even into the Equestrian trenches. They fought back just as hard as their vehicle counterparts, though their efforts were less noticeable.

A SuperCobra roared overhead, curving around to fire on one of the mortars.

A pair of AAVs fired their grenade launchers and successfully destroyed a position. A scarred Changeling soldier missing two legs was thrown into the open, writhing in pain as flames consumed his uniform.

Two marines fired grenade launchers at another hardpoint of automated guns.

Skyhawks threw down high explosives, saving a group of pinned-down alliance and Equestrian soldiers from another machine gun.

Corsairs ripped up the ground around a nearby mortar with their machine guns, finishing it off with a pair of rockets.

A pair of Harriers hovered over a halted AAV and its comrade, suppressing the machine gun-mortar combination further up the slope.

As fast as they took out the enemy positions, it seemed as though two more popped up to replace them.

Drunken Carnage, befitting her name, was driving down a hill and inadvertently ran over another machine gun before it even activated. This time they were rewarded with a gut-wrenching scream from alien vocal cords.

The ambush seemed to be faltering. The flight of harriers protecting the convoy’s more vulnerable elements ran a sweep of the foothills. They were smaller than the ridges protecting the ambush valleys, and didn’t appear to have any hostile contacts.

Hopefully the escorts could catch up.

“Break break! Incoming fire!”

The harrier that spoke vanished in a ball of fire. The second’s engine nozzles swiveled, “Taking evasive action!”

He streaked off in a direction that took him away from staging areas and the fleet, flares strewn in his wake, with a high-altitude aircraft coming closer and closer in behind him.
“Hostile enemy aircraft! Unknown classification! I’ll try--”

The second harrier’s transmission was cut off.

The convoy had no time to grieve, or even to process what had happened. They were set upon by modern weapons fire. From the hills all around them.

“Christ, is this how the Iraqis felt?!” the commander of Bravo companyshouted, watching his infrared scopes pick up tanks and armored vehicles that had been concealed on the hills.

Their adaptive camouflage systems couldn’t conceal the heat from their guns, but that was unnecessary now.

The convoy had gone into herringbone formation to avoid air attack, spreading out to either side of the road, only to be driven right toward the third ambush. They took cover as best they could, and fought back hard.

The enemy planes drove the human air cover away with ease. They could barely even track the damn things, let alone fight them. They could outclimb and outrun even the human Skyhawk jet fighters.

These enemy planes were on par with F-22 Raptors of the 21st century, while Skyhawks had gone up against MiGs in Vietnam.

As they swept the human aircraft back, their cockroach and junebug troop transports arrived to deposit even more armored vehicles and troops.

Stinger teams fired, managing to take down several junebugs before they were destroyed themselves.

The LAR platoons arrived to lend a hand, but they weren’t designed for stand-up fights. They had to close the distance to the enemy vehicles just to stay alive.

The convoy was in trouble. Escorts spread out too far, their transport vehicles under heavy fire, air support was obliterated from Canterlot all the way to the beach…

It wasn’t just that the enemy had overwhelmed them. No, they’d screwed up. Bad.

Operation Market Garden, half a century earlier, had suffered a similar fate.

An operation that would end a war rapidly, that relied on rapid reinforcement of air-dropped forces. Such plans were always risky, with plenty of chances of failure.

And Alpha Company was playing the part of Major John Frost’s beleaguered unit.

It was about to get a lot worse.

XXXXX

A marine PFC, a scout on 1st platoon’s right flank, was in a bell tower overlooking an Equestrian Army position. They had perhaps a company of troops in the buildings along the street, and a pair of light cannons at the intersection. They might not do much against tanks, but they'd pack a wallop.

The sound of a Stinger firing caught his ears. He looked up to see an alien helicopter soaring low over the buildings, dropping below the missile as it went wild and pursued the flares in the aircraft’s wake.

"Shit...!" He hissed, and leaned out of the tower, "hey! Take cover down there! Take cover!"

A dozen or so small containers fell out of a compartment on the back of the helicopter, falling right past the scout and onto the troops below. He scrunched up preparing for the blast, but it didn't come. Instead, when he looked down, a snow white cloud was growing steadily out of the containers. A smoke screen?

It approached the artillery first. The pony soldiers started coughing, grabbing their necks. Some fell to their knees, vomiting before becoming prone. Others attempted to stumble away.

“Shit, shit!” he grabbed his radio, “Break break!This is Lima 1-2-4! We’ve got chemical weapons, repeat, we’ve got a aerosol chemical weapon on the loose! The left flank’s collapsing!”

The scout made a step toward the stairwell, but couldn’t leave his post. He moved back to the railing, “Hey down there! Get to high ground! Get to high ground!”

He tried to block out the sound of the soldiers coughing, screaming, and collapsing. The stairs thundered as a handful of the smarter ones figured it out.

Lieutenant Cole’s radio operator had a horrified expression on his face, having already informed her of the status of their air support and reinforcements, “Lieutenant...the left flank’s collapsing! They’ve got some kind of sleeping gas!”

Cole raised an eyebrow, “Wait, sleeping? So it’s non-lethal? That’s something at least…”

Melissa grimaced, “They’re probably using it to keep victims alive so they can trap them without resistance. Wonder why they haven’t used it more.”

“We’ve got gas masks,” Vaughn said, “The ponies haven’t invented chemical warfare yet. Great way to knock out most of our forces.”

“It’s probably a one-trick deal though, we’ll know to prepare for it in the future. They must be using it as an ace in the hole.”

“It’s certainly working right now!” the lieutenant snapped, “My left flank’s about to roll up! I’ve lost something like half of it!”

“Recommend you get either everyone without a mask out of the underground, or get a bunch of fans to use overpressure to keep the gas out,” Melissa said, “That gas is gonna settle down in the lowest areas. Hell, get some unicorns if you can’t find fans!”

“I know how to fight in a city, Sergeant,” Cole snapped, “Get your ass out onto that street before--!”

There was the sound of shells screaming in, and the building shook. Several people were knocked to the floor.

Melissa and Vaughn helped Twilight to her feet, “Let’s go, let’s go! We got incoming!”

They rushed outside to see a dozen marines, and two score Equestrian soldiers come hurtling toward the strongpoint from the direction of the main road.

Several of the marines stopped to fire off a round from a Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle, and unload small arms, while the rest sprinted at full speed toward safety.

“Texas!” someone called out, rising from the trench.

“Fuck the damn countersign!” a pony marine with a single chevron on his uniform screamed, “We got bugs! Lots of bugs!”

“Stop and give me something, man--!”

The pony pointed back toward the street he’d come from. “Look at that you bastard! We gotta get the hell outta here!”

What looked like a cloud of darkness was a few hundred meters away. It was a cloud of Changeling soldiers, centered around a small armored convoy of APCs and Tachikomas, as well as four of their main battle tanks. Their engines were tremendous, but not quite as loud as an M1 Abrams. Who knew what kind of energy was driving them?

The tanks were rumbling down the highway, driving around the shell craters and pointing their guns at...

“Take cover!”

Melissa pushed Vaughn into a foxhole, feeling the shockwave of the high explosive shell pulling at her pack. The shell missed anything significant, but took a chunk out of the restaurant.

Lieutenant Cole stuck her head up from behind cover, uncovering Twilight after protecting her from the attack, “Return fire! Concentrate fire on the little ones, leave the MBTs to the TOW!”

“What’s the plan, Lieutenant?” Melissa called out.

“Same as before, Foster! Don’t talk back and fall back in an orderly fashion! Help get first squad ready to move!”

“We going to call in the reserves--?”

“Foster!” Cole barked, “Get to work!”

Melissa swallowed, and nodded. She helped Vaughn up, and waved Twilight over.

“What do you need us to do?” Twilight asked.

“Keep us from dying! We need to get ready to move, I think I know what the LT has in mind.”

They moved from cover to cover, to the foxholes first squad had dug to protect themselves and the ponies. Or rather the trench. The almost two meter deep trench.

The three dove into it, and Vaughn glanced at his remaining corporal, “Henderson, how'd you manage this?!”

Henderson grinned, “got two Earth ponies with us!”

Applejack fired her carbine over the lip of the trench, “aw, it weren't nothing!”

Twilight said, “nice work Applejack. It would be even more impressive if we didn't have to move in thirty seconds or so!”

“What?” Rainbow almost whined, “but the bad guys are right there! Let's just--”

“Our air support’s FUBAR!” Melissa said, “they're probably gonna wipe out the artillery pretty soon! We're going to get the hell out of dodge!”

Rarity spoke up, “in that case, shouldn't we make sure we're all accounted for? Where's our little medical team?”

Vaughn facepalmed, “Henderson?”

“I dunno, sir! I mean...I think Santiago took them inside! I’m not sure!”

“Fuck me…” Melissa snarled, and started to get out of the trench.

Machine gun fire tore over her head, and she immediately went back down. “Let’s deal with that later! Twilight, don’t you have some sort of concussive spell?”

“Yeah! Why?”

“Try and flip over the Tachikomas!”

The TOW launcher fired off another round as the marines opened fire. Mortar fire rained down on the enemy infantry while the Browning unleashed hell.

A Dragon anti-tank launcher targeted one of the main enemy tanks. The round was slightly off-target, and hit an APC behind it instead.

Unfortunately, the tank they’d targeted found their position, and blew the crew to pieces.

Soldiers started to fall as the Changelings closed the distance, and could target them with firearms.

Slowly, but steadily, the Changelings were pushing their way into the square.

“We’re getting murdered out here!” Twilight yelled.

“No shit!” a griffin snapped, pausing to reload.

“What in equestria are we waiting for?” Rarity called out, “We must withdraw!”

“The lieutenant’s got a plan!” Vaughn called out, “She might be…”

He ducked to avoid enemy fire, “...she’s got a plan. She always has one, somehow.”

A trench of Equestrian soldiers exploded.

“Really?!” Twilight barked, “She does?!”

Artillery fire rained down on the enemy yet again, and a new sound reached their ears.

Heavy engines. Internal combustion.

A Tachikoma, advancing on their position, crumpled to pieces under a barrage of autocannon fire. A line of Changeling soldiers were swept out of the air.

The squad poked their heads out of the trench. Three humvees, two trucks, and an LAV were arrayed at the opposite end of the plaza from the Changelings, partially in cover behind the building. First and second squad of 2nd platoon had arrived.

Messengers ran through the defensive fortifications, “We’re pulling out! Everyone fall back!”

Melissa pulled Rainbow Dash and Applejack off the line, “C’mon, we’re falling back!”

“But--”

“Now, Dash!”

The team leapt out of the trench, quickly retreating across their battered fortifications. A griffin too slow to get out was caught by the approaching foes, and was dragged off screaming.

The Changelings rapidly overcame the withering defenses, the buzzing of their wings like demonic mosquitoes chomping at their heels.

Demonic mosquitoes that shredded a hippogriff from Vaughn’s command from the waist up.

A marine running beside Twilight caught a bullet in the shoulder and fell. Without hesitation, she picked him up with magic and kept running.

Pinkie Pie turned around, dropped her cannon down, and fired it into three Changelings about to attack Twilight.

One would think getting hit with cake batter wouldn’t hurt that much, but anything with enough force can hurt…

And if the cake batter has been mixed with some incredibly sticky substance, it can make it extremely difficult for wings to flap. Or to even move.

The platoon reached the trucks, climbing on or clinging to whatever mounts they could find.

Melissa hopped onto the back of one of the uncovered 6x6 trucks, hanging off a cargo handle as she checked to make sure everyone was aboard.

The truck’s engine revved and started to move, but Vaughn was lagging a few meters behind.

She reached out to grab his claw, “C’mon, Vaughn! Reach!”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a Changeling rise out of cover, its rifle raised.

She couldn’t reach her weapon, she couldn’t warn him, the truck was moving, she--

Blam!

A gunshot went off near her ear, and the Changeling fell squealing to the ground.

Melissa grabbed Vaughn’s outstretched claw and pulled him aboard.

“That’s all of them! Let’s go!” Wilson yelled, pounding on the cab of the truck.

Letting Vaughn move past her, Melissa tilted her helmet and stuck a finger in her ear. Beside her on the edge-most seat sat Andrew, a smoking M1911 in his hand.

“Nice shot!” Melissa yelled over the ringing in her ears.

“Least I’m still good for something!” he said.

Melissa gave him an odd look, and glanced around the truck bed, “Where are the civilians? The wounded?”

“The tunnels,” Andrew said, “They sent the guys who were the worst off along with the civilians on a route out of the city. They said that was why you guys were out there so long.”

“That, tragically, did not include me.” Coporal Ceres spoke up, leaning into view, “I apparently still count as walking wounded.”

“Well, you still have three legs, man…” Andrew pointed out.

“Oh shut up, four-eyes. I need two of them to hold my rifle!”

“How can you hold a rifle and walk on all fours at the same time?”

“Both of you shut up and scooch over,” Melissa barked, “I’m hanging off into space here!”

XXXXX

The battle in the air was not going well. The heavy transport planes en route from the Terran Alliance territory with airborne paratroopers had been rerouted.

From the Jackson’s battle group, the Skyraider squadrons were virtually wiped out, with the Corsairs fairing little better against the enemy air superiority aircraft.

They were massive compared to the pitiful piston aircraft. With a vague teardrop shape similar to the possibly-apocryphal-possibly-not USAF F-19 fighter, they had a small radar profile and a limited weapons loadout. However, their loadout had a much greater range compared to the Sidewinders and autocannons the humans possessed.
Their stealth capabilities and weapon systems would be problematic enough were it not for their speed, flight ceiling, and maneuverability. The Changeling fighters, these “Wasps”, were designed with similar capabilities to the SR-71 Blackbird and the F-35 Lightning, resulting in a high-performance multi-purpose aircraft with VTOL systems. They could land or takeoff from runways, forest clearings, and travel at altitudes high enough to interact with a low-orbiting starship.

The three remaining Harrier jump jets were a generation behind the F-35s, the latter designed to be an improvement on the first.

The Skyhawk fighter jets were from the same generation as the Harriers, only the start of it instead of the tail-end.

There were only twelve Skyhawks from two squadrons remaining. Four Corsairs from another squadron. Most of the remaining Skyraiders had bugged out, completely unable to lend a hand in this situation.

There were eight operational Wasps in the air, out of nine they had started with. One had been lightly damaged and returned to the starship.

It was a near impossible task, but by god they would try.

Colonel Waters at the beach watched the distant air battle through binoculars. His command was falling apart. He’d sent out the last of his available reserves a few minutes ago. Most of the marine air element was grounded or destroyed. Just about the only thing getting in and out of Canterlot were CASEVAC helicopters, and that was probably because they hadn’t accidentally shot down any Changeling medical helicopters.

He ignored the sounds of the howitzers pounding on a nearby hill, and tried to figure a way out of this.

A glint in the sky and sonic booms caught his attention, and he fixed his binoculars on another point in the sky, much closer.

Three black teardrops tore through the air, vapor cones traveling in their wake. They were heading right toward the fleet.

Waters called to his radio operator, “We’ve now got twelve enemy fighters in total, three inbound to the fleet. Better let them know!”

The warning was unnecessary. The Chesapeake Bay could see the enemy strike fighters inbound. She’d been coordinating the battle with the air combatants, but hadn’t been able to engage using the fleet’s missiles. They could barely see the things, only a handful of radar sets could pick them up and at inconvenient ranges.

An E-2 Hawkeye Airborne Early Warning aircraft, as per its design, was able to overcome this. It extended the radar range and spotted them approaching, again from seemingly nowhere.

The Chesapeake Bay’s computers spoke with commanders on the fleet as they fell into a battle formation.

12 RIM-66 SM-1 missiles arched skyward, guided by a variation of the Tartar Guided Missile Fire Control System, named after a previous generation of missiles. Another wave followed them closely.
Yet while quantity has a quality all its own, they were still not enough. The stealth surfaces and spoofing systems of the enemy fighters were enough to evade several missiles, and they raced past the rest with sheer speed.
Joining the fight, the Chesapeake Bay’s bow and stern lit with fire, twice in a row, as she lit off two pairs of her last remaining RIM-66 SM-2 missiles.

The SM-1s were decades older in design than the SM-2s, more of the precious relics brought from home. They were faster, more accurate, and more powerful.

The crews watched on their displays as the missiles closed with the enemy. Two went wild, a third simply missed, but the fourth managed to detonate just behind one of the aircraft lagging just behind the rest.

A ragged cheer went up as it turned away from the fight, then became stronger as the other two broke off their attack run and arched back around toward shore.

“What are they doing?” Admiral Curtis wondered, sitting at a control chair trying not to pose like Captain Kirk. Though he no longer commanded the Bay, she would forever be his flagship so long as the two were in the same fleet.

The Chesapeake Bay’s current skipper, Captain Baxter, shook a fist at a viewscreen, “We drove them off, admiral! I recommend we pull the fleet in closer, see if we can’t offer the infantry a hand.”

“Baxter,” he said, looking at her, “We didn’t shoot any of them down, and they’re not vectoring any of their other planes onto our position. That stinks of something in the works. Am I right or wrong?”

The captain grimaced, “Right, sir. Should we stay in formation, or try to help the infantry?”

“Stay in formation until we can solve this.” Curtis ordered.

15 minutes later he got the answer. The USS Randolph, a few thousand meters away, suddenly crumpled, its center vanishing and lifting the two broken halves of the ship into the air.

The clouds above were chopped and rippled outward like disturbed water. A neat circle formed in them as if with a knife.

Seconds later, there was a tremendous whoom! Like the loudest thunderclap anyone had ever heard.

Waves like a small tsunami spread outwards from the slowly disappearing warship.

A frigate huddled close to the vessel capsized over onto its side, spilling sailors into the water. The other ships in the fleet turned desperately into the wave as rapidly as they could.

The Rio Grande, their supply ship, was hit at an angle, and listed heavily to starboard. The San Antonio was tilted to a lesser degree, but the Sea Knights resting on its hull, along with several tonnes of supplies, spilled into the water. The Houston was in a similar state, spinning somewhat after being hit at an angle.

A destroyer on the opposite side of the Randolph was swamped, one if its helicopters sliding dangerously along the landing pad.

The Chesapeake Bay herself leaned to her side as she tilted toward the surge, throwing crewmembers about, a spray of water crashing over her decks.

Curtis struggled to maintain his position in his chair, and instinctively called out, “Get me a damage report! Get us out of the way of another attack like that, and watch for those fighters!”

Captain Baxter glared at him, “Admiral, let me worry about my ship! Worry about the fleet!”

Curtis winced. Even after all these years he still caught himself doing that.

“I need an external camera.” he told an aide, “Get me a status update on the rest of the fleet. Call back more of our squadrons to deal with those wasps! That attack was probably to take the heat off of them!”

The rest of the fleet accompanying the Jackson a few thousand meters ahead came out alright, at least from the first attack.

Another round of whatever weapon destroyed the Randolph hit the sea just behind the other ships. The thunderclap reached them an instant before the waves did. The Midway-class carrier, massing 40,823 tonnes, rode out the storm well, facing directly away from the attack, but some of the other ships, massing at least of quarter of that, were affected. The cruiser USS New Washington, lagging behind the others, became swamped. The two frigates and remaining destroyer started listing.

“Looks like that one missed!” Baxter said with grim satisfaction.

“Yeah, but they just FUBAR’d half our firepower!” Curtis snarled, “And our biggest Amphibious Assault Ship!”

“What the hell was that?”

“Project Thor.”

XXXXX

“Oh fucking blistering barnacles in a shit typhoon!” Melissa choked out, face buried in her hands.

Captain Hansen looked at her, “That’s a colorful expletive.”

“Yes, she’s like that, captain,” Twilight said, “What is this ‘Project Thor’?”

They stood in the command center of Alpha company, surrounded by staff trying to coordinate the fighting retreat being waged through the city. 1st and 2nd platoon, along with a large number of Equestrian soldiers, had been barely able to withdraw through the tunnels in the ridge in sector 4 only a few minutes ago.
Melissa, Andrew, Twilight, Vaughn, Sergeant Wilson, Cole, along with the senior officers and NCOs of 2nd platoon, and the rest of Alpha Company’s commanders, all stood around a table covered in maps of the city.

The radio operator who’d told them the news of the carrier strike group was slowly edging away. They could take artillery but not quite Melissa’s cursing.

“I haven’t heard of it…” Lieutenant Cole muttered.

“Really? None of you have read Footfall?” Andrew grumbled.

Hansen looked at him, furrowing his brow and somewhat confused, “Mr Shepherd...or is it Doctor?”

“Could just call me Andrew for now…”

“Andrew...do you have something to add?”

Andrew glanced at Melissa, “Why not you?”

Melissa looked up at him, and raised her eyebrows, “Uh...okay…? Sure.”

She cleared her throat, and adjusted her helmet, “Project Thor was a plan in the 50s for kinetic bombardment. Big tungsten rods the size of telephone poles that would drop from orbit at mach ten and hit the ground with the yield of a nuclear weapon but without any of the rads. It’s a bit like how an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, only on a smaller scale, though theoretically it could be used to wipe out all life on a planet. It’s pretty common in sci-fi--”

Cole held up a hand, “Sergeant Foster, get to the point!”

Melissa exchanged a look with Vaughn, “...yes ma’am. The weapon is extremely powerful, and can hit a point on the planet in about 10-15 minutes depending on the system utilized. If they’ve got mass drivers, or railguns, or whatever up there for kinetic bombardment…” she grabbed her head in frustration, “...we’re fucked. We are utterly fucked. Oh sweet merciful shoggoths this is the plot of Out of the Dark! Goddamn space-based weaponry you fucking cheating bugs, we can’t even hit back! No wonder we couldn’t detect their aircraft coming in, they’ve got their ship up there! Fuck me, I should’ve thought of this!”

Twilight bumped her elbow with her head as a cat would, and gave her a knowing look. Melissa sighed, and nodded.

Hansen looked to his officers then back to Melissa, “Isn’t...isn’t there anything we can do? Aren’t there any weaknesses?”

Melissa shrugged, “Well...sure! They’re actually kind of impractical. They’re predictable in their orbits, have no abort function, can’t hit moving targets too well(as evidenced by the Jackson surviving), depend highly on extremely precise targeting systems, and haven’t been used historically because they’re not cost effective. The launchers can be shot down too, and with a powerful enough laser...”
She shook her head, “But, we don’t have any of that stuff!”

“Sergeant--” Cole started to say.

“Lieutenant, with all due respect, I’m not being insubordinate here! I’m trying to figure a way out of this! And I don’t...wait, do you guys have any ASATs?”

Hansen shook his head, “We’ve got a few satellites, but no Anti-Satellite Weapons. And we’re months away from that being feasible.”

Melissa sighed, slumping forward with dejection, “Okay. We’re dead. That’s it. I mean, we can survive as guerillas, but you can say goodbye to large-scale resistance. They’re probably going to wipe out the Alliance first, then bomb other parts of the planet. Or just wipe out all human military presence, blame us for the destruction, and probably take the place of Celestia to make the Equestrian army conquer everything.”

Twilight put a hoof on her arm, “Melissa, calm down. Think; what would we need? You’re the expert here, what would we need to beat them?”

“We might be able to take them on if we had 21st century tech, but we don’t. We need missiles, we need lasers, we need spaceships. We don’t have any of those things! We’re gonna have to become insurgents.”

“We’ve got a ship.”

All eyes turned to Andrew.

“Excuse me?” Lieutenant Cole asked.

“We’ve got a spaceship, I said,” Andrew inched his way back into the circle, “In the archives, they’ve got a Dream Chaser.”

“Dude, the Sophia’s grounded.” Melissa said, “That thing’s not getting off the ground without a booster...”

She trailed off, mumbling, “Wait a minute...she still has power and still has her...”

Looking around, she noted no abnormalities in anyone’s attire or equipment. She glanced around at the marines operating the command center with a suspicious eye.

“Has everyone here been verified as normal?” she asked.

“As best we can without tasing people at random,” said an officer, “Can’t be totally sure though.”

Melissa nodded, “Alright. Lieutenant Cole? Captain Hansen? With your permission, I’d like to submit a plan.”

They offered their permission, and she pointed at a map of the city, “We might be able to win a tactical victory here, though most likely only if we manage to pull out with all our forces intact. In any case, no matter what we do, we’re going to lose strategically so long as they hold the orbitals.”

“So what do we do?” Cole asked impatiently.

“We can’t win conventionally. We don’t have enough troops, and our air power is wiped out. Even if we destroy this city with nukes, which I doubt Twilight will allow, as the most senior representative of their government with us.”
Twilight stood up straight, “What?”

“You’re Celestia’s student, and with pretty much all higher authority MIA or incapacitated, you’re the highest authority. Would you allow us to use nukes if it meant stopping these guys?”

“Of course not!” Twilight said with disgust, “This city holds millions of ponies, and is the heart of our government and economic base! Isn’t that why we’re defending it?”

Melissa nodded, “Thank you, senior government official! So, we can’t win conventionally and we can’t use nukes regardless of what the Brass will argue. Our only chance of stopping them rests on getting rid of that starship in orbit.”

“You said it was impossible.” Vaughn spoke up.

“Well…” she flushed a little, “I kind of forgot about the Sophia. It’s the Dream Chaser spacecraft you guys might remember from the briefings. It’s in the Canterlot archives under the castle. It still has power, and still has its weapon systems, two laser cannons.”

Murmurs went through the soldiers.

“If we can get to it, we might be able to use it to shoot at the enemy ship. We’ll either use its engines to get it into the air for a few minutes, or we’ll at least shoot through a skylight or something, whatever. The phasers it has aren’t Star Wars turbolasers. They can’t destroy it, but they can at least blind its sensors and scare it into a higher orbit where it can’t get accurate targeting data for the kinetic bombardment system. It should screw with their reinforcements, if they haven't set up many bases down here, which I doubt they have since they seem to be dropping them Starship Troopers style. That’s what I was talking about earlier, and why they show up on radar so suddenly. They’re dropping through the atmosphere.

“It will also hopefully cripple their air power, cutting off their resupply. The airborne will be able to make landings, and we’ll be able to push the bad guys back.”

She glanced at a logistics NCO nearby, “Hey, Corporal! How long would it take for the airborne to get here? What’s their fuel situation?”

He checked his watch, “They were ordered to stay in the area when we waved ‘em off, but they can only do that for a couple hours. Maybe...two hours?”

Looking around the table, Melissa said, “Did you all hear that? We’ve got to make this decision now.”

Cole raised an eyebrow, “Sergeant, in case you’ve forgotten, the archives are in enemy hands.”

Melissa put a map of the underground on the table, “that's why we’re going to go through the sewers. Sergeant Vaughn, would you and first squad be willing to accompany this sapper to go and set space on fire?”

Cole glared at her, “Sergeant, in case you’ve also forgotten, you’re under my command. I need first squad to defend this city, not go--”

“Ma’am, we’ve taken 50% casualties,” Vaughn pointed out, “I have three KIA, four MIA, and two WIA--”

“Everyone’s taken casualties, Sergeant, and we’re low on assets already--”

Hansen rubbed the bridge of his nose, and in a calm stern voice spoke, “Lieutenant Cole?”

“Yes…?! Sir?” she asked, visibly calming herself down.

“I appreciate your advice, but ultimately the decision here is up to me. Clear?”

Cole suppressed a scowl, “Yes sir.”

“Now,” he glanced at Alpha Company’s first sergeant, “Nelson, is it true that Sergeant Vaughn’s squad is one of our most understrength units?”

First Sergeant Nelson nodded, “They’re understrength, but still combat effective. We can either deploy them for this mission or keep them with 1st platoon. Vaughn, would you agree?”

“Yes, sir.”

Hansen looked at Melissa, “Sergeant Foster, are you sure you can do this?”

“Sir, I don’t see any other choice.”

He looked at his other officers, “Anyone else know the chances of this working?”

Hansen looked at a man with corporal’s chevrons on his collar and GI glasses; his intelligence officer, “Toby, know anything about lasers?”

The corporal scratched his head, “The Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser was still in development when the Chesapeake left home, and we didn’t get much info on it after that. It could dump out a megawatt of power though, and they were hoping to use it to shoot down satellites. They had a ton of bugs with it though...Will these even work in an atmosphere? I’ve heard about all the problems with directed-energy weapons--”

“These lasers do only about 30 kilowatts from what I know of,” Melissa said, “And they have much less range than the MIRACL system did. But I only know the specs of the one designed to be mounted to ships, not the Sophia, which I’m guessing has much better systems. Anyway we don’t need it to work well, we just need it to scare them and get them into a higher orbit.”

The other soldiers spoke amongst themselves.

“C’mon, what do we have to lose?” she demanded, her hands balling into fists, “Eight soldiers or the entire human presence on this planet?”

Hansen sighed, “Alright. Lieutenant Cole, your first squad is to go with Sergeant Foster to try and get the sky back.”

Cole’s face was passive, “Yes sir. Vaughn?”

“We’re ready to go whenever, ma’am.”

Melissa grinned, “Alrighty. Hopefully we don’t all die!”

She glanced around the table, then to Twilight expectantly.

When Twilight just looked back, Melissa’s expression flickered, and she elbowed the pony.

“Huh? Oh! Everypony-- body, as the senior-most member of the Equestrian government present, and by default the supreme military commander of forces within Canterlot, I must propose a mission of my own.”

At the alarmed expressions of the humans, she quickly added, “I will do nothing to interfere with your military operations. In fact, as I am inexperienced in such matters, Captain Hansen, until you are told otherwise or an individual senior in rank to myself is recovered, I am going to grant you joint command of the Household Division, along with whatever senior officers survive.”

Hansen blinked, then nodded, “understood, ma'am. Is this the only part of your plan?”

Twilight shook her head, “no, Captain. As…”

She hesitated, and briefly glanced at Melissa, “...as we cannot put all our eggs in one basket, I propose that a team consisting of myself, my friends, and Andrew also go through the underground to try and retrieve the Elements of Harmony.”

Cole scoffed, “Ms Sparkle, I --”

“Lieutenant, be quiet,” Hansen glared at her, “Ms Sparkle, you have a go.”

Twilight glanced at Melissa.

“That means yes.” Melissa explained.

“But sir--!” Cole started.

“We don't have time for this, lieutenant. We need all the assets we can get. Corporal,” he called to the logistics NCO, “See to it that first squad gets priority on resupply.”

“Yes captain!”

Melissa, Twilight, Andrew, and Vaughn walked out of the command center building, into the staging ground area around it.

Artillery still boomed, but with a lesser intensity. Contact had been lost with the airfield and the artillery battery there as they'd made it back to friendly lines.

The command center was located in a section of the industrial sector, one of the administration areas. It had plenty of space and didn't run the risk of machinery getting in the way, but also had enough smoke nearby to make junebug or vulture attackers think twice.

The area was filled mostly with Equestrian soldiers and civilians, all waiting for their chance to get back to the front lines or to the train station respectively. A handful of marines were in the area getting resupply, or were runners delivering messages.

A UH-1N Huey helicopter marked with the red cross came down nearby to load up casualties.

“Hey Vaughn,” Melissa asked, “how's Ceres?”

“He went out on the last helo, along with the rest of our wounded.”

Andrew tapped Melissa on the shoulder, “Melissa, come with me.”

Melissa looked at him, and took a step away, “Why? Where? What do you want? I’m warning you, I’ve got Glamdring, Orcrist, my .45, a taser, and an alien pistol--”

Twilight glared at Andrew, “Andrew, for the love of Celestia don’t get her going like this.”

“I swear to great Cthulhu that I’ll--”

Andrew growled, and all three noticed his Colt at his side, “Tell me something only the real Melissa would know!”

Melissa raised her M16 slightly, but put out a hand to stop Vaughn, “What? Dude--”

“Tell me!” he snapped.

She let her rifle dangle from a clip on her vest and crossed her arms, “As you wish. Commander Firebrand and I had to rescue you from that scuffle with his troops involving that one magazine store. You know the one. Now, tell me something only Andrew would know.”

“Well, I once caught you in your car with your laptop and--Oof!”

She punched him in the stomach, making him double over.

“What in Tartarus are you doing?!” Twilight demanded, grabbing Melissa’s raised fist.

“Sergeant, stop!” Vaughn barked, seizing Melissa’s other arm.

Melissa struggled in their grips, “You want to try putting a gun in my face again, Andrew?!”

“No,” Andrew coughed, “Not really!” Twilight released Melissa’s arm and went to help him to his feet.

“Then what the hell--”

Vaughn took hold of both Melissa’s arms when she tried to break free again, “Whoa, Foster!”

Twilight looked between the two, “Andrew, Melissa, what’s the matter with both of you?!”

“Melissa, are you insane?” Andrew roared, “Your plan sucks! How the heck are you going to hit anything in the sky with that ship on the ground, let alone in space?! I checked the specs,” he pulled out the iphone for emphasis, “Those phasers can’t hit anything from down here! They can barely hit anything outside a few miles down here! You forgot the thing even existed! I had to be sure you weren’t a Changeling!”

Melissa broke out of Vaughn’s grip, “Damn it all, Andrew! Why can’t you trust me for once?”

“I do trust you right up until you start sending people to their deaths and punching me! Okay, I’ll admit, pulling a gun was a little rash, but this is crazy!”

Vaughn looked at her, “Foster? What’s he talking about?”

Twilight was confused as well, “Melissa…?”

Melissa rubbed her face, “No--! Fuck man, did the concept of--! Just, just, just trust me, damn it!”

“Tell us what’s really going on, Melissa!” Andrew barked, “I think we deserve it!”

Melissa scratched her head, “Look, everyone, I know the plan seems ludicrous, but you have to trust me. I didn’t tell you things before because I was stupid, but now it’s because we won’t have a chance of winning if I tell you!”

She dragged Vaughn and Andrew away from bystanders who were staring, gesturing for Twilight to come along.

They stopped in a nearby alleyway, and Melissa sighed, “Okay. Vaughn, I know you haven’t known me very long, but you have to trust me. This plan will work. Andrew, I know I’ve hidden things before, but this time it really is necessary.”

Andrew looked at Twilight, “You were just as angry as I was before we got attacked. What’s your take?”

Twilight looked at Melissa, then back to Andrew. “...I trust her. This is different from before. She has a plan.”

Andrew gaped at her, “But...but…”

He looked at Vaughn, “Hey, dragon dude, she…she...”

Vaughn was holding one arm by the elbow, using that arm to rub his snout, “Alright, I don’t know what happened between the three of you, but it needs to either be resolved now, or needs to be put on hold. Foster, are we still going to the same place in your secret plan as with the regular plan?”

“Yeah, Vaughn. My plan’s pretty much the same, just what we’re gonna do when we get to the Dream Chaser is different from what I told them.”

He nodded, “Alright. I’m gonna trust you, Foster, you haven’t done anything to shake my faith in you. You don’t seem like the cowardly type, so obviously you think what you’re doing is right for the good of others. Andrew, it’s gonna be my tail in the fire here. I can keep an eye on her, if that’s what you want.”

Melissa snorted, “Thanks Vaughn.”

She looked at all of them, a hint of sadness in her eyes, “Regardless of what you all think of me, this is a moment that will decide the rest of the planet’s history. My plan should work, and it could save us all. I just can’t tell you all the details because of the possibility of spies.”

She looked at Andrew, “Dude...you’ve lived here longer than I have. Do you really want to see this whole place burn to the ground because of a stupid feud between the two of us?”

Andrew looked away. He stared at Twilight for a long moment, “Fine. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. If you end up killing us all, I’ll never forgive you.”

He walked out of the alley, “Twilight? Don’t we have some quest to deal with?”

Twilight looked at Melissa briefly, then followed.

Melissa looked at Vaughn. His dragon eyes were as cold as they were when in public, and he stared right back.

“Foster…” he started, then took a breath, “Just don’t get us all killed. Tell me next time we do this.”

Melissa raised an eyebrow, “You...you’re okay with this?”

“My platoon leader is Lieutenant Cole, Foster. She has a problem with telling us all her plans, but they always work out. At least you have the decency to at least tell me you've got a secret plan. Anyway, if we fail this mission, we’ll probably be dead, and if we win...let’s just say I don’t really have much of a choice. And I volunteered for this shit, not getting told things is part of the job description. Just promise not to end up like the lieutenant.”

Melissa chuckled darkly, still a little shocked, “Alright, Vaughn. I promise. And I hope nothing like this ever happens again.”

Chapter 21

Well, this was embarrassing.

In a somewhat anticlimactic engagement, only just after emerging from the underground, Andrew and the Mane Six had been captured. No stunning this time, much to their relief, but they were deprived of their weapons and dragged away.

They were brought back to Canterlot Castle, surrounded by almost two dozen guards who looked as though they expected the unarmed prisoners to attack at any minute.

It seemed the bugs were making themselves at home. Equipment was being moved in, command equipment, supplies, ammunition, crew-served weapon systems, etc.
Moving through the castle, they saw captured people trapped in restraints that looked like green snot. Some were stuck where they had fallen during the initial attack, pinned to walls, or stuck to floors. More were being brought in from elsewhere in the city; they saw parties of terrified civilians, and a surprisingly small number of Marines and Equestrian infantrymen herded into rooms hastily converted to holding pens.

The answer to where the rest of the POWs had gone lay deeper in the castle. There were several corridors without any natural lighting, the gloomiest parts of the castle. The few remaining light bulbs not destroyed by weapons fire were able to light up a disturbing sight.
Clinging to the ceiling, the walls, and making the corridors cramped were several dozen disgusting green cocoons, made out of even more of the snot-like substance. They looked vaguely like the eggs out of Alien, but bigger and perhaps slightly more disturbing because of their other resemblance to the Collector capsules from Mass Effect.
The contents of the pods weren’t facehuggers. They were people. Ponies, marines, pilots, and civilians. Those inside appeared to be unconscious for the most part, but there were some who were struggling weakly. The cocoons provided an all-you-can-eat buffet of emotions for the bugs.
The group averted their eyes, hoping that they might be able to find their way out of this and free these people.

They were brought into the throne room, where the Air Marshal of the 4th Assault Swarm awaited.
Hanging from the ceiling were a pair of the cocoons, containing Queen Luna and Celestia.
Standing up the stairs near the throne was Shining Armor, still looking high as a kite. Beside him was Cadence, stuck to the ground by the snot substance, but far more conscious, and screaming abuse at the queen.

Chrysalis was ignoring her, and looking out the stain glass windows with a malicious smile on her face. A claw idly stroked a Metal Storm sidearm strapped to her side by what must have been a magnetic strip.

She heard them approach, “Oh, you're here! Hadn’t you heard? The reception’s been cancelled!”

No one had the energy to come up with any sort of snarky comeback, and settled for trying to see if the death glares of seven individuals could concentrate to create a lethal concentrated beam of hate.

Chrysalis’ smile grew even larger, “Ah, nothing to say? No quaint little cries of defiance, no hopeless attempt at even verbal abuse? Your people seem to be learning.”

She smirked, glancing out the window at the city, “Well, not that well anyway. Did you really think I wouldn’t hear about your…” the bug queen started cackling, “Your ridiculous plan?! And I thought the girl was the smart one.”

“Hey!” Andrew barked.

“Oh, be silent. She still is smarter between the two of you. Though that’s not a very high bar. I heard about that ludicrous plan of hers.”

Chrysalis laughed again, “By the emperor, did you really believe her? No, I forgot who I was talking to. Of course you believed her!”

She trotted past Andrew, over to the ponies, “She lied to you. They all lied to you!”

Rainbow Dash scowled, “We’ve been through this before, you stupid bug! Don’t try it! It won’t work!”

“Oh, what won’t? My shattering of your dubious faith in humanity’s ability to protect you?”

She swept an arm toward the windows, “Look around you! They sent a single battalion of soldiers to hold off my swarm! Obviously, they either don’t care about you, or they’re incredibly stupid! The reality is that they are both!”

“Smart enough to give you a bloody nose!” Andrew said, the words feeling defiant but his voice cracking when he spoke.

Chrysalis’ face twitched, then she laughed again, “Now, little ones, let me explain why your friend is so wrong. There are these things called ‘direct-energy weapons’. They are weapons that don’t go boom, but instead shoot invisible beams of light. The ship you have in your archives carried two of them. Now, your idiot friend, I hesitate to call her an ‘engineer’, seriously believed that these pitiful energy weapons could reach into the sky through the atmosphere, and into that thing called space. Those primitive solid-state lasers couldn’t get across a few dozen kilometers. She was an idiot, a blasted imbecile! She called herself intelligent? A simple Google search would have proved her wrong!”

Andrew continued scowling, his anger rising briefly at two targets. He’d been right.

Applejack, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie looked at his face, then each other, confused.

“But…” Rarity muttered, “What?”

Rainbow Dash was making many rude gestures, while Twilight remained defiant.

Chrysalis smirked, then pointed at Twilight “you! Uh…” Chrysalis started snapping her claws, as if she were trying to jog her memory, “You...you, Twinkie, Twiggy...Twinkle, right? What’s with that face? This should be a day of celebration!”

“Celebration?!” Twilight demanded, “Celebration?!”

“Yes, filly! We've come to educate your planet! These humans are misleading you!”

Twilight rolled her eyes, and snarled, “you think you've won?! You really think we were so stupid about the lasers? Any minute now, your whole plan--”

Chrysalis sighed, “Twinkle, the girl failed. I told you she was an idiot. She's…”

Chrysalis looked expectantly at the massive doors of the throne room, “...I think she's coming in now.”

The doors opened, and four Changeling soldiers hovered in, followed by a fifth without a weapon who looked very concerned. His uniform was unusual, a stripped down version without the pockets and equipment of the others. On his helmet was hastily painted a red plus sign...or was it supposed to be a cross?

The ponies let out exclamations of shock and dismay, then outrage.

“What did you do?!” Rainbow Dash roared.

Fluttershy squeaked in horror, “oh my word…”

Twilight put a hoof in front of Andrew to stop him, but he didn't move. He just stared at the sight of what the bugs were carrying.

Two of them were carrying Melissa by her legs and shoulders, moving carefully and trying to keep her head level. Two more had their rifles turned on her, not that they would need them.

The marine was missing her helmet, her rifle, and most of her other equipment. Her right forearm was missing its sleeve, and was covered in bandages, the same as her right leg. That same leg was splinted, with duct tape rolled around it. Bloodstains covered her uniform, and her face was scratched and torn. Her eyes were closed, and her head hung limply.

“Such an idiot,” Chrysalis sighed, “We found her and her squad fairly easily. Our spies knew they were coming. They did manage to make it to the ship, and put up a good fight, but as you can see, it wasn’t quite good enough.”

She inhaled happily, “Ah, all that national pride of theirs. Delicious. We’ve been capturing as many marines as we can, volunteer armies always make useful sources of food. Especially those of democracies.”

The fifth Changeling had the bearers set her down, and checked her pulse.

“Air Marshal--” he began, then coughed, “your highness, she's badly injured. We should take her to the combat support hospital--”

“I don't recall asking for your opinion, lokhagos,” Chrysalis snarled, using what the ponies presumed to be a rank, “is she going to die anytime soon?”

“Well-- your highness, that's not the point.”

“Is she?” Chrysalis repeated.

“No, your highness, but we've only managed to stabilize her. She needs fluids, and she needs surgery as soon as--”

“You will revive her to the point that I can interrogate her, lokhagos.” Chrysalis hissed.

“But--but--ma’am!” the medic(?) squeaked, “She--this is a--”

He started to shake under her gaze, “M-Ma’am...I--I--”

“Revive her. Now.”

He backed up a few feet, looking between his patient and his commander.

“Y-yes your highness.”

The Changeling crouched near Melissa, and pulled a gun-like device out of a pocket. Putting it against her neck, he squeezed the trigger.

The jet-injector hissed, and he stood up.

“This should keep her lucid enough to answer questions, though not for long. Especially not if she gains additional injuries.” the medic said.

“Yes, I see. You’re dismissed, captain.”

The medic looked alarmed, “Y-yes ma’am.”

Looking at the rest of the guards, Chrysalis said, “You’re all dismissed. Go and feed, you’ve earned it.”

The infantrybugs glanced at each other. They looked nervously at the ponies and the humans.

“Yes, my queen.” one said, bowing and walking out.

The others followed.

The queen watched them close the doors, then nodded with satisfaction. “Excellent. Now…”

She pulled out her pistol, and poked Melissa with her foot, “Hey, wake up!”

There was no response.

The ponies looked at each other. Andrew’s hands balled into fists.

Twilight was getting nervous, a sweat bead traveling down her neck.

“Leave her alone!” Rarity barked, “Can’t you see--”

Chrysalis rolled her eyes, “Oh, she’s fine. I’ve seen humans survive worse.”

She prodded Melissa harder, “Wake up!”

Using another foot, she poked Melissa in the stomach, “Wake up you stupid primate!”

Finally, Melissa stirred. She didn’t seem aware or anything, but she moved.

The ponies breathed a sigh of relief. Fluttershy tried to move forward but was stopped by Chrysalis’ gun.

“Ah, well,” the queen muttered, “I can wait.”

She turned toward the rest of the prisoners, “I have plenty of time.”

“You can’t just leave her like that!” Applejack cried, “She’s hurt, and she needs help!”

“She’ll be fine!” Chrysalis barked. She trotted toward Andrew, “You. Andrew. I need information.”

Andrew backed up as she approached him, the group moving off to either side, “About what?”

“Everything. I need to know everything about the Terran Alliance. Defenses, base locations, secret projects, everything!”

“Okay, you’ve been calling me an idiot this whole time, what makes you think--?”

Chrysalis charged her horn in the same way a unicorn would, and telekinetically threw Andrew across the room. He slammed into a wall, stunned.

“Andrew!” Twilight and Fluttershy cried out.

Chrysalis flipped her pistol around, ready to use it as a bludgeon, “You will tell me what you know!”

Andrew struggled to his knees, “What the fuck is wrong with you?! You want defense data...from me?”

Chrysalis gestured to the walls and the Mane Six, “The marines and the ponies are too primitive,” she pointed at Melissa, “and the only other POW is currently incapacitated, so that leaves you.”

Andrew stared at her, looking back to Twilight, to Fluttershy, then back to the air marshal, “...You’re kidding, right?”

Chrysalis approached him, in an oddly seductive manner, “What’s the big deal? I just want to know--”

Andrew shook his head and scurried backward on his hands back up against the wall, “No--what--what--what is your obsession with me, lady?!”

Chrysalis halted, furrowed her brow at him, “What?”

“What do you want from me? I’ve got a liberal arts degree! What could I possibly know about anything involving the military? Jesus H Christ, the only person who would know this stuff is drooling on the floor!”

There was a coughing sound, and Melissa’s eyes cracked open, “Whuh…?”

“Y’see?!” Andrew pointed, “She has all the secret plans, she never bothered to tell me anything!”

Chrysalis scoffed, “You really expect me to believe you don’t know anything about--?”

“Yes!” he snapped, “What is wrong with you? Why don’t you interrogate her? Try and sleep with her instead! Just stop trying to seduce me you giant bug!”

His eyes widened, and he suddenly laughed, almost hysterically, “Oh, I see! You--you have a crush on me don’t you? What, are you jealous of Fluttershy and Twilight?”

The room was silent. Chrysalis tilted her head at him, utterly befuddled.

“Pfff…” Melissa spat, lifting her head and rolling onto her left arm, “Ha!”

The ponies tried to suppress some laughter as well. Chrysalis’ fury grew.

Andrew laughed a little more, “Oh my god, Tsundere bug from outer space after me! ‘It’s not like I like you or anything, b-baka!’”

He yelped when a bullet zipped past his ear.

“Shut up, or I’m killing you first!”

Andrew laughed again, more nervously, and somehow choked out, “Heh heh, ‘tsun tsun’!”

“Chrissy’s in lo-o-ove!” Melissa grunted.

“You stupid apes!” Chrysalis snapped, throwing Andrew against the wall again. Melissa kept laughing, and the Changeling stalked back to her. She raised a hoof, and stomped down hard on Melissa’s wounded leg.

Melissa screamed, holding the limb, but then looked horrified, “What the hell did you do to me? I--I barely felt that!”

“Oh please, surely you know about interrogative anesthesias!”

The queen’s confident facade faded, replaced with one of utter rage and contempt. She pointed at Andrew, “I’m an infiltrator! It’s my job to do these things, you cretin! I only hit on you because she's a heterosexual! I find the very idea that I would be genuinely interested in creatures like you offensive! Mighty emperors above, your people are disgusting!”

She gestured to Fluttershy and Twilight, “You, Andrew, sleeping with those ones, don’t both your people have some sort of bestality restriction or something?”

Chrysalis rubbed her face, “I can see why we had to civilize your world.”

She glanced at the ponies, “Have you heard about this invention they have, the internet? It was a computer system developed to store information and communicate in the aftermath of a nuclear war, and they used it for their revolting pornography!”

“Are you saying that because it survived your attempts to destroy it?” Melissa garbled, “It’s one of our most decentralized inventions, usually survives in every alien--”

Chrysalis kicked her in the gut, and Melissa whoofed, “Will you be silent, you endoskeleton?!”

“Hey, I thought you wanted information!” Andrew barked, “You interrogate me instead of her, and when she starts talking you want her to shut up?! I don’t know anything--”

“That’s right!” Chrysalis shrieked, kicking Melissa again, “You stupid fucking apes know absolutely nothing!”

She kicked Melissa a third time, “You damn, dirty, filthy, rotten, endoskeleton primates!”

“Stop that!” Cadence cried from near the throne, struggling to get free, “Why don’t you leave them alone?!”

“What did any of them ever do to you?!” Twilight demanded.

Chrysalis rolled her eyes, “You ponies don’t know what humans are like. You don’t know what they’ve done.”

She glared at Andrew, “You apes are too stupid to know when to quit. Why do you always resist us, why don’t you give up?! We were trying to bring the light of civilization to you! And you repaid us with terror and death! We brought you superior technology, we could’ve fixed your global temperature problem! You would have been happy, why couldn't you accept us?!”

Walking back to the windows, she continued, “Ponies, your friends here are monsters. They are responsible for genocides, forced marches, death camps, and mass destruction. Their world was in complete chaos when we found them. Refugee crises, terrible leaders grinding them into the dirt, an entire land mass in complete chaos for a hundred years, chemical weapons used on civilians, the larger nations refusing to help, driving species into extinction, torture, racism, xenophobia--”

“How much of that did you cause?!” Andrew snapped, struggling to get back on his feet and holding his bruised shoulder.

Chrysalis whipped around and tried to speak, but he shouted over her, “I heard from one of your bugs! You infiltrated our governments to try and make us ‘settle down’! You could’ve caused a nuclear war, he said!”

Chrysalis’ face twitched, “Well-- you never would have accepted our help anyway. You, so unwilling to do what needed to be done. You allowed your people the ability to say whatever they wanted, even against the state! It's an obscenity! So foolish, so insane, so stupid. Yes, we infiltrated your governments, and influenced them, but we had to. We tried to help subtly, but you forced our hand. Sometimes making a new world means tearing down the old one. We had to weaken or destroy your old governments to make rebuilding your world easier.”

“What, so are you responsible for Trump?!” Melissa demanded.

Chrysalis laughed, “No, that would have been too obvious. We used your own people to weaken you. The dictators, the monsters, the fools? Those were all as human as your are. We simply helped a few on their way. The underlings, your celebrities, the elites, the politicians, the news media...”

She smirked, “It was surprisingly simple to manipulate them. We only replaced a handful. You had to be corrected, to be set on the right path. We did this at great personal expense, just to try to help you!”

“To feed your empire.” Andrew muttered, “To feed your empire you tried to destroy us.”

Chrysalis’ face went red again. She stalked forward and pistol-whipped him.

Andrew spat out blood, and tried to see if he’d broken teeth or a cheekbone.

Chrysalis growled, “It was for your own good! You could’ve been happy! No more war on your world, no more strife! It would be peaceful! It seemed so easy, they thought most of your people to be mindless barbarians!”

She walked back and kicked Melissa again, “But no! You just had to fight back! You couldn’t accept the natural order of things being restored! You were devoted to all those little traitorous words, that petty drivel written by men dead centuries ago! Made before you even made electricity, how could any of them have any meaning anymore?! You forced us, you made us do it! We could no longer do it subtly, we had to take direct action!”

“What does that mean?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“It means invasion!” Melissa choked out, holding her chest, “They turned us against each other to try and ruin our defenses! We fought them--oof!”

Chrysalis put her foot back down, “Yes, we had to deploy forces to intervene, but it was all about the greater good.”

“‘The greater good’.” Melissa and Andrew echoed.

“Shut it!” Chrysalis snapped, “My commanders thought it best to try and intimidate you, to make you realize there was no hope. They believed they just had to beat your military forces to make you surrender. We pitted your people against each other to weaken their forces. Your standing armies and munitions were depleted, and they thought that would be enough, that our simple appearance and a lightning attack would be enough! But they were wrong! Clearly! They thought they understood you, they thought they knew how to beat you, but they didn’t understand your stubbornness. No one understood your stubbornness! The only thing you monsters understand is force!”

She scoffed, “We could have battered you into submission, we would have ground your cities into the dirt to force a surrender, but high command wouldn’t allow us.”

With fury, she continued, “Your governments fell apart as they found out our agents, as others vanished, and yet you hung on! Half your chains of command vanished, and yet you continued with organized resistance! Somehow, your people had found out about us before our strikes! They had formed plans, they made weapons, they had contingencies! Your people united --somehow!-- and fought back! How could any race unite like that after so much betrayal?! How could you be so stubborn?! We destroyed your armies, we destroyed your bases, we fought, and fought, and you wouldn’t stop!”

The alien sighed heavily, “And then. And then, ho ho,” she laughed ironically, “You built those warships. You burned your own territory with hundreds of nuclear devices! Just for a chance to wipe out our fleet!”

She pointed her gun at Melissa, “And in your blind, stupid insanity, you killed thousands of my people! You killed, and killed, and killed, and killed! My crew and I barely escaped, and came here. We already had an infiltration program working here and I took control. I had to stop the humans here! I had to save the ponies!”

She stomped on Melissa’s wounded forearm, and the marine screamed louder.

Clutching the injury, she glared up at the alien.

“Do you need any more evidence that they’re monsters?” Chrysalis demanded of the ponies, pointing at Melissa, then to Andrew, “Those poisonous warships of theirs flew into orbit, and started attacking our ships! They destroyed dozens of vessels, with thousands of drones aboard! They’re fucking war criminals! A vicious cowardly act, they didn’t have the good sense to stay down!”

Melissa tried to sit up, but Chrysalis put a hoof on her chest, “Those pilots on the Sophia. They were among these war criminals. I gave them a fate befitting war criminals.”

Melissa rolled around to exchange a look with Andrew, “You...you killed them?”

“They were war criminals!” Chrysalis hissed, putting her gun to Melissa’s head, “They had to pay! They had to pay! Pay for everything! Pay for all your people did to us without cause! For everyone I lost! For every one of my soldiers you killed, for every one of my friends you murdered!”

“Without cause?” Rainbow Dash cried, “You attacked them just cuz you could, you bomb the hay out of them, and when they hit back you start crying! ‘Waah, big bad humans hurt us, waah’!”

Chrysalis roared and pointed her gun at Dash.

Just as she squeezed the trigger Melissa grabbed the queen’s leg, opened her mouth wide, and bit down. The bullet went wild, hitting the ceiling.

The queen yelled, kicking the marine off and stepping back.

“You see?” she demanded, looking at the ponies, “They’re savages! Monsters! They only understand violence--”

Twilight yelled, “We don’t care! She did that because you hurt her!”

Chrysalis scowled, “I hurt her?! Her military killed--”

“Because you were invading us!” Andrew yelled, “Can you blame us?!”

Chrysalis roared and ran forward, ramming a hoof into his gut. He doubled over onto his knees, and tried to hold in the contents of his stomach.

“Yes! I can blame you! Our arrangement was perfect! You didn’t even know we were there until you started resisting! You would’ve remained blissfully unaware of our existence! The right politicians were in office, they were setting everything to the natural order! If you’d just accepted it, had just accepted happiness, no one would have to die! If you hadn’t forced us, if you hadn’t fought our agents and those logical enough to follow us, you could have been happy! No more war, no more pain, no more poverty, just happiness! Why, why, why couldn’t you have just let us help?!”

“'It is better to live as your own man than as a fool in someone else's dream.’” Melissa croaked, “‘No dictator, no invader can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power tyrants and dictators cannot stand. Though it takes a thousand years, we will be free.’”

“Melissa, don’t!” Twilight warned.

Melissa pulled herself up, rising to a sitting up position, “Do you hear the people sing, singing the song of angry men? It is the music of the people who will not be slaves again!”

Chrysalis seemed quite angered by the song, “Cease that hideous sound this instant!”

Melissa laughed, coughing, and switched up her song, “Oh, we’ll rally round the flag boys, we’ll rally once again, shouting the battle cry of freedom, and we’ll rally from the hillside, we’ll gather from the plain, shouting the battle cry of freedom!”

Chrysalis kicked the marine in the ribs, making her scream and knocking the wind out of her.

Spitting out blood, Melissa wheezed, “The union forever...hurrah boys, hurrah! Down with the...the Changeling, and up with the star--”

She was kicked again, “W-while we rally round the flag...boys...rally once…”

A gunshot went off.

“Next one is going in your head if you don't shut the hell up!” Chrysalis shouted.

Rarity spoke up insistently, “You can’t kill her! She knows too much for you to risk it! Isn’t she smarter than--apologies, dear-- isn’t she supposedly smarter than Andrew?”

Chrysalis glared at the white unicorn, “You’re right. I can’t.”

She aimed her pistol at Melissa’s uninjured leg, “But she doesn’t need her legs to talk.”

Andrew heard her claw on the trigger, and coughed, “You say violence is the only thing we understand?! Look at yourself! Don’t try and say you’re saving us you son of a bitch! You think you’re above us?! You think we don’t understand you? Oh, we understand! We know what you are! We know you bastards! You’re us!We are you!”

Chrysalis’ face filled up with intense anger, and she turned her gun on him once again. She flung him back against the wall. He cried out, feeling something sticky trickling down the side of his face, but his pain turned to anger.

The ponies, in particular, Fluttershy, stared at Andrew with surprise. There was a rage they hadn’t seen in him before as he struggled to his feet.

“You’re no better than we were a hundred years ago, than we were five hundred years ago!”

“Don’t you dare compare us to your sniveling, pathetic race!” Chrysalis shrieked, “We are the greatest empire to ever grace this galaxy! It is our right to rule and to civilize the savage races! You should be thanking us on your knees!”

Andrew laughed, “That’s just what my ancestors used to say. Colonialism we called it. Ever heard of The White Man’s Burden? Manifest Destiny? ‘The empire on which the sun never sets’?”

Melissa rolled over, holding her stomach, and gasped out, “ever hear of the Battle of Little Bighorn, you creepy black goo imperialist? US troops intent on using women and children as shields, get slaughtered, then the Native Americans are depicted as the bad guys for a hundred years! For defending themselves against an immoral act committed by a legitimate military target that had been slaughtering them for 200 years! Oh no, the white people, with their Gatling guns and smallpox are totally the injured party!”

Andrew waved dismissively, “Oh, but Melissa! You forgot! This is the great 'Mutan Empire’! That’s human stuff you're talking about!”

“Oh, my mistake!”

Andrew glared at Chrysalis, “Tell me--no, tell my friends here, what and why you’ve come here to do to their planet. And how it's different from anything we've done!”

Chrysalis glowered, but her confident facade seemed to fade back in.

“Ignore what these ones say,” she said, looking at the ponies, “We’re here for your benefit! They’ve led you astray, they--”

“You impersonated one of our leaders, attacked our city, hurt our friends and a lot of other ponies, and you say they’re the bad guys?” Applejack demanded.

“We’re not ignorant of what they’re capable of,” Rarity cried, “We’ve seen it even before today!”

“Everypony has skeletons in their closet,” said Pinkie, “it would be creepy if they didn't!”

“They...they didn't even try to hide it!” Fluttershy burst out, “Andrew told us about their terrible weapons, their horrid acts…”

“Andrew and Melissa had a fight about giving us tech,” Rainbow Dash added, “they were afraid of hurting us!”

“All these two have ever done has been to help us,” Applejack said “They shared with us their art, their inventions, their music and culture! They have music with instruments I ain’t never even dreamed of!”

“They showed us awesome stories and movies and stuff!” Rainbow said.

““Glimmering cities of steel and glass!” Rarity spoke up, “Instant communications, knowledge at everypony’s--everyone’s hoof--fingertips!”

“Medicines! Lots of...medicines…” Fluttershy squeaked.

“Space travel, flying machines, all sorts of fun things!” Pinkie Pie said.

“What have you shown us?” Rarity demanded.

“We see your land ironclads destroying our city, we see you gassing our soldiers, we see you bombing us!” Applejack gestured to the windows. Outside could be seen the smoke clouds billowing across the city, the chunks taken out of buildings. A Changeling gunship roared over a street in the distance, its nose gun tearing up targets below.

“Who do we see laying down their lives to help us?” Rarity asked.

“We see humans!” Pinkie Pie called out.

“Enough!” Chrysalis shrieked, “I knew you wouldn't understand! They're monsters, savages, what they don't understand they fear! What they don't understand, they destroy!”

Melissa barked, “Mongols! Native Americans! Zulus! The Vikings! Gauls! Scots!”

“Shut up!”

Andrew roared, “So we killed thousands of your troops, what did you expect?! You invaded us! Our people fought so hard to break the bonds of imperialism, to try and heal our planet and people, and we were doing fine! Not great, but we could do it without your ‘help’! You had no interest in helping us, you wanted the same thing Columbus wanted, that Cortez wanted, that they all wanted! You wanted to conquer us because you could! It’s your right to conquer? It’s our right to be free! We won’t let slavery, inequality, and cultural eradication come back! We’ll fight if it’s the last thing we do!”

Chrysalis rubbed her face, “Say we are similar. What good does it do you? It’s not as though you can make a difference. You are simply two injured humans, a thug and a useless scholar. With a bunch of primitives and abominations who can barely fight off my forces. We control the orbitals, the air, we are on the verge of controlling the second-most powerful empire on this pathetic world. Once we have subdued this world, we will wait for a courier ship, and use it to send a message back and get reinforcements They will be civilized, as will humanity in time. You can’t fight back.”

Melissa rolled over, “You’re wrong. Just a few people can make a difference. A few courageous people can save the world. We can fight, as long as one person still refuses to be broken, refuses to bow down.”

“But can you win?” Chrysalis sneered.

“‘Every time I say no’.”

Chrysalis peered at her, and opened her mouth to say more.

Abruptly, she put a claw to her ear, as if listening to a headset.

She furrowed her brow, then opened her mouth slightly, and her eyes widened. A profoundly furious expression fell slowly across her face, turning to look at the heap of captives before her.

On the ground, a weak beeping emitted from Melissa’s wrist. She raised her head, and shifted her right arm around to look at her watch. The alarm had gone off.
“15:23:06” it read through her own bloodstains covering the face.

Melissa could not hide the satisfied, happy, and predatory grin that stretched across her face, and she managed to turn off the alarm.
She looked up at the ponies, and whispered, “‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’.”

Chrysalis looked down at the beeping sound, and bared her teeth. “You!”

She lifted Melissa up by the collar, “You utter waste of life! What have you done?!”

Melissa grinned, “Suck it, you fucking cunt! Suck on both my--”

With a roar, Chrysalis threw Melissa across the room.

Slamming into the stairs at the base of the throne, Melissa howled with agony as her shoulder dislocated. Her camelback burst, spewing water all over the stairs. However ever so briefly, she laughed.

XXXXX

Roughly eighty minutes earlier, the Sophia’s communication system cut through the rock above it, and through thousands of kilometers of atmosphere and space to reach its fellow lost comrade.

United States Air Force Warrant Officer Ellen Weaver’s body was still strapped into place aboard her Starfury, pieces of shrapnel floating around the interior of the cockpit. Her helmet drifted back and forth gently, her frozen sightless eyes still peering intently at her console. Her hands were still posed to grasp the joysticks, but had been pulled off them and placed in her lap.
Lieutenant JG Brennan hadn’t wanted her to accidentally activate the ship, recalling a scene from the series finale of Battlestar Galactica.

The screens that had remained dark for so long suddenly winked on.

Ship status indicators registered the relatively minor damage, ammunition and fuel levels, and a course calculator displayed the current trajectory with a blue line. The ship was in a stable orbit.

Tactical displays scanned the vicinity. It registered mostly a handful of random objects, space debris, and junk, but there was one massive contact detected.

Text scrolled across the screen. “Handshake protocols accepted. Friendly operator recognized. Remote operation command online.”

The Starfury’s joysticks moved on their own, thrusters making the hull vibrate as it reoriented itself.

On the screens, a purple orbit began to shift itself away from the blue orbit, the change centered on the periapsis. The apoapsis of the purple orbit grew until it reached close to the apoapsis of the larger object.

“Course change projection accepted. Estimated burn time: 30 sec. Estimated time to maneuver node-- 00:00:59:56.”

The orbit display placed the craft’s icon a little further back from the maneuver node, and the Starfury rotated around to face prograde. The direction the orbit was taking it.

An hour passed, and the Starfury's four engines lit off. Slowly, the blue orbit began to shift.

It crawled through thirty seconds of continuous burn, creeping to match up with the purple projected orbit. Finally, acceleration stopped. Weaver's helmet, pushed back against the seat, went limp again.

The maneuver node vanished. On the weapons display, another text box appeared. “Target acquired: track number 1259. Time to firing range-- 00:00:20:05.”

The Earth-time clock read, “15:03:01.”

Time passed again. The timer reflecting off of Weaver’s broken faceplate reached down to zero. In the distance, just barely visible as it came closer and closer, was a damaged starship. A screen enhanced the image, zooming in on the spacecraft and setting it beside an archival image. Numerous hull breaches were labeled, significant damage to its sensors, weapons, subsystems, and the engines. In particular, what the UN forces on old Terra had determined to be the Faster-Than-Light drive, was critically damaged. Functional, but just barely.

The railguns were relatively intact, and an alert indicator registered an energy spike as a slug of ammunition was loaded.

On the planet below, just cresting the horizon, a group of islands glew much brighter than the rest of the tiny soft lights that dotted the globe. These lights were as bright as stars, one could almost mistake them for volcanoes.

The targeting system put a reticule on the ship, a circle appearing around it blinking rapidly.

As the timer reached “00:00:00:00”, two missiles from the Starfury’s limited remaining stockpile detached. Their engines ignited, and they streaked into the dark.

Melissa had felt a vise on her heart as she programmed the Starfury. As far as she knew, that starship was the only way home. If the Weaver opened fire, the missiles had a high chance of destroying the railguns, but also of damaging the warp drive or even destroying the ship if its reactor was damaged.

She’d designated the target anyway.

A graphic of an impact played out. Old and new hull breaches ripped open, blasting atmosphere and tiny thermal signatures into the dark. Energy readings and scans made damage assessments, reading that the railguns were offline...as was the warp drive.

The Changeling engineers had tried to repair the warp drive as best they could, but with limited spare parts, they could only guarantee one more jump before failure. The queen had wanted to save that for getting home, hence why they had never gone for reinforcements--the commander being afraid of what her superiors might say if she came back in shame.

The barely-holding-together warp drive and the damaged weapon systems finally went offline for good. The remaining crew life signs and the reactor were stable, the ship would not explode, but they weren’t getting home anytime soon. Not that the marine who programmed it would know.

Far below, as the crew desperately went to damage control, Air Marshal Chrysalis was alerted to what had happened.

XXXXX

An A-4 Skyhawk fighter of the Andrew Jackson’s air group, Bowler 2-1, twisted in the air and pulled up, firing off her last batch of chaff.

The radar-homing missile took the bait, chasing one of the pieces of foil instead of her plane. She was luckier than her wingman.

Bowler 2-1 breathed a brief sigh of relief, banking around and passing through a cloud to try and avoid getting locked onto again.
Her controls warbled a radar alert, and she started tilting in her seat to try and see where the enemy wasp was.

She could see the distant shape dancing around at her 7 o’clock, and cursed.

The instruments made a constant steady, irritating tone. Locked.

“Let’s see how you pull out of a dive!” the pilot muttered, and headed for the deck.

She broke through the cloud layer, streaking toward the ocean below.

It was a surprisingly beautiful day, 2-1 noted through the g-forces.

The light glinted off the remains of the fleet in the distance, and she could see contrails from other aircraft and missiles criss-crossing the sky.
They were losing. Badly.

“This is Bowler 2-1, I could use some help over here!” she called out, and rapidly pulled up.

She couldn’t see the wasp behind her, but she could also guess that it may not have taken the bait. Her sensors were still telling her there was a threat.

Bowler 2-1 pulled away from the fleet and out to sea, hoping to draw the enemy fighter off or even let the ships shove a missile up their tailpipe.

We’re getting killed out here! At this rate they won’t have to destroy the carrier, all our fast-movers will be gone!

As she streaked across the sea, flying low, her radar picked up something that turned her gut.

Twenty-five new contacts coming from the west.

Reluctantly, she reached for the ejection lever. Her missiles were gone, she’d dropped her air-to-surface munitions a while back, and her machine guns were down to a few milliseconds of fire.
She could see the red dots in the distance through her windshield. The contacts were almost in visual range.

The first enemy fighter appeared in her rear vision, coming out of the clouds. The sensors whined again. Locked.

Red streaks shot out from the contacts in front of her. Missiles.

Her hand curled around the lever, This is gonna hurt!

Suddenly, the radar warning cut off. The wasp pursuing her made a rolling bank to starboard, as the missiles from Bowler 2-1’s 12 o’clock pursued it!

“This is Thunderbird 1,” her radio crackled with an Englishman’s voice, “Hang onto your hat, Bowler 2-1. We’ve got this.”

Three F-4 Phantom II jet fighters accelerated out from the group of approaching contacts, each a member of Thunderbird Flight. The most elite fighter pilots the British Empire had on this world.

“Chesapeake Bay, this is Knightrider squadron, we’re here to lend a hand.” a voice with an American southern accent called out, “Sorry we took so long. We’ll take care of these bugs for ya.”

Bowler 2-1 leaned forward in her seat, catching sight of six F-5E Tiger II fighters off the aircraft carrier USS Woodrow Wilson.

“This is Opus Flight reporting in. Tell us where you want us.” a Welsh voice accompanied the four Phantom jets off the British carrier HMS Prince of Wales.

Finally, the last of the aircraft roared by, as Bowler 2-1 curled around to follow.

“This is 1st Squadron of the Soviet 201st Fighter Aviation Division. The flight has been long, we’re ready to fight.”
The Skyhawk was following in the wake of twelve Soviet MiG-23s.

Bowler 2-1 grinned behind her air mask, watching the aircraft close the distance.

“This is Bowler 2-1 to Old Hickory. Headed back to the barn for rearmament.”

“Copy that, Bowler. You’ll be getting another fire mission when you land, so don’t get too comfy.”

Still alert, the pilot pushed the foot pedals to the right and come about for a landing on the Andrew Jackson.

Off to her starboard side she could still see the engagement in the distance. She heard radio chatter, and watched as missiles lanced out between the targets.

Despite the superior speed, stealth systems, weapons, sensors, and maneuverability of the enemy wasp fighters, there were only nine left. Nine wasps with fuel and munitions partially spent, up against twice as many aircraft much closer to their level of technology fresh for the fight.

XXXXX

Drunken Carnage crested the top of the foothill, and fired at the rear of one of the Changeling main battle tanks.

Even as the enemy tank rotated around to try and fire back, it was too late. A chunk was taken out of the hull. It’s starboard bogies were wrecked, and the turret lifted up on one side for a moment and slammed back down.

The M60 Patton had taken a beating. It was scorched, and battered, with a hole carved in the turret armor by a near-miss from a High-Explosive Anti-Tank round.
They were lucky they had composite armor, if they’d been in a Patton made on Earth they’d have been dead. Those M60s made back home had planned to use composite armor, but they’d never been fitted to production vehicles.

“Driver, get us back on the road!” the commander called out, “Alpha Company’s still in trouble!”

Leaving bits and pieces of armor in their wake, the vehicle roared down the slope, back to the center of the valley and the dirt road.
The valley was in ruins, with fires brewing here and there. Trees had been uprooted by the artillery, bodies were strewn about, and plenty of ruined vehicles. Dozens burned; humvees, Tachikomas, Changeling APCs, their tanks, a few AAVs, trucks, and LAVs. Ogre 2, Berzerk Gladiator, sat off to the side of the road, being pulled aside by the M88 Recovery Vehicle accompanying the tanks. Her gun still stood pointed proudly at the sky, even with the damage she’d taken. Fires burned from her hatches and the hole carved between her turret and hull.

The Skyraiders had come back, along with the two remaining Harrier jump jets, and helped to shred the enemy

Ogre 3, Keen Valkyrie, and a pair of LAVs came up the road behind the remains of the Gladiator, and slowly moved around the wreck.

Drunken Carnage’s commander poked his head up out of the hatch, shouting, “C’mon, c’mon! We gotta get moving!”

He looked at the city in the distance, smoke plumes rising.

Reenactment of Operation Market Garden indeed. They had no word from inside the city. They may have achieved all the objectives but the most important one.
Trucks and humvees from the beach laden with additional infantry arrived, along with more AAVs. The convoy rumbled out once again. What was left of it.

XXXXX

“You will pay for what you've done!” Chrysalis shrieked, flicking the safety off her sidearm.

“Up yours!” Melissa roared, struggling to sit up. She reached back painfully to her camelback, groping at something. Her left arm wasn’t working right, and the right one was full of shrapnel. She could barely close that hand.

Twilight ran down the stairs from the throne, and stood in front of the marine, “Don’t you dare hurt her! One more step and I’ll--”

Chrysalis looked back at the rest of the Mane Six, now only five. “How did you get over--?”

The queen groaned, “Ugh, enough with this drivel! Get out of the way, don’t think I won’t kill you! You’ve already been corrupted by them!”

“I don’t care, you bug-eyed eyeshadow-wearing murderer!” Twilight snarled, “You want to get her, you go through me!”

“This was your plan all along?” Chrysalis demanded, looking at Melissa, “to buy time with your friends lives? I thought better of you, I really did. I didn't think you were suicidal. I suppose that's not surprising though. You’re only human. How you managed to survive this far is beyond me, what with your constant emotional problems and stupidity. Really, did you think your little sneak attack would harm my ship? You may have caused damage, but it will be easily repaired--”

Twilight smirked, “if it was, you wouldn't be so mad.”

Melissa groaned and settled into another position, “my plan was really great, wasn't it?”

She nodded at Twilight, then to the others, “really, wasn't it? Clap for Chrissy, she had an excellent performance.”

Andrew exchanged looks with the ponies, astonished.

Melissa coughed, “Ach, you've all forgotten some key Sun Tzu rules! 'appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.’ then there's 'if you know your enemy and you know yourself you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.’”

Twilight grinned, “You see, Chrissy, we knew you’d try and take us alive.”

“And I knew that you’d bring us to this room with our fellow captives,” Melissa added, “You could never resist the chance to taunt those who’d done you wrong. I knew we’d get in here with Cadence, and her fiance.”

“And that meant once we got you sufficiently distracted, I could then free Cadence, and she could go to Shining Armor, who could then activate the city’s defenses.” Twilight gestured up the throne at Cadence and Shining Armor. Cadence had her fiance in a tight embrace, and he seemed to be coming out of his stupor and trying to power up his horn.

Melissa tried to hold up her index finger, only to yelp when she tried to move her right hand, “... and right about now, he’s waking up, going to ask if the wedding is over, find himself unable to power the shield again, but will be aided by Cadence’s love.”

Chrysalis looked up in shock at the pair near the throne, both now hugging one another. Their horns connected, and a buildup of energy was created. It formed into a sphere, that swiftly expanded outwards.

“No...no, no, no no!” Chrysalis shrieked pointing her pistol at Cadence and squeezing the trigger.

XXXXX

Alpha Company had sustained heavy casualties. A damaged Changeling cockroach shuttle had crashed near the headquarters, forcing the evacuation of the area and the capturing of the hospital.
While no one in the hospital was hurt, and were treated fairly, without a central location it made CASEVAC much harder. Along the entire line the ponies and marines were breaking, falling back as they ran out of ammo and personnel. Desperate last stands were made, admirable acts of courage and valor alongside cowardice and shame.
Sweeping over the southwest side of the city, the cliffside, the bugs were able to pierce the flanks, adding to the violent tidal wave of soldiers already coming up from the direction of the residential district.

The marines had given it their best, and continued to do so. The Equestrian Army, despite their lack of equipment and training, quickly adapted. They held out in dirty house-to-house fighting.
But still, without reinforcements, they were losing.

Second Squad of Third Platoon, along with their attached M240 and Carl Gustaf squad, were still holding out at the bridge. They’d taken casualties, and been joined by a handful of stragglers from other units, and held off several major attacks.

Staff Sergeant Marcus Gardner fired a final burst from his weapon, the rounds pinging off the corner of the buildings the bugs were hiding behind. His M240 was running hot, the spent ammunition lying about his feet.
As he ceased fire, the second M240 on the floor above him opened up on the same position.
The machine gun squad was defending a tall building built right next to the bridge that they’d appropriated from a kindly old pony couple. They’d been keeping the road clear. Not that it would matter, if they lost.
Gardner felt a tap on his shoulder, and looked up to his loader, who was waving at another window.
“They’re making another charge!” he screamed, both their hearing damaged from the weapon despite what ear protection they had.

Gardner heaved the weapon up and rushed over, careful to avoid tripping on the original gunner, prone with crimson stains across his chest.
As he set the gun down and adjusted it with his loader’s help, the loader cried out in pain as the weapon bumped into him.
“You alright?!” Gardner yelled.

“Shrapnel! I’m fine, sir!”

Well, that was it. Gardner was the only soldier in the squad not wounded or dead. A lucky grenade had taken out their third machine gun, the gunner for this M240 was killed when he stuck his head out the window, and they’d taken a lot of fire before the bugs figured out that flying around in the air wasn’t a good way to avoid casualties.

Their other loader was in the corner nursing a busted ankle and watching one side of the building; he’d tripped, ironically.
A handful of riflemen were scattered around the building as well as a few other structures nearby. Their most severely wounded occupied the ground floor defenses of each building.

A sniper team was on the roof, taking cover whenever the junebugs flew overhead. The Stinger team had run out of ammunition around the same time they’d been cut off from the HQ and the supply depot. On the second floor, a Carl Gustaf team still had ammo, but if the enemy mounted another armored attack that wouldn’t last.

There were several dozen Equestrian Army soldiers with them as well, providing simple warm bodies to throw into the fight if nothing else.

Gardner fired on a group of bugs making a dash for an overturned cart. They just kept coming; another one of their squads had already done the same thing ten minutes ago.

The machine gun upstairs took its turn, and in the pause, Gardner looked in the direction of the HQ, to the north-east. There was an explosion from that direction. He hoped it was a spider tank blowing up and not one of the humvees.

Return fire made him duck, and the loader fell down beside him. Shrapnel had hit his left side earlier, but now a round had caught him right in the palm.
Picking up the private and dragging him to the side, Gardner called out hoarsely, “Where is that medevac?!”

He managed to get a few riflemen to take his place at the gun and their only medic took the loader off his hands.

The griffin carrying the PRC-77 portable transceiver fiddled with the knobs. He spoke rapidly into the microphone, and looked up at the sergeant with fear and despair, “CASEVAC doesn’t have anywhere to put down! The HQ’s been overrun! Something about a cockroach shuttle crashing there! Organization’s shot all to hell, and no one knows where the captain and his staff are!”

There was an explosion in the distance, closer this time.

“What about sending them through the train tunnels? The maintenance ways?”

“Those are packed full of refugees, and the trains can only go one way. There’s no guarantee that the medevacs could pick them up, even if we could get them in, and pony hospitals are full too.”

A third explosion, and the distant sound of some heavy weapon firing. It sounded heavier than the Bushmasters on the LAVs, but Gardner couldn’t be sure.

“What about ammo? Reinforcements? Any news from 2nd platoon?”

“I can’t get anything from them, sir! Lines are getting all jammed up, and I think the radio might’ve taken a hit when I did,” the griffin gestured to the bandage covering his wing; a chunk of the radio had been taken out by the same round, but he’d sworn it could still function earlier…

The machine gun crew on the 2nd floor took a break to allow the 1st to open fire. Both weapons were running hot, they couldn’t afford to fire too long.

The gunner, a dragon, swapped out with the other crewmember, a human.

He leaned against the wall beside the broken window the M240 stuck out of, and felt his stomach gurgling.

The PFC realized he hadn’t eaten since morning, and drew out an MRE.

The third member of the gun crew, a pony, and the human gunner both stared at him like he was crazy, but realized they’d done the same thing.
As the pony took out an MRE herself, she cocked her head to one side.

“What’s the matter?” the dragon asked.

“Listen! I thought I heard bagpipes!”

The dragon rolled his eyes, “Don’t be daft.”

Another explosion went off, making them all flinch.

The pony cocked her head again, and put down her MRE to peek out a window facing the bridge.

“Incoming!” Someone called out, and Gardner looked out a window in horror to see a Changeling MBT coming out of a side road on the other side of the plaza.

Their Carl Gustaf wouldn't hurt it. They were dead.

There was a harsh barking sound immediately followed by a high-pitched shriek that sounded bizarrely like a combination of a sci-fi laser and a cartoon bullet noise, then succeeded by a rocket motor.

In the blink of an eye, the enemy tank vanished to be replaced with a massive dark mushroom cloud.
They could see the bottom of the tank halt completely, throwing what remained of the turret forward onto the ground. The mushroom cloud dissipated somewhat into a simple dark smoke cloud fed by what remained of the vehicle.

The pony gunner’s face lit up at what she saw. She slapped the dragon’s arm, and pointed, “I told you I heard bagpipes! It’s the reinforcements!”

Sitting on the end of the bridge was a small squat tracked vehicle, bearing a missile rack billowing smoke on its roof. It was an FV102 Striker anti-tank guided missile carrier emblazoned with the labels of the British 6th Airborne Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment. It carried descendants of the Vought High-Velocity Missiles(HVM), steel rods with rocket motors attached that flew at mach 6, instead of the conventional Swingfire missiles as those Strikers on Earth used. The HVM could punch through any tank another missile couldn’t.

Alongside it, snaking along the road down the mountain, were columns of Terran Alliance soldiers in fatigues lighter than those of the marines, and some in fatigues that resembled those of Operation Desert Storm. US Army and British Army airborne soldiers respectively. The airborne reinforcements had finally arrived.

The sound of the song Black Bear grew stronger, as a British soldier walked alongside the Striker, blasting a set of bagpipes as a Scotsman had done seventy years before.

He followed close behind an officer wearing a beret instead of a helmet, with a sword in one hand and a submachine gun in the other. They were elements of the British Army 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion, a part of the 1st Parachute Brigade.

Behind the Striker were FV107 Scimitar armored reconnaissance vehicles, as well as trucks and jeeps of the air-transportable variety bearing Union Jacks or the Stars and Stripes.

Coming up even further down the line were several small fast-moving tanks with low turrets and almost cartoonishly-long barrels. Mauler Light Tanks, a detachment of the US Army 76th Tank Battalion, attached to the 188th Airborne Infantry Regiment now advancing alongside them.

Gardner, as the most senior officer not incapacitated in any way, rushed down the stairs and outside.

He sprinted up to the British officer wielding the sword, “Colonel Lawford, sir!”

Lawford nodded, “Staff Sergeant. Sorry we’re late!”

“Better late than never, sir.”

“What’s the situation?”

Gardner pointed at the other end of the plaza, “The bugs are regrouping a few hundred meters that way. Headquarters got overrun, and we’re expecting--”

A flash of light made everyone duck. In the distance came a massive pulse of energy, a distortion in the air approaching rapidly from the castle.

The soldiers could see the Changelings rising up from the other side of the plaza, they could see their aircraft beginning to pull away from the distortion.

It was too fast. As the barrier passed, a shimmer effect rippled over Changeling aircraft, infantry, and vehicles. Everything that belonged to the Changelings shifted back, as if blown away from the center of the energy sphere, before seemingly fading into mist.

The rumble of weapons fire had decreased massively. Lawford and Gardner looked on in disbelief, then to each other.

Equestrian soldiers, and some of those ponies wearing Alliance uniforms, sent up a cheer, emerging from cover and dancing for joy.

Lawford shook his head, “Alright, move out! Everyone forward!”

Several blocks away in the ruins of a factory, Captain Hansen emerged from cover, looking around for any opponents.

“What’s going on, Captain? Did they all get vaporized?” a clerk asked, their hands still shaking on their M16.

Hansen shook his head, grinning somewhat somber, “No, if I know the horses, they just got teleported somewhere else on the planet where they won’t bother us. Now, hopefully Vaughn’s unit--”

He gazed toward the castle, and called out, “Oh...I need a radio! This fight may not be over. We need someone up at that castle ASAP!”

XXXXX

The bullet just barely avoided hitting Cadence, but had given her quite a fright. It drove into the throne a mere moment after Queen Chrysalis had vanished.

There was no more artillery fire in the distance, no sickening sound of engines that were not human or pony-made.

The ponies cheered, with Cadence and Shining Armor embracing each other with joy. They’d won!

Andrew choked back sobs, holding his stomach and other injuries, and stumbled over to the marine lying on the stairs. Twilight was still standing over Melissa, holding her hooves up hesitantly. She was just in time to catch Andrew as he fell to his knees beside her.

Melissa moaned, and rolled back onto one side. Fresh blood stained the bandages, and the dislocated shoulder was overcoming her painkillers. She writhed around in pain, holding her wounds.

“Medic…” she called out weakly, “Medic…!”

“Melissa!” Andrew cried, moving his hands erratically, and unsure of what to do, “Hey, hey someone help me!”

Fluttershy ran over, as did the others.

“Melissa, can you hear me?” Fluttershy asked, lifting the marine’s head.

“She’s hurt bad!” Twilight said, pointing at Melissa’s shoulder. It was flattened compared to the other one.
“Oh Christ…” Andrew hissed, wincing.

Distractedly, Twilight pointed to Rainbow Dash and Applejack, “See if you can free Celestia and Luna! Maybe they can help!”

Melissa opened her eyes, moaning, “Does anyone...know...know how to reset a dislocated...thing?”

They all looked at each other, and she barked, “If someone doesn’t know...I’ll-- I’ll-- I’ll do it...ngh...myself!”

“No! Bad idea!” Fluttershy snapped, “Pinkie Pie, go and find--”

The doors slammed open, and four marines emerged carrying Changeling rifles. A hippogriff, an african-american man, a dragon, and a caucasian man.

Twilight sighed with relief, “Sergeant Vaughn! Sergeant Vaughn! We need your help!”

Vaughn looked around, “What happened? Our guards vanished and--”

Santiago spotted Melissa, “Oh hell.”

He rushed over, pulling out his medical kit and looking her over.

“What happened?”

Fluttershy explained, “Shrapnel wounds in the arm and leg, a dislocated shoulder. She’s been kicked four times in the stomach, once in the leg, and once in the rib cage!”

Santiago unzipped Melissa’s PASGT vest and yanked down her shirt. He grimaced at the blood and purple marks already forming, “Bad bruising. We’re going to need an x-ray, but she might have a cracked rib.”

“Can you save her?” Andrew asked.

“Get a CASEVAC!” Vaughn barked to Wagner.

“Out of the way!” Santiago shouted, shoving the onlookers away, “Ms. Fluttershy, help me change her bandages.”

He took out a small syringe from his kit, and shoved Melissa’s sleeve up.

As the morphine injection made the pain go away, for Melissa, everything seemed to fade into the distance.

Stretcher. Straps keeping her held down. They were carrying her somewhere. American accents, someone reassuring her…

It was vaguely like being on the edge of a dream, where lucidity ended and began. She knew she was awake, but she wasn’t at the same time. She could think in the dreamscape, but it was like that was the foreground, while the ceiling of the real world passing overhead was the background.

Oh my god. I have shrapnel in me.

Shrapnel, shrapnel, shrapnel. Little bits of metal, right? What was the dictionary term?

What was shrapnel doing inside her?

Your job is to run around a battlefield doing demolitions and shit, you moron!

Shrapnel injuries. What did they entail? She couldn’t remember. Everything was so foggy. It was like the soldier had been put to sleep and the geek brought to the surface, her first aid training going with it.

She blinked. They were outside.

The golden hour, wasn’t that it? The time it would take for a helicopter to get back to base and save a soldier’s life.

How was she still thinking like this? Surely…

Helicopter. Inside, looking up. She weakly rolled her head to the left, seeing how small it was, that basic blood tray...No, that was Pelicans. She couldn’t remember the slang term for the crew compartment on a Huey.

Huey. Was he the red duck or one of the others?

No...The other Huey.

Yes, she was in a UH-1N Twin Huey. It had that square compartment with the corners for the door gunners, and completely open. When did she get aboard?

I am so fucking high right now...

Wait, this wasn’t the ship. Her stretcher was being carried through open air, there was no sound of the sea…

A tent she didn’t recognize. Cool air inside.

Transfer to a bed, or a cot or something.

Marines with rifles. Why in the medical tent?

She saw a bug. Bug. Looked like a skitter…

Oh shit.

Melissa started rolling, trying to move and get away.

“Emperors, not again!” an odd voice said, and pulled her back onto the bed.

“Urk…” she gargled, trying to punch the person. Was she super weak, or were her muscles just drugged?

Her right hand wouldn’t clench, it hurt too much. At the same time, that hand made contact with something and sent a jet of flame through the fog down her forearm.

She lay back on the bed with a hollow and weak shriek, holding her arm.

“Oh sure, ignore the doctor, that’s good for you…” the voice muttered. It came from a bug in her field of vision. There was a human marine behind him though. What was going on?

“Lokhagos Larynx,” she guessed the first word was some sort of rank, “this one’s got several shrapnel injuries in her wrist, thigh, tibia, and her knee is partially shattered. She’s also got bruises across her chest, a cracked rib, and a dislocated shoulder,” Another voice said.

Shattered? My...knee? Shattered? Oh, fuck me. Fuck.

Melissa tilted her head, and could see a Navy doctor in surgical garb, “Lucky she had that vest on or she’d have broken more ribs. No need for your assistance. We’ve already reset the shoulder and we can get most of the shrapnel out on our own, thanks.”

Little consultation for my knee, sir...Fuck!

“Most of it?!” shrieked the first voice, the bug she thought, “What are you going to do, Nelson, leave foreign objects in the patient? Such shallow wounds?”

“If necessary, yes. We’ll try and get out the other fragments--”

“What kind of barbarism is this? If you leave some of this stuff in, she won’t be able to use her hand! She probably won’t be able to walk again if you don't replace that knee!”

“Lokhagos, I understand where you’re coming from, but it just isn’t possible. We’ve determined those pieces cannot be moved without further damage! Cutting--”

The bug snarled, “So you want to not only leave harmful foreign objects in the patient, you want to hack her open and then go rooting around inside for a look-see?! With those bloody instruments?! No wonder you think removal is the problem!”

“Well, we’re going to clean it off obviously--”

“Gee, glad you apes know what germ theory is! Clearly you don’t have a good idea of it if you’re still sewing them together! By all the emperors above, cutting her up was what started this and you want to take it further? Put away your butcher knives and stay away from this patient! We can remove the shrapnel using a magnetic laser scalpel!”

“A what?”

“Captain Nelson, leave the serious cases to me and keep your damned leeches away from the rest of patients. Nurse, we need a general anesthetic. We'll need an x-ray and a 3D scan of her left knee.”

What? Why?

“Why the good knee?” The Navy doctor demanded.

“We need to save the leg!”

“What, were you planning on cutting it off?”

“Are you insane? Why would anyone do that?! Get out of my operating theater, you butcher!”

An air mask of some kind was placed over her face.

There was a sense of panic as she started falling into blackness, and she started struggling, “No...no…”

“Someone help me here.”

Human hands started holding her down, “Sergeant, you’re okay, we’re just putting you under for surgery…”

“Bug...bug!”

“Okay, is that a slur? Why do they all call me that?”

Slowly, darkness enveloped Melissa, but it wasn’t a harsh darkness. More like falling into a deep sleep.

She could give up now. She could stop fighting. No one would blame her. She’d done her fair share. Her mission was over. She could rest…

XXXXX

Those vast cool Green Mountains, Vermont, the United States, North America...the world that was humanity’s home, that green spinning space mote…

Her heart reached out longingly, grasping for the green hills of home.

All she wished for was one last landing on that globe, to see the fleecy skies and cool green hills of Earth.

One last time. She wanted to see those hills again. That was all she wanted.

To feel the sweet fresh breezes of a Vermont summer again, to feel as they roved around that lovely globe that gave her birth…

She could rest, couldn’t she?

Couldn’t she?

The cool, green hills of Earth...so distant they were now. That little ball of dirt, what made it special? This new world was full of so many wondrous things, to fill a lifetime. She could rest here…

Couldn’t she?

One last landing on Earth...to rest her eyes on the Green Mountains…

One last landing…

She could rest here…

“No! Take me back! Take me back home!”

“It’s not so bad here. Why do you keep struggling? You’ve made a life here.”

“I can’t stay here! I can’t die here!”

“Why not? It’s just dirt. What would you do if you went home? What would be the point? The others who came through the wormhole had to die here too, why can’t you accept it?”

“Because I can’t! I can’t! I can’t let my people live in fear of the universe!”

“They were fine before.”

“I can’t let them go down the dark side! Don’t you understand? They don’t know what I know! They haven’t seen this world!”

“You’ve seen it. Isn’t that enough?”

“It’s not! I can’t leave them like that! This world is so full of wonders, and we can’t share them with home! I can’t stand the thought of Earth not seeing this! I have to make it home, I have to show them that the universe isn’t scary! We’re just getting off the planet, I can’t let them be afraid now! They’ll be afraid, they’ll be terrified that they’ll have to fight to survive in a hostile universe! I have to show them that they won’t! I have to show them this place! I have to show Earth how much friendship means! I have to show them the discoveries we’ve made, I have to show them the film I took! The scientific knowledge! I have to show them that love, and kindness exist elsewhere in the universe!”

“You’re just trying to become famous. Do you really care about Andrew, about the ponies? The Alliance? Do you really care about Earth?”

“I do! I do care! I don’t want them to stay like this, I want to get everyone home! I want to bring everyone home, I want everyone to see their families again! But we can’t stay with only that, we need to stay in contact with each other! I want--I need to show them all they don’t have to be afraid. I want to help humanity reach out into the stars, and make friends instead of enemies. I don’t want us to be the Imperium, I want to be the Federation! I want peace on Earth, I want friendship for everyone! I want us to learn from the ponies, to love and care about each other, I want...I want…”

“What do you want?”

“I want a happy ending. For everyone.”

Chapter 22

In Canterlot Castle, in the hallway before the entryway to Celestia’s throne room, a griffin hefted the large video camera he held. “Aurora News Network” was stamped on the side.

He was dressed in a blue t-shirt, a black PASGT helmet, and a flak vest with the word “PRESS” written on a piece of tape across the front.

He balanced the camera on his shoulder, using his right claw to hold the handle, and held out his left with all the talons out. Peering through the lense, he began to put down one talon at a time as he hissed, “Recording in 4…3...2…”

The human in front of him, dressed in USMC fatigues bare of any labels beyond “PRESS”, and carrying a small microphone, rapidly flattened his hair and nodded.

The griffin gave a thumbs up, and the human cleared his throat, “This is War Correspondent Hank Morgan reporting from Canterlot Castle. After a brutal engagement defending the city, Terran Alliance soldiers from four different branches of service and three different nations have won the day. What remains of the USMC 32nd MEU, along with the US Army 188th Airborne Infantry Regiment, the 1st Parachute Brigade of the British Army, and No. 41 Commando of the Royal Marines are currently providing security and humanitarian aid to the city.

“Most of the Mutan Imperial forces within the city limits have been routed through magical means, and the rest are attempting to evacuate the country, and potentially the surface of the planet with what few air assets they have left. Without proper air cover, these evacuation attempts are proving hazardous. The Royal Air Force, Soviet Air Forces, and United States Air Force have inflicted heavy casualties. The remainder are expected to surrender within the next week at best.”

Morgan gestured with one hand behind at the crowd standing before the doors, from which they were a few dozen meters away.

“Behind me you can see the throne room of Queen Celestia, leader of Equestria. Behind these doors the first arrangement between the Terran Alliance and the Kingdom of Equestria is currently underway. Representatives from the United States, the Soviet Union, the British Empire, the French Republic, the Netherlands, and the German Empire are attending the session.”

Turning around, Morgan stated, “As you can see, the Royal Guards are keeping a strong barrier between the doorway, the various escorts of these representatives, as well as any and all reporters.”

Including the Royal Guards, there were seven different types of uniforms. The Royal Guards stood to either side of the doors, their muskets pointed at the ceiling but ready to sweep down at a moment’s notice.

The remaining six uniforms were the dress uniforms belonging to the honor guards of the six national representatives. They stood in neat formations on either side of the hallway, leaving an open corridor in the middle. The crowd in front of the corridor consisted of two dozen reporters from a dozen newspapers, and one TV network. There were a few score random officials from the nations.

“They have been in session for several hours now, and--”

The locks on the entryway clunked, and a ripple went through the crowd.

“Here they come,” Morgan said, “Mackey, c’mon!”

The camera was jostled as they shoved their way through the throng, getting as close as they could before a US airborne soldier stopped them.

The doorway opened, and out filtered a dozen diplomats and heads of state.

Leading the group were Queen Celestia and Queen Luna, looking exhausted but presentable despite their recent captivity.

Much to the disappointment of the Alliance reporters, and the surprise of the Equestrian newspapers, the Terran diplomats had no ornate diplomatic uniforms. They wore simple business suits. The difference between each group was subtle, the cut of their outfits and the faces of the individuals.

A large green dragon and a human assistant followed the queens, and Morgan spoke into his microphone, “There’s Ambassador Elizabeth Allemand, the French ambassador…”

Next came a tall stiff human gentleman, his face stoney and calm, “That’s Silverclaw Romanovich, ambassador from the Soviets. Jesus, he scares me...”

A paradoxically short woman followed, looking around at the reporters and grimacing, “Okay, staying away from her, uh...that’s Ambassador Lauke Kiffer, the Netherlands. Mackey, be careful, I’ve heard she doesn’t like cameras…”

The camera adjusted in time to catch a griffin with an early 20th century mustache emerging, “Ambassador Baron Erich Von Weiskopf of the German Empire. Does he ever cut that thing?”

A clean-shaven younger human male, grimacing as he deliberately let the baron get ahead of him, stepped out, “Casey Holland, that’s our--I mean that’s the US ambassador. Man, what did Weiskopf do to him?”

An older man, the oldest second only to the queens, wearing a light pair of glasses, took one look at the two beside him and put a hand to his face. “Oh, Lord Bradley doesn’t like that. He doesn’t crack a smile at anything though, he’s the most British British ambassador they could hope for.”

Almost as if on cue, when all the ambassadors emerged, the reporters surged forward. The soldiers immediately fell into a new formation, trying to let them get close without risking some sort of attack.

At least one more physical than the bombardment of questions. “Your highnesses--over here--Ambassador--do you have any comment on--”

Morgan and Mackey shoved their way through, the camera obscured by moving bodies. It refocused in time to catch Celestia’s perplexed expression.

She walked closer to the men in US Marine garb, peering at the camera.

Morgan took the opportunity to elbow a pony jostling him and shove aside a human journalist from the New Washington Herald. He moved in as close as a stone-faced royal guard would allow him, and Mackey was right beside him.

“Queen Celestia,” Morgan said with a raised voice to be heard over the rest, “We’re a TV crew with the Aurora News Network. Can you tell us the results of this negotiation? What was agreed upon?”

Celestia furrowed her brow, somewhat confused as she looked from Morgan’s microphone to the camera, “I…”

“Just look at me, your highness, the camera’s getting everything you’re saying.”

The queen immediately became the picture of dignity again, “We have signed a nonaggression treaty with the nations of the Terran Alliance. We thank them for their aid in one of our most desperate hours. Without them, I doubt victory could have been achieved. In addition to this treaty, we have loaned them the land around their landing site, Utah Beach, for use as a military base as a deterrent against future Mutan Empire attacks.”

Ambassador Holland walked up to come into the camera view, “The United States military is happy to provide troops for this mission. It is hoped this agreement will lead to a formal alliance between ourselves and the Kingdom of Equestria.”

Ambassador Bradley cleared his throat, “Utah Beach’s operating personnel will consist of a multinational task force from the Terran Alliance taking soldiers from all six nations. To be clear, this is not an invading force, it will be a relatively small presence of soldiers. If the Changelings attack again, they will do all they can to help.”

Another torrent of questions rang out, and Celestia pointed at a pony reporter.

“Ambassador of the Terran Alliance, from what our sources have been able to gather, this coalition has existed for over 200 years. Why have you kept yourselves hidden for so long?”

Ambassador Allemand spoke up with an odd french accent, her claws behind her back and her wings folded, “When my ancestors first arrived on this world, there were but 1200 people aboard their ships. With superior technology, but limited supplies, they had to settle somewhere. They were lost and terrified by what they saw, the strange creatures and places on this world. They knew of no other human beings on this world, and did not want to lose what little they had. A policy was enacted that we would maintain total secrecy until we felt secure enough, or there was sufficient cause, such as those events of the past week, to force us into the light. We have done all we can to rescue any other human beings who have come to this world while also maintaining security.”

“Ambassador Allemand, are you not a dragon yourself?” Another equine reporter asked, “The Drakantos Empire, beyond a handful of campfire stories, knows nothing about you.”

Allemand shook her head, “I am not Drakan, I am French. One of my ancestors was a sailor in the service of the Second Drake Kingdom’s maritime forces. In the year 1817, he was rescued when his ship went down in a storm close to the future Terran Alliance. He decided to settle in the country, and my family has stayed there since.“

There was another bunch of questions, and Allemand gestured at a different reporter.

“Ambassador, how have so many species come to be in the Terran Alliance without breaking secrecy?”

Allemand replied, “Much the same way my ancestor did. While we maintain secrecy, we are not monsters. We rescue ships in distress when it is absolutely necessary. We offer the survivors a choice, to come home with us. Many of their crews over the years have chosen this option, as you may be able to tell from our ranks. Most, if not all, have become fully integrated into our society.”

“What happens to those who don’t want to come with you?” the reporter asked, “Where are they? How is it that with such a merciful policy that you have maintained secrecy? Surely if you left them alive--”

“I resent your implications,” Allemand said coldly, “I have said, ‘we are not monsters’. We do not kill those who don’t follow us. We take them home and release them. To ensure they did not speak of us, we would pay them off, or discredit them if they refuse. With our secrecy broken, this policy no longer exists. We will operate in the open from now on.”

“Will your spies reveal themselves?” One reporter spoke up, “How many do you have in Equestria?”

“I am not at liberty to discuss that information as of yet,” Allemand replied, “the Alliance is still reeling from the sudden exposure, and is currently revising various policies.”

She selected another reporter to speak, “Up until the first appearance of two humans several months ago, some believed humans to be an extinct species, while others believed humans to be a straight-up myth. The Terran Alliance has existed for only about 200 years, yet the stories of humanity date all the way back to the Uncertain Years. Why is that?”

Allemand’s face twitched, “From what we have been able to gather, the belief in humans varies wildly depending on the country and education. This is probably due to our own disinformation efforts. As to how long the myths have been around, it is clear the phenomenon that brought our people to this planet has been around that long.”

“Will there be trade or immigration with the Alliance territories?” A reporter called out.

“That will depend on the individual nations within our coalition,” said Allemand, “While we are united in some areas, the nations are still independent and each has their own immigration and trade systems.”

“Your highness,” Hank Morgan said, directing the camera at Celestia, “How do you feel about this whole affair? Equestria is a peaceful state, and the United States Marine Corps just helped trash it. Humanity has a history of violence, and the Alliance holds a massive technological advantage over your military. Aren’t you concerned?”

Celestia shook her head, “The Alliance only inflicted damage on Equestria in response to the Mutan Empire’s transgressions. The Marines were trying to help us, not destroy us. I understand humanity’s history. Despite our outward appearance, Equestria is not populated by pacifists. We understand violent histories. We also understand technological advantages.”

She swept her hoof toward the ambassadors, “These are not potential threats, these are not enemies. They are potential friends and allies. This is their first formal meeting with a government beyond their own planet. We have much to teach one another.”

Celestia turned to look at the representatives, and smiled, “People of the Terran Alliance, won’t you be our neighbors?”

Morgan blinked, temporarily speechless. He looked at Mackey, who shrugged. They looked at the other Terran Alliance reporters, many of whom had small grins on their faces.

Who knew if it was intentional?

Once the impromptu press conference was over, Celestia and Luna retired to the throne room.

“Has there been any word on M-- Sergeant Foster’s condition?” Celestia asked a nearby aide.

“Not as of yet, your highness.” the stallion replied, checking his clipboard.

Celestia nodded, “Find somepony to check on her. See if they need assistance.”

The aide nodded, and wrote something down.

Luna saw the look in her sister’s eyes, and put a hoof on her shoulder. Nodding at the aide, she said, “You’re dismissed.”

The aide nodded, and along with the guards, departed.

As the doors shut, Celestia squeezed her eyes shut, grimacing.

“Celie, she’ll be alright,” Luna said quietly, “She’s alive, and in good hooves.”

“I think you can understand why I’m uncertain about those hooves.”

Luna grimaced, “They have the most advanced medical facility on the planet, more advanced than even the humans. You saw how severe her injuries were. She would have lost half her limbs had she been in one of our hospitals.”

Celestia frowned, “Yes, I understand that.”

She looked out the stain glass windows at the city. The fires had been put out, and reconstruction was underway. Bulldozers moved rubble, helicopters and airships lifted construction materials.

The bridge between the castle and the town was still out. A large tracked vehicle was in the process of unfurling a new metal bridge that was supposed to be able to take more weight than the original could. And it was just a temporary solution.

“Celie...it was not your fault.” Luna said.

“It wasn’t?” Celestia snapped, “Luna, I put our entire nation in danger. I couldn’t see Chrysalis when she was right in front of me. I ignored one of the most valuable soldiers we had because I couldn’t separate my feelings about her from how I felt about Sunset...and I-- we nearly lost her.”

“We all made that mistake, Tia.”

Celestia’s nostrils flared, “But I was the one who ignored Melissa’s recommendations! I thought she was being paranoid, Lulu! If I listened to her, maybe all this destruction wouldn’t have happened! Maybe she wouldn’t have gotten hurt…”

She looked down at the bridge layer, and sighed, “...And now I find that we may be responsible for even more suffering.”

Luna’s eyes widened, “What? What do you mean?”

The queen of the sun pointed at the helicopters, and the humans she could see walking around the city, “Humanity has only been here for the past thousand years. Since the Uncertain Years. Perhaps millions of humans have been coming to our world over that time. Hundreds of thousands have most likely died, far from their homes and their families. Who knows how many encountered enemies as Andrew and Melissa did, but did not have any good fortune? Is it our fault? By delaying in confronting Discord, did he create the portals? Did--”

Luna put a wing around her sister, giving her a hug, “Tia, calm down! We didn’t conjure up a portal to summon them, did we? Remember what it was like back then? All the chaos, all the magic being unleashed? Whatever happened wasn’t our fault. What’s done is done. Bureau 13 did their best to try and find them. Even if they were unable to rescue any cosmic castaways, they at least recovered their stories. Their families will have closure. We’ve done our best, haven’t we?”

Celestia leaned against her sister, “Is that enough?”

XXXXX

Beep...Beep...Beep...

The pulsing tone rushed into Melissa’s senses as she awoke with a start, coughing and gagging, a terrible taste in her mouth. Swallowing only made it worse, her throat was quite dry. Light stunned her eyes, it was white and fairly soft. Shapes moving.

Before she even knew what she was doing, she had put her left arm on a bed rail, and was sitting up and trying to get out of bed. The blanket, and what felt like half a dozen cords moved with her. IVs and stuff she couldn’t identify.

“Oh shit!” someone said, “Nurse! Whoever! Someone!”

What felt like dulled claws started pushing her down as her vision started to clear. USMC uniform, BDU, urban camouflage. Odd shape though.

More shapes, large dark one.

“Sergeant, calm down!” spoke a voice she recognized but did not know.

She rubbed one eye with her right hand, and yelped with pain, then with anger as she caught sight of a black perforated body as the source of the voice.

“No, no no…” Melissa garbled, and with her good hand tried to punch the Changeling. The pulse of the heart rate monitor grew more frantic.

There was a blast of air around her face. It made her more aware. And realize she was wearing some sort of oxygen mask.

She sat up again, trying to pry the mask off in a panic.

Someone helped pull it off, and a third voice spoke, “Sergeant Foster, stop! You’re going to hurt yourself! Doctor Larynx, get away!”

“What? Look, you monkey--”

“She keeps panicking when you get near, so back away!”

Several sets of hands forcibly pushed her back.

“F...fuck off…” she garbled, swinging her fist and bumping into something.

“Sergeant!” the first voice snapped, and grabbed the fist, “You’re safe! It’s me!”

A navy blue coat of feathers came into view, a griffin’s upper body, wearing the uniform from earlier.

“Who…?” Melissa muttered, rubbing her eyes again. Her vision was clearing slightly, she could make out vague blobs. A human medic on one side, the griffin, and...a Changeling standing at the back wall.

“Corporal Ceres, ma’am,” the griffin said, “you had four-eyes steal my sidearm, remember? You’re at a combat support hospital, stop trying to hurt yourself!”

“Right...Ceres...where the fuck are we?”

“Combat support hospital, ma’am.”

“Bull-fucking-shit,” she snapped, grabbing him by the collar and pointing at the Changeling, “There’s a bug over there!”

“That’s a slur, right?” the creature asked, looking to the nearby medic, “They always say that.”

“It’s a Changeling combat support hospital, Sergeant,” the medic said, “Bravo Company’s convoy found them. They surrendered, and gave us the facilities so we can heal the casualties in exchange for sanctuary. Don’t worry, we’ve got them under control.”

“What? Why?” Melissa demanded, “Hell, why the flyin’ fuck do you bastards have facilities on the planet’s surface instead of the ship?”

The Changeling doctor, clad in what must have been their equivalent of scrubs, scoffed, “The things known hearabouts as ‘doctors’, and ‘surgeons’, barely know how to put your people back together, much less my own. And I don’t expect you to know how much fuel it takes to get something into space.”

“I think five kilograms of fuel for one kilo of stuff for us…” Melissa muttered, “Bug, trust me, I know. I’ve lost so many Kerbonauts because of my bad fuel calculations...”

She glanced around the room. It was some sort of ward in a tent, with a dozen or so beds lining both sides of the building. Almost all of them were filled, with wounded Terran Alliance, Equestrian, and Changeling soldiers being tended to. It seemed to be the recovery room, not many were making sounds of distress.

“Why am I in here anyway? I understand future technology, but…”

As she spoke, Melissa shifted in her sitting position, and winced. She rolled up her sleeve and looked at her hand, closing and opening her fingers. Along her forearm, where there had been torn skin and blood along an open gash was instead another gel-like sponge...thing, mounted to a plastic rig wrapped around the limb.

“You were among some of the badly wounded. You took a blast of shrapnel in your wrist and right leg,” the medic said, “Along with a…”

“Cracked rib, dislocated shoulder, bruises…” Melissa nodded, “I remember something--”

She inhaled sharply.

Her right knee wouldn’t bend. There was some sort of brace, it felt like.

Flickers of memory returned. Melissa lifted the blanket, and her heart sank. The leg was encased in some sort of brace, carrying what looked like a blue sponge covering the kneecap and several smaller ones covering other parts of the limb.

“W...what…? But...”

“The shrapnel missed your tibia, fibula, and femur, but your knee was shattered.” the medic said, “They had to replace it.”

Melissa slumped forward, holding the limb and snuffling. Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry…

“Well fuck.”

The Changeling doctor’s eyes widened in surprise, and he looked at the medic, “What? What’s the problem?”

“My service is up, you interplanetary goat!” Melissa snapped, “My fucking knee is gone you stupid fucking fuckwhistle! ‘For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs both legs, no more waltzing Matilda for me’! fuck!”

The doctor put up his claws, confused, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Why are you getting so upset?”

The marine stared at the doctor in utter confusion, “Who’s the primitive here, jackass? You know I only have two of these, right? An artificial one, even 3D printed to fit me, won’t get me back in the service! Fuck it, I had a good run but--”

The Changeling sighed with relief, and stepped back over, rolling his eyes, “Oh, by the emperor! You didn’t think we’d put anything like steel pins in there? Steel pins, staples,” he shivered, “Ugh, metal implants. By the emperor, even Earth was at least trying.”

Melissa glared at the Changeling, “You better start talking or I’m going to chop off your limbs, rip out your intestines, and ride you like a meat toboggan. What did you do to me?!”

The doctor actually chuckled at that image, sounding strangewith his alien voicebox, “We don’t use leeches or prayer around here. We saved your leg, and you’ll be running after a few months.”

Melissa gaped, looking at the medic, and to Ceres, “What?”

The medic explained, “It’ll be less like you got your knee replaced and more like a bad break.”

Ceres pushed his rolling chair back a bit, and pointed at his lower back leg. It was wrapped in another brace, shaped like a walking boot. “They did the same to me. The bones got cracked or chipped or something. They did some surgery, and tell me that I should be walking on it and back to work in a few months.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. Hey, Doc bug, tell me exactly what you did.”

The doctor shook his head, preparing to walk away, “You wouldn’t understand, I’ve got to--”

“Cellular regeneration? Is that what this thing is? Or is it some sort of artificial bone? I’m going to assume that if I can walk, or run on it again it’s got shock absorbency to keep my bones from shaking themselves apart. Don’t judge me man, my society’s just less advanced, not primitive. Considering how I was able to figure out how your guns worked pretty quickly, I think I might be able to understand how you managed to fix my leg.”

The doctor sighed, “You think you can understand? Alright, I’ll tell you what we did. We pulled out the damaged bone and replaced it with a biodegradable ceramic scaffolding, which your osteoblasts colonize. It will serve the purpose of the bone for a few months, until your osteoclast cells eat away at it, and replace it with normal bone, as they would if you’d never gotten injured. Normally, your cells will do this with the natural bone, like workers replacing a brick in a building one at a time, and this effectively tricks your cells into thinking nothing's wrong, and to keep building business as usual.”

He smirked, confident that would confuse her enough to stop talking.

Melissa’s eyes widened, “Holy shit! That’s amazing! Sounds like a perfect kind of bone replacement! So just a few months of physical therapy, and I can jump and run and stuff?”

“Could you before?” the doctor asked, somewhat disappointed, “Oh, speaking of which, Petty Officer?” he glanced at the medic, “Help her up, we need to test the leg.”

Melissa immediately swung her legs out of bed, “Ow, ow, ow!”

The doctor rapidly went over, trying to help Melissa straighten out her leg, “By the emperor, enlisted are alike all over…”

Melissa’s left pant leg slid up a bit, revealing a gash...or where a gash used to be. Instead, there was a nice neat line, with a pair of white strips on either side running parallel to the closed wound. The strips were connected by dozens of plastic zip-tie-like pieces across the wound, holding it shut.
The marine reached out to touch it, then pulled her hand back, “Well, looks like you guys don’t do stitches anymore. Zip Skin Closure System, right? Noninvasive stitches, I can pull it off on my own?”

“Yes, sorry to tell you, but we don’t sew people together like cloth around here.” the doctor said.

“Thank the Elder Gods, man-- uh, bug, I was not looking forward to pulling a stitch out-t-t-yeow!”

Talking became quite difficult the instant she put her weight on the replaced knee. Pain arced through the limb. She nearly fell over, first against the bug then pushing herself off to lean against the human medic.

“Put more weight on it,” the doctor said, “It won’t heal if you don’t exercise it.”

“Hippocratic Oath doesn’t say anything about pain, right doc?” Melissa hissed through gritted teeth, standing back up straight.

“I wouldn’t know, but my oath doesn’t. Try to take a step.”

Melissa took a step, leaning on the medic while trying not to touch the Changeling. Pain still lanced, the bones grinding together with a sound vibrating through her body that was altogether unfamiliar.

Taking a step onto her good leg, she noted in the back of her mind how much had changed since she’d left home. How much else would she lose before going back?

Would she ever?

The pain of the next step focused Melissa’s mind. What had happened since she was out?

“Hey, Chief,” she said to the medic, “what’s the status of the battle? What happened to the Changeling troops?”

“That force field the ponies have made all those in the city disappear. We couldn’t do much for the ponies in the way of supplies, what with the Randolph gone, but the Woodrow Wilson and the Prince of Wales brought up their battle groups and a bunch of Strategic Sealift ships. The Royal Marines helped the rest of you leathernecks clear out the rest of their guys. Most of them pulled out though. Biggest concern is looters and the humanitarian crisis.”

“They have looters here? Wait. The city. What happened to the city?”

“Canterlot’s fine, ma’am,” Ceres said, “Sergeant Vaughn was the one who told me to keep an eye on you.”

“Which we would’ve done, but our nurses are all busy…” grumbled the bug doctor, “So we’ve got a bunch of morons getting in the way just to keep the drugged up patients from wandering off!

“Look doc, I don’t think my squad leader would appreciate his combat engineer getting devoured for her love or wandering off and getting herself hurt!!”

“The assets?” Melissa said, hissing as she tried to walk forward more.

“Celestia’s Heroes? They’re fine,” said the medic, “The fleet’s sending supplies to the city. Some bridge-layers for the wrecked bridges, bulldozers, tractors, they’ll repair buildings and infrastructure...things are going pretty well. I hear there’s going to be a party or something tomorrow.”

“Wedding,” Melissa corrected, “I need to see them as soon as I can. You’ll probably want to keep me for a bit, but can I at least go out tomorrow for an hour to visit the wedding?”

The Changeling furrowed his brow, “Uh...sure. But only if you can stand on that leg alright with a walker. If you experience any problems, you’re going right back--”

“Doc, I get it. Thanks.”

They helped her back to the bed.

“It’s not so bad, ma’am,” Ceres said, “I mean I gotta walk around with a cane!”

He held up a cane designed for griffins for emphasis, and glanced at the medic, “Sir, with all due respect, would you mind finding a walker for her? My squad leader will kill me if I let her out of my sight and she wanders off.”

Without breaking eye contact, he pulled Melissa further back onto the bed when she tried to slide off.

The medic chuckled a little, “I’ll see what I can do, corporal.”

Melissa sat back in bed, groaning a little in pain.

She scanned the room. There were a pair of windows on either side of each bed. Out of the windows across the aisle, and those beside her, she could see the camp.

The facility had been placed on one of Equestria’s many foothills, a squat huddle of prefab buildings and flattened dirt.

The hospital was in a much more reduced state of chaos than they had been from the flashes of memory Melissa had. Helicopters moved in and out, depositing troops and supplies. Changeling soldiers scurried about, moving patients and equipment, kept a careful watch on by members of the USMC 32nd MEU.

Sentries watched the perimeter, as well as the interior, several manning the machine guns of humvees. An FV4201 Chieftain tank with a Union Jack on its side sat near a road leaving the base.

A handful of Changeling soldiers moved solemnly, carrying body bags to a corner of the facility where dozens of others lay. Their shapes were indiscernible, they could have been anyone.

But her attention soon fell on something that was familiar.

She could see Equestrian mountains stretching from one side of the horizon to the other. Mountains covered in foliage, mostly a light green with streaks of dark green slowly overtaking the landscape as the trees bloomed.

At home, in Vermont, it would be summer. The fields would be tended, school would be out, everyone trying to beat the heat. The lake sides would be covered with families, playing in the sun. Strawberries would be in season…

Melissa put a hand to her face, feeling tears leaking at the sides of her eyes. What else did people do during the summer? She couldn’t remember. Had she forgotten, or had she never found anything to do? Had she so taken her world for granted?

Regret, regret, regret.

What have I done?! I destroyed the FTL drive, I can’t go home...

The sergeant let out a soft sigh, “‘We pray for one last landing on the globe that gave us birth...’”

Ceres cocked his head at her, “Ma’am, do you normally talk in your sleep?”

“...Why?”

“You kept saying that stuff in your sleep.”

Melissa furrowed her brow, “I did? Huh.”

She looked down at her knee, and flexing her wrist, “Hope I don’t end up like Rhysling…”

“Who? What? Sergeant, what are you talking about?”

“The Blind Singer of the Spaceways. Sunburn fried his optic nerves. Died damping a reactor before he could reach home.”

Ceres glanced at the IV fluid containers, “Jeez, how much of that shit did they shoot you up with?”

“Where are you from, Corporal?” Melissa asked, letting out a deep breath and keeping her eyes locked on the horizon.

“New Washington.”

“You a city boy or country? I consider myself something of a mix. Grew up in the country, but lived my college life in Boston before I joined up.”

“Uh...city. New Washington’s one of the biggest cities in New Texas.” the corporal looked a little uncomfortable, “Ma’am? You doing alright?”

Melissa blinked slowly, one eye closing before the other, “Yeah...yeah! I’m fine. I’m from Vermont. Specifically Bleakburn, one of those little New England former mill towns. The main part of town...you could look out and see these roving hills all the way out to Champlain...”

She sighed, “What’s New Washington like, corporal?”

Ceres scowled, looking off to the side, “What’s it like for who, ma’am?”

Melissa looked at him, confused, “What do you mean?”

He shook his head, “Sorry, Sergeant. It’s nothing. It’s the capital of New Texas. It’s got statues of famous people, museums, all sorts of stuff. It’s a bit like New York back home, I suppose. They’ve even got the USS Meadow there. Floating museum now.”

He remembered who he was talking to, “Oh, that’s the first American ship that came over here. The founders of New Texas.”

“Wait a minute, what were you saying a second ago? What’s the city like for who?”

Ceres right claw balled into a fist, “Nothin’.”

Melissa grimaced, “Okay. Corporal, what’s New Texas like? I grew up in the Continental United States. I’m going to guess New Texas, despite technically being part of the country, is different.”

She smiled a little, looking him up and down, “Well, one difference is obvious--”

Her smile faded and the grimace returned, “Oh...shit. The Meadow was from 1945…Jim Crow?”

Ceres waggled his claw, “Not exactly. I mean, my grandmother said it used to be worse. The Meadow’s crew was a very small number when it first showed up, and they kinda got a bunch of forced racial integration, both black people and dragons and ponies and griffins and the rest.”

“Still got a bunch of diet racism though, eh? Damn it, even here that still exists.”

Melissa flexed her right arm again, “You got family there? Parents, wife, girlfriend, siblings?”

Ceres scoffed, “I wish I had a girlfriend...I’ve got a brother, he’s human. So are my parents; my mom’s American and my dad’s French.”

“So does that mean you’re a chimera, or…?”

“I’m adopted,” he growled, “What about you, Sergeant? Any family?”

“Brother, and my parents. My brother’s a marine aviator, my mom’s in the air force, and we don’t talk about what my dad does.”

“What?” Ceres laughed, grinning, “Is he a secret agent?”

Melissa snorted nervously, “Uh…”

“Oh my god, what?! I’m right?!”

Melissa shrugged, “I don’t know what to tell you man! He was in the marines, then he got into SOCOM, and after that it’s all ‘eyes only’ and ‘we’ll have to kill you if we told you’ and ‘don’t go through dad’s filing cabinets’.” she added a few air quotes, mostly with the one hand, and cackled at Ceres’ befuddled expression.

He had never heard her laugh like this before. Always a chuckle, a snort, never full-blown laughter. It was somewhat infectious, making Ceres smile and laugh himself.

As the laughter finally died, Melissa sighed, looking into the distance, “I miss him…”

She shook her head, putting on a somewhat forced smile, “So...New Washington. Is it like…”

Melissa cleared her throat, looking somewhat confused, “Is there anything there like home?”

Ceres shrugged, “It’s got mountains.”

Melissa winced, holding her stomach, “Oh, what the hell? What’s the matter with me?”

She clamped the corporal’s beak shut when he tried to speak, “Right, I know, I walked into that one.”

When she let go, Ceres rubbed his jaw, “Ma’am…you got a grip! Ow...Do you want me to get the doc?”

“Nope,” Melissa groaned, hunching over, “I’m fine, I just...just...”

The medic showed up with a walker that didn’t quite look like those of the elderly, “Everything alright?”

Melissa pulled her legs off the bed, “Oh thank Cthulhu, not anymore! I gotta get outside. That’s what I need!”

Limping to the walker, Melissa leaned against it. “For fuck’s sake, I feel like an old lady.”

“Hey, at least it makes it easier for me to keep an eye on you.” Ceres pointed out.

“You want to keep those chicken legs of yours, corporal?”

“Oh, news for you, sergeant,” the medic spoke up, “Colonel Waters and Captain Hansen want to sit in on your debriefing session. Once you’re feeling up to it, obviously.”

Melissa’s mouth twisted, “Alright, probably better to do it ASAP than later. Where do I go?”

“I can get them to come here. The interviewers need to go over a lot of people, anyway. Sergeant, are you sure you’re up for it?”

“Doc, my career is on the line here for reasons I probably can’t tell you. Let them know to come interrogate me.”

The medic nodded reluctantly, and soon left.

Minutes later, the tent flap opened, and in stepped an earth pony mare, who wore no uniform, but was instead dressed in an equestrian-made pant suit.

And it was a pony Melissa knew.

The mare scanned the room, and spotted them. “Melissa! Melissa Foster!”

She quickly trotted over. Ceres painfully stood up, and blocked her path, “State your business.”

“Stand down, corporal,” Melissa said, “Strike Berry? What are you doing here?”

“You know her?” Ceres asked, looking at the pony with suspicion.

“Know her? She’s on my company’s board of directors!” Melissa peered at the mare, “Strike, what’s going on? This is a military base, what are you doing here?!”

Strike Berry moved to stand by the bedside, “Oh, thank Celestia you’re alright. Are they treating you well? How’s the leg?”

“It’s fine. They say I’ll be off the walker in a few months. What are you doing here?”

Strike Berry winced, “I uh...uh…”

“Miss, this is a military facility,” Ceres growled, “Either show me some ID or authorization, or--”

Opening her jacket, Berry pulled out her long wallet. She ran her hoof along one seam, and pulled open a small hidden pocket. From within she withdrew a small plastic card and offered it.

Ceres took it and peered at it. His eyes widened and he gaped.

Melissa yanked the card out of his hands, and her own eyes rounded.

She glanced up, her eyes narrowed. “Strike, friend, what is this?”

Strike Berry scratched the back of her head, “Um...well...Melissa...let me reintroduce myself. I’m Operations Officer Strike Berry, Central Intelligence Agency. I’ve been keeping an eye on you these past months.”

The card had a picture of the earth pony wearing an American pant suit placed on the left side above her name. The seal of the CIA was placed on the right side, above a bar code.

“You’re a spook?!” Melissa yelled, “You’re a motherfucking CIA spookand you didn’t tell me?!”

“I’m really, really sorry, ma’am!” Berry stammered, “It was my job! You know how The Company is!”

“Oh I sure as fuck know what the goddamn CIA is like you motherfucker!” Melissa snarled, and lunged at her, “I’m gonna beat the shit--!”

Ceres managed to grab her left arm before she fell off the bed, and she tottered on the edge for a second. Pain arced through her body, and the automated IV machine began beeping rapidly, several valves hissing. Berry helped push her back into bed.

Melissa leaned back, her eyes flicking around weakly. She moaned softly, her leg and arm going somewhat numb.

Struggling to keep one eye open, she gestured with her left arm, “Man, what is this stuff? It’s great!”

“Ma’am? You alright?” Ceres asked.

Melissa’s head raised weakly, “Wha…?”

Her eyes caught sight of Strike Berry’s white coat, and her mental train went back on the track, “Now I know why you have the name of a shitty heavy metal band…”

“Yeah, dad was the biggest metal-head on the Chesapeake Bay…” Strike Berry mumbled.

“Oh, so you’re a chimera too? Would’ve helped to have known that!”

Strike Berry grimaced, for the first time somewhat mad, “Look, Melissa, did you think the Alliance didn’t know about you? How do you think they trusted you so easily on the threat to the planet? You run one of the biggest companies in Equestria, not to mention, advancing their technology a ton! We had to keep an eye on it!”

“Oh, so you could afford to keep an eye on us, but not tell us that we weren’t the only two humans on the planet!?”

Ceres glared at Strike Berry, “What?! I mean, I get the need for secrecy, but...what?!”

Berry’s eyebrows snapped together, “Corporal, you know the policy!”

“Yes, I do! I mean, I know we had spies, but...I thought maybe you missed them or something! But we knew?!”

“Do you have any idea what you put us through?!” Melissa roared, “Andrew and I?! We were alone! We actually thought for a bit we could be the last humans alive! Why, why, why would you lie to us?! You could have helped us! You...you…”

The automated dispenser activated again, and she simmered down some.

Strike Berry found a chair and climbed up on it, “Look, Melissa…” she furrowed her brow at Ceres, “...and uh, Corporal...up until the other day, we had 13 million people to keep secret. The populations of the other countries on this continent are at best three to five times that number. We can’t match them for numbers or for industrial output, we can only beat them in terms of science. We couldn’t risk breaking secrecy. Not even for two actual humans, and especially not once you got famous. If we tried to retrieve you, you would be missed, and we could be found out. If we even told you, there was an increased risk we’d be discovered. I’m sorry, Melissa. This wasn’t my choice. It’s been Alliance policy since its founding.”

Melissa took a deep breath. Her shoulders slumped, and she leaned back.

“Motherfuckers…” she muttered under her breath.

She rubbed her face, trying to wipe away some tears again, “Fuck me. I understand why you did it...but...Cthulhu’s left testicle, I’m mad.”

“I know, Melissa. I know…” Strike Berry looked down at the ground, her eyes twinkling.

“Jesus christ, the things our country does…” Ceres moaned.

“Don’t get me started on that!” Melissa said, pointing at him, almost drunkenly, “You missed the bullshit big brother nonsense known as the Patriot Act, the nosy and obnoxious NSA, and the pushy creeps who love to watch footage of people using the bathroom also known as the CIA.”

“We don’t like to watch people using the bathroom!” Berry said indignantly.

“Ah, but you do have footage of it, don’t you? I rest my case.”

Melissa cast her eyes downward, and was silent for a minute. “What are you even doing here, Strike?”

Strike Berry tapped her hooves together nervously, “Uh...so I mentioned that my word is part of why they trusted you, right?”

“Right…”

“They want me to sit in on your debriefing.”

Melissa’s eyes widened. The IV machine beeped again.

She slumped back. “Oh shit.”

Ceres furrowed his brow, “What’s the problem?”

“Melissa, from what I’m told, you lied to superior officers, and/or concealed information.”

The sergeant cast a sideways glance at Ceres. To her surprise, he was still glaring at Strike Berry. It seemed he took Semper Fidelis seriously.

Melissa put up her hands, and began speaking, “Okay, now let me explain. You have to believe me, this was extenuating circumstances. You see…”

Chapter 23

Within two days after the Battle of Canterlot had ended, electricity and water had been restored to a large portion of the city, and the monarchs declared it to be a day of celebrations. The castle was still intact, and they had all the preparations for a massive royal wedding planned, why let all of it go to waste?

Less emphasis was placed on the wedding by this point of course. Once the ceremony was out of the way, one could easily have mistaken the resulting party to be mardi gras.

The Royal Gardens were the primary area of the wedding guests, those who weren’t in the hospital and had enough rags to throw together to technically qualify as formal attire partying like crazy. The normal guest list was there of course, with the addition of Alliance diplomats and officers.

The ponies accepted the griffins, hippogriffs, dragons, or humans into the party with gusto. Any animosity held could be forgotten for just this one night, at the very least.

The various members of the Mane Six and their allies were scattered around the party, participating in the festivities.

Rarity and Spike in particular were standing in one area of tables, arguing about something and nervously looking at the orange dragon in a dress uniform sitting nearby. Vaughn was sitting at a table alone, a glass of clear liquid before him. He was the picture of calm, occasionally sipping from his drink as he peered intently at the pocket-sized book in his claw.

“Oh, Spike, he probably won’t bite you! He’s very well-mannered from what I recall. He saved your life!”

“Yeah...but he’s still a dragon! I don’t know if he’s anything like the ones I’ve met!”

“I hardly think Melissa --Melissa, Spike!-- would trust him with her life if he were like those dastardly youngsters. Just go and talk to him! Say ‘thank you for saving my life, my name is Spike’.”

Spike tugged at the collar of his suit, and slowly edged his way closer to the sergeant. He tried to stay out of the stallion’s peripheral vision until he could work up the nerve.

Vaughn looked so much smaller out of his BDUs and equipment, his bulk almost that of a normal human’s. He had a pocket-sized book in his claw, and his eyes were peering intently at it. No one stood nearby, not even close to the table, as if a perimeter had formed around him. He looked utterly unapproachable. It reminded Spike of when Twilight was deep in a new book and in the library. Woe betide anyone who tried to interrupt her in her greatest place of happiness.

Vaughn’s eyes darted upwards to peer at Spike, and the purple dragon flinched. How had he spotted him?

Vaughn blinked several times, his eyes locked with Spike’s. His expression was the same as it was when he’d been looking at the book, neutral, calm. It was the same as it was the whole evening. There was something in his eyes though.

His shoulders tensed. He glanced around at the crowd rapidly in an odd manner. His claw strayed to his side.

Spike didn’t know what was up. He cleared his throat, and walked forward.

The dragon sergeant’s hand went back onto the table, opening and closing. He looked at it curiously, then down at Spike.

He stopped looking around, but it was almost as if he grew even more tense.

Fireworks launched into the distance, making several soldiers amongst the party guests flinch.

Spike clambered up onto the chair opposite him, and gave a little wave, “Uh...hi! I’m Spike.”

Vaughn nodded, “Yes. I know who you are. I’m Sergeant Vaughn, United States Marine Corps.”

He glanced around again, “Do you need something?”

“Who? Me?” Spike stuttered, “Uh...uh…”

He glanced back at Rarity, who gestured toward the sergeant frantically.

Looking back, Spike was surprised to see Vaughn’s eyes become suspicious. He peered around again, unable to see Rarity.

“Spike, are you under duress?”

“‘Duress’?” Spike asked, “huh?”

“Is someone forcing you to speak to me? Are you in danger?”

Spike was bewildered, “What? No! No! I’m fine! I--I--”

Vaughn’s stoney expression broke, and he became nervous, “Oh...da--darn. I’m sorry, kid. I’m...look, I’m a soldier, I--”

He clapped his book shut, his face reddening, “Um...look, I’m sorry. I’ll--”

Spike was staring slack-jawed at this dragon before him. This stallion two or three times his size, a brave soldier who had saved him from a bunch of alien monsters without fear.

And he was stuttering like Twilight or Spike himself.

They had more in common than they thought. Saving the world seemed to be wildly different from social situations in human culture just like it was in pony culture.

“No, it’s okay, nothing’s wrong!” Spike said, waving his claws, “Sorry! Sorry! I--I just...thank you for saving me!”

Vaughn tilted his head, “Huh?”

“I wanted to thank you for saving me. You saved me a few days ago during the battle. I never got to talk to you. I haven’t met any dragons beside…” Spike’s nose wrinkled, “Well, that’s not important. Uh…”

Vaughn’s cool expression changed, to one of mild uncertainty, “You’re welcome.”

“Uh...where are you from?”

“New Philadelphia, New Texas.”

Spike blinked, “You’re...you’re not from the dragon lands?”

“Nope.”

“Is that why you don’t have wings?”

Vaughn twitched. “Birth defect. My grandfather was human.”

Spike looked at him doubtfully, “How does that work?”

Vaughn flushed, and looked off to the side, “Oh, jeez…”

Rarity walked over, turning her charm on to full, “Oh, hello Spike! How are you and the sergeant getting along?”

“Fine, I think.” Spike said.

Vaughn’s nervousness diminished somewhat, “Hello, miss Rarity. How are you?”

“Very well, thank you,” Rarity smiled, looking him up and down, “That is a very dapper outfit, Sergeant Vaughn. Tell me, who is your designer?”

Vaughn glanced down, “I don’t know, actually. This is just a standard-issue dress uniform.”

“Your people have very interesting designs and fabrics. What’s your fashion industry like?”

“I wouldn’t know much...we’ve got a lot of fabrics that can be made back on Earth, though we don’t have anywhere near the manufacturing capabilities of what home must have.”

Spike raised his eyebrows. He thinks of Earth as home?

Rarity’s expression shifted at Vaughn’s relatively limited responses. “Do you know what plans your people have, now that they’re out in the open?”

“Trade and diplomacy, obviously,” Vaughn said, “Probably some immigration both ways, but not much at first.”

Rarity blinked. He was just repeating what the ambassador said. Such a reserved being...he was odd alright.

Perhaps that’s why he got along with Melissa, she mused with a small smile.

“Sergeant, how did you and Melissa meet? You seemed to be good friends--at least, what little I saw of you two.”

Vaughn sipped from his glass, “She and Twilight were assigned my squad. Both of them are good at what they do. I mean, they saved the planet.”

“Oh we all do such things, but what’s your relationship with Melissa?”

Vaughn peered at her, blinking, “What do you mean?”

The sergeant didn’t catch on, but Spike did, and immediately tried swerving the conversation, “So uh, Vaughn...you like gems?”

Still oblivious, Vaughn nodded, “Sure. I put red ones on pizza, with pepperoni.”

Spike nodded, jabbing at Rarity under the table. She pouted slightly, and nudged him back.

Across the party, Andrew Shepherd, wearing his normal clothes, was sitting at a table trying to relearn how to breath without hurting himself. He still had a bandage around his head, and around his chest.

Fluttershy sat nearby, and became alarmed when he winced, “Are you alright? Do you need anything?”

“No, I’m fine,” he grunted, “I’ll breathe on the weekend.”

Across the air had been music of various types, mostly live performance stuff and some relatively calm dance music.

As the latest song ended, there was a static-washed sound that momentarily drowned out the crowd.

A moment later, there was a burst of sound that quickly reverted to words, “It’s been a long road, getting from there to here…”

“Faith of the Heart?” Andrew muttered in surprise, then realization dawned on him.

Getting to his feet, and groaning with the exertion, Andrew stumbled a bit. Fluttershy hovered over, “What, what is it?”

“Help me out here!” he grunted, walking forward and wincing.

“Don’t hurt yourself!” Fluttershy said urgently, “What do you need?”

“She’s back.”

On the opposite end of the party, wearing their dress uniforms as best they could, Ceres and Melissa departed from DJ Vinyl Scratch’s station, where a little red MP3 player had been left.

An earth pony with a dark coat, dark mane, and wielding a cello, standing with the live band, was glaring daggers at their backs, then to the DJ.

Melissa looked back and smiled a little as Vinyl returned the glare with a shrug and a smirk, and started cackling.

She looked forward and sighed. Both hands were white-knuckled trying to hold onto the walker, every instinct telling her to lean on her legs.

Ceres glanced up at her, walking along with his one crutch and making better progress, “You okay, Sergeant?”

“You lucky bastard with your four legs and your wings…”

“I’ll take that as a no...”

Ceres limped alongside Melissa, cursing his own injury but being more cautious of her.

The griffin snuck a glance up at her. He’d respected her at first as a fellow soldier, and an NCO, then as someone he might like to get to know. She certainly responded better to his wisecracks than Vaughn did, and didn’t seem to care that he had feathers instead of skin. And he respected anyone who grabs a helmet and an M16 then jumps into a firefight.

Ceres’ commanders had always complained he was an annoyance, but admitted his loyalty was unshakable. He’d follow superiors he respected into hell and back.

However, after what he’d heard in that debriefing, all the adventures she’d had on this world before they’d met, he wondered what kind of person she really was. What kind of person is able to hold up under all that stress and torment? Along with hiding whatever it was they’d told her to be quiet about?

Someone to admire, in some respects at least. Maybe worth a date or two even...

Ceres caught himself. Maybe someone like that. Doesn’t have to be the sergeant.

On the edge of the party, dancing the night away in their own little way, Melissa spotted the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Despite her injuries, and the walker, she still managed to make it quite close to them without being spotted.

The other two eventually noticed her approach, while Scootaloo did not. She tapped the little filly on the head, “Scoots, your scooter is being towed!”

Scootaloo spun around in confusion, then her face lit up.

“Melissa!” They cried, louder than cannon fire, and immediately set about trying to hug her.
“Whoa, whoa, careful!” Ceres said, limping around to catch Scootaloo by the scruff of the neck to keep her from attacking right Melissa’s leg.
Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle settled for embracing the other half of her lower body.
“Not too tight, not too tight!” she said happily, leaning down as best she could to give them partial embraces with her limited mobility, “I’ve got quite a few injuries.”

Scootaloo was still struggling in Ceres’ grip, “Hey, put me down!”

The griffin set her down, “Sorry, kids. Doctor’s orders say not to jump on Aunt Foster’s leg.”

The fillies went wide-eyed, “Why not?”

“Can you still walk?” Sweetie Belle asked, reaching out to try and touch the gel on her knee. Ceres grabbed her hoof and pulled it back.

“What happened anyway?” Apple Bloom asked.

“Who are you?” Scootaloo asked, looking at Ceres.

“I’m her babysitter, unfortunately.” Ceres sighed.

Melissa reached down and ruffled Scootaloo’s hair, “He’s alright, Scoots, he’s with me.”

“But what happened?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“You look like Granny Smith after her hip surgery…” Apple Bloom muttered nervously.

“Well girls, I went through a war. You knew that probably, but I kinda took a grenade to half my body and also broke a few things.”

“Tell us the story!” Scootaloo demanded, “We didn’t get to see any of the battle!”

“Now’s probably not the best time, with all the noise and stuff, but I can certainly tell you the gritty details later.”

“Aw…” they collectively sighed.

“But are you okay?” Sweetie Belle asked, “Like...will you be able to walk properly again?”

“Oh yeah, this is just until I heal. My knee’s still regrowing and stuff.”

“So who are you?” Apple Bloom asked Ceres, “Whaddya mean, ‘babysitter’?”

“I’ve never seen a griffin in real life!” Sweetie Belle commented, “ Where are you from? What’s Griffonstone like?”
“Are you with the humans?” Scootaloo asked, pointing to his dress uniform.

They continued to overwhelm the poor marine with questions, and Melissa started laughing, “Girls, calm down! You’re killing the poor guy! We can only be here for an hour or so, so what say we schedule something later for us to talk, and he can answer all your questions and I can tell you how I ended up with a walker?”
Ceres rubbed his beak, muttering incoherently.

The Crusaders were somewhat disappointed, but after some negotiation agreed to the arrangement.

“Alright, roll out, Ceres!”

“Yes ma’am…” the griffin muttered.

Once the foals were gone, he hissed, “Sergeant, I am not an entertainer!”

Melissa smirked, “Ceres, they’re good kids. They’ll just ask a few questions.”

“A few?”

“Okay a lot. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine, they’re not monsters, if that’s what you think. You might like them if you got to know them.”

“Last time someone said that I…” he hesitated, the cliche not exactly working for him, “Wait, no, she was nice...ugh, fine, I’ll give them a try later.”

“Good man.”

They continued walking through the party, looking for their comrades.

A rainbow blur suddenly shot past them, then immediately returned.

“Melissa?” Rainbow Dash said in relieved surprise, “You’re okay!”

She eyed the walker, “...I think. Where have you been? Last time we saw you you were passed out in a stretcher!”

Melissa’s face lit up, and she chuckled, “No spoilers. I’ll tell it to everyone, once we find them all. I don’t want to have to explain it all at once. Have you seen Twilight, or Andrew, or Sergeant Vaughn?”

Even more suddenly as Dash had appeared, out of nowhere erupted Pinkie Pie. “You need help finding the rest of the gang?”

Ceres shrieked in surprise, jumping up several meters in the air and flapping there, while and Melissa nearly fell backwards.

“Thundering typhoons, Pinkie! I have a cracked rib and enough trouble breathing as it is! Don’t give me a heart attack!”

Pinkie’s eyes went wide, “Oh, I’m so sorry! Did I hurt you or anything, I--”

“How the hell did she do that?” Ceres demanded, trying to figure out how to land without aggravating his wound.

“Don’t ask, pal,” Rainbow Dash said, “It’s just Pinkie.”

Melissa waved a hand, “No, Pinkie, I’m fine, you just have gotta stop scaring me like that! I’m paranoid enough as it is!”

“Yeah, you nearly broke my muzzle that one time!” Rainbow said with a snort.

“Who sneaks up on someone while they’re asleep?!”

“I was making sure you weren’t dead, you weren’t waking up!”

Pinkie Pie, with one last reassurance from Melissa, went off to look for the others.

Rainbow Dash watched the corporal making a gentler landing than if he was trying to land a Lunar Excursion Module, and hovered over him, inspecting his wings, “So...how fast can you fly? How high do you go? I'll race you!”

Ceres looked up at her with a marginal amount if shock and confusion, “look here, fly girl, I'm in the infantry for a reason! I don't like to fly! Least not outside a plane!”

Dash stared at him, “what are you, nuts? What the hay else do you do with those chicken wings of yours?!“They're wings, jarhead, how-- I don't --”

“Look, I hover, I fly a little,” Ceres replied, making a small gesture with his index talon and thumb, “but I prefer walking! Or driving!”

“Celestia's shining golden flank, I can't believe I found a marine who didn’t like flying more than Fluttershy…” Dash moaned, smacking her face with her hoof.

“Hey Dashie,” Melissa called out, “you see these hands?” she gestured to make as if she was gripping circular objects with them, “These were evolved for climbing trees, but ya don’t see me doing that!”

“Yeah I do! You were stringing up telegraph wires that time! And then there was--”

“Okay, not the point, but you get what I’m saying? I didn’t used to climb trees! Same principle!”

“But it’s flying!” Dash moaned, “Why are marines alike all over?”

“Hey, hey, hey!” Melissa said with a grin, “We can all agree...at least he’s not navy.”

All three shuddered.

Dash gestured, “C’mon, I think I saw the sarge over this way.”

Melissa put a hand down to stop Ceres from taking off, even as he flapped his wings and growled menacingly, “Easy, man. She’s air force, they just don’t understand all us ground pounders.”

They made their way to the table where Vaughn, Spike, and Rarity were sitting.

The ivory-coat mare immediately hopped off her seat and rushed over, “Melissa!” Rarity cried, trotting forward to try and embrace her.

“Don’t hug me too hard!” Melissa held out a hand, “Cracked rib and lots of bruising!”

“Darling, are you alright?

“Yes, I’m fine, I’m fine, just be careful!”

Sergeant Vaughn stood up as well, looking the pair over, ““Foster, Ceres! Good to see you!”

He eyed Melissa’s walker, “Glad to see you’re in one piece, Foster. My soldier keeping a good eye on you?”

Melissa grinned, “He’s doing great. Except he won’t let me drink.”

“Ma’am, you know what the docs said--!”

Melissa chuckled, “I’m kidding, Ceres, geez! Mostly. I don’t actually know if my inhibitions will stay together…” she seemed to drift off for a moment, “...what was I saying?”

Ceres snickered, “She’s got a lot of painkillers. And I’m fine too, by the way, thanks for asking.”

“She has much worse injuries, and when would you admit you weren’t fine?”

The griffin faked a grimace, “I’ll give you that one.”

“How many did you lose, Vaughn?” Melissa asked.

“How many did we lose, you mean?” Vaughn scratched his chin, and scowled, “Still only three KIA, thank god. We found two of our MIAs. Private Jansen and Corporal Shephard we found in those pods--”

“Jansen? That griffin who got dragged off at the strongpoint?” Melissa asked.

Vaughn nodded, “They’re a little freaked out, and Shephard was banged up. PFC Franklin and Lance Corporal Demeter are still missing.”

“Franklin?” Ceres cursed, and kicked at the ground.

“They're the two who you-- who we lost in the wedding, right?”

“Yeah. There’s a bunch of MIAs like that. People who were captured and never found. Not proper missing-- some were confirmed captured and just...vanished.”

“Hell. That’s a mystery I’d like to puzzle out.”

Eyeing their bandages and accomodations, Spike slipped off his chair and walked over, “So what did happen to you, Melissa?”

Melissa glanced down at the dragon, “Well Spike, a grenade exploded near me, and send tiny shards of metal into my leg and arm. The shards of metal in my leg shattered my knee. I also got beaten up by the Changeling queen, and may have broken a rib or two.”

Rarity gasped, then became confused. “But...you still have the leg.”

Spike smiled, “Oh, I get it! Your people can replace them! Is that why you still have it?”

“Replacing a knee?” Rainbow Dash asked, befuddled, “How’s that possible?

“Wasn’t my people exactly,” Melissa said, “Had to get help from the Changeling medical facility.”

“Changelings? How could they help?” Rarity asked. All present noted a brief inferno in her eyes.

“Not the main force,” Vaughn said quickly, “We just captured some of their medical personnel. They surrendered and treated our soldiers in exchange for safety from their people, and to be able to help their own.”

“Seems like a good deal,” Spike said, “Though are you sure you can trust them?”

“If my people had replaced this knee, I would be forced into a desk job or retirement,” Melissa said, “Now that the Changelings replaced it, it’ll just be a bit before I can use it and then I’ll be back to normal.”

“Are you certain? There’s no magic trick or anything associated with such a...bargain?” Rarity asked, peering at the knee suspiciously.

Melissa bent down slightly to get into Rarity’s view, “A, it’s science, not magic this time, and they had guns on the docs the whole time, and B, why aren’t you more surprised by the concept of replacing a knee?”

“I am!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed, “Seriously, how can you replace a knee?”

“Well, your knee is a bone, and you can replace those--”

“But...but…” Dash sputtered, looking at one of her hind legs for a moment, “Like...how does it not fall apart when you pull it out? How--”

Melissa laughed, “Dash, I’m not a surgeon. Now can I sit down? My everything is killing me.”

Pulling out a chair, Melissa tried to figure out how to sit down, and nearly fell over. Before either pony could interfere, Ceres and Vaughn were there to help.

peered at the book placed on the table, “Hey, is that…?”

“Huh? Oh, Star Trek Enterprise: Broken Bow. Picked it up at one of the book stores. One of your collection, right? What do you think?”

“You like Star Trek?” Melissa breathed, her knuckles white.

“Yeah. I haven’t gotten too far into the book. What’s the show like?”

“Kirk or Picard?”

Vaughn blinked, “Uh...I’m kind of a middle-of-the-road kinda guy on that subject. They both have their strengths and weaknesses--”

He trailed off, seeing the largest grin on Melissa’s face, “...what?”

“Nothing. I’m more Kirk, but I can see the appeal of Picard, and his meme faces.”

“And you have to admit that Patrick Stewart’s a great actor even when it sounds like the writers fell asleep on their keyboards.”

“What’re your thoughts on season 1 of TNG? Most of their worst episodes are in there. That one racist piece of shit, y’know, planet of black people, was episode three!”

“Well, I mean they hit their stride eventually. They did have some good ones there as well. I liked The Last Outpost and The Battle. Say, how much longer did the show last? How many more series were there?”

“Dude, you missed a bunch of shows, Enterprise, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine--oh, remind me to show you Babylon 5 too.”

Melissa pointed to the air with her right hand, grimacing as she did so, “You hear this? Faith of the Heart? This was the Enterprise theme song, first Star Trek series to actually have one. A lot of people complained about it, but I thought that combined with the visuals, it was really moving.”

“What more did they do with the Borg? And Q? I really enjoyed those episodes.”

The other four were observing the encounter as though they were at a zoo.

Ceres laughed a little, face in his talons, “Man, she got the sergeant going on Star Trek. He’s the ultimate Trekkie--Star Trek fan I mean.”

Rainbow Dash smirked, “Oh, I bet she can beat him as the bigger fan!”

Melissa pulled out her phone and angled it toward the dragon, “Dude! In upstate New York, I went to this recreation of the Star Trek Original Series set in Ticonderoga. Some Elvis impersonator spent fifteen years making an absolutely perfect replica! Look, they had the transporter room, Kirk’s quarters, the bridge, obviously…” she pointed at the screen, “There’s me in Kirk’s chair. That was awesome.”

“Oh, I am so jealous!”

“Don’t be so sure.” Ceres countered to Dash, “Wait for it…”

“The medical bay? Nice. You know those computer displays they have there? I heard some medical company got really mad at Gene Roddenberry, because they thought someone had leaked their design even though they totally didn’t.”

“Aw, that’s cool! And ridiculous! I mean, look at all that stuff, it’s just common sense! Respiration, pulse, temperature...what else would you include?”

“There we go,” Ceres hissed happily.

Rarity smiled, and nudged Spike. He nudged her back, making a face.

They continued watching the two soldiers acting as two geeks, and Dash and Ceres started placing bets on who would be the bigger fan. It’s what friends do, right?

Or at least two bored enlisted.

The night wore on, and they still awaited the rest of the group.

Sergeant Vaughn looked around, hoping to spot the others. He didn’t see them, but he saw something else.

“Is that...Admiral Curtis, dancing with Queen Luna?”

The others looked where the dragon was looking. Melissa squinted, “I think it is! Didn’t think she was his type...”

“Many a stallion --and a few mares-- are going to become quite upset.” Rarity commented.

“Well, they may just be dancing together.” Vaughn pointed out.

“Wait a minute,” Melissa said, “isn’t the dude married?”

Ceres shook his head, “Nah, not even close. He’s got a pretty messed up love life. Dumped one girlfriend, and the other two dumped him for each other.”

“Ooh, poor guy.”

“It gets better. The first two were human, but the third was a griffin.”

“Man, he put them off their gender and species? Woof.”

“He’s the only bachelor from the Chesapeake Bay’s original command staff. Everyone else has paired off, but he hasn’t had much luck. Not for lack of female, or male, suitors though. But would you date any of the fans who only know you from your exploits and TV?”

“Corporal, how do you know all this?” Vaughn asked.

Ceres winced, and flushed a little, “Uh…scuttlebutt?”

“Ceres…”

Both sergeants were now looking at him.

“...Celebrity gossip magazines.” he mumbled, putting his talons together nervously.

“Huh. Well, that explains some things...” Vaughn said.

Melissa laughed a little, “Oh, you should talk to my friend Rarity!”

She turned, “Hey Rar’! I think you and the corporal here have some common interests!”

Rarity looked at Ceres with pleasant surprise, “Really? Darling, we should have a conversation about this!”

Ceres was flushing heavily, “Um...sure, miss.”

Spike and Rainbow Dash joined in the conversation, mostly for the teasing but secretly for the gossip as most people who knew them could guess.

Vaughn turned his eyes back toward the admiral and Luna, “You think they might get together?”

“Probably not,” Melissa replied, This might be a courtesy thing, public relations. I don’t think Luna’s interested in anyone yet.”

“Why would an admiral’s love life be in celebrity gossip magazines?”

“Hestons and officers of significant arrivals are always pretty famous. Curtis is a bit of a superstar admiral.”

Melissa passed a glance at the rest of the group, then jerked her head away, “Hey, Vaughn, can I talk to you for a second? In private?”

The marine glanced at the others as well, “Sure.”

He reached out a claw to help her up, but Melissa hopped onto her good leg, and leaned on the walker.

They moved just a small distance from the rest of the group just out of earshot. The part of the garden they were at had a good view of parts of the city. Fireworks were flying, and the larger ones made the pair flinch.

Vaughn shivered a little, “Not going to get used to that again for a while.”

“I heard it was worse for the guys from Bravo and Charlie companies. Bloody Metal Storm.”

“I’ve gotta look that stuff up…” Vaughn removed his dress uniform cap, scratching his blue head crest, “What was it you wanted to talk about?”

Melissa avoided his gaze, “Look, Vaughn...we’re friends, right?”

“Sure. Only known you for a week, but hey…”

The combat engineer scratched her leg, “Look man...I...you remember my argument with Andrew? About the secret plan I had?”

“Sure.”

“And you said you'd go with it?”

“Yep. I recall I also said for you not to do this again.”

“I won't, I won't...but...man, I don't know how to tell you this. Part of my plan was leading your squad into that ambush and getting us all captured.”

Vaughn's eyebrows raised, “really?”

“Yes... I didn't think anyone would get hurt…I just… I’m sorry it had to be your team.”

Vaughn looked away for a long time. “Sergeant, you know you're the only one with an injury from that incident, right?”

“Yeah…”

“Did you plan on any of us dying?”

“No…”

He scratched the top of his head, at one of his fins, “okay... Foster, I don't like what you did. I'm mad as hell. You put my people's lives at risk without telling them what they were doing.” his voice took on a hint of a growl, and one hand curled into a fist.

“I know, I'm sorry. It had to be done though. There was no other way.”

Vaughn nodded, “the mission comes first. I know that, but...I mean you got us all out alive, and mostly in one piece, but you put all of us at risk. Including yourself.”

Melissa cast her eyes downward, “I'm sorry, Vaughn, I'm so sorry. I know you care for your guys, so do I. This...I had to save the planet! It was either your squad, or the entire planet!” Her voice raised slightly, and she almost whimpered, “That kinetic bombardment system could have destroyed us all. I fucking hate those things. Death from above and we can't hit back. Vaughn, it was our only chance! If we didn't stop that weapon, it would destroy us. Vaughn, do you know what else I had to blow up? That damn thing's FTL drive-- Faster Than--”

“I know what it means.”

She snarled, anger overtaking her regret, “Good for you. I had to destroy that too, to keep them from getting reinforcements. That ship was my only way home, Sergeant! It was our only way back to Earth! That ship is now stuck here like the rest of us! I just gave up everything! I did my best to save your squad, man, but I had to make a choice! The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few!”

She grimaced, and looked down again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry it was you.”

Vaughn looked at her, pinned to a walker, her wrist mangled, and barely able to breathe.

“Foster...Melissa, it’s alright. You’ve been punished enough, by the looks of it. You didn’t just send us in there, you went in there with us. You were willing to take the risk. And you were pretty much the only one who got affected.”

They both chuckled a little at that.

“I don’t think there’s anything I can do to you that would make me feel better. I trust most people I’ve been in a firefight with. So, try not to get us into a mess like this again, and I won’t break anything of yours.”

Melissa rubbed the bridge of her nose, and laughed, “Thanks, Bedwyr.”

“I know it’s what I said last time, but it still stands. I mean we were talking about the same thing…”

“Yeah, I get it. Thanks.”

Awkwardly, they stood/sat there.

“You think Ceres has a chance with Ms. Rarity?”

“Oh, not a chance in hell. Though I doubt either of them are thinking romance.”

They made their way back to the table, and minutes later, the rest of the group arrived. Andrew, Fluttershy, Twilight, and Applejack, all lead by Pinkie Pie bouncing along.

“Melissa! You’re okay!” Twilight exclaimed, and trotted forward to embrace her.
“Hey, Twilight,” Melissa grinned, and embraced her with one arm, “I’m okay. I can still walk, just need a few months to heal.”
Fluttershy, Pinkie, and Applejack joined in the hug, offering their own words of thankfulness.

Andrew, still holding his chest, walked forward a bit. Melissa looked up and nodded, “Andrew.”

“Melissa. How ya doing?”

She made a so-so gesture with her right hand, “Doing alright. Using a walker sucks.”

Andrew squinted at the motion, “Wait, didn’t you get shrapnel in…”

She started wiggling her right fingers, “I did,” she grinned, “Problem?”

“I…”

The others looked at the motion, and Vaughn was alarmed, “Foster, don’t hurt yourself!”

Still grinning, Melissa winced a little, “Yeah, probably shouldn’t do that too much. Still, I still have my hands! I still have my job!”

“But how?” Fluttershy asked, “Your wrist was a wreck!”

Melissa pulled her right sleeve up. Where several days ago there had been torn skin and blood along an open gash was instead another gel-like sponge...thing, mounted to a plastic rig wrapped around her forearm.

She pointed, “They freaking regrew some of my skin, used a laser to help get some of the shrapnel out, and then fixed some of the muscles while they were at it.”

Pulling up her left pant leg, she pointed at a sealed gash, “Check it out, the bugs don’t use stitches anymore! Back home I saw some versions of this, Zip Skin Closure System. I don’t need someone to help me remove it, and I can just peel it off in a few weeks!”
Pointing at her right leg, she lifted it and bent the knee a bit., “They pulled a ton of junk out of here too. This gel stuff is supposed to help heal the muscles in there. The scars from that velociraptor attack will be gone! Oh, and it turns out my knee was shattered.”

All the new arrivals gaped at her.

“Oh yeah. Well, partially at least. This new thing is some sort of biodegradable ceramic. They implant it into where my knee used to be, it forms a sort of scaffolding for osteoblast cells to grow on. It’ll act like a normal knee, and over time the osteoclast cells will eat it like they do when they maintain your normal bones, and replace it with new bone material. So then it’ll be fully integrated.”

“But...wait, will you be able to do your job?” Andrew asked.

“I can’t believe you even still have the leg!” Fluttershy said. She stepped forward, peering at the knee, “The Changelings may be scary, but...my word, they can do wonders! Any soldier in our military who takes such an injury is lucky to even still have their leg!”

“It’ll be just like a bad break instead of knee replacement surgery. I’ll be fine and back to work, I just need a few months of physical therapy.”

Melissa glanced at the griffin corporal, “He got some of this stuff too.”

Ceres turned to show his hind lion leg. He didn’t have a full brace as Melissa did, just one small rig around the lower part and the bullet wound, “They got that ceramic for my leg too. I can limp on it, and it didn’t have as bad damage…”
Andrew scratched his head, looking at Melissa, “So I get a concussion and a ton of bruises, and all I get is a regular old hospital. You just happen to be closer to the queen so you get all the special treatment?”

“Well I’m sorry for being around when some jackass starts hucking grenades around! Anyway, you got the envy of the alien commander, remember?”

“What?” Ceres demanded, “What on earth does that mean?”

Vaughn half-smiled, “I’m sure there’s a story, right?”

“It means the bitch who broke my rib was hitting on him.” Melissa said.

Andrew smiled half-heartedly, then narrowed his gaze at Melissa. “We need to talk. You, me, the group.”

“You want us to go?” Vaughn asked, gesturing to himself and Ceres.

Andrew nodded.

“Sure. We’ll see you. Mr Shepherd, Ms. Sparkle, Melissa...” he offered a nod.

“See you later, man!”

Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie noticed Melissa watching Vaughn go. They smiled at one another mischievously.

“Is someone smitten?” Rarity smirked, nudging Melissa’s arm.

Melissa’s cheeks burned, and she hissed, “He’s just a friend! I don’t even know if it would be legal to have a relationship, you fucking crack shippers!”

“What are you yelling about?” Twilight asked.

Andrew, with a small grin on his face, raised a hand and opened his mouth to reply.

“You’re not even gonna start that sentence if you want to keep that hand.” Melissa said cooly.

He put his hand down, his smile fading. He looked at her with a changing expression, his whole demeanor shifting.

Melissa crossed her arms, eyes locked on his. “What is it?”

“That sergeant. How long have you known him?”

“Literally a week.”

Andrew scowled, “Right. Of course. Okay, Melissa, why’d you lie to us?”

The ponies looked at each other.

“Oh, the spacecraft!” Twilight said helpfully, “You never explained your plan with that!”

“No, that’s not what I--”

”Oh, the ship! We did not hear the details of that!” Rarity said.

“All I saw were a bunch of lights in the sky.” Rainbow Dash muttered, “What kind of space battle is that boring?”

“Wait!” Andrew snapped, immediately regretting doing so, but still mad.

He crossed his arms, and looked at Melissa, “When we were looking through the Sophia’s flight recorder, you recognized the Changeling. Before that, you were acting really weird around Cadence, who turned out to be an alien. I thought you said you came here before the invasion.”

Melissa put a hand to her chin, looking off to the side, “I did get here before the invasion, but I can't tell you how I know. My brain is a strategic resource. You'll just have to trust me.”

“Trust you?” Andrew snapped, “Melissa, how can we trust you again? How can I trust you again? After all this?”

“Hey, we got out fine, didn’t we?! Everything went according to plan!”

“Fine?! Plan?!” Andrew spluttered, “Christ, look at you, you’re using a walker!”

Melissa chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

“It was the knee replacement part I didn’t expect. The cracked rib, dislocated shoulder, and other shit I was expecting. But nobody expects the Shrapnel Inquisition!”

Andrew goggled at her, “...What?”

“It was part of my plan.”

“What was your plan, Melissa? Operation Let's-Nearly-Get-Everyone-Killed 32?!”

“No! It didn't have a name!” She sighed, “alright, I explained this to my superiors already.”

Glancing around, she sat back in her chair, “So Andrew reminded me the Sophia existed. Then I remembered the Weaver existed-- that’s the Starfury up there. It was powered down, but since the crew thought they’d be able to contact it, I figured I’d be able to as well. They said something about remote piloting, so I also figured that the Sophia could contact it. Since it was powered down, the Changelings wouldn’t be able to pick it up, at least not until it was right on top of them. I played a lot of Kerbal Space Program, so I knew how to make an orbital intercept with a keyboard. Then I figured out how to designate targets, threw some advanced Phoenix missiles at em, bing bang boom. So my plan was only partly faked. I meant to get to the Sophia, I just didn’t need its weapons. I needed the communications array.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you lied to not just us, but your superiors,” Applejack pointed out.

Melissa grinned, “That was the best part! I lied because I knew the bad guys had agents among us. I was counting on it, in fact.”

“What?” Andrew asked, rubbing his face.

“I knew they had agents in amongst us, didn’t know who, but I knew it.”

“And what good would telling them our plan do?” Andrew demanded.

“Um...that was part of the plan? I let them know what they thought was the real plan. See they didn’t know that I knew they knew, and that way I could manipulate them to my purposes.”

“So what was your idea, Melissa? You got to the ship, and readied the weapons, then what was your plan?” Rarity asked slowly.

“Okay, so the Sophia plan was only partly fake, obviously. However, I knew they had some Earth knowledge, like the Navy specs for the LaWS. They would know--”

“...That you lied, right?” Andrew pointed out, scratching his head.

“No, that’s the best part! They’re a bunch of imperialist dickheads led by a racist X-Files-looking colonialist nightmare bitch, so they wouldn’t assume I was lying...well, some of them would...except one.” She grinned.

Rainbow Dash grinned, “Chrysalis would think you were just stupid!”

Andrew shook his head, “Wait, we know most of this!”

Melissa nodded, “You know her half. You don’t know mine, so let me finish.”

She held up her right arm and tried to extend her index finger, and winced, “One, she thought I was stupid. Two, she has a massive fucking ego. Three, I knew she loved to gloat. So, I knew that if she knew where I was, and thought she had me all figured out, she’d want to capture me to gloat.”

“So what was the point of us?” Rarity asked nervously, “Were you trying to get us captured?’

Melissa winced, and chuckled nervously, “Yeah...sort of. Look, it was the only way to guarantee none of us would die. I needed all you guys to be in the same place as Chrysalis. This way, I’d be able to get Twilight in, and she could free Cadence. So I hid a truth in a lie, then manipulated the bitch who likes to manipulate people, so that we could save the day! I expected to be beaten the crap out of, because that damn bug is that kind of person, I just wasn’t expecting a grenade.”

Andrew rubbed his face, “Melissa, you’re insane.”

“But brilliant, in a way.” Rarity commented.

“Fine. Brilliant but insane.”

“How is this new information?”

“Point there. But why didn’t you tell us?! And you still didn’t answer my question, how did you know about everything with Chrysalis before she showed up? You knew who she was!”

“Whoa there, sugarcube...calm down!” Applejack said, seeing the anger building.

Melissa tapped the side of her head, glaring at Andrew, “Stra-te-gic resource! The enemy has ears everywhere, even with the Changelings gone! I can’t tell you much!”

“What enemies? Dammit Melissa, I can’t trust you anymore! Tell me the truth, how long have you known that sergeant?!”

“What the hell are you getting at, Andrew?! Spit it out!”

He stood up, “I figured it out. It’s the only possibility. Since day 1, you must have been a Terran Alliance agent, or spy. You’ve been with them this whole time! You came here during the invasion, to help them win!”

The ponies were silent, shocked at the accusation.

Melissa looked at all of them, watching them gravitate toward different opinions.

“Huh?” Rainbow and Applejack grunted in unison.

Pinkie Pie blinked, “Why would that be?”

“That’s ridiculous!” Rarity said.

“What are you saying, Andrew?” Twilight asked.

“Think about it, all of you! A perfectly-equipped United States Marine falls into our laps, who just happens to have plenty of knowledge on how to upgrade your technology? Just in time for the aliens to show up? And just happens to know the invasion is coming, and just happens to show up with a massive army to help? Seriously, you managed to convince them you were legit if you weren’t working with them?! You lied to us Melissa! You’ve lied about everything, haven’t you? How could you do this to me, to us?!”

“I...he has a point…” Fluttershy mumbled.

The rest of the ponies were nervous, fidgeting or muttering some half-hearted agreements.

Twilight looked between the two humans, quite nervous.

Melissa was not nervous.

Painfully, awkwardly, she got to her feet, standing on one leg without her walker.

Andrew took a step back, but kept his gaze on her.

“Excuse me?!” she roared, “Do you have any fucking idea how insane that is, you doryphore?!”

She jabbed a finger at him, “For fuck’s sake, you’re a dick! Do you have any idea how ridiculous that is?! Did you pay attention to the news report the other day at all?! They had plenty of spies who were way more secret than I was! If I was a spy, why would I be so obvious? There are millions of ways to do this better that don’t end with me losing a fucking knee! Cthulhu’s bloody tentacles, man, that’s insane!”

“Then how--”

“They were spying on us, you fucking dolt!” Melissa shouted, “One of my board of directors was a spy! She came in the other day, and admitted she was a spook!”

“What?” Rarity demanded, “Who? I’ll throw them out of the company immediately!”

“Oh, don’t fire her…” Melissa huffed, and redirected her rage back at Andrew, “I trusted her, and she was hiding this shit! They knew about us for months, and didn’t tell us because of their damned secrets! They had satellites, they had spooks, they knew about us and didn’t tell us! That’s how they knew I was trustworthy, moron!”

“How can we trust you on this, Melissa?! You’ve lied to us before!”

“No I haven’t! I haven’t actually lied, I just--”

“Andrew!” Twilight roared, loud enough to drown both out.

The rest of the ponies shrank back, and Andrew took a step back. “...Yeah?”

“If you can’t trust her, trust me! She’s not a spy!”

Andrew’s eyes widened, as hers blazed with anger.

“She told me why she...bent the truth. About knowing about the Changelings, about everything. I can’t tell you what she told me, but she’s no spy. I can’t believe you’d think like this! She didn’t know anything about the Terran Alliance, she knew as much as I did! Andrew, I was there!”

“You...you knew? She told you and not me?!”

Melissa put her elbows on the table, and gazed about the table, “Look...I’m sorry. I told you before, I didn’t trust your ability to stand up to interrogation, and you can’t give up things you don’t know. The only reason I told Twilight was because we thought we might drown out on the ice. I told the Brass, and they ordered me not to disclose this information. I don’t have a choice anymore. I understand you’re mad that I didn’t tell you, but that still doesn’t excuse you accusing me of being a fucking spook!”

Andrew sat back down, “I, sorry...but...but…”

Twilight looked at the others, “Do the rest of you understand?”

Rainbow Dash’s jaw tightened, “Yeah. Need-to-know junk. I don’t like it, but...I get it.”

Fluttershy nodded rapidly.

“Not knowing the secret makes it easier to keep the secret!” Pinkie Pie said.

“Matters of national security, of course I understand.” said Rarity matter-of-factly.

“I don’t get why you can’t tell us,” Applejack said, shaking her head, “You know us, we wouldn’t say a thing.”

“You still won’t even tell me!” Andrew grumbled.

Melissa gently beat her head against the table, “Ugh...why can’t you understand it? Do you have any idea what this is doing to me?”

“So why are you doing it?” Andrew demanded.

“You ever heard of the enigma machine? World War II?” Melissa asked.

“Ye...no.”

“During the war, the Germans had a code system called enigma, to protect their communications. The Allies cracked it, but there was a problem. If they used it too much, the Germans would get wind of it, and change the code. So they had to be very careful about what info they gave out.”

She considered adding Dinobot’s speech from Beast Wars, but decided against it.

“If I give out too much of what I know, the rest will become useless. Understand?”

Andrew was silent, his mouth open slightly.

“Oh...oh…”

The table was quiet.

Melissa slumped forward, resting her elbow on the table and putting her hand on her mouth. “The price we pay.for this shit. God damn it…”

“Look, I’m sorry, I just--”

She looked at Andrew, “Man, if I could tell you, I would. I’m using myself up dealing with this shit. I just want it to be over. I want to be able to think again, to breathe freely, but I can’t.”

She looked at her leg, “If the Changelings hadn’t been here, I would be honorably discharged, at least from frontline duty. Would that have been better? Nah, Silverbolt would...or I...uh...”

She rested her head on the table, her eyes half-closed, “Hoo, I feel funny…”

Rarity smiled a little, patting the marine on the head, “Andrew, darling, I hope you understand how rude it was to accuse her of being a spy.”

“Yeah...yeah…”

“Haven’t...haven’t you had conversations like this before?” Fluttershy inquired, shrinking a little as all eyes turned toward her, “I mean...why do you keep doing this to yourselves?”

“It’s not on purpose, Quiet Yellow…” Melissa mumbled, her head still on the table.

Fluttershy was bewildered for a moment, “Was...she talking about me?”

“I didn’t wanna call you Butterball or Butters, one might be offensive and the other’s copyright…”

“We’re not doing it on purpose,” Andrew muttered, “It’s just...I dunno…”

“You kind of keep being really suspicious of her,” Spike pointed out, speaking up for the first time in a while, “And you guys fight every other time you meet. Aren’t you supposed to be friends? Who fights like this?”

Twilight raised an eyebrow, and shook her head slightly.

Andrew sighed, “I know. We drive each other nuts.”

“We’re perfectly aware of this everyone,” Melissa said, somewhat muffled with her head still on the table, “We’re not complete fools.”

“Then why do you keep fighting like this? It’s always one of you has suspicions, another is upset over bottled-up anger, it never ends!” Applejack exclaimed, “Can’t you two just--”

“That’s what humans are like! That’s what you’re like, AJ!” Andrew interrupted, “You and Rarity, you and Rainbow Dash!”

“Friends aren’t people you never get mad at,” Twilight said, “They’re people worth forgiving more than once. We argue all the time, right? Just because these two don’t have the best relationship doesn’t mean--”

“We’re not gonna kill each other.” Andrew said, smiling a little.

Melissa sat up suddenly, “Gah, phasers, full spread!”

“Don’t you mean torpedoes?” Pinkie Pie asked, looking at her like she was crazy, “And don’t you only have twelve?”

Melissa, even in her addled state, managed a confused expression, “Whatever. We’ve been through a ton of shit, and I expect Dr Wolf is gonna make a mint from all this. That’s why we’re at each other’s throats right now!”

“I was stuck in a tunnel for a week!” Andrew said loudly, “I’m surprised I haven’t become Gollum!”

“And, a serious contributing factor to all of this, is the Terran Alliance.” Twilight said.

“Why would that be a problem?” Rarity asked, “I would think it would make them happy!”

“It’s a subconscious problem.They’ve been homesick for almost a year, with no prospect of alleviating it. Then they find humans, and their hopes are raised...but the very fact that they’ve been stuck here for 200 years ruins everything.”

“How?” Fluttershy asked.

“We might end up like Rhysling. That’s what makes it a problem.” Melissa growled, “We’re not just homesick, that’s the problem, we’re scared that we won’t ever go home again. Just like Rhysling.”

“Rise-ling?” Applejack asked.

“Rhysling. Blind Singer of the Spaceways. He’s from an old story. The Green Hills of Earth, by Robert Heinlein.”

She rubbed her nose, and snuffled, “In the story, he...he was a jetman, operating nuclear rockets across the solar system. He flew around for years before he was blinded in a reactor accident. Spent decades singing songs, earning money, becoming a folk hero. The titular song, he started writing on Venus. We rot in the molds of Venus, we retch at her tainted breath…”

She looked up at the sky, the darkness lit by fireworks, and the celebrations of the locals. Far above though, she could still see the stars. The stars that were silent, and distant. She felt so small.

“As an old man, he tried to return home, but...but…”

Her voice shuddered, “He recorded his last rendition of the song after an accident killed the main reactor technician, and he was forced to seal himself in the power room to keep the rocket safe. He never saw Earth. He died of radiation poisoning.”

She closed her eyes, “This isn’t Earth. No matter what we do, it’ll never be Earth.”

Andrew sat up, scratching his head, “Well, yeah...It’s the best we’ve got though, right? I mean, I want to go back as much as you do, but...what if we can’t go back?”

Melissa shook her head, “Andrew, I can’t think like that. I refuse to ‘settle’. This place is great ‘n’ all, but as long as there’s a change Earth is still out there, I refuse to let it go. I...I want to see home again I want...I want to land there at least one last time, I want to see the hills of home again…”

The sergeant rubbed her eyes, then took a deep breath. “‘We pray for one last landing on the globe that gave us birth, let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies and the cool green hills of Earth’.”

“'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.’” Andrew scratched his head, “can't remember much more of the song then that.”

Their futures were secure, for now at least. The survival of humanity on this new world wasn’t in jeopardy from the same threats anymore.

But none would forget their world, somewhere out among the stars above. It was Earth. It was home. Even generations removed, the humans of the Terran Alliance still said “back home” when referring to their origin planet.

It was a relatively unremarkable dot, suspended in a sunbeam, but to its inhabitants, it meant everything to them.

Mid pleasures and palaces though I may roam,

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;

A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there,

Which, seek thro' the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere. Home.

Home! Sweet, sweet home!

There's no place like home.

There's no place like home.

An exile from home, spendor dazzles in vain,

Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again;

The birds singing gaily, that come at my call;

Give me them, with that peace of mind, dearer than all.

Home! Sweet, sweet home!

There's no place like home.

There's no place like home.

To thee, I'll return, overburdened with care,

The heart's dearest solace will smile on me there.

No more from that cottage again will I roam,

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

Chapter 1

Disclaimer: This story is a crossover with the fanfiction Hands. I do not claim ownership of the character Andrew Shepherd. He and all associated storylines attached to the fanfiction Hands belong to creator Andrew Joshua Talon. You can find the original story here:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/14407/hands
Addendum: This is a slightly abridged version. Due to FimFiction.net’s guidelines, I was forced to remove several song lyrics from this story. It does not harm the understanding of the narrative in any way, it is merely to meet a site requirement. You can find the unabridged version here:
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12626356/1/Mid-Pleasures-and-Palaces-Though-We-May-Roam

Melissa Foster yawned as her Tesla Model X soared down the darkened road, headlights barely making a dent in the thick fog.

Not too many drivers this time of night… she thought idly, noting her MP3 player as the only sound aside from the rushing air buffeting the car.

She reached over to the passenger seat and grabbed a handful of the remaining movie theater popcorn; Melissa wasn’t in the habit of throwing out perfectly good food, but grimaced at the cold taste.

Chewing on the salty snack, she scratched the back of her head, running a hand through thick wavy hair. Blonde with streaks of fire engine red, it was a shaggy pixie cut in a militaristic style, and shimmered in the light from the controls.

A near blinding light appeared on the road ahead, and Melissa looked aside, “Damn, dude! Turn down your brights!”

Mercifully, with a bit of a bump, she passed them, and sighed in relief...before the ride got really rough.

The car creaked and moaned, the wheel almost shaking itself out of her hands at the unexpected terrain.

“What the...Oh shit!”

She found herself driving through unflattened woodland area, the collision avoidance system shrieked with alerts telling her to stop. Melissa slammed hard on the brakes. True to her driver’s ed instructions, despite the skidding she kept turning in the direction she wanted to go.

Despite the reliability of the computer system, even it had to make a mistake once in awhile. She was going too fast, and the sensors were picking up far too many objects to avoid them all. The car hit the tree at an angle instead of dead on. momentum carried it forward with a squeal of scraping metal.
There was a bang, and she was hit square in the face. The smell of something burning filled her nose for several seconds.

“Ow...Frelling frak fuck my arm…”

“No blood, no broken bones…” She stayed seated, knowing that moving she might only hurt herself. Someone would come along soon, she hoped.

She realized that the airbag had gone off, and guessed she had been lucky enough not to hit her head. Her face did burn with pain though, and her nose hurt like hell. Working her jaw, she couldn’t tell if any of her teeth were loose.

She pulled out her cell phone. No bars. “Of course! Freaking Vermont…”

Melissa reached over to the passenger’s side, turning on the Fire Department radio attached to the side of the control column. “Bleakburn F-5 to Norton dispatch. Are you receiving me?”

There was no response. Only a lot of static.

She hit the channel control a few times, flipping through them and repeating, “Bleakburn F-5 to dispatch. Do you copy? I’ve been in an accident. Can someone come out here and help me?”

Static.

Melissa changed her tune, “Bleakburn F-5 to any transmitter in the area. Does anyone copy?”

Still static.

“Hello?” she demanded urgently, “Someone please respond! I’ve just been in a car wreck! I’m off of route 7. Don’t know where exactly. My phone isn’t working. Does anyone copy?”

White noise.

“I am a firefighter. Can anyone hear me?”
Her desperate calls echoed through the surrounding woods, with no reply whatsoever. Not even any pattern in the static, just...noise.

After a few more tries, she rolled her glimmering cyan eyes. How unusual. No signal in Vermont. Frelling dead spots...
Melissa angrily got out of the car, and strode around to the trunk. Opening the emergency kit, she pulled out a pair of road flares, along with a heavy-duty flashlight. She flicked the light on, and moved to inspect the damage to the car.

Her light played off the metallic white and silver paint to reveal only minor damage; a few dents, a serious paint scuff that ran the length of the car, but nothing serious...Though the right headlight flickered concerningly.
One bit of good news, Oscar’s not FUBAR, She thought, thanking the construction of the vehicle.

She stepped back, found a bare patch of ground, and popped one of the flares. Melissa tossed it down, and looked around to try and find the road.

Her SUV had left several furrows in the ground to follow. Eagerly, the young woman pursued them...until they abruptly stopped. A sweep with the flashlight proved there wasn’t a mistake. The tracks just suddenly disappeared.

Okay, calm down. This is probably a dream or something...You just stayed up too late reading Destroyermen or A Long Time Until Now...Any minute you’ll wake up.

Melissa waited for several minutes for it to end, taking slow deep breaths. She looked at her hands, to see if they could confirm her suspicions.

They looked normal. Shaking from adrenaline, but normal.

Nope. This seems real for now.

“Frell. I at least teleported.” Melissa grunted aloud, her vast knowledge of pop culture racing to explain what had occurred, and selecting the least crazy option.

Maybe the military’s testing out some new weapon, and got the coordinates wrong. Hopefully I won’t wake up with a park ranger pointing a rifle at me.

She turned back towards the car, and briskly trotted towards the driver’s seat.

Regretfully, she leaned in and pulled out the keys. No sense wasting electricity. The friendly headlights gently faded, allowing the darkness of the night to creep in on the lone woman and her glistening flare.

The weirdest thing about the forest however, was how...wrong it felt. She felt as though there were a hundred pairs of eyes watching her. In the moonlight, the trees created disturbing silhouettes. This was normal, she knew intellectually, but they were somehow more disturbing now than ever.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that she had to get out, as quickly as possible.

She turned away from the disturbing forest.

Priorities, Mel.

Melissa began to hum a tune and opened the trunk to try and make an inventory of what she had. The song was Japanese in origin, a marching tune of some sort.

Melissa counted a handful of mostly full water bottles, a variety of snacks, several flashlights of various types, batteries for same, the emergency kit, energy bars, a first-aid kit, and some MREs.

Being an active(albeit junior) member of the Fire Department, she had her turnout bag with her. It contained her helmet, turnout jacket, and some miscellaneous items. Not much use for now.

Still singing, she glanced at a dry-cleaning bag hanging from one of the ceiling handles in the back seat. Melissa shook her head to herself, and continued with her inventory.

Due to the unpredictable weather lately, she was currently clad in fall clothing; a winter hat, scarf, gloves, a windbreaker over a long sleeve shirt, t-shirt, cargo pants, average socks and tennis shoes.
Melissa trailed off in her song as she went over the contents of her backpack. Among the contents she had several books, her laptop and tablet, some add-on systems for the devices, and various odds and ends.

For once, she was glad that her car was messier than a landfill.

Melissa had a thought, and pulled up the floor of the trunk, removing the tire iron from the depths.
Now she was armed!
Oh, like that helped the Santa Catalina folks in Destroyermen, A part of her brain tormented as she made a few practice swings, They had freaking Thompson SMGs and they’re still missing!

She went back to singing her song, picking up from where she left off, as she placed the iron in a belt loop and moved for the passenger seat, intent on checking the glove box. A tire iron was useful, but a firearm would be even better.
The door was still stuck against the tree, forcing her to go around through the undergrowth.

A hissing filled her ears. She froze, primeval instincts kicking in at the sound. A snake’s tail stood out of the grass.

“Oh, good.” Soon it would be a stain. Wait a minute, it’s too cold for snakes!

Its head shot up and made eye contact with her. The creature was a very bizarre type of snake, with an olive-drab body, and what looked like wings extending from its back. It also had a chicken’s head. A no-kidding chicken's head.

She attempted to step forward, to at least scare the freaky thing off. Instead, she froze again. Not of her own will.

Melissa looked down to see her shoes turning grey. Her toes were completely unable to move.

Other body parts began to harden, the substance slowly but steadily creeping up her limbs.

Melissa thought helplessly, Record for shortest time universe hopping, and managed to get off a, “Fuuu--!” before turning completely to stone.

XXXXX

Rainbow Dash, the sky-blue Pegasus with the rainbow-colored mane, was having a tough time sleeping. Normally she was excellent at the art, but for some reason, tonight, she had incredible insomnia.
Dash had tried everything; milk, counting sheep, spinning up a tornado, making a bed of clouds, nothing was working!

She was reduced to flying around Ponyville’s countryside, and couldn’t even go very fast because everypony else was sleeping.

So there she was, just plodding around, trying to get tired enough to sleep.

As Dash flew over the edge of the Everfree Forest for the fifth time, she stopped in midair, having noticed something out of the corner of her eye. A red light. Bright red; not like fire or any animal she knew of.

Swiftly she banked around, rapidly making a pass over it but hesitant(not unwilling, hesitant!) to dive into the strange place herself.

It was an artificial light...But what was it doing out there?

Cautiously, Rainbow Dash forced herself to come in for a landing in a small clearing, where the red thingy sat.

As she approached, she noticed the light was attached to the end of a stick, with a series of numbers and letters on the side.
“30 minute red highway foo...fuse?”

After a moment, she realized what the device was.
What’s a pegasi directional flare doing out here? She wondered, There aren’t any airfields around for miles! Maybe a shipment got lost or something.

She chuckled aloud, I’d bet my wings Derpy accidentally dropped it. I wonder where the rest of the shipment went...

Rainbow glanced around at the shadows, picking up the flare as she did so. She noted the long furrows in the ground, left by…Aha! There was a large glistening shape hidden in the shadows under a tree.

What the--? As the shape came to light, she realized it wasn’t an air shipping container. It was some sort of silver and grey wagon.
It was built out of metal instead of wood, with glass and doors like a carriage.

There wasn’t a place for a pony to drag the thing, nor was there a connector for a wagon train.

The tracks made it look like it had bonked into the tree leaning against it, but how did it get out here in the first place? The tracks only started a few feet back, and if that wasn't weird enough, there weren’t any major shipping routes anywhere nearby, so she had no idea how it could've gotten out here if it were owned by ponies.
Well, maybe it's one of those new automated mobiles. And whoever was driving it probably just got lost looking for help.
“Hello?! Anyone out there? I found your cart!” She was hoping to guide them back to the road, maybe getting a reward in the process.

“Hello--Oof!”
Rainbow fell back, dropping the flare and extinguishing it. In the low light, she saw the silhouette of a pony standing above her, on their hind legs.

“There you are. By Celestia, what are you doing out here?”

The pony didn’t reply.

Rainbow Dash still couldn’t see much, and reached out to grab their outstretched hoof, which looked like it was clutching a pipe.

“Hey, you alright?”

The moon came out from behind the cloud, and shined down on the creature; Rainbow gasped when she realized it wasn’t a pony.

The creature had a height advantage over the Pegasus, and her first thought was that it could be a dragon, Oh, wait, no wings. It’s something else. The fingers were also much smoother than most things she had seen, further narrowing down the list.

Soon, she realized that there was no other possibility. It had to be a human, turned to stone. She couldn’t tell what gender, but Well, it’s not Andrew…I guess it’s a new one.

A deep hissing sound erupted from behind her.

“Cockatrice!” she grunted in alarm, and covered her eyes with one hoof. Rainbow reached out, feeling for the human’s midsection blindly.
Gotta get them out of here…

“Are all humans this heavy?!” she demanded of no one in particular, as her wings blurred to hummingbird speeds, trying to gain altitude, the hissing coming closer and closer.
Lucky for both of them, she didn’t call herself the fastest in Equestria for nothing.

She flew high above the treetops, several times barely keeping a hold on the delicate package.

“Twilight will know what to do. Andrew will be happy to see another human at any rate.” Rainbow Dash uttered aloud, and accelerated to high speed, not caring about everyone else’s sleep anymore.

After only a few seconds of sustained flight, Dash found that she couldn’t carry the load for too long; her altiude had dropped by a few dozen feet already.

By the time the idea had processed, she was already descending into Sweet Apple Acres. Rainbow propped the human up against a tree, and climbed in altitude. She took off at high speed, headed for the large red barn.

The Pegasus skidded to a halt in mid-air, spotting something else out of the corner of her eye; an apple tree shaking in the distance, and the fruit disappearing below.

“Bucking weirdo farmers…” she grumbled, but for once was glad for Applejack’s early hours.

Dash raced towards the tree, pulling a rapid dive that shattered the canopy, just as she realized she hadn’t given herself enough room.

She sat up from the small furrow she made in the shape of her face, spitting out branches.

“Hey there, R.D,” greeted Applejack in her pleasant twang, as she bucked another tree, “What are you doing up so late?”

Dash scrambled to her feet. “Applejack! I need your help! Medical emergency!”

The blond earth pony immediately threw off her pack, and rushed to help up the pegasus. “What is it? Who’s hurt?”

Rainbow Dash flexed her wings experimentally, and pointed in the direction of the human statue. Taking several bounds, she leapt into the air; Applejack rushed along beside her, her loose ponytail bobbing up and down in the wind.

“I found another human! She was in the Everfree Forest!”

“Bound to happen at some point…” Applejack drawled. If one had come through, there had to be more. Hopefully it wouldn’t become a tidal wave. “How’d she get hurt? Manticore?”

“Worse--Cockatrice!”

Applejack relaxed slightly. They might be able to help. If the human had been bleeding badly, or lost a limb, well...that would have been a much different story.

They reached the spot where Dash had left the human. Applejack took a moment to examine the creature. Her shocked features revealed she was only a recent arrival, and her brandished weapon added to that. Many cockatrice victims usually knew of the monster, and tended to be found frozen with limbs raised to cover their eyes.

She also noted the human wore cold weather clothing, despite the warm evening; a scarf, jacket, hat, and long pants.

“C’mon, we need to get her unfrozen ASAP!” Dash urged, snapping Applejack out of her thoughts.

She took the human by the head, while Dash got the feet, and together they moved out of the orchard towards town.

Encountering little on their route, they galloped as fast as they could towards the large library in the center of Ponyville.

Applejack set the human’s head down on the cobblestone. Muttering an apology, she raised a hoof, and pounded hard on the door.
Several floors above, a silhouette sat up on a bed. The owner reached over with a five-fingered hand and held the clock up to the moonlight.

“Someone had better have died…” Andrew Shepherd grumbled, as the pounding increased.

The silhouette of a magenta pony appeared on the same bed. Her horn twinkled gently underneath her purple and pink mane, as a small energy field appeared at the box of matches near the gas lantern. The box opened, a match being lit as the knob on the lamp turned. The light quickly lit up the room, driving away the shadows.

“Ngh...Probably Pinkie to give us a party telegram.” Twilight Sparkle mumbled, as she slid out of the bed and trotted after her boyfriend. Coltfriend. Whatever.

Andrew stomped down the stairs, making an effort to make as much noise as possible; whoever was trying to break down the door was doing the same thing, apparently.

Spike continued snoring in the corner of the library, undisturbed by the pounding.

“Fine, don’t get the door…” Andrew grumbled, as he threw the door open, and looked down at the two ponies standing on the front porch.

The human stood a full two feet above the tallest pony in Ponyville, so even standing there in his underwear, he was pretty intimidating.

“UPS? I thought you guys didn’t deliver until…” his snarky comment trailed off as he saw the concerned looks on their faces.

“What?” he immediately suspected the worst, “I didn’t do it! It wasn’t my fault! You don’t have any witnesses! I have those magazines just for the articles, I swear!”

Both ponies stared for a moment, before Rainbow Dash bounded across their package, and knocked him to the ground. “Andrew! Shut up and look!” She shouted, pointing at the end of the cargo.

“Owch! Get off me!”

“You don’t need a spleen, just look!”

Andrew shoved Dash off, and got to his feet. “Holy...Where did she come from?”

“Don’t know. Probably the same place you did.”

“With more stuff at least,” Andrew observed, pointing to the tire iron in the frozen human’s hand, “Wonder why she’s carrying that.”

His first note was the short hair that stuck out from under the woman’s hat. From what he could tell, it looked a bit like the hairstyle Samantha Carter wore in Stargate: SG-1. At first, his heart soared, perhaps she would know some good skills, but he noted the style of hoodie, and her cargo pants too. With a sinking feeling, he moaned, “Oh dear god, first human female to come to Equestria and she’s a thug, mugger, or gang member.”

“What’s going on?” Twilight asked, trotting up behind him, “What’s--Oh! Looks like my theory was correct!”

“Wha’ theory?” Applejack wondered.

Twilight moved around the frozen form, examining every detail. The body appeared female, judging by Andrew’s descriptions of human anatomy, though her outfit was formfitting, similar to those of human males instead of the stereotypical female outfits. However unusual that was in Equestria though, clothing might be less gendered on Earth.Most of the fibers, judging by look alone, did not appear to be hand-made, and those few materials Twilight could recognize were woven with more precision than any Equestrian manufacturing plant could even dream of achieving.
A scarf was wrapped loosely around the neck, and looked as though it had been knitted...but again, it had been woven with too much care, too much finesse to be hand-made.
Impossible to be sure if she is a citizen of the United States of America, but she is at least from a culture of a similar technological level, perhaps a European country. Andrew had mentioned little about other countries on Earth outside of his own, but he did say Europe held many of the “superpowers”, and that they were alongside the United States of America in technological development.

“I know it would be impossible for Andrew’s appearance to be a single event, one that would never have repeated.” Twilight finally explained as she poked at one of the frozen boots, “Scientifically impossible. This human proves it. What I don’t know is why there aren’t any other records of previous contact. Creatures and wars may be responsible, they may have destroyed some records.”
She prodded the tire iron, randomly muttering to herself, “Most likely coincidence that it’s female…Yes. Definitely coincidence.”

“Well? What are we waiting for? Let’s get her unfrozen!” Rainbow Dash cried, lifting up her end of the human.

“Now, hold on. The way she’s dressed….”

Twilight rolled her eyes, “Honestly, Andrew, you don’t judge a book by its cover!”

“Yeah, half of Ponyville went into hiding when you first came into town,” Applejack added, “And you were covered in dirt and junk! Maybe it was jus’ cold back on Earp.”

“Earth.”

“Whatever.”

XXXXX

“--uuck...!” Melissa’s legs finally responded to commands, and she stumbled forward, raising the tire iron for a strike.

She slammed into a bookcase, becoming buried underneath its contents. The bookcase itself, luckily enough, did not follow its cargo, being built into the structure of the building. Melissa painfully stood up from the mess, and after a momentary delay, clutched her tire iron at the ready in one hand, and clenched the other into a fist.
“What? Where? Keep back!” Melissa shouted to no one in particular.

She was no longer in the forest. It was daylight now, inside some sort of old library.

The entire chamber was rounded, with several bookshelves lining the walls. A doorway had been set into the wall, with an oak door that looked like it had come straight out of Lord of the Rings. On the opposite side stood a wavy staircase, leading up to another medieval doorway. A pedestal had been placed in the center of the room, with several books neatly arranged on it.
Looks like someone was really going for the nature look, she thought, noticing that the pedestal’s wooden construction. Aesthetically pleasing art designs had been drawn all over the walls, the staircase, the door, even an image of the sun had been placed on the ceiling above.

“Uh...hello?” a voice hesitantly questioned.

Standing in the center of the library before her was a young caucasian-looking man. He was about six feet tall, and stocky, but he seemed a bit thin for his size. His round face was a bit gaunt as well, his battered glasses sagged across his face under messy short and poorly-cut brown hair that seemed to be going silver prematurely, given that he looked about her age.

His clothes didn’t quite hang off his frame, but they still betrayed the possible lack of nutrition. The guy’s shoulders were visible through his long coat, the scarf that hung loosely around his neck was barely holding on, and his jeans seemed about half a size too big. His boots were just about the only thing that fit properly. His clothes put her in the mind of Nathan Fillion’s character in Firefly, the Confederate guy, whatever his name was.
“Hello?” the guy repeated in an american accent with a concerned look on his face, “You feeling alright?”

“Who the hell are you?” Melissa demanded, brandishing her tire iron, “Where have you taken me? Did you run me off the road, kidnap me?!”

He furrowed his brow in confusion, opening his mouth to reply, but eyed her tire iron fearfully. Despite his height advantage, nearly a foot taller than her, he seemed to know not to piss her off.
“Okay, no, you haven’t been kidnapped. You’ve been...The...I…” The kidnapper sighed, clearly hesitant to tell her anything, “My name’s Andrew Shepherd, and as for where you are...You may want to sit down for this.”

“Oh, I haven’t been kidnapped?” Melissa asked sarcastically, “You mean I didn’t wake up in a strange place, with a stranger who won’t give me a straight answer? Considering how I can’t remember how the hell I got here, kidnapping is sounding more and more likely, you skinny grandpa-looking motherfucker!”

He rolled his eyes, “You don’t remember how you got here because you weren’t conscious!” Andrew, or whatever his real name was, stopped halfway through the last word, “Okay that sounds really bad.”

“Ya think?”

He sighed, “I really should’ve made notecards...Okay, uh, what’s your name?”

“Captain Kathryn Janeway.” she uttered with a nasally tone.

Andrew facepalmed again, “No way I’m calling you that...N7, this is going to sound completely insane. I mean, really insane.” The nickname apparently referred to Melissa’s Mass Effect hoodie, patterned after the armor Commander Shepard wore.

When she didn’t object immediately to the nickname, or hit him with the tire iron, Andrew took a deep breath. “You’re not on Earth anymore. You’re in a magical land filled with anthropomorphic ponies, mythological monsters, and I-don’t-know-what else. You and I are the only humans on this planet.”

He spoke with an incredibly deadpan tone, and had an embarrassed expression as well.

“So...We’re in Equestria?” Melissa scoffed, “Dude, that’s the worst pickup line outside of ‘get in the van’.”

“I told you it was going to sound crazy…”

Despite the obvious lie, she looked around the chamber again. She noticed that all the books in the library were hardcover. Really thick hardcover too, with no dust jackets. On several shelves she could see what looked like authentic scrolls, too.
Stranger still, the shelves themselves were ovular, rather than rectangular. Glancing around, Melissa could find no seams in the floors, walls, or stairs, only in the doors. It looked like everything had been grown into these shapes, with the doors and windows added on later.
“You went all out, didn’t you?” she snorted, after doing a double-take at the pedestal. The central spire was a carved horse head, just like the one in the TV series. “How much money did you spend on this? Just to kidnap one girl?”

She waved her tire iron at him again, “You didn’t even do a very good job of it. I’m still armed, dumbass!”

“Well, it’s kinda hard to take someone’s stuff when they’re made of stone…” he muttered.

“What the fuck are you--Oh, drop the act,” Melissa advanced on the kidnapper rapidly and seizing him by the arm, “You’re coming with me. I am going to find a car, and we’re going straight to the cops, do you hear me?”

Andrew’s hand went for an odd-looking holster at his side. Instinctively she hit him in the shoulder with her weapon.

He cried out in pain, and she kicked him, forcing Andrew to his knees. Sweeping a foot into his gut, she knocked the wind out of him.
The kidnapper managed to rise, and rapidly turned his stumble into a dive at Melissa’s midsection.
Surprised, Melissa fell back onto her rear, her weapon clattering out of reach. Swiftly, she scuttled backwards, throwing a book at Andrew as he got to his feet.

“Hey, be careful, you jerk!” he coughed, dodging the missile as it flew over his head.

Melissa scrambled to her feet, putting the pedestal between her and her foe. Her tire iron in a corner, she decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and bolted for the door.

“Wait!” Andrew cried as she yanked it open, “Don’t--”

She rushed outside, expecting to see the outside of a barn in rural Vermont. Instead Melissa found herself on a street in the middle of a town.
This mild revelation brought to mind thoughts of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre...Which instantly fell into the background when she saw the faces staring back at her.

Faces that weren’t human.

“Uh...buh...huh?” she garbled, temporarily losing control over the English language.

Melissa whirled about, several times, and rubbed her eyes. They were ponies. Ponies!

She grabbed her head in frustration and confusion, taking swift shallow breaths. Ponies!

They were multi-colored ponies, actually. They only bore a passing resemblance to normal equines. The fact that they were a couple dozen centimeters or so shorter than her in height was a major difference.
Their heads were much more humanoid and expressive, and each had thick, unique manes, with no one style looking alike. All bore unique symbols on their flanks, further differentiating them from Terran equines.

In addition to the “standard” set of ponies, there were also unicorn, and pegasi types. Pegasi that were defying gravity, as they hovered impossibly in place, or flying overhead with wings that shouldn’t possibly be providing lift.

Melissa tensed up, her plan forgotten, as she swept her eyes across the square for the millionth time.
She heard footsteps behind her, and whirled about. The kidnapper stood on the front porch of the library, holding his stomach in pain. If it was possible, her jaw dropped even further. The library didn’t look like a tree, it literally was a tree!

“Andrew! Are you alright?” a female voice queried in a concerned tone, and Melissa saw a magenta-colored unicorn rush to his side from the corner of her vision. She had what resembled a compass for a flank mark, and a purple mane with a single pink stripe through it. She was also extremely familiar.
“Man, she hit me hard,” Andrew groaned, apparently oblivious to the fact that it was a pony holding him up. A four-foot tall, or 1.21 meter-tall, purple pony.

“But...What?” Melissa mumbled in confusion as realization struck, “You can’t be real! You just can’t!”
They shot me up full of drugs or something, she thought, How else am I seeing both humans and ponies? I’ve gotta get out of here, find the cops.

Another pony, one of the pegasi this time, appeared in front of Melissa before she could escape. The pegasus possessed a sky-blue coat, with a rainbow-colored mane, and a rainbow lightning bolt emerging from a cloud as a flank mark. She appeared to be furious.

“You’re gonna regret that!” she shouted confrontationally, and Melissa barely ducked as a hoof fist-like thing swung through the air.

Melissa jumped away, half-heartedly putting up her fists in defense. Her actions only made the pegasus flash a grin, and fly rapidly towards her.
“Oh shit!”

She barely managed to dodge the streaking missile. The Pegasus still managed contact in the arm. Her shoulder felt like she had just fired a shotgun wrong.
Realizing that she was still mobile, Melissa scrambled away, ignoring the cries following her.

The human rushed through confusing streets, leaping over crates and swinging around street corners. She passed by more of the ponies, who swiftly left the street with cries of alarm.
“Wait, dammit!” Andrew shouted, but Melissa wouldn’t. She couldn’t.

A wagon of goods appeared on the street, the vendor sprinting away the instant she had appeared. Stopping beside it, she grabbed one end, and gave an almighty heave. The cargo scattered across the pavement, hopefully making her pursuers hesitate. Not that she stayed long enough to find out.

“Where’s the fire?” the pegasus’ voice said from beside her. Mel turned her head to see the creature relaxing in midair, her wings flapping at a faster rate as she examined her hoof lazily.

With a yelp, Melissa attempted to dive to the side. Something grab ahold of her scarf. Hastily, she pulled it free, and left it in the hands of the attacker.
“Okay, that’s it.” the human heard the pony say in the distance, before a rainbow blur rushed by. Again. And again.
Strong winds began to billow around Melissa, and she immediately realized the pegasus was responsible. Thinking quickly, she watched the pattern of the blur, waiting for the right moment.

“Hey! Leggo!” the pegasus cried indignantly as Melissa tackled her, and dragged her down to the ground.
As the winds died, Melissa scrambled to her feet, shoving the pegasus back down again, and broke into another sprint.

“What was that supposed to do?” the voice of the pegasus taunted her, as the human saw the edge of town in the distance.

Her feet moved faster. Surprisingly, this time there were no obstacles, no further direct attempts to stop her.
She could still hear the feet behind her however, and the flapping of wings.

Melissa staggered onto the bridge, gasping for breath, pausing to look at her pursuers. Andrew, and the pegasus were lagging behind, abruptly moving at a more leisurely pace.
Gotta...keep...running.

She started to run, but her pace became a crawl, which devolved into a stagger. Had her adrenaline reserves run out?

There was a sudden flash of light before her, and she skidded to a halt, covering her eyes. An instant later, the magenta pony stood before her, looking a little angry, but more concerned than anything else.

“Stop running, and let us help you!” she cried, “We’re not trying to hurt you!”

Melissa’s eyes went wide again. “Stay...stay away!” she squeaked, gasping for breath. She backed away, back to the other end of the bridge.
Her pursuers were standing at the other end.

“You can’t be real!” she backed up against one of the barriers of the bridge, in its center. She took a defensive posture, fists at the ready.

“That’s what I said, my first time,” Andrew rolled his eyes, “This isn’t even the weirdest thing around here.”

The pegasus opened her mouth, presumably to say something snarky, but Andrew and the unicorn glared at her.

“No, this isn’t happening,” Melissa muttered, partly to herself, “I just got into a car accident, then you dragged me off to your fucked up little town, and shot me up full of drugs to try and convince me I’m in Equestria.”

The other three looked at each other in confusion, “How do you know that name?”

Melissa snorted in an ironic laugh, “Jesus, you’re absolutely committed to this, aren’t ya? I bet you’ve got four other friends dressed up as the Mane Six! Well, I’m not falling for it!”

Andrew shook his head, looking at the unicorn, “I told you it wouldn’t work.”

“Well, she’s obviously afraid of you!” the unicorn barked, and motioned for the other two to step back.

Calmly, without any sudden moves, the unicorn stepped a meter closer. “Let’s try this again. I know this must be rough for you. My name is Twilight--”

“Yeah, I know who you are, or who you’re supposed to be,” Melissa cut her off, “If what I’m seeing isn’t part of the hallucination, nice costume work. You certainly look the part.”

“She thinks we kidnapped her.” Andrew explained to the others, but the one supposed to be Twilight Sparkle held up a hoof.
“What do you recall before waking up in my library?”

Melissa stayed quiet, glaring daggers at the three foes.

“We don’t want to hurt you,” Twilight pressed, “We just want to know what happened.”

“You know exactly what happened, you ran me off the road and kidnapped me, you weird memory-erasing assholes!”

“What do you mean, ‘ran you off the road’?” blurted the blue pegasus, the Rainbow Dash impersonator.

Melissa stayed silent again. Nothing. I’m not telling them anything.

Frustrated, the Rainbow Dash impersonator shot forward and grabbed Melissa by the collar, “Answer me, you monkey!”

Oddly enough, the other two kidnappers were the ones who pried Rainbow Dash off her. They proceeded to admonish her for it!

Good cop, bad cop. Greeeaaat.

Twilight tried again, “What could we do to convince you that you haven’t been kidnapped?”

“Nothing.” she growled.

“Maybe show her some magic, Twilight,” Andrew suggested, “Remember how I reacted?”

Rainbow Dash snorted with amusement.

“Uh...okay…” Twilight stuttered, and thought for a moment. “Oh!”

Without warning, there was a flash, a brief sound like wind chimes, a cloud of dust, and Twilight wasn’t there anymore.

Melissa did a double take. She stepped forward, and swept her hands through the spot Twilight had been.

“Over here!” she heard, and turned to see Twilight down the road, waving from underneath a tree.

There was no possible way she could have covered the distance on foot. Could it actually be teleportation?

Another purple flash. Twilight reappeared on the bridge.

Melissa stared for the longest time, and backed up against her wall again.

“Before anything weird started happening, what were you doing?” Andrew asked hesitantly, recognizing the look in her eyes.

For the moment, Melissa told herself that she would play along. The teleportation thing had to be a stage trick. Had to be. “I was driving home, and there was a flash...then…” she scratched her head, “Come to think of it, something’s missing...I know something happened after that, before I woke up in the library.”

“Short-term memory loss,” Twilight noted, “A typical symptom of flash mineralizing.”

“Mineralizing? As in stone?” Melissa squeaked, “I got turned to stone?”

“We think that’s what happened...” explained Twilight, “Is there anything else you remember?”

“Uh...My phone didn’t have any bars. That’s Vermont for ya, am I right?”

The Twilight impersonator looked at Andrew again, who shrugged. “...Maybe?”

Twilight sat down where she stood. “Tell me more.”

Melissa suddenly stopped talking, her paranoia returning, “You’re trying to manipulate me, trying to be my friend. What kind of sick game are you playing?

“No game!” Twilight protested, putting up her hooves defensively, “I’m just trying to find out what happened!”

“Hey, N7!” Andrew interrupted, frustrated, “You see any needle marks in your arm?”

Hastily, Melissa rolled up her sleeves, then her pant legs. “...No…”

“How did we get the drugs in you, then?”

Melissa threw her arms up in the air, “I don’t know all the various types of drugs! You could’ve put it in my eyes, my ear, my nose, made me swallow it while I was passed out!”

“Why in Equestria would anyone do that?” Rainbow Dash demanded, “That’s disgusting!”

“Wow, that voice sounds right,” Melissa smiled slightly, “You’ve got to be the best Rainbow Dash impersonator I’ve ever seen! How’d you get the wings to work?”

Fake-Rainbow glared, and took a step before Andrew pushed her back.

“I really must compliment your work here, actually.” Melissa said, glancing around, “I wonder how the feds never found it.”

She slumped, “Aw, Cthulhu...Did I sign up for some military experiment or something? Did the CIA pick me up? Did I get roofied? This is some serious Fox Mulder shit going on around here.”

“CIA?” Twilight asked, bewildered, “Roofied? Who’s Mulder?”

“You know who they are.”

“No, they don’t!” Andrew grumbled, annoyed, “Because they’re alien ponies!”

Melissa ignored him, and looked out across the landscape. “Wow, you’ve got the Everfree Forest out there too! Oh look! I think that’s...Canterlot…No, too far away, but...”

Her arms fell to her sides, and her eyes went wide. “Holy shit.” she whispered eventually.

“What happened when you found you couldn’t call anyone?” Twilight questioned, noting the body language.

“I tried my radio,” Melissa spoke rapidly, sliding down the wall to a seated position. Memory began to return in a landslide, “That didn’t work. I made an inventory of my stuff...Then...I got my tire iron, and…then, that thing...”

“You ran into the cockatrice?” Twilight confirmed quietly.

“Yeah...I think I did.” she pulled off her blue winter hat. She looked at the white letters of “Caboose”, on the front, and the “-1” on the back.
She just teleported. She honestly teleported. A voice in her head whispered, you know the characters too. That’s how Rainbow Dash would work. Everything is spot on. What else could it be?

“Does anyone know where my scarf got off to?” Melissa finally whispered in a defeated voice. She gave in. Either she was hallucinating, or this was real.

“Rainbow?” Twilight asked, and the sound of wings flapping came to life.

Melissa got to her feet, shaking a little bit. Stay calm. Stay calm. Ginga suihei namima-wo koete mezasu kousei ‘centauri’...

“Uh…” Andrew hesitantly spoke, and Melissa looked at him. He offered out her tire iron fearfully.
“Thanks.” she muttered, and stuck it back on her belt.

“What’s your name?” Twilight said inquisitively.

“Melissa. Melissa Foster.” She looked up at the unicorn, and smiled a little. “So...You really are the real Twilight Sparkle.”

“Yes...How did you know my name?”

“He might know.” She stuck a thumb at Andrew, ”Have you told them yet?”

Andrew furrowed his brow, “Told them what?”

“About...Y’know…” she gestured all around.

“No...no, I don’t know.”

She growled, and pointed at Twilight, “MLP?”

“‘MLP’?”

“Uh...Bronies? Lauren Faust?”

He stared at her blankly.

“‘Friendship is Magic’?”

Andrew shrugged, “Around here it literally is. And magic exists too. Look!”

He pointed to Twilight, who had been writing down their conversation on a pad of notepaper. The notepad hovering above the ground.

“Wow...Uh, okay…” she took a breath, “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic?”

Now there was a spark of recognition. “I know My Little Pony in passing,” he admitted, “They do look the part. I chalked that up to coincidence.”

“They look exactly the part! How come you haven’t heard of the new series?”

“I’ve been stuck here for a couple months!” he said, angrily.

“Dude, they’ve got like five seasons or something now. Cthulhu’s tentacles, how have you never heard the word ‘brony’ before?”

“Again, at least six months without the web!” he barked.

“Okay then!” She roared back.

Rainbow Dash returned, bearing the red and black scarf in her mouth.

“Oh...Thank you.”

“What?” the pegasus demanded, seeing Melissa’s odd expression, “What’s wrong with it?”

Andrew realized what she was worried about, “Don’t worry, it’s fine. No spit at all, actually. Their mouths are surprisingly clean.”

“Hey!” Twilight and Dash objected together.

Sure enough, the scarf was completely dry. Even so, Melissa rubbed at it with her sleeve, before putting it around her neck.

Andrew looked at the text on the red and black scarf, puzzled. “What’s Rooster Teeth?”

“Red vs Blue?” Melissa prodded, “Achievement Hunter?”

“Oh...Oh! Those guys? They’re hilarious!”

“Yeah, Roosterteeth is their company. They’ve even got a movie going.”

“Really? What’s it about?”

“You know the ‘Wow!’ Signal from the ‘70s?”

“No…”

“Big powerful signal received from deep space, no one knows exactly what it was?”

“Okay…”

“Well, they’re having it that the signal came from aliens who were warning us about an invasion, and are sending us a battle suit to deal with the threat. Instead of the hero getting it though, the thing is in four pieces picked up by some idiots who found the crash site. The suit’s locked to them, so now the idiots have to fight the aliens.”

Her excitement suddenly evaporated, as she looked off into the distance.

“How long have you been here?” she croaked.

Andrew scratched the back of his head, “Little fuzzy on the exact numbers...I’ve been knocked out a few times…Couple months, minimum.”

“Any others with you?” she asked a little louder.

“No. Just me.”

“Aw, fucking shit!” Melissa yelled, kicking the side of the bridge as anger flooded into her, “Shit, shit, shit!”

The ponies backed up, a little surprised at the rage.

“Goddammit! The Dragon and the George! Aagh! Billions of blue-blistering barnacles, that’s all I need! Tanj, tanj, tangit!”

Andrew’s expression was a mixture of shock and utter confusion at the curses.

Turning to look at him, she demanded, “...You the protagonist or am I? Cuz clearly I’m in one of those spatial/dimensional displacement stories!” She spared a glance at the ponies, “Granted, better company than most of those. And two humans means The Human Memoirs...that’s not necessarily good…Just who the hell are you, anyway?”

“I already said, I'm Andrew--”

“Yeah, I got that, dumbass. What do you do?”

“Liberal arts major.”

Melissa kicked the wall again, “God dammit! You’re not even Jim Eckert! Wait, how did you get here? Maybe this is a kind of Sam Beckett kinda thing!”

He shrugged, “I don’t know what you're talking about. I was just walking around, when there was a flash--”

Melissa nearly deafened the other three with a shriek of rage and pain to the sky. She followed it with a long line of expletives. Then kicked the same piece of bridge wall extremely hard, and with surprising strength, forcing an entire block to break off and fall into the water with a heavy splash.

Finally, she collapsed from exhaustion over the edge of the bridge, gasping for breath.

“Feel better?” Andrew inquired.

“Maybe. Where the hell’s Osc--my car?” panic rose in her voice, images of precious equipment destroyed by stupid fearful aliens and primitives filling her mind, “Where the flying fuck is it?”

Andrew facepalmed, “I ended up here with nothing but my cell phone and the clothes on my back. I think your car…”

“Wait, that was a car?” Rainbow wondered, cutting off Andrew, “That metal wagon?”

“Yeah, you’ve seen him--it?!” Melissa demanded excitedly.

“I found it in the clearing where you were!”

“The one in the Everfree Forest?” Andrew asked, looking fearful, “Rainbow, are you sure you saw a car? Maybe it really just a metal wagon. There’s no way to know for sure.”

“Hold on,” Melissa muttered, pulling out her jingling car keys. She clicked the fob once, twice, three times. Nothing. “Huh.”

“I told you,” Andrew said with slightly forced regret, “The forest is full of creatures anyway, I--”

“Hold on!” Melissa repeated, “I wonder…”

She put the fob under her chin, and opened her mouth. With a couple clicks, they all began to hear a distant alarm go off.

“Wow. I didn’t know that really worked!” She laughed, her mood swapping, “C’mon! Let’s go find it!”

“Hold on,” Andrew interrupted, “What was with that mouth thing?”

Melissa rolled her eyes with a smirk, “It’s a body-hack. Doing that extends the range of your key fob, makes your head into a giant transmitter through your bones or something. Go and read Cracked dot com next time you…” she winced, “dammit…Let’s go.” and stalked off.

Andrew sighed heavily as he trudged after her. I’m gonna be manticore chow...Or cockatrice food.

XXXXX

There was no sign of the cockatrice in the clearing. In fact, there was no sign of any creature investigating, despite the smell of food in the open car.
Stranger still, the walk to the area had actually gone without any encounters of any type
Not even any feelings of being watched.
“It could be something about your vehicle,” Twilight had suggested, “Maybe it’s arrival has put them off balance.”

The clearing was easier to see in the daylight. Healthy green grass occupied most of it, excluding a pair of lines left by the Tesla.
The shape of the clearing seemed a bit odd as well, and looked perfectly circular. The ponies didn’t think much of it; the forest was full of mysteries like that.

Along one edge of the clearing, still pinned to the tree it had bumped against, lay the Tesla. It shone in the daylight, and looked as perfect as the day Melissa had gotten it.
She also noted how strange the grass was, appearing almost as though it were reaching for the wheels. They had to get it out of there soon.

“That doesn’t look too heavy,” Rainbow Dash commented, “I bet I could carry it with one hoof!”

“It’s nearly two tons, Dashie. You’d probably break something.” Melissa replied, distractedly, her eyes fixed on her car.

“Excuse me?” Dash challenged, stepping in front of the taller human.

Melissa took a few steps away, standing behind Andrew, “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Andrew, get out of the way!” Rainbow barked, trying to get at Melissa.

“I don’t think she was trying to be rude, Dash!” Andrew responded, “Were you, Melissa?”

“No! I wasn’t! Jeez, I just trying to stop you from hurting yourself!"

“Well...uh, next time be more polite.” Andrew grumbled, still standing between the two.

“Jesus, how much did that thing cost?” he wondered, changing the subject as he looked at the car.

“You don’t want to know.”

Melissa went over to her pile of equipment, still sitting in the trunk. Rapidly packing it away, she requested, “Twilight, Rainbow, can you move it away from the tree? Carefully?”

A purple field of energy appeared around the vehicle. As Dash provided direction, Twilight lifted the vehicle slowly up and to the side. With a creek and a pop, several panels were relieved of their torment, and sprang back into place.

Once the Tesla had been moved to the center of the clearing, Melissa moved to the driver’s seat, and inserted the keys. Several displays lit up, reading roughly 95% power remaining.
She breathed a sigh of relief, and went around to the right side, opening the gull-wing back door, and then the passenger side door. Both functioned correctly, despite the damage.

“Okay...Now, Twilight, I need you to--”

Ssss…

Andrew, Rainbow, and Twilight froze at once, upon hearing the call of the cockatrice. All quickly covered their eyes, and Andrew pulled out his flintlock.

The hissing grew closer. Closer. For several nail-biting minutes, they stood still, unable to do anything.

The loud hissing was abruptly cut off by a deafening boom. The hissing transformed into a squeal of pain, that slowly trailed off.

Andrew risked putting his arm down and aimed his pistol in the direction of the hissing.

The cockatrice lay there, a chunk of its head missing, blood dribbling out of the wound.

He turned around to see Melissa leaning against her car, passenger door and glove box open. She held aloft a Glock 17 9mm pistol, with the word “Glamdring” written on the side. She blew the smoke away from the barrel, and clicked the safety on.

“Payback’s a bitch,” She grinned.

“Where did you get that thing?” Andrew demanded, as the ponies gaped at the corpse.

“I had it in my glove box.” Melissa reached into the car, and pulled out an underarm holster. She placed the pistol inside, and took off her jacket, putting her head through the loop of the holster. Once settled, she put her coat back on.
“Why didn’t you get that instead of your tire iron?” Andrew asked in confusion.

“Because I still thought I was in Vermont. Didn’t want to accidentally shoot someone. Where’d you get the flintlock?” as she spoke, Melissa crouched down to peer at the spent 9mm cartridge lying in the grass.

“A few ponies make them for me,” he replied with a shrug, “Adapted some of their own for me.

“Which ponies?” Melissa inquired, tilting her head at the spent cartridge. It’s pretty hot, so a plastic bag won’t hold it…What do I do with it?

He hesitated in response, “Some ponies around town.” he finally said somewhat-truthfully.

“What kind of firearm is that?” Twilight interrupted, noticing the smoke(or lack thereof) produced by the weapon. Furthermore, upon closer inspection, she noted that compared to a musket, there was much less soot and grime from the powder.

“Glock 17,” she explained distractedly, looking at Andrew “Hey, how much have you boosted the industrial base?”

“What do you mean?” said Andrew.

“You’re a 21st century human in a 19th century industrial base. You’re gonna be boosting their tech within ten minutes. Haven’t you ever read Destroyermen?”

Andrew shook his head, “Nope. Besides, I can’t remember much stuff to make too big of a difference. I think the only way we’ve been building anything has been ‘cause the CMC are trying to earn cutie marks by building some of the stuff I’ve been describing.”

He suddenly froze, “...Did I say that out loud?”

Melissa laughed, “Of course those three are doing that...Anyway, it’s actually going to be a bit easier now that you’ve got advanced firearms going, and the ponies already have a fair supply of metals, as well as steam engines.”

“What’s going to be easier?” Andrew questioned, his hand unknowingly straying to his belt. Usually anyone being that ominous around here meant something bad was going to happen.

“Jump starting a Second Industrial Revolution, what do you think?”

“A what?” asked Twilight, still jotting down everything Melissa said.

“Second Industrial Revolution. An event back home that got us into internal combustion, planes, automatic weapons, tanks, and cars.”

“You’re gonna get us tanks and stuff?! Awesome!” Rainbow Dash shouted, joining in the conversation.

“How are we going to do that?” Andrew asked, rubbing the bridge of his nose, “You can’t have enough memorized to do it very quickly.”

Melissa smiled, “I was hoping you’d say that. You see, I have a laptop, a phone, a tablet, and a couple books in my car. My nearly-fully charged car. My kindle is on my laptop as well; it contains every destroyermen novel up to Rising Tides, and the writer’s a gunsmith who puts a whole lot of detail into his work. That’s not even counting the ‘So you’ve gone back in time’ poster on my desktop.”

She continued, “Also, I have memorized a lot of stuff. That's what happens when you go through high school with severe ADD. These concepts are pretty simple when you stop to think about them. I think between you, me, Twilight, and Equestria’s best, we can get something together. Really, the biggest obstacle is going to be getting the internal combustion engines going, but it’s not too hard.”

Melissa noticed the other three were staring at her. “...What?”

“You just got here...And now you’re planning an industrial revolution?” Andrew demanded in disbelief.

Melissa shrugged, “Knowing Equestria, there’s probably gonna be some way to send us home. But in the meantime, I’m not just gonna sit around.”

She looked at the unicorn beside him, “Twilight, how would Equestria’s economy improve with long-distance communication? Messages sent over a long distance and received in a couple seconds?”

“We already have that,” Twilight replied, “Magic.”

“Aha, but it’s only accessible to a select few! Extremely strong unicorns, or dragon fire. What if every town had access to that? A system anyone could access?”

“We have semaphore, and several other types of optical telegraphy…”

“And, a system that’s accessible at any time of day, in virtually any climate?”

“That…” Twilight thought for a moment, before her eyes lit up, “That would be fantastic! Is this a form of wired telegraphy? Tell me, how would we build it?”

Melissa excitement faded, “Uh...Hmm.”

“Suddenly not so easy, is it?” Andrew declared snarkily.

“Hey, just because I can’t think of it right this instant doesn’t mean it’s not in there,” she tapped her head for emphasis, “shouldn’t be too hard to figure out. Wired telegraphy is freaking high school physics! Just electrical signal on or off for a period of time. I’ve got severe ADD too, so I know some odds and ends about some things. Spent most of high school just googling things. And for other stuff, they’re already pretty far along! they’ve got pretty good metallurgy tech! Steam engines! And some pretty complicated gadgets! Twilight, didn’t you use a brain scanner thingy on Pinkie Pie when you were trying to figure out if she actually had Pinkie Sense?”

“Huh?” Twilight was too busy writing something else down.

“Never mind. Rainbow, uh...Does your navy have aircraft carriers?”

“‘Aircraft carrier--’ Oh! You mean flattops! Yeah, we’ve got a few.” The pegasus replied, “Never got the chance to serve on one.”

“They steam powered?” asked the female human, and Rainbow nodded with a grin.

“See? Their tech isn’t primitive, magic just has them stunted in a few areas.”

“They’ve still got muzzle-loaders!” Andrew pointed out, “How are we going to get them into gas power?”

“Hey!” Rainbow objected, “Don’t judge someone on their firearm tech alone! And it’s hard to get our weapons to fit you, so don’t judge!...Though they’re not as good as that thing,” she gestured to the Glock.

Melissa nodded, “Wow, thank you. Anyway, they have hydroelectric dams too, they’re ready to go on the Second Industrial Revolution any day now. Why not hurry things along?”

“Your assistance would be greatly appreciated, Melissa,” Twilight elbowed her way into the conversation, preventing the argument from getting any further, “But perhaps it would be best to get back home before we discuss this further?”

XXXXX

The Tesla crept along Ponyville’s streets, slow-moving carts and pedestrians scrambling to get out of the way of the vehicle. Rainbow Dash’s “encouragement” wasn’t much help. Her method consisted mainly of “scare the crap out of them until they move”.

No one could avoid staring. Without any ponies pulling it, and no blasting, hissing steam, the vehicle moved. Melissa couldn’t help but smirk as she flipped the left turn signal, and those behind her all squinted at the blinking light.

The passenger seat window kept moving up and down on it’s own, as well. At least until Melissa turned it off.
“What’s this control for?” Twilight sighed disappointedly, releasing the window switch. She sat awkwardly perched in the passenger’s seat, and pointed at one on the central dashboard.

“Temperature control,” Andrew explained distractedly, from behind her, “And the wipers. Hey, Mel, when’s the last time you cleaned back here?”

“Why?” Melissa asked, dodging the question.

“I can’t move my feet! How much stuff do you throw back here? And is this a dry cleaning bag?!”

“Don’t open that. Mostly I put stuff back there...and then I don’t get it. So none of it’s trash, at least.”

Andrew picked up the popcorn bucket gingerly, before squeamishly throwing it in back. “Right...”

“So, this isn’t powered by gasoline?” Twilight asked, browsing through the menu on the dashboard.

“No, this is one of our attempts at getting rid of the gas-powered cars. Has Andrew told you about Climate Change?”

“Vaguely. Speaking of which, Why were you so agitated, when I asked?” Twilight wondered, turning to raise an eyebrow at him.

“‘Cause it’s a pretty touchy subject.” Andrew said, darkly. Twilight realized he didn’t want to discuss it further.

“What is it powered by, then?”

“Lithium-ion batteries. We charge the thing up at the house, or anywhere with an outlet, and it gets about as much range as a regular car of the same type.”

“Interesting. I’ve heard about experiments in Manehattan and Detrot about motor vehicles, but none have been this advanced.”

Melissa snorted, “Actually, while a lot of this stuff,” she gestured to the dashboard, “Got invented in only the last ten years, the engine itself is pretty old. It’s just that assholes like Edison--”

Andrew nodded and smiled nervously as Melissa went on a long rant about what went wrong, historically, with the various inventors and corporations. Twilight did the same, but wrote down every single thing the human said.

Finally… “--and that’s why we should have colonized the moon!” Melissa let out a breath.

Falling silent, she turned another corner. After a moment she glanced at Twilight, before locking her eyes on the road again. “So what’s been going on here in Ponyville lately?”

Twilight looked up, “Oh, nothing much. Some unicorns tried to take Sweet Apple Acres, we had an incident with time travel…”

“Actually, that whole week was pretty weird.” Andrew muttered, and Melissa noticed the other two were averting eye contact with one another.

“...Do you want to talk about it?” she inquired, “I know Twilight went into a time paradox, going back to tell herself that she shouldn’t get so stressed out.”

“Wait a second, how do you know that?”.

Melissa glanced at Twilight with an odd expression, staring for a long moment. Finally, with a sigh, she explained, “...Because that was the plot of the episode.”

“Episode of what? Your weird My Little Pony thing?”

“Yeah.”

Andrew suddenly connected the dots. “Are you saying...that we’re in a TV series from back home?”

Melissa’s hands tightened on the wheel. Caught on fast, didn’t you? “Eeyup.” She hoped she wasn’t looking into a camera.

“Is that an impression of Big Mac?” Twilight asked hesitantly.

“uh huh.”

“A TV series. You’re saying we’re in a TV series.” Andrew repeated.

“Yes. A cartoon. Twilight, did he explain what that is?”

Twilight appeared confused, “Yeah, he did...But how is this possible?”

“No clue.”

“Well, we know we’re real at the moment.” Twilight said, speaking slowly, “So it’s not just fiction.”

“Yeah, but--”

“Clearly, the creators of the TV series must have had some sort of psychic connection to us,” Twilight explained, brightly and matter-of-factly, “They’re fairly common. Tell me, Melissa, are events and details in the series completely identical to what you have seen here?”

“Not exactly. A lot of the character details are right, you and Dash are spot on...Though, I expected more horror when I shot the cockatrice.”

Twilight nodded, “Even Fluttershy would understand. We try not to kill animals, but sometimes we have no choice. Cockatrices are extremely dangerous.”

“I could see that. Andrew wasn’t in the show either. I think your explanation might be right.”

“Yes,” agreed Twilight, “It appears to just be giving the creators general concepts, and some, but not all the details.”

“That would explain why bullets actually worked on the Cockatrice. MLP is targeted at kids, despite the wide age variety, so they can’t show blood. If we were actually in the show, the pistol would misfire, or it would just collapse without the brains.”

Andrew shrugged, “Better than anything else I have. It’s at least less depressing.”

Melissa nodded in agreement, “Yeah, psychic link! Cool. Different topic, anyone?”

They pulled up to the Golden Oak Library, and Melissa turned the key to the “off” position.

Without warning... “Hi!”

“Christ on crutches!” Melissa screamed in surprise, as a pink pony leaned in the open window. Twilight rolled her eyes, groaning “Pinkie!”

“I’ve never seen you before! What’s your name? I’m Pinkie Pie!” the pony said, ignoring Twilight.

“Melissa Foster.” Melissa replied, doing her best to stay calm.

“Nice to meet you!” Pinkie cried joyfully, seizing Melissa’s hand and shaking it vigorously.

She inhaled deeply, and began to sing, “You’re Melissa, first human mare to Equestria, consider me your first guide to this strange land...ia!”

Melissa blinked, as the pony stopped, gasping for breath. “Uh...Huh. Didn’t have much time to prepare that, did you?”

Pinkie shrugged, “Well, I can’t use the space in my head I’m using to plan your party--” she gasped suddenly, and rocketed off, leaving a cloud of dust vaguely shaped like her.

The human slowly moved her hand down to the window control…

Pinkie Pie abruptly returned, “Party at four minutes past 7:00. Don’t be late!” And zoomed off again.

Melissa blinked again, and slowly rolled up the window. “Anyone know what just happened?”

“Not a clue.” Andrew said.

“Party at 7:00.” Twilight shrugged.

XXXXX

Pinkie Pie had been true to her word. Exactly four minutes past 7:00 PM, according to Melissa’s watch, as darkness began to creep in, a party erupted into existence..

Based only on first impressions, Melissa found that there were no individual words to describe Pinkie’s personality, her insatiable curiosity and her...her...would the kindest word be insanity?

As the greeting party raged around her, Melissa was introduced to the remaining members of the Mane Six.

“Hmm…” a thoughtful expression crossed the face of the unicorn with the white coat and purple mane known as Rarity, as she looked at Melissa’s outfit.

Panic filled the young human’s mind, images of corsets flashing before her. She cringed, and grabbed a random passerby, holding them between her and Rarity and bracing for impact.
“Yes?” Melissa encouraged, as if nothing had happened.

“Whoever is your tailor, my dear? That outfit is simply inspired!”

Melissa opened one eye. “What?”

“Such simplicity...Yet charming!”

Melissa opened the other eye and glanced at the unicorn. “What? This doesn’t go against your fashion sense?”

“Of course it doesn’t!” Rarity replied, stepping around the random blue pony held as a shield, to repeat, “That jacket is very endearing! And the camouflage pattern on the leggings...Oh, for once it is not so drab, and so eye-catching! So much storage as well! Functional! And what amazing materials, by far the best part! Oh, you simply must tell me the name of your tailor!”

“Can I go now?” The pony shield whimpered.

“Oh! Sorry!” the human released the unfortunate bystander.

The pony sprinted off as Melissa turned to Rarity, “I don’t have a tailor, I bought this online.”
“On line you say? From a store?”

“No,” Melissa laughed, “I bought it from a website. Has Andrew mentioned the internet at all?”

Rarity contemplated for a moment, “He has mentioned something like that in his frequent cultural references...Though we never understood those.”

“Forget about it,” Melissa replied, and unzipped her jacket to gain access to the collar tag. As she pulled it off, she revealed a long-sleeve shirt with the words “Cool. Nerd stuff.” across it. Around this caption lay a dozen nonsensical equations, with a car, a pistol, a sword, and some strange dish on a stick scattered across the shirt.

Rarity appeared thoughtful, considering the shirt from all angles, but didn’t know exactly what to make of it. The materials are extremely excellent at least...

Melissa looked at the collar of her jacket, “Humans will put tags in our clothing, identifies the manufacturer. I guess for this exact reason.”

Rarity stared at the smooth silver tag in wonder. On one side the strange “N7” symbol appeared again, with an “S” in brackets underneath. Below was a completely apocryphal word, “Bioware”.
The spurious word was followed by a little pair of capital letters, “T.M.”, drawn as one might draw an exponent symbol in mathematics.
Under that were the words “Mass Effect”, followed by two forms of the T-M symbol, the exponent again, as well as regular text; these were followed by the letters “EA” and the abbreviation for “incorporated”.
On the opposite side were the materials used in construction, a variety of incomprehensible symbols, and washing methods.

“There we go, Bioware.”

“Interesting, I’ve never thought of that before! Putting all this information onto the clothing itself! Though I have to ask...”

“Why we would put someone else’s name on our clothing instead of our own names?” Melissa finished, the words Calvin Klein appearing in her head, “It’s the manufacturers, they do it themselves, so they have control over it.”

Rarity noted the human’s collar, realizing that there were two layers. “May I see the final layer? It could hardly be in bad taste, you’ve shown me so much good already!”

Obediently, Melissa pulled up her outer layer to reveal a black t-shirt underneath.

Rarity took in the sight, a bust of a human figure was printed on the front, a gentle smile visible within the large bulbous helmet he(she assumed) wore on his head. The letters “C”, “C”, “C”, and “P” could be seen on the forehead of the helmet. The stallion’s helmet looked strange, and it was hard to see what material it was made out of due to the colors of the image. She grinned at the colors she could see, the image was merely a silhouette, its outline lit up by a canvas of stars!

“Marvelous…” she breathed, shocked once again at human technology.

“Really?” Melissa looked down at the image, “I’ll admit, Yuri Gagarin was awesome, but the image itself is pretty basic…”

“‘Basic’?!” Rarity demanded, “While it does not shimmer in the light, it’s certainly far better than anything similar I can turn out at my boutique! That shape is flawless! No error at all! The amount of detail on the face! The stars look as though you had plucked them from the sky! How can you call this basic?!”

“...having a century’s worth of an advantage?”

“Irrelevant. Would you mind if I took some measurements at some point? And could examine this outfit of yours?” Rarity asked politely, “I would love to have more examples of human clothing for ideas.”

Most of Melissa’s earlier fears melted away as she nodded, “That would be nice. Tomorrow afternoon, perhaps? Tonight I’m going to be occupied.”

The unicorn nodded brightly, and bid farewell, as Melissa saw a familiar-looking Earth pony near a refreshment table.

“Uh...Excuse me, Applejack, I presume?”
The bright orange pony turned to look at her, her blond mane whipping around, as she had a friendly smile on her face. “Ya must be Melissa! A pleasure to meet you. I woulda met ya when ya first woke up, but ah had to get back home. Work, you know.”

They shook appendages, and Melissa gave her full name. “Well, if Pinkie hasn’t already done so, welcome to Ponyville!” Applejack delivered in a dramatic fashion.

“Thanks,” Melissa replied, “How is Sweet Apple Acres doing? In the black, I presume?”

“Would we be anywhere else?” Applejack said with confidence, “We’re the best apple-makers in the business! Ah reckon all of Equestria would be rioting’ if we quit.”

“I’ll bet!” Melissa smiled, “But uh...I do have something important to ask of you.”

“Anythang. A friend of Andrew’s is a friend of mine.”

“Are there any allergies that you have run into? Anything that limits the foods one can eat?”

Applejack put a hoof on her chin thoughtfully, “Hmm...There are the usual peanut allergies, allergies to certain types of hay…”

“Anything that prevents one from eating wheat?”

Applejack slowly nodded, with a concerned look on her face. “I thought that only occurred in foals…”

This puzzled Melissa. She thought the ponies had technology roughly equal to the 1850s, with magic augmenting it a bit. Celiac disease wasn’t properly observed until 1887...Albeit to the absolute worst possible extent of medical science. Strange that they would know about it to this level.
Maybe Equestria was more advanced than she had thought...

“Well, at least in humans, that’s what we thought too. It started turning up in older people, and, well…” She gestured to herself.
Applejack’s tone turned to one of concern, “Sugarcube, do you have that disease...uh, celiac? The one Steel Guise discovered?”

“Well, if that’s the pony version of Samuel Gee, then…”

“Well, why dinna ya just say so? I can have ya fixed up in a jiff! We’ve got a ton of grass products...”

“Humans can’t digest grass. It doesn’t give us any nutrients.”

Applejack hit herself lightly on the head, “Right, of course. Why is that anyway? Everypony can eat grass…”

“Humans are descended from apes, not equines. Most of our diet is fruit, vegetables, and…”

She coughed, “...Meat.”

“Ah though Andrew was joking about that…” Applejack mumbled, wide-eyed.

“We can eat apples though,” Melissa added quickly, “Lot and lots of apples.”

Within seconds, another refreshment table appeared, with a variety of apple products on it. Mostly plain old apples, but there were some creative designs as well.
“We get requests on occasion to deal with this type of thing,” Applejack explained, “I can wrangle up some of our better recipes later. For now, ah hope these will work out.”

“Thanks, Applejack!” the human replied, and reached for a bright red apple, “Usually people don’t understand this kinda thing.”

“Oh, don’t fret none. Happens all the time!”

With that, they separated. Melissa walked off through the mass of partying ponies, chomping on the best apple she’d ever tasted. She glanced around to find the final pony she was looking for.

There she was. In one corner of the square, sitting on the pony equivalent of a metal folding chair.
Fluttershy. The butter-yellow pegasus with a light pink mane.

Quietly and calmly, Melissa moved over to her. She didn’t speak, just went and sat down, chomping at the apple.
Fluttershy raised an eyebrow. She hadn’t encountered many people who were willing to simply sit quietly, and not start up conversations immediately.
Hesitantly, she opened her mouth, “H-hello. Are you Melissa?”

The human smiled, and nodded. Another bite from the apple.
“Did you know Andrew back on Earth?” she blurted. Fluttershy was no good at small talk, and a mild jealousy circuit kicked into the timid pony’s mind.
“Nope,” came Melissa’s best impression of Big Mcintosh, “Big planet, Earth. Seven billion and counting, 200 million in the US alone...I think.”

Fluttershy nodded in reply. Melissa’s turn to ask a question. “What do you think of him?”

She blushed in reply, and Melissa grinned a little, trying to make her feel more at ease.

“He’s kind, and sweet, and while he can be a bit…” Fluttershy took a deep breath, as if about to reveal a state secret, and whispered, “...Rude, he hasn’t bothered anyone in town. He’s…” she caught herself, “...A friend. He’s a very good friend.”

Melissa nodded, and they went back to silent. She had experience with timid people.

Eventually, she got up, and walked away. Where was she going? Even she didn’t know, as all thoughts were banished by the appearance of Pinkie Pie.

“I’ve prepared a much better welcome song!” she cried in a sing-song tone, “Hopefully, it should ease the pain of culture shock!”

“Wait, what--oh no no wait wait wait wait, stop!”

Pinkie had brought out the big cart she had used to greet Cranky Doodle Donkey, and at present held her mouth open comically, completely frozen.

“You already have welcomed me!” Melissa explained, smiling nervously, “you don’t need to do it anymore!”

“Oh! Did I offend you?” Pinkie bounded up into the human’s personal space, “I’m so sorry! I--”

“No,” Melissa said firmly, “You didn’t offend me. It’s just...I’ve heard you can be overwhelming at times and I don’t want my anxiety issues to start kicking in…”

“Who’d you hear it from?” Pinkie inquired in a strange manner.

“Uh...Andrew! Yes, Andrew told me!”

All the tension suddenly disappeared, “Oh, okay! I’ll be back later for your MP3 player, go finish establishing your relationships with the other characters!”

The pink pony bounded off, leaving Melissa very confused.

My MP3 player? Establishing relationships?

After a moment, she shrugged and moved on. Pinkie Pie was just being Pinkie Pie.

A flap of wings and a streak of rainbow light. Then, like that, there was a pegasus hovering in front of her, scrutinizing Melissa with great interest.
“So...what’s your story?”

“Uh...what?”

“Y’know, how’d you end up here? What’s your job back on Earth?”

“Wormhole, and I’m...I’m…” Melissa hesitated, and coughed, “...A firefighter.”

“Aw…” Dash looked a little disappointed, “No one ever interesting comes...what else can you do?”

“Well for one, don’t knock firefighters if you know what’s good for you. Second of all I’m a good shot, I can blow shit up, and my brain’s packed with technical data and information, as well as a basic understanding of world history. I guess I’m kinda like Sam Carter in Stargate--”

She grimaced and kicked at the dirt, “Shit, you don’t get that reference. One more thing to get used to...”

“You’re a firefighter, how do you know about blowing stuff up? And why do you swear in every other sentence?”

“Well, preventing something means understanding how it works in the first place. Second of all, a fucking potty-mouth is the least of my frakking problems. I’m a...firefighter, and that sort of attitude comes with the freaking job, so no one can complain!”

“I beg to differ…” Rainbow scoffed a little.

“You wanna die, little-miss...something something witty insult involving the word slow?”

They glared at each other for a moment...when Rainbow Dash suddenly snorted, amused.

“Were you planning on going somewhere with that one?” she asked.

“Give me a day, I might have something for ya.” Melissa admitted, “I’ve got quotes and references up the wazoo, but improv’s not my forte.”

“Heh, me neither. What the hay’s a wazoo?”

Rainbow Dash watched as, with well-practiced movements, the human pulled out the small device known as a cellular telephone.
Melissa swiped from bottom left to top right, and spoke into it, “Hey Cortana, what’s a wazoo?”

After a moment, the screen set a white glow against Melissa’s face, and her eyes bugged out. Dash laughed as the human turned a bright shade of red and facepalm.

“Well?” Dash asked, chuckling even more, and relishing in the torment being inflicted, “What is it?”

“It’s...it’s…oh, Cthulhu...” Melissa whimpered a little, embarrassed.

“Oh, give it here!” Dash snatched the device out of Melissa’s hands, and stared for a moment, then roared with laughter.

Snatching the device back, Melissa grumbled, “Yeah, yeah, rub it in. Safe search can’t stop everything! And I’m offline, so I don’t know if that setting even works! ! Besides, you asked!”

“Huh? Safe search?”

“Nothing...I’m gonna go...over that way.” she pointed randomly and stepped away.

“Oh, uh... okay!” Dash watched her go. Huh, that went better than expected. I guess Humans are all weirdos, though.

As Melissa walked nowhere in particular, she felt her leg hit something and was flipped forward onto her back.
“Jeez, who leaves a stump in the middle of a plaza…?” she groaned, rubbing her skull.

“Ow...who goes around not looking where they’re going…?” another voice grunted in reply, “Or was that a train that hit me?”

Sitting bolt-upright, Melissa turned to see she had accidentally bowled over a small purple and green creature. He lay on his back, struggling to get back up, with dirt marks in the shape of her sneakers across half his face.
The figure was a little less than a meter tall, covered in scales, with neon-green fins that stuck out from the the top of his head and ran down the length of his spine and tail. One of his two claws held a wooden cup, the contents of which were now spilled across the cobblestone. She knew him immediately, by voice alone.

“Frak me, I’m sorry, Spike!” Melissa cried, jumping to her feet and moving over. Lifting Twilight Sparkle’s assistant(oof, heavier than he looks!), she placed him back on his feet and dusted him off anxiously, “You alright?!”

“Yeah, I’m fine…” he grumbled, pushing her hand away and mournfully looking at his mug.

“You sure? I know jack diddly about dragon physiology? Well, unless you count dinosaurs, in which case...no wait, shit, you’re more evolved than them, your skull’s gonna be pretty thin, are you sure you’re alright!?”

“Yes, I’m fine! Stop worrying!” He barked indignantly, and seemed unfazed by the creature he spoke to. “Watch where you’re going next time!”

“Again, I’m sorry, Spike. I’m still new to this thing...did I kick you that hard? I didn’t mean to, I just didn’t see you...”

He stared at her for several long seconds. “You like to talk a lot, don't you?“

“Depends on the day...By the way, if you don’t mind me asking, what’s with the attitude? Aside from me kicking you in the head.”

“What attitude?” he demanded rudely.

“Y’know, you’re usually a bit calmer.”

He opened his mouth to deliver a rude reply, then tilted his head, “Excuse me? ‘Usually’?”

Wincing, Melissa garbled, “I--eh--uh…Well, you see, back on Earth--”

“Yes, yes, Melissa, cultural reference we will never get!” Twilight interrupted, thankfully appearing out of nowhere alongside Andrew. The unicorn grinned nervously, and her eyes told Melissa it might be a good idea to stay quiet.

“You trampled him too?” Andrew asked, “Me too, the way I found out about him in fact.”

“Yeah, he screamed like a little filly!” Spike laughed, then winced and held the side of his head.

“I did not!” Andrew rolled his eyes, “Spike, beat it. Human stuff to talk about.”

Melissa slugged him in the arm, “Dick! Don’t be so rude!”

“He threatens to kill me on a regular basis!”

“Oh, who doesn’t? Threaten anyone, I mean. That can be friendly! In the fire service at least.” Melissa crouched down to Spike’s level, “Sorry again. We do have something private to discuss, though,” grinning, she had an idea, “Maybe you could tell Rarity something about my shoes. Sneakers might leave impressive scars.”

Spike smiled a little, “Okay, I get it. I’ll go.”

Melissa stood back up, turning to the other two, “Great Old Ones, Shepherd, are you trying to play renegade? Twilight, am I going nuts here, or is he really being rude?”

Twilight grimaced, “Well, by our standards...yes. Yes he can be. That’s totally understandable given his unfamiliarity with our culture and ways. Though with some things I’d expect him to have adapted to.”

“Hey!”

“Don’t worry about it dude,” Melissa said, waving it off, “In this type of story, you’re the first guy who has the second person to comment on your behavior, usually offering some improvements. Though I have no intention of being your sidekick, so I might do a bit more. I do have the modern firearm, all you have is a flintlock that isn’t even built right.”

“Hey!” Andrew barked again, a little indignantly, “Why are we talking about my issues and not what we came over here to talk about?”

“I thought that was why you came over here.” Melissa giggled.

He glared at her, then Twilight, who was giggling too, “Oh, don’t you start..No. We didn’t.”

“Well, quit dragging us off topic then!”

“I didn’t!”

“I don’t know. Melissa, analyzing his flaws would prove to be a very interesting conversation. I’ve had numerous theories on why he’s created a facade of cowardice, rude behavior, and indecisiveness to hide behind, despite his clear bravery and moral code.”

“Now that is interesting. Tell me Andrew, did you have issues with the rest of your family--”

“Alright, that’s enough!” Andrew said loudly, rubbing his face, “Neither of you are a psychologist, and you just got here!”

“That doesn’t matter. Being able to analyze character depends on the mind, not just time.”

“Remind me again why we unfroze you?”

“Too late to go back now. And I got the best gun on the planet in my jacket. So you can just suck it.”

He glared at her smirking face, half-willing to try and deck her right there.

“What’d you guys want to talk about?” Melissa asked, suddenly about business.

“Well,” Twilight began, “We did want to check on how you were settling in. And we wanted to discuss the psychic link.”

Melissa held up a hand, “Okay, let me stop you right there. There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that we are hiding this, at least completely. That will only lead to an extremely awkward situation, and probably with one of us dying, or me getting beaten up, or something else horrible. Therefore, I suggest, Twilight, that you compile a briefing for the rest of the Mane Six and Spike. Anyone else would lead to trouble, probably involving kidnapping to get my brain, and we can simply explain my advanced knowledge as being a fast learner.”

“What about me?” Andrew asked.

“What about you? You’ve already adjusted, and never heard of the show before I showed up. I know of everything that’s happened over the past two years here in Equestria, private and public, though my brother could probably remember in better detail. Since I'm guessing you know less, you’re way less valuable to any agents from foreign countries”

“Really?” Andrew said doubtfully, “Everything?”

Melissa nodded, “Twilight, you were going to attend Moondancer’s party before you left Canterlot, but the whole Nightmare Moon situation distracted you.” she paused, as though she were about to add something, but shook her head and continued, “Entering the library looking for information on the Elements of Harmony(it was under ‘E’), you knocked Spike across the room, causing him to fall on the present and stab it. While you were--”

“Okay, okay!” Andrew interrupted, “I understand. But jeez, why are you so paranoid about that?”

“Because I’m realistic! In The Human Memoirs, the protagonist gets kidnapped by a bunch of foreign agents working for a government who wanted to exploit advanced human technical knowledge. The locals(big sentient cats), treated him like an animal, inflicting torture both intentional and not, he nearly died of exposure, and was picked up by some weird carnival people who wanted to sell him. He would have died if it hadn’t been for his real good friend in charge of the good cat people who sent out parties like crazy searching for him. I don’t want that to happen, do you?!”

He squinted at her, “My life is now magic and talking ponies, but I think right now you are by far the strangest person I have ever met.”
To punctuate his statement, he raised the cup he held to his lips.

“Hey, what’s in that?” Melissa asked.

“Soda…?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“Dude!” she slapped it out of his hands, scattering the contents and cup to the floor.

“What the hey was that for?” he demanded, lamenting his drink.

“It’s 19th century soda, you idiot! Don’t you know what’s in this stuff?!”

“Of course I do, Same as ours. Teeth-rotting high-fructose corn syrup. It’s just one area where they’re a bit more advanced than others.”

Melissa facepalmed, “Okay, haven’t you seen any coke bottle? ‘Since 1898’ or something? Coke was originally sold as a tonic, and you know what the high-fructose corn syrup replaced? Cocaine! That’s freaking liquid cocaine!”

The tone of their conversation changed so sharply it could cut someone.

His eyes widened, but his brow was furrowed in concentration for a moment, “Well, that explains a whole lotta things...”

“Is there a problem?” Twilight inquired in confusion, “Of course it has cocaine.”

“Wait, you knew?!”

“Of course I did! Everypony knows!”

“Andrew, they’re at a Victorian-era technological level,” Melissa explained, “Why wouldn’t they? People toted it as being able to cure dandruff, toothaches, and probably ‘female hysteria’, AKA ‘please let me out of the kitchen’. I recommend you start carrying around your own water bottle, by the way, with water from verified sources, and not trying any prepared foods that haven’t been fried. You think Flint’s water is bad, there might be some flesh-eating disease, or--”
She suddenly laughed, “Sorry, just remembered a funny Red vs Blue joke on this type of thing. ‘I’m gonna have to hold Caboose’s hand while he screams himself to death’. Ah, Rooster Teeth...”

He stuttered, mumbling disjointed words, “Are you insane?! What on earth is wrong with you?!”

“Obviously, something. My job is to go into burning buildings, how is that not insane?”

“Alright, ask a stupid question,” then he looked at Twilight, “Okay, give me a list of what has cocaine in it around the house so we can burn it all.”

“That’s not what you do with drugs--” Melissa tried to explain, but Twilight interrupted, “Excuse me, but what’s the problem? It’s a harmless drug, with many uses.”

“Twilight, I love you, but sometimes you’re just plain wrong.” Andrew grumbled, “Cocaine is extremely dangerous, outlawed all over Earth. There are massive statistics on how many people die from overdosing, and the horrid effects. People die over this, small wars and massive destruction. Some countries don’t have any exports other than the stuff, trading it to the CIA for weapons to keep their banana republics going.”

The unicorn gasped, “But--but--maybe it just affects humans adversely.”

Melissa shook her head, “That’s not how it works. Our ecosystems are extremely similar, and we’ve had centuries to study these effects. In the wrong dosages, it screws up transmission in the brain, over-stimulating neurotransmitters and basically rotting everything away...I can’t remember my health class too well. Since the 80s there’ve been PSAs on the ‘soul-destroying’ drugs. The true effects are extremely debatable, partly because of the war on drugs screwing everything up, but without proper regulations or understanding of these things, it’s not a good idea to risk it.”

She halted for a moment, staring at Andrew, “Did you say…’love’?”

Andrew’s eye twitched. “Oh crap.”

Twilight rolled her eyes, “Andrew...fine, I’ll do it.”

“No no no no--!”

“We are in a romantic relationship together, with some additional tension between us and Fluttershy. Andrew has some feelings for her, and has been extremely indecisive about the whole situation.” Twilight explained carefully. “Is there a problem with this?”

Andrew groaned, and buried his face.

“Huh.” Melissa grunted. “Well, I imagine several bronies just felt a ripple in the universe. Two ponies vying for your love? Cthulhu, why is that always the cliche? That is so stupid I wanna puke! There are so many fanfictions with this plot, and why are all the dimension hopping stories with that one too? All of them are like that. How is it that every single person involved in these situations.just happens to be a furry? Silva in Destroyermen made sense, one in nearly two-hundred guys, sure, but jeez, every single one? That’s so freaking weird, and so freaking cliched.”

Andrew looked up at her, scrunching up his face, “Really? That’s it?”

“I’m not a xenophobe. I have a crush on Garrus Vakarian, who am I to judge? My only problem is you dating one of my personal heroes.”

“Personal heroes?” Twilight asked, “What?”

“Forget about it.” she furrowed her brow and looked down at an interesting pebble on the ground. Strange, she wasn’t reacting more strongly. Something was wrong, something had changed in her gut.
“See you guys later…” she mumbled, stepping away.

Andrew made to follow her, concerned, but Twilight held him back.

Pinkie Pie noted the strange departure, watching the human move back to her carriage and collapse against it.
Is that normal? Humans always look like they’re going to fall over, I can never tell.

She watched in curiosity as the human slid down to the ground, putting her head between her knees. A clear case of some sort of sadness.
Immediately Pinkie was across the plaza, next to Melissa, and wondering why the human seemed to always jump out of her skin whenever she showed up.

“Quit freaking scaring me you pink pain in my goddamn ass!” she cursed, getting back up off the ground, “How do you even do that?!”

Pinkie replied, “Well, I won’t tell you if you’re rude! All I wanted to do was cheer you up, you seemed upset somehow.”

“And your response is to try and tele-frag me?”

Pinkie raised an eyebrow, “What’s that?”

“Ugh...never mind, what’d you want?”

“We haven’t heard human music before. How do you feel about dancing?”

Melissa thought for a moment, then shrugged, knowing better than to argue with the physics-defying creature, “Eh, I’m not doing anything else.”

Her brief depression gone, she rushed over to her car and pulled out her MP3 player and a speaker. She connected the two, and moved over to the DJ pony.

She reached up, tugged on the pony's headphones to get her attention.

After a quick conversation, DJ nodded, and turned off her own music. Melissa arranged her speaker near a bullhorn, and pressed the “play” button.

The speakers crackled, and unfamiliar instruments began to play. Melissa vaulted over the DJ platform, into a spot before it.
Lyrics of a song recorded thirty years previously on another world rang out across the plaza.
Grinning like a maniac, Melissa began to dance, bobbing back and forth as the drums battered away. She strung an air guitar as the real instrument began to squeal across the plaza. Several ponies, taken in by the music, quit staring and began to dance as well.

More ponies joined in. Several got up on their hind legs to try and imitate Melissa’s air guitar. Pinkie Pie leaped in next to Melissa, dancing in coordination with the human’s random motions.

A man named Stan Bush, thirty years younger, sang with clarity pony technology could not hope to match.

Melissa and Pinkie Pie began to sing along with the lyrics, breaking the air guitar and going into general dance.

Stan Bush was strumming an instrument that could not be built by Equestrian hooves for another ten years(without interference) at best.

Nearly the entire group of ponies attending broke their stares, and were dancing in similar fashion. Applejack and Rarity quickly made their way over, happy as could be dancing to the strange music. Pinkie and Melissa moved towards them as well.

It was The Touch, a song recorded for the 1986 Transformers film.

All four met in the center, dancing in coordination, rolling shoulders and bobbing their heads. Across the way, Andrew exited Twilight’s treehouse, searching for the source of the 80s music. His jaw dropped as he took in what was occurring before him.

“What...I don’t...How...What?” Andrew opened and closed his mouth, shaking his head in confusion.
He could not even begin to describe the spectacle before him. He had no idea where the music was coming from, where the fireworks were coming from, or why a musical was happening right befre his eyes.

Twilight Sparkle appeared next to Andrew. The biggest grin spread across her face as she jotted down notes.

She was just in time to see Rainbow Dash spiral around the other four, forming a rainbow-tornado.

When the drums began to slam in full, and Melissa mimed pounding away at them, as the rest of the group did so with their own instruments.

Andrew felt a strange tugging sensation. Almost as if he had to join in. He resisted as best he could.

The music slowed to the simple tones it had been at the beginning for a moment, and so did the dances...

...Until the electric guitar kicked back in, and then came the chorus.

They ended with a big finish, Pinkie and Rainbow leaning against each other to form a bridge, underneath which lay Melissa. Rarity and Applejack were on their knees in similar dramatic poses, and the rest of the population matched each pose exactly.

“...Power!” Melissa trailed off, and finally, the singing ceased.

“Nice music choice, Melissa!” Rainbow Dash complemented, giving her a friendly nudge, “I didn’t think anyone else liked that sort of thing!”

“Ah haven’t danced like that in forever,” Applejack commented, out of breath, “I haven’t even heard anything like that.”

“Whoo!” Melissa cried, still on the floor on her back, “Pony parties!”
Andrew strode up to the group as they continued to congratulate each other. “Uh oh, it’s the killjoy, girls!” Melissa giggled strangely as she attempted to get up.

“Melissa? Tell me what just happened.” Andrew calmly asked.

“Um...We were dancing?” Melissa raised an eyebrow at him, her words sticking together and clunky.

“...Awesomely!” Rainbow added, and they shared a bro-hoofed. Sloppily.

“In extremely coordinated dance moves. Almost as if you had been practicing.” Andrew pointed out.

“No, those were all spontaneous…” Melissa trailed off, and hiccuped, “Did we just have a spontaneous musical number?”

“Alien dances! Alien music!” Twilight made a squee sound as she continued to write, “So much data! I’m going to be analyzing this for weeks!”

“Melissa, Why aren’t you more worried about this?” Andrew demanded, “Spontaneous dancing!”

“Eh I’ll figure it out later…” She tried to pick herself up again, and staggered a little, leaning against Dash for support.

“Dashie, you have the cutest wings!” Melissa muttered. She stopped trying to get up, and leaned against Rainbow Dash, a goofy smile on her face as she stroked the blue pegasus’ wings, “So fluffy!”

“Um...Thanks?” Dash replied, confused.

“I love them...So much...And they smell nice too…” she fell to the ground again, hiccuping a bit.

“Mel, are you okay?” Dash asked, trying to get the human back to her feet.

“I feel great...You’ve always been important to me, Ms. X-15…” She ran a hand through Rainbow’s mane, “So tough...So pretty…Human or pegasus...”

“...Andrew?! Help!” Dash squeaked. Melissa was acting stranger by the second.

Andrew began to laugh, actually. “Oh my god, I think she’s drunk!”

“I love ya, Dashie...I love ya…”

“Definitely drunk.”

“Guys!?”

“But how?” Twilight wondered, a magical field dragging Melissa off Rainbow Dash, “She didn’t drink any cider, and isn’t acting like you did when you drank some, Andrew...”

Andrew scratched the back of his head as the Mane Six giggled. That incident was never to be mentioned again. “I think it was the dancing. I haven’t joined in any of your dances, so I wouldn’t know. But how was she acting before she started dancing?”

“Very polite.” Rarity reported, as Melissa mumbled words not to be repeated in present company.
“Coherent.” Applejack added, as the human garbled and snorted.

“...Quiet.” Fluttershy finished, as Melissa’s head went limp and she began to snore.

“So she wasn’t intoxicated before dancing...Then, that’s what did it? Dancing?” Twilight raised a doubtful eyebrow.

“It’s magic, so I guess anything’s possible.”

“Um...Excuse me…” Fluttershy interrupted, before the analysis could get much further, “What are we going to do about her?”

They settled for going to her Tesla, and putting her to sleep. Andrew figured she would rest better in a familiar place anyway. He fished out her keys, and unlocked the vehicle.

He rolled down the windows, and put the back seats down as Twilight carefully deposited Melissa on the makeshift bed. They located an emergency blanket, and placed it over her.
Pinkie found a NASA pillow in the front trunk, and pushed it under Melissa’s head.

“What are you staring at, Larry?” she muttered in her sleep as most of the gang walked away.

Thus ended Melissa Foster’s first 36 hours in Equestria. Collapsed in the back of her Tesla after a spontaneous dance number, mumbling references to an obscure 80s comic, while a magical butter-yellow pegasus keeps an eye on her.

No one noticed a tear trickling down the human's face.

Chapter 3

Lyra Heartstrings trotted up to the table, waving to her friend Bon Bon as she approached. She sat down, giving her order to the waiter who materialized out of nowhere.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said, drinking from a cup of water, “Construction work.”

“It’s alright,” her friend replied, “I only got here a few minutes ago.”

Their food arrived rapidly, a pair of fairly large sandwiches. For what must have been the millionth time, Lyra sipped her drink and asked her friend, “Any more news about the human?”

Bon Bon sighed in response for the millionth time, but instead of saying no, responded, “Yes, actually. I met her.”

Lyra spewed liquid a distance of ten meters, hitting some random passerby as she demanded, “What?!”

Bon Bon didn’t even bat an eye, “She was leaving the hospital on crutches, and called me over.”

“What’d she say?! What’d she say!?” Lyra demanded, leaning over the table.

Her friend’s obsession with ancient fairy tales had surprised Bon Bon the first time they met. Despite being completely satisfied with her current job, Lyra had an odd obsession with some legendary, possibly non-existent creature known as a human, and pursued an anthropology degree for this reason. The stories varied wildly, ranging from humans portrayed as benevolent heroes, to cruel villains.
Most ponies let Lyra be, figuring it to simply some sort of phase. After all, human fossils had never been discovered, and the majority of the(quite vague) stories were well over a thousand years old. There had been numerous searches for records in other countries, but most of the searches turned up much of the same, leading credence to the idea that they were simply myth.

The aquamarine pony’s obsession returned with the appearance of a real human several months prior. Lyra had been positively ecstatic, but her mood quickly grew into fear. At being confronted with such a great being as a human, what does one say?

Lyra quickly became disillusioned for several days after she had finally worked up the courage to talk to the human. He didn’t seem to possess any of the great knowledge of the stories, only a single piece of technology that quickly became useless, and was prone to smugly making extremely obnoxious references to his own culture that nopony could understand.

When it finally seemed as though her obsession had faded, it quickly reignited with the arrival of the second human. A human with far more technology and information.
Lyra had been unable to even see the human during the party(though not for lack of trying, Bon Bon thought, I thought she was going to assault that unicorn!), and was in no way prepared for a one-on-one conversation either.
Thus, she resorted to asking every passerby and friend if they had any news of the human.

“She wanted to know where a flat wide open stretch of unused land was,” Bon Bon replied, recalling the human woman’s words, “Said she wanted to use it for...something.”

“What else did she say? Was she nice?” Lyra demanded, sliding back into her seat.

“She seemed exhausted, and was kind of distant, so she didn't say much. She only said that she needed it for something called a...plane. Yes, that was the word.”

“Wait, isn’t a plain exactly what she was looking for?”

“Yeah, I thought it was weird too. Oh, something else a bit odd, she asked about you. You specifically.”

Lyra’s jaw dropped, “What?”

Bon Bon shrugged, “Apparently, she wanted to know if you were as into anthropology as she’d heard.”

The aqua-colored unicorn didn’t respond. She simply ate her food in silence, stunned.

Bon Bon snorted, recalling a funny bit of gossip overheard in the marketplace.

“What?” asked Lyra distantly.

Snickering, Bon Bon asked, “Do you think Andrew’s gonna date her too? I hear he’s got a place at Fluttershy’s and Twilight’s!”

Lyra giggled, “Oh, I wonder! They’re both human, so maybe...”

Bon Bon abruptly looked behind Lyra, out at the busy marketplace. “Hey, there she is!”

Looking behind her, Lyra squinted for a moment. Her eyes bugged, and she grabbed Bon Bon, dragging both under the table.

“Lyra! What the--”

Lyra shushed her friend, and watched the human hobble her way across the courtyard. She wore a black jacket, and those strange-looking pants humans wore. On her left hind leg she wore a tall tan boot, while her right hind leg was wrapped in a bandage; she galloped along on a pair of hastily-made crutches, clutching several pieces of paper in one hand.
None of these attributes were what made her panic. It was the fact that she recognized the human. Or the pony pretending to be a human.
There was nopony else who had that mane, that flowing, thick red and gold hair. There was no one else with that demeanor either, that “I’m smart and I know it” bearing that the pony known as Sunset Shimmer had made her own. Her air of arrogance wasn’t the same though. Probably due to the injury messing with her posture.

The pony who had disappeared two years ago, leaving a trail of destruction behind her. What is she doing here? What did she do to herself?
Her horn was gone completely, her ears were as well...No, they were just tiny and on the side of her head now. Her snout was so small, did she even have a sense of smell anymore? Her hooves...well, those hands might not be so bad. Maybe it had been some sort of magic experiment gone wrong...

“Lyra? What are you doing?” Bon Bon hissed, snapping the unicorn back to reality.

“Don’t you know who that is? That’s no human!”

“What are you talking about?” Bon Bon sighed, looking from her friend to the human, and back again.

“Didn’t I tell you about Sunset Shimmer?”

Bon Bon thought back for a moment, “That crazy unicorn? The one who went behind Queen Celestia’s back?”

Lyra nodded vigorously, “I knew her! She was always pretty rude and never wanted to spend any time with us.”

“What do you think she’s here for?” Bon Bon asked, suddenly serious.

“No clue! Last I heard she beat up a bunch of palace guards and escaped Canterlot!”

“She must be really powerful if she was able to escape Canterlot’s police and the Household Division…” Bon Bon muttered, and began to quickly scribble notes on a notepad, “Are you sure it’s her?”

Lyra squinted intently at the figure moving amongst the marketplace stalls. Sunset didn’t stop at any of the hay stalls, but being human-like, that wasn’t surprising. She did stop at the apple stalls though, as well as a handful of others, the traveling ones that would be there only for the day; in particular, a seller who was displaying various types of pretty rocks and metals. Sunset had always liked apples, and exotic things. She also had an intense interest in the elements, for both pleasure and in school assignments.
As she watched, Sunset dropped a hoof-full of bits on a counter and walked away, not stopping at all to talk with the vendor. How rude!

There was no doubt about it. That was Sunset Shimmer.

“Yes, I’m sure. What do we do, Bon Bon?” Lyra asked, fear creeping into her voice, “She must want revenge! We’ve got to do something!”

“We are doing something. We’re observing, getting info.”

“We have to tell somepony though!” Lyra insisted.

“We can’t.”

“What?” Lyra demanded, “Why? She’s dangerous! Why shouldn’t we tell anyone?”

Bon Bon stopped writing for a moment, and looked at her friend for a long moment.

Lyra had no idea what Bon Bon’s previous job was. She couldn’t say anything. Few knew that the agency had even existed, its missions highly classified, and the dissolving of the department had destroyed every shred of evidence left. She made an oath to Equestria’s security, she had orders!
It was just one little lie, but it was worse than any of the others she had told over the years.

“Lyra,” she said, resting a hoof on her friend’s shoulder, “You’re right. I’ll let somepony know, but don’t tell anyone else. Remember people have trouble believing you about...certain things. Don’t ask anypony about this, either.”

Lyra rubbed her face, giving a shaky exhale, “Okay. I gotcha.”

Bon Bon smiled a little, and climbed out from under the table. She still had contacts left in the government, who could get the information to the queen rapidly.

XXXXX

“Black powder and alcohol…” Melissa muttered, tapping her pencil against the piece of paper she was writing on and mumbling a song to herself. The sheet was covered in scribbles and had been folded several times. She was leaning against the smoothest wall she could find, trying to recall where she had been before…

“So...you’re sure you don’t need any help?” Pinkie Pie asked, holding up the remaining odds and ends Melissa had dropped, “Didn’t mean to surprise you like that.”

“Ssh! I’m concentrating!” she began to write as she continued to sing the song Black Powder and Alcohol.

Melissa glanced at Pinkie for a moment, “Where’s the nearest compost pile? With veggies, mainly?”

“Out behind the French cafe, 12 feet away from the back door, 9 feet and three inches to the left.”

She was about to write that down, but looked back at Pinkie, “Why…?”

Pinkie Pie shrugged happily, “You never know. Compost emergency!”

“Excuse me while I resist the urge to vomit.”

“Well you brought it up!”

“Never mind…” she finished the last of the song and wrote down the final lines.

Pinkie Pie quickly read over what Melissa had written down, and her brow furrowed, “What is this?”

“It’s a song.” Melissa replied, taking back her remaining papers, picking up a bag that lay near her feet, and hobbling off.

“About?” Pinkie asked, trotting alongside.

“It’s a folk song about making black powder and alcohol from the basic ingredients.”

“Cool! Even your schools must be better than ours! I wish my school house had taught math in song…” Pinkie sighed wistfully.

“Actually, our schools haven’t changed much since 1815. Still sitting in chairs, leaching brain cells out through our orifices, being depressed, and finding that someone’s pissed all over the bathroom floor just to be a dick.”

“Now who’s being disgusting?” Pinkie asked rhetorically.

“Oh, bite me.”

She caught her crutch on something, and stumbled. Again.

Melissa kept a tight hold on her papers this time, but her cloth bag jumped a few meters away. Several blocks of wood, a pile of rocks, a roll of copper wire, and a wooden box came dancing out.

Pinkie Pie went to pick up the items, then tried to help Melissa to her feet.

“I’m fine.” she grumbled angrily, shoving the pony away, but softened her tone somewhat when Pinkie offered the bag, “Thanks.”

“What’s that stuff for anyway?” Pinkie asked, ignoring the rudeness, “You spent nearly a hundred bits on it.”

“Hopefully, the key to victory.”

“What?”

“They’re the ingredients to a bunch of basic stuff that I can build, which are the stepping stones to the cooler stuff.” she checked a spherical glass test tube for cracks, and opened the wooden box to examine a set of glass syringes, nodding to herself confirming that they were intact, “Hey, who do I have to talk to to get a look at that hydroelectric dam down the river?”

“Probably the mayor. Why?”

Melissa glanced at a dormant street lamp on the corner. It was a large black pillar, with a four-sided glass lantern on top. One of the panels was open, and a step ladder propped against the side. A colt stood at the top with a load of tools. He had both hooves inside the lamp, and muttered a curse when there was a zap noise from the arc lamp within.
“No reason.”

Pinkie soon left, having her own errands to run.

Melissa kept going toward the center of town. As she turned the final corner, headed for the Tesla model X, Melissa noticed a certain purple unicorn standing near the vehicle.

She patted herself down, and found her keys. Trying to act nonchalant, she clicked the trunk door on the little model of her car attached to the chain.

Melissa put her bag in the vehicle, and pulled a binder out of her backpack. Within were pages of notes scrawled with chemical formulas as well as the word “bored”, underlined, capitalized, and with several exclamation points. She put her papers inside, taking much longer then she should have, avoiding Twilight’s gaze.
I got all my porn off the tablet, she knows about nukes...I think. Is it my video games maybe? X-COM? Fallout New Vegas? No, it’s gotta be the novels…

“Melissa?” Twilight asked politely.

The human rubbed her eyes, damn, I’m tired…”Where’s Andrew at?”

“He’s out with Fluttershy at the moment.” she almost winced at the mention of her friend, but Melissa took no notice.

“Did you need something?” Melissa asked, adding some citations to a schematic.

“Yes...Can you tell me what these are?”

Melissa turned to see a plastic bag hovering next to Twilight, modern technology of course. It was filled with a variety of bottles, orange, white, the colors didn’t matter. It was nearly every single bottle of medicine she had. Benadryl, ibuprofen, her ADD medication, everything that wasn’t from the medical kit.

Immediately she snatched at them, but the bag drifted gently out of the way.

“Give. Those. Back.” Melissa ground out.

“You didn’t answer my question.” Twilight said neutrally.

“It’s medication. Give it back.”

“Is there something we should know?” she asked with concern, still keeping the bag back, “Medicines like this are for those with mental illness, according to Andrew.”

“None of your business. Give it back.”

“If there’s something wrong with you, we need to know!”

“Oh, real nice, Twilight!” Melissa stopped trying to grab the bag, and rolled her eyes, “Why don’t you mock my busted knee, next?”

Twilight cringed, “I’m sorry, that was--”

“Out of line? You have no idea how far.” Melissa hopped on one leg over toward the unicorn. Angry, she used her full height to stand over Twilight.

“I didn’t mean any offense!” Twilight replied, staring Melissa down, “I was just concerned for your well-being!”

“So you went through my fucking car?!” Melissa glanced at her keys, not recalling them going missing, “How’d you get in, anyway?”

“...You left a door open.” She explained with some hesitation.

Melissa smacked herself in the face, “Oh, god damn it! This place is worse than Detroit!”

Twilight stomped a hoof hard on the ground, getting angry herself, “Look, Melissa, I didn’t mean any harm by this! You were acting very strange on the painkillers the hospital gave you, and that is normally the result of several drugs not interacting well with the nervous system! I didn’t disturb any of your personal items--”

“Other than my meds! Jesus, what do you people define as privacy?!”

“Listen! At first I wanted to know if there were any medical requirements that needed to be met, but once I found out about a possible mental health issue, I had to ask you about it!”

A notepad appeared as she spoke, “Now, I need to know. What is the nature of your...uh…”

Melissa facepalmed, “Trapped in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Great…”

She leaned against the car, glaring daggers at Twilight, “It’s nothing bad at all. I just have trouble focusing, and the pills help with that. Ibuprofen is for pain, and benadryl is to help me sleep. I have allergies.”

Twilight stopped writing, and looked up, “...That’s it?”

“What were you expecting?”

“Well, to be frank, I thought maybe, something worse…”

Melissa gave her an incredulous look, “You thought without my pills I’d be a raging homicidal maniac bent on wiping out all life on the planet, correct?”

“Uh…”

“When will you people discover Freud?!” she demanded, “Not all mental illnesses are that bad! Attention Deficit Disorder is something really minor! Every single type of mental thing is on a scale, from mild to serious. Actually, ADD doesn’t qualify as a mental illness! It’s just a neuro-atypical brain difference. It’s pretty common back on Earth, and I actually didn’t take one of those pills the first day I came here! Nor did I take them the days I was in the hospital!”

Twilight’s face looked quite guilty. The bag hovered closer to Melissa, and she grabbed it.

Taking out the orange bottle, she took one of the white and green tablets and swallowed it, “Now if you’ll excuse me…” with that, Melissa stormed off, taking a second to ram her point home by remotely closing the trunk, and locking it.

XXXXX

Still seething, Melissa limped across town, heading towards the smithy.

As she approached, she was surprised to find that all the green, fresh grass and plants typical of the area disappeared in a large radius around the building. Scorch marks, a distinct outline of another building’s foundations, and dead ground occupied the space instead. Clearly, it had been rebuilt several times.

Further proof was the tree growing around the remains of a boiler, that had become embedded in the trunk decades ago. The boiler hadn't been placed there either; judging by the angle it was at.

A sign on the door read “open”, and she pushed it ajar. Inside was a fairly typical smithy of the late 19th century. That the equipment was designed for there wasn’t too much to be surprised by. Muskets, armor, carriage frames, tools, and other equipment filled the wide building, as well as work benches and desks.

“Hello?” she called out, seeing no one.

When nopony answered, she guessed they were out on a lunch break or something. Melissa glanced around, looking for anything interesting.

She found a table in against one of the walls, sloped with a lantern above it to provide ample lighting. A classic designer table.

Peering over the notes, she understood only part of it. Her engineering experience was based on terminology, symbols, and techniques a century more advanced.

However, she did recognize one thing.

“Aw, you idiot.” She muttered, shaking loose one schematic and glaring at it. “No, wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.”

“Hey,” a gruff voice said from behind her, “You’re the new human? Mel-something?”

Melissa turned to see a fairly tall earth pony standing behind her, a dark pelt underneath typical blacksmith equipment; a smock, utility belt, and a newsboy hat.

“I’m Melissa. You’re the smith?”

“Yep. Name’s Smokestack. You want something?”

“You mind telling me what this is?” she held up the blueprint and shook it at him.

“It’s a piece of paper. What’s the problem?”

“Lever-action? Lever-action?! Goddamn lever-action firearms?!” she roared, “That’s what you went with?!”

Unlike any of the other ponies, he didn’t back down. Calmly he replied, “Better name than what I came up with. I just gave it a patent number.”

“Whatever. Why the hell did you pick this?!”

He shrugged.

Melissa made a face, “You got it from him, didn’t you.”

Before Smokestack could answer, she cut him off, “Okay, I am going to tell you several things. First off, he’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t, but go on.”

“He’s not that intelligent.”

The blacksmith raised an eyebrow, “He’s a bit odd, I’ll give you that, but he’s not stupid…”

“Whatever. He’s not an engineer. I am. You’re going to need to make some changes, pronto.”

“What’s the big deal? I thought you two would be happy to have some more modern weapons…”

Melissa facepalmed, “Not modern, actually. Looks good on paper, I know. Much faster firing rate, but that’s about it.”

She put it down on the desk, “Look. The round fires, you push the lever to put the next round in, so you need something to keep the unspent shell from going out, something else to stop the others from all going out at once, and a spring to keep pushing the rounds forward until the magazine’s expended. Then you need to be able to fire the shell, and work that in with all of this.”

Melissa took out a pencil and circled each spring and notch for each function, “All those are all things that can fail, break, and malfunction. Too many moving parts. If you moved the lever too hard, all that comes crashing down. You tilt the weapon wrong and it doesn’t work. Lever-action’s just a mess!”

Peering at it, Smokestack scratched his chin, “Huh. And you have a better idea, I assume?”

Without hesitation she whipped out her Glock 17, and slammed it down on the desk. “single shot, semi-automatic, and/or bolt action.”

She grabbed a piece of blank paper and crudely sketched out the inner workings of an rifle. “This one might be a bit advanced, but it’s the only semi-auto rifle I can think of right now. The M1 Garand, issued 1936, still in use today by other countries. It’s gas operated. You feed in a clip, so already it’s better. When the round goes off, there’s a hole in the barrel that vents the exploding gases back and pushes the bolt back into place, readying it for another shot. As the magazine goes up, once it’s empty, a spring knocks it out of the way.”

“That the operating principle on your own weapon?” he asked.

“Not exactly, this concept began production around 1920, I think. Phased out by the 50s, replaced with the M14, and the M16 after that. Gas-operated weapons are still in use today, but usually they’re automatic weapons or sniper rifles...I doubt we can make these at the moment, though. Forget it.”

Smokestack nodded regretfully, “I think you're right. I had to call in some favors from Colt’s Manufacturing to get the stuff I needed for the cartridges alone, since I couldn't get all of it locally,.” he commented, “I doubt I could get extremely complicated weapons going any time soon.”

“Wait, what?” Melissa scratched her head, “Colt?”

“Yeah…” he confirmed, confused.

To his mild surprise, she chuckled, “Coincidence. What do they make here?”

“Cannons, muskets, and fine machine parts, mostly.”

Her smile faded to confusion, “You said cartridges?”

“Yep.”

“You’ve made those?”

“Yes,” he trotted over to a large metal container, opening it to reveal several rows of massive cartridges.

Melissa came over and picked up one.

“You got a foundry here?” she asked offhandedly, studying the ammunition.

“Yeah, a small one.”

“Good. Can you do steel?”

“You need something in particular?”

“Yeah, hold on a second.”

The things were huge, like that of an M79 Grenade Launcher. They appeared to be centerfire rounds, a bit crude but at least it didn’t seem like it would explode upon pulling the trigger.

Examining the shell itself, she noticed that there wasn’t a fuse. Upon knocking, there was no sound. They weren’t shells. They were simply giant bullets.

Impractical, over-expensive, to say the least. Melting just one down could probably make three rounds, at least, cartridge and all.

“What the heck are these for?” she asked.

“This.” Smokestack replied, and retrieved a weapon that looked very similar to the M79 the rounds could have belonged to.

She squinted in confusion, “What the hell? Why on Earth did you make that thing?”

The smith’s left eye twitched, “For the record, I didn’t have the idea.”

“Oh, that was the firearm he was talking about...Did they make the primer?”

“No, they got some nutjob in town to. Don’t know how he did it without blowing himself up. We've been trying to make cartridges practical for years and he figured it out in a week.”

“Remind me to go find that guy. Wait...for years? I thought you only got firearms when Andrew showed up!”

The blacksmith looked at her like she was crazy, “...Of course not. We’ve had firearms for centuries! Your friend only provided some help on that breechloading monster and the flamethrower.”

Melissa scratched her head, and spoke as if reminding herself, “Right. Obviously.”
She looked back at him, “Anyway, this design’s wrong, just plain wrong. Even elephant guns aren’t this high-caliber. You’ve lost pretty much all of your potential returns by making big rocks like this It does fix a whole lot of shit though. This means it won’t take long to make bolt-action!”

Melissa returned to the piece of paper, sitting down in the uncomfortable pony chair. “Put in a clip, rack the bolt forward. Pull the trigger, round goes off, move the bolt back; while the spent cartridge is ejected another moves up to take its place, pushed by the spring in the clip. Easy-peasy!”

She drew another design, “Then there's single shot. Open a trapdoor, put the round in, close, fire, rinse and repeat. Not pretty, but it works.”

“What does your pistol use?” Smokestack asked, picking up the weapon. He demonstrated good muzzle control as he turned it over, his hoof unable to fit in the tiny trigger guard. He raised an eyebrow at “Glamdring” along its side, but said nothing.

“It’s a semi-auto, but not gas operated. It uses the energy of the explosion to lock the bolt back, letting you fire next time you pull the trigger.”

“Quite different from the army’s sidearms...” he commented.

“You can borrow it for a little bit, if you need to,” Melissa offered, “I probably need you to make more bullets anyway, I can give you the owner’s manual.”

“The what?” he asked. Oddly, Melissa noted that his speech pattern, previously fairly intelligent, descended into a stereotypical blacksmith’s.

“You know, the manual for operation. How to take it apart, some operating principles…”

He blinked in surprise, “Wouldn’t you just remember it?”

“Well, we do, but this isn't my primary weapon to begin with, and it's still a big help to have the manual around to provide a refresher.”

Going back to the paper, she drew out a third design, “The Glock 17’s concepts were based off of the Walther P38 sidearm, made in 1939 by Nazi Germany...unfortunately. It’s a good gun though.”

She didn’t react to Smokestack’s blank expression, “The P38’s short-recoil, closed breech, very close to the Glock. However, it’s a bit less complicated. No ceramics, plastics, only a single row of bullets. Might be better to stick with revolvers for now. Maybe advance to M1911s instead…”

The smith pulled the paper over, “I might be able to pull something together at some point. This single shot sounds doable, though.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I reckon so. Might have to substitute in some parts, but…”

“Thank you so much,” she cut him off, a genuine smile stretching across her face, “You have no idea what this means to me.”

Flipping the paper over, she continued with happiness, “A couple more things. One, the thing that we can probably build in a couple days with paper or pinfire cartridges. I know some people make their own ammunition for this sort of weapon, a triple-barreled shotgun. Much easier than regular cartridges. You have timber wolves hanging around here, right? Big problem?”

“Lost one of the last smithies to an attack, actually.”

“Jesus, this place gets more dangerous all the time...Okay, you know flares?”

“‘Course.”

“Alright, this weapon uses them. It was designed for cosmonauts. When coming back to Earth, the crew of Voskhod 2 crashed in the middle of Siberia, just about one of the most dangerous places on the planet. They only had a pistol to defend themselves against bears, regular timber wolves, and other creatures. So, the Soviets developed the TP-82, it can fire two shotgun blasts, and the third barrel is slung underneath the other two, not a shotgun blast,” she hastily drew out the calibers of each barrel, “meant to fire rifle rounds, or flares.”

“A flare launcher on a regular firearm? Huh...could get some help from the nutjob for this one, but it might be possible.”

Melissa stopped writing, and looked up at Smokestack, “Are you serious? About all of this?”

He shrugged, “Been doing pretty well so far.”

She shook her head, “Now that I think about it, I’m wondering how the heck you were able to make any of this. What else have you made?”

“A few things, explosives, a flamethrower...”

At Melissa’s dropped jaw he shrugged again, “Everypony needs a hobby.”

“How did you know how to do all this? I mean you’re just a blacksmith!” dramatically she clapped a hand over her mouth at the last sentence.

He snorted a little, “I get that a lot. People don't think about blacksmiths much, but you’d be surprised at what we can do. Anyway, I did have to get some help from the rest of town in certain areas, and had to put in some special orders from a few cities.”

Shaking her head, Melissa began writing again, “Got it. Oh, what do you have in the way of standard-issue firearms?”

Smokestack trotted over to a corner of the workshop, Melissa hot on his heels. The small area was filled with equipment for maintaining and manufacturing firearms, several racks of the weapons lining one wall. There were a variety of types, muzzle-loaders, flintlock, percussion cap, even a few matchlock. All were designed for pony hooves, shorter and slimmer than human versions.

“Wow…” Melissa breathed, I should've known. I should, I should have known.

He took down one recently-made muzzleloader and placed it on a workbench. “This here’s not the latest type...in fact it’s several decades old. It works though.”

At Melissa’s request, he stripped the weapon down, inadvertently revealing that the ponies had figured out interchangeable parts in the process.

“Great. I'm not starting from scratch. Okay, you need to keep buying breechloaders. They’re the way of the future, and are going to make all this other crap obsolete. However, now you have a problem. What to do with all these shitty guns? Well, the United States Army had the exact same issue. Thousands of muzzle-loaders just lying around, and replacing them would be expensive. Mind if I borrow this barrel?”

She pointed to one of several musket barrels lying out on another workbench.

When the smith nodded, she grinned and whipped out her phone. Studying it for a moment, she went over to a milling machine in one area of the workshop. Taking a moment to adjust to a hand-crank mill instead of one that was electrically powered, she quickly and efficiently used the machine to cut a small opening in the closed end of the barrel.

“And you ruined that perfectly-good barrel...why?” Smokestack asked.

“That’s exactly what this guy said in Destroyermen,” Melissa replied, gesturing to her phone, “Here’s the thing, I just made this into a hinged-breechblock. It’s called a trapdoor Springfield back home, you carve a hole just ahead of the...action thingy on a muzzle-loader, attach a door to a hinge at the rear end of the hole, and the door keeps the cartridge still in there.”

She scratched her head, “...There’s more to this, I’m sure, but that’s just the basic gist of it for now. It’s called an Allin trapdoor design, I think. Thoughts?”

Smokestack took the barrel, peering at it, “That is a problem we’ve been wondering how to deal with, what to do with the remaining muzzleloaders. I guess this is better than nothing.”

“That was kind of the point. It was a cost-saving measure.”

Melissa went back to the design table and began to draw again, “One last thing I need, this should be the easiest.”

Smokestack looked at the picture, “That’s all you need?” he asked, doubtfully.

“Hey, these saved a lot of lives, “Finishing the specifications, she added, “PASGT Helmet”, and underlined it, “And this steel pot will probably end up saving my life too. Don’t have kevlar, but the Germans did fairly well without the stuff. I combined some aspects from the old M1, so it should fix some problems.”

Smokestack frowned, “If this...pass-gat is for what I think it is, it’s not going to provide much protection.”

“Paz-get, Personal Armor System for Ground Troops. And what?”

“It’s just a steel pot as you said. It may stop an initial hit, but the impact won’t be good for your head. See, you need--”

Melissa’s grin grew even wider, “Awesome! You know about the suspension system!”

Relieved that she wasn’t going to have to explain how the brain can rattle around, she eagerly sketched out another helmet, with a silhouette very similar to the first. “That’s exactly what this was for. Inside the main helmet, which you cannot wear without this part, you have basically a hard hat. The steel stops shrapnel, while the inner stuff keeps your brain from going all over the place.”

For once, Smokestack shook his head, “I can do the steel, probably by tomorrow. Want a hard hat, talk to Rarity.”

Melissa twitched in such a way that she could only describe in a quote, “‘I think my cerebellum just fused’…” she moaned, slamming her face on the desk, “I missed my appointment with her!”

Looking down with growing dread, she moved her leg out from under the table, and lifted it up. The nice neat digital camouflage patterns ceased below her knee. Below the knee, the pant leg was almost completely shredded, the remaining pieces dangling loosely around the bandages covering her lower leg.

“And I need these fixed. Mother pus bucket…”

Smokestack chuckled, “Good luck with that.”

Melissa hobbled outside, shutting the door as best she could. She spotted someone in the distance. Her good mood vanished, and she attempted to shuffle away in vain, as Andrew approached.

“Hey, Melissa!” He called out, “Been looking all over for you!”

“Come to lecture me or something?” She asked, moving faster.

He gave her a look, “What are you talking about?”

“I know, I know, I shouldn’t yell at the ponies, and blah blah blah….”

“Seriously, what the heck are you talking about?”

Melissa gritted her teeth, “Never mind. What’d you want?”

“Heard you got out of the hospital. Thought you would’ve been at the library, but couldn’t find you or Twilight.”

“I wonder why…” She grumbled.

Raising an eyebrow, he didn’t comment, “What were you doing with Smokestack?”

“Nothing much, just filling out some insurance, thinking of names for firearms, and fixing just about everything you screwed up…”

“What? I--what?”

“Lever-action? Lever-action?! What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Hey, I have no idea how to design guns! I’m a good shot, but I can barely make do as a handyman! Besides, what else could we make with the technology around here? Steam engines and the Bessemer Process are about the best they can do. Sure, they have magic but…” he stopped, and looked at Melissa’s bemused expression, “...What?”

“You know what the Bessemer Process is?”

“Duh, steel manufacturing, first thing that started the Second Industrial Revolution.”

“...You know what the Bessemer Process is?”

“Yes, I do. Why?”

Her eye twitched, “...You know--”

“Hey, wake up!” He snapped his fingers, “What’s the big deal?”

“You’re probably the only person on the planet outside of my friends and my 8th grade middle school class who knows what the Bessemer Process is.” Melissa explained, an odd smile on her face, “You might be brighter than I thought you were.”

“Thanks?”

“Don’t mention it. Anyway, lever-action’s a dead end. C’mon.” She got back on her crutches, and began walking.

“What do you mean a dead end?”

“Fire rate. The one advantage over bolt action, one advantage! Bolt-action is easier to maintain, can put out a faster rate of fire over the longer term, you can go prone with it, and what did most militaries adopt before the Spanish-American War of the 1890s? Bolt-ac-tion!” she sang.

“Yeah, but Winchesters were the guns that won the west, and they’re cool as hell!”

“Everything you learned about the ‘Wild West’ was bullshit, but that’s beside the point. I’ll take your Winchesters, and raise you a Springfield, Mosin-Nagant, and the Colt M1911s! Those are way cooler than those junky old Winchesters! They load much faster, that’s better than firing rate!”

“Wouldn’t you want a faster firing rate? That’s why you have machine guns.”

“Well, A), fire rate doesn’t mean anything if the enemy can hit you from a hidden position at long range. B) stripper clips enable for a faster rate of fire on average because you don’t have to manually load every single round. Even bolt-action without a clip is faster...I think.”

Andrew asked, “What do you have against Winchesters?”

“Too many moving parts! Can’t use it prone! Too slow to reload! Limited types of ammunition! Just about the only military that used them were the irregulars in the Spanish Civil War. It’s only good for hunting.”

He huffed mildly, “I guess...maybe you have a point.”

“Course I do. That’s why I’m the engineer, and you’re the…uh...”

“Liberal arts major.”

“Yeah, that. Oh, and speaking of which...I’ve seen a bunch of messes that were supposedly ‘repaired’ by you. What the hell did they do to you? They barely function!”

“Well, you take a turn at learning carpentry on your own!”

“I don’t have to, learning it is a requirement for…” her mouth suddenly snapped shut, and she shifted slightly, “...For my engineering degree.”

He raised an eyebrow at the odd behavior, but said nothing.

She changed the subject, “Hey, you know that M79 knockoff you have? The very badly designed one?”

“Okay, I didn’t make it. And Smokestack said it wasn’t--”

Melissa shook her head, “No, not that. It’s like a big cannon, that’s the problem.”

“Huh?”

“Giant rifles are useless! You can have high caliber, but not this high! Even elephant guns weren’t that high!”

“So…”

“Don’t make a big rifle, make an M79! It’s easy! Actually, a Milkor MGL might be better, but given the circumstances, an M79 might be all we can do.”

Andrew tilted his head, “How do you know all this stuff? You’ve got the strangest knowledge base I’ve ever seen! From Random trivia about Star Trek to guns now!”

“I’ve got ADD, and had access to the internet. I get bored.”

Walking in silence for a while, Andrew changed the subject, “Where are we headed, anyway?”

“Rarity’s…” Melissa answered with a groan, “I’ve gotta pick up some stuff too.”

“I guess you do need it. Your t-shirt was a mess last I saw.”

“Huh?” she lifted up her long-sleeve shirt to look at her Yuri Gagarin t-shirt. Gagarin’s face was untouched, but the lower portion was shredded, revealing several bandages around her gut.

“Oh…Right.”

“Want me to come with? Rarity’s kinda odd…”

“No, I’m good.” Her good mood suddenly disappeared again, as she once again saw a purple unicorn in the distance.

“Are you sure? I--”

“I said I’m fine!”

Melissa rushed off, leaving a confused Andrew behind her.

“What was that about?” he asked Twilight when she trotted over.

She sighed. “So, you know how she was acting strangely in the hospital…?”

Chapter 10

Andrew, Twilight, and Rarity were led up the stairs of one of the castle towers. Visitation rights had been granted, but there was a limit on how many could visit Melissa at a time.

It struck them as strange that Melissa was not interred in the actual prison, but locked up like a princess in a tower. Andrew mentally kicked himself for even thinking that. She’d probably kick me for real…

It was also strange that Twilight had volunteered to visit Melissa first, considering their tense relationship.
No one had asked. Things hadn’t been right amongst the group since the argument the other night.

At last they arrived at one of the tower chambers, with several locks and bolts over it. The guard knocked on it, “Visitors!”

“Call if you need any help.” the guard winked at Rarity as he opened the door.

Melissa was sitting on the bed that didn’t quite fit humans, flipping through a book from the bedside. She looked up with exhaustion, “Hey guys.”

Andrew and Rarity quickly moved over.

“Melissa, darling! Are you alright?” Rarity inquired.

“You look like...well, like the cops beat the hell out of you.” Andrew said.

“By Celestia…” Twilight whispered, seeing the bruises and cuts covering Melissa’s face, “I’m sorry...Is there anything I can do? Oh...” she couldn’t think of anything else to say, “I am sorry.”

“Are you?” Melissa glared.

Twilight was a little taken aback at the hostility. She couldn’t have known about her doubts...could she?

Before anyone could say anything, Melissa looked up beside her, focusing in on something no one could see. She looked back at the unicorn somewhat apologetically, “Ah shit. Cthulhu, I’m sorry, Twilight.”

She flopped back on the bed. “Coffee withdrawal, migraines, and--” one explosive sneeze, “--and a cold. I’m doing real great here.”

“It’s quite alright, darling,” said Rarity, “You’re under a lot of stress.”

“No, no it’s not.” Melissa argued, “I’m such an asshole, goddammit I’m an asshole! I’ve been yelling at everyone, I’ve been rude as hell! But now it doesn’t matter, I guess! I’m gonna be executed!”

“Executed?!” the others exclaimed.

“Yeah! She’s gonna have me killed because of my fucking hair!” Melissa reached up and painfully tugged out a strand from her red streaks. “Oh look, it’s hair dye!” she gestured at the pattern visible, the top layer red but the bottom strand turning to blond. It was amazing the artificial colors had lasted this long. Eventually, her hair would revert back to normal.

“Well, the streaks are kind of confusing. It does look like a pony mane…” Andrew pointed out.

“Dude, it wasn’t the streaks she was worried about. It’s the fact that my hair is this color.”

“How did you manage that, anyway?” Andrew wondered curiously, “Isn’t the military pretty strict about hair?”

She shook her head, “It’s mostly natural. My mom was blond, my dad was a redhead, I got this. Whenever I go out in the sun, some of it turns to light streaks. I just had highlights added because...reasons. The drill sergeants didn’t believe it was natural, actually, not until I spent a while outside.”

Her anger flared again, “But does the big white bitch care? No! Ten thousand Shoggoths, excuse me for simply having hair!”

The ponies were glaring at her for what she had called their queen. Andrew was tugging at his shirt collar.

“Melissa…”

“Oh, shut up!” Melissa barked...at an area of air 30 degrees away from Andrew.

He waved at her, “Um...I’m over here.”

“I’m not talking to you!” she shook her head and rubbed her eyes.

Rarity turned in the direction she’d been looking, and her face lit up at the empty air.

“Oh, pardon my manners, sir! Shame on you, Melissa, for not introducing us! Good day to you!”

After a moment of stunned silence, Rarity nodded, “Very well, thank you. I so apologize for my lack of--”

“Uh, Rarity?” Andrew asked, “Who are you talking to?”

“Why, to Melissa’s friend here, of course,” she gestured to the air, “He is very well-mannered.”

“Rarity, there’s no one there.” Andrew pointed out, a little afraid for the unicorn’s mental state. He looked at Melissa, “Do you know what she’s talking about?”

Melissa hesitated, shirking from eye contact, “Uh...Rarity? What exactly are you seeing? Are you saying that there’re more than four people in here?”

“Well, if our spells work for you, then of course.” Twilight said, looking at the humans like they were the crazy ones.

“Rarity, you see him too!?” Melissa burst out.

“But of course, I’m your legal counsel.”

Melissa scrunched up her face, “What?”

“I am your lawyer.” Rarity clarified.

“Since when?”

“Since you were arrested.” Rarity looked at Melissa like she was the crazy one.

“Great Old Ones preserve me…” Melissa groaned, “How? How are you a lawyer?”

Rarity ignored the hostility, “Darling, it’s really quite simple. I gained a license as a private investigator years ago--”

“What? Why?”

“That’s not important. After getting my license, I got tired of seeing ponies without lawyers completely lose their case despite plenty of evidence in their favor, and decided to help alleviate this problem by getting a degree in law as well.”

It all became clear to Melissa, “Oh, you don’t have public defenders yet.”

Andrew shook his head, interrupting, “I hate to bring us back to matters of mental stability, but could someone please explain what the hell you two are talking to?!”

Melissa looked at the spot in the air, then rolled her eyes. “Right, right, I’m sorry...Silverbolt, Andrew. Andrew, Silverbolt.”

“This is not helping in the least! This is in fact, doing the opposite!”

Twilight raised her eyebrows in concern, “Andrew, calm down! This is perfectly normal!”

“What is?! Rarity’s talking to thin air!”

Melissa let out a huff, “No, she’s not. I know it sounds crazy, but…” she looked embarrassed, “Um...okay, you ever seen the show Quantum Leap? Scott Bakula’s in it?”

“No…”

“Damn. Okay, remember Harvey in Farscape?”

“Scorpius’ clone in Crichton’s head, of course.” Andrew replied.

“Now, have you seen Transformers Beast Wars?”

“Maybe…”

“Well…” Melissa scratched her head. There was a twinge of pain in her expression, “Apparently, as part of my rehabilitation, I kinda sorta...have a character from that show installed in my head, acting as Harvey, or Al Calavicci from Quantum Leap. Somehow, Rarity can see him.”

Andrew stepped away from both of them, “What.”

Twilight looked confused, “Andrew, you don’t know about Incarceration Assistants? Prison Buddy is the colloquial term.”

“I’ve got a fucking transformer in my brain, you macrocephalic baboon!” Melissa snapped, her patience wearing thin, “Silverbolt from Transformers is in my head! He appears as a hallucination, and my legal counsel can see it!”

“Are you sure you’re not just..y’know…?”

Melissa looked at Twilight, “Can I kill him? Please? I swear it won’t take long. Unless you want it to. I can make him suffer with a butter knife...”

“No, please don’t. We need him to clean out pipes in town.”

Melissa snorted a small chuckle, surprising all parties.

She lapsed back into grim, “Okay, where’s my pen...ah.” she grabbed a piece of paper, and quickly drew something out. “Here.”
Andrew took the drawing, and looked at the mechanoid depicted. “He’s a transformer? Really? With the dog head? I thought they were all robot-y and stuff.”

Melissa glared at him, and nudged toward the apparition with her head, “I think that might be racist. Or something. Anyway, why the hell do you think it’s called Beast Wars? They crashed on prehistoric Earth, but there was too much energon, and they had to create alternate forms based on the most powerful local creatures for protection. Silverbolt’s stasis pod took a lot of damage though when the Vok knocked it out of orbit, and so he’s a bit of a griffin. Replace the lion with wolf, though.”

She was used to the stares she was receiving. Classmates had been giving it for a long time.
“Oh, his voice actor, Scott McNeil, cameoed in SG-1, the episode with Mitchell having to pretend to be that assassin. But...damn dude, you don’t know about Beast Wars? What was your childhood like?”

He opened his mouth to protest, but she held up a hand, “Wait, no, never mind, I have a pretty good idea, Dr. Jackson.”

Andrew stared at the image a moment more, “So...you both can see him? It’s not just Melissa losing her mind?”

“Way ahead of you on that, but no, he’s not a product of my imagination.” replied Melissa.

“Wait a minute,” Twilight interjected, “Why do you think you’re going to be executed?”

Melissa threw up her hands, “Gee, let me think. Oh, that’s right, being accused of about a dozen crimes in a monarchy! Andrew, help me out here. What’s the most common result?”

“Among human monarchies? It really depends…”

“But execution for very little reason was very common, yeah?”

“Ye--”

She gestured at him, “Y’see?”

“Melissa, the queens are not in the habit of executing ponies.” Rarity said firmly.

“Ah, but what about homo sapiens? We don’t technically qualify as sentient beings, do we?” she gripped her head, grimacing with pain, “Ah...fuck.”

Rarity tried to explain more, but Melissa jumped up off the bed and walked over to the window.

“Maybe she won’t execute me. The worst that’ll happen is I’ll be interrogated for every little ounce of information packed in my pretty little head.” she suddenly cried out, and held her head with both hands, “Tap-dancing christ, ow!”

“Why would they want to interrogate you?” Andrew asked.

“There are those factions who believe your people are preparing to invade…” Rarity pointed out.

“Yes, that’s one.” Melissa turned back, her eyes boring into Andrew, “Do you ever listen to a word I say? Didn’t you read Destroyermen, Axis of Time, The Human Memoirs, The Lost Regiment, Time’s Eye? 21st century humans are of the highest value. What is cutting-edge here is high school science to us. ‘When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.’ Arthur C Clarke. It might not fit exactly, but it’s a good basis for my point.”

“Of course that information is valuable,” Twilight agreed, “But if that’s the only goal, why go to all this trouble?”

“Monarchies are rarely ever quite sane. Now, let’s ignore Celestia’s bizarre personal hatred for me, and think of other areas. The lower levels of monarchies are made up of nepotism and corruption.”

Andrew held up a finger, “Not always--”

“Most of the time, they are. Usually if the citizens don’t have a say in how the government is run.”

“But we do, we--” Twilight tried to explain, but Melissa rubbed her face.

“Fine! Starting over. Lower levels of governments will occasionally have factions with their own agendas. Happy?”
She looked at the air beside her, “Yes, I was getting to that. Thank you, Silver. Some of these factions might not be a result of the government itself, just spies from other nations. But regardless, there are those who want to exploit people with superior knowledge for their own gain. Specifically, warfighting capabilities.”

“There hasn’t been all-out war for decades!” Twilight exclaimed, “The Equestrian government would never--”

Melissa shook her head sadly, “The storm is coming, and soon. The pressure is building in a way we’ve seen before. Technology, cultural, diplomatic, economic…”
She and Andrew exchanged knowing looks, “It may not be your government, it may be others, but someone somewhere is going to want to exploit our unusual status for their own gain. They’ll want weapons, they’ll want vehicles, they’ll want power. And we’ve got a lot of those, if only concepts. I saw your people working on internal combustion engines, if I gave even the slightest of hints, I could shave years off their time.”

“Excuse me, but how does this connect back to the trial?” Rarity interjected.

“This is what they want,” Melissa claimed, “Whoever is making those stupid claims about invasion wants to use me as part scapegoat, part well of information. ‘Oh no, the aliens are coming, we must build up the military! This agent will prove useful in upgrading our defenses! Now we need a buffer zone, why let our nice new guns no one else has go to waste?’”

“Darling, while that’s certainly a concern, the matter of your imminent charges takes precedence. Namely, this Sunset Shimmer person.”

Melissa twitched at the name. “I am not her. Anymore than Silverbolt is the peacock.”

Blank stares.

“Never mind. S...that pony and I are not the same.”

“Regardless, the justice system believes you are. We must prepare.”

Melissa sighed, “This is gonna be real fun.”

XXXXX

Luna, Queen of the Night and second in line of succession to the leader of all of Equestria, watched her sister pace across the throne room with growing concern.

“I think they did something to her,” Celestia mused, “To her mind. She truly believes she is human, and our examinations insist that she is. But that just can't be it. They are far too similar.”

“Sister, could it really be that impossible of an idea that she might be who she says she is?” Luna suggested.

Celestia shook her head, “Yes, it is impossible. There is nopony else with that mind, that creativity and cleverness. She walks the same, talks the same.”

Luna commented, “If it walks like a duck, but doesn't think or look like a duck, is that enough to confirm that it is a duck? I've been in her dreams, and studied the materials I was provided. She might have some passing similarities, but otherwise this human is just that. A human.”
Luna hadn't been around during Sunset Shimmer's incident, and had only the word of others to describe the unicorn. She liked to think that gave her a more objective and neutral standpoint on the issue.

“Dreams aren’t admissible in court.” Celestia pointed out, “But I know it’s her. Have you really looked at her, Luna? Her mane, her face, her walk...Slightly different, but the details are there.”

“The way in which a pony walks is not admissible in a court of law either. I have never seen Sunset Shimmer's face, and in case you hadn't noticed, the red is starting to come out of her mane. It's something called hair dye, intended to last a long time but not permanent. That is no pony mane.”

“Who knows what horrible things those creatures have done to her.” Celestia said somberly. She trotted over to a window, gazing out at the frozen landscape.
“You should have seen the look in her eyes, Lulu. Even just before she left I never saw that much fear. She wasn't afraid. She was terrified.”

“Did she say why?” Luna asked, trotting over.

“No. Her alienist--have you seen her alienist? It’s a strange ‘mechanoid’ creature, a...Cybertronian, known as Silverbolt. He did explain that she was under a great amount of stress, but there was something else...another fear. She also refused to answer to her name, it seemed to create a great deal of anger in her.”

“Are you sure you’re not projecting, Tia?” Luna asked hesitantly, “I mean, are you sure you’re not just trying to ease your conscious with this mare? We may be prosecuting an innocent.”

“She knew about Nightmare Moon, Luna. She knew more than Twilight knew before her return, she knew that you two were connected. She even recited one of the old nursery rhymes spawned by our disagreement. Now how would an alien know that?”

“According to Twilight’s notes, there was some sort of psychic connection between their land and our own.” Luna pointed out.

“Yes, but her friend Andrew said he had no knowledge of that specific link. He knows of a few examples of things aesthetically similar to our own world, but nothing anywhere near as specific as the knowledge she displayed.”

Luna shook her head, “That’s hardly fair evidence. We only have two samples of humanity, from two different parts of a country three times the size of our continent, from a widely different culture. Surely one could have known something the other didn’t.”

Celestia did not comment. She sat on her hindquarters, and continued to look out at the landscape.

Luna sat as well, “What was Sunset like? Before she left, I mean.”

Celestia sighed, “She was...interesting. I kept her and Twilight’s educations apart for reasons of my own. They both had such promise, such potential. And they were so similar, in many respects. Their intelligence, their power, their self-reliance, and their…” she smiled with memory, “antisocial behavior. Though where Twilight is humble, Sunset was the opposite. Twilight is quite kind, but Sunset was condescending at best. However, despite her flaws, Sunset was also very determined, and stubborn, an admirable level of persistence. I was eventually planning to have them meet, in fact, hoping some of their qualities would rub off on one another. Unfortunately, circumstances threw all my plans out the window.”

“How did she escape?” Luna asked, “I find it hard to believe even a unicorn equal to Twilight could evade you and the entire Household Division.”

Celestia replied, “That was the official story. If word got out of what truly happened...it would be a major security breach, and possibly a threat to national security.”

“By the stars, what happened?” Luna demanded, “was it that bad?”

“She had broken into a secure archive. The research on alicorns. Several guards were escorting her to a cell, when she escaped and retreated deeper into the archives.”

“But she’d be trapped.” Luna pointed out.

“That was what the guards thought, but she found the mirror.”

“The mirror?” Luna inquired.

“A portal to another world. We do not know what is on the other side, and it only opens for three days every thirty moons.”

Luna stuck to the topic at hand, ignoring her amazement, “If that’s true, and if this human is Sunset, how’d she get get back without us knowing?”

“I don’t know,” Celestia replied, “But how much do we know about humans? They could have found a way to return her without it.”

“But why? To what end? Why send her back like this?”

“I don’t know. It could be their method of controlling her.”

“And if she is not Sunset, what then?” Luna proposed.

“Then we prepare for war.”

Luna gaped, “Sister, what has gotten into you? Let us look at the evidence. Two humans have appeared, one of whom happens to have a passing resemblance to an old pupil, and the other who has been here far longer I might add, has displayed no major aggressive tendencies beyond self-defense. Two humans, after a thousand years, and your immediate conclusion is that they are preparing for war?”

“It’s not just them. Have you read the intelligence reports in the Southern Sea?”

“The usual reports of strange craft, of course.”

“A human combat unit could be down there. This initial claim of a ‘bright light’ bringing them here might be fabricated, their actual means of deployment being from human aircraft. Or they could have even been transported from there to the Everfree Forest using that light.”

Luna shook her head, “Tia, this is madness. Two humans, and strange craft that have been reported for over three centuries in an unexplored area. How is that evidence of an alien incursion?”

Celestia furrowed her brow, “...when you put it like that, I suppose that isn’t much, is it?”

“And how do we know humanity would be hostile? You remember the legends as well as I do. It is right to be cautious, but this is downright paranoid.”

“I remember the legends, Lulu, but my faith in those has been shaken recently.”

Luna pressed, “Tia, this human--”

“It was not her.” Celestia conjured up a slip of paper, with directions scrawled on them. Passing it to Luna, she explained, “there is something I haven't been telling you, and I apologise for that. A project we've been running for a long time. Section 13. I think you may wish to see it.”