The Red Moon of Equestria

Chapters

A cutie what now?
Time does fly when you're trapped in an alternate world!
Since when has my wife had hooves?
The world's strangest case of identity theft
My complicated call to action
When the abnormal becomes normal
Open up your eyes
A life they never asked for
Butting heads
Questioning loyalties.
Things best left forgotten
the obvious exposition chapter
Hooves and wings and horns oh my!

A cutie what now?

Author's Note

I’ll be going through and rewriting a majority of the chapters now that I not being constrained by due dates. This will be indicated by an (E), which means edited.

A cutie what now?

Now have you ever had one of those days where you woke up and thought to yourself, "today is going to be a great day!", only for horrible things to happen to you in a rapid-fire succession? I hope not, so just imagine you're going through one of those days, ok? Ok. Now multiply that by that one kid in middle school who put a whole packet of lit firecrackers in your backpack. Well, that was the kind of day I'm having right now, except much, much worse than that.

Now I don't know if any of you have been forcefully knocked unconscious, but the thing about being unconscious is that you never know how much time will have passed until you wake up. It could be a couple of seconds, or minutes, hours, days, months, YEARS! Not going to lie, that thought of being unconscious for that long terrifies me. And if you were paying attention last time, you would know that I was knocked unconscious from whatever destroyed my make-shift barricade. Now as if that wasn't bad enough, I was in an alien world, chased by armored sentient creatures, and was in a different body. So needless to say I was about as terrified as a germaphobe in a pig pen.

But fortunately for me at the least, it seemed that only a couple of minutes passed by when I came too. I felt almost immediately a massive headache, but I wasn't able to rub my head since I couldn't focus on doing so because of my headache. In fact, most if not all of my new body was unresponsive, as if I was just a corpse.

"oh whatarewegonnado?! whatarewegoingtodo?! whatarewegoingtodo?!" A voice repeatedly asked with a fearful tone. It sounded like the first female who tried to talk to me before the door was blown open. "If Celestia finds out about this I'm DOOMED!".

"Relax sugar cube! It was my fault that I bucked too hard. If anypony is to blame it's me." The voice with the western accent said.

Wait...did she just say buck? Isn't bucking a term used for a horse? I mean they look pretty similar to horses, but bucking was a term created by humans. Then again, so are castles, doors, windows, and everything else I've seen, so could there be humans here? Possibly, but I would need to know more about the world first before coming to any conclusions.

"Cheer up Twilight! At least he's wasn't a changeling spy!" The tomboyish voice cheered, "I think he'll understand all the roughhousing if the PRINCESS OF FRIENDSHIP explained it to him!".

"For the last time Rainbow, I'm not the princess of friendship!" The first voice complained. “I’m just a normal pony like anypony else! I mean do you see any wings on me?!”.

That word again, changeling. What the tore is a changeling? And...the princess of friendship? What kind of title was that? It sounded like something a little girl would call her toys! That title was so ridiculous that I found myself wanting to laugh at that. But all I could manage was a half-hearted chuckle. I quickly regretted that, because right after that, I heard all three of the voices gasp at me. Because that was what I needed right now, more attention from those...things.

"Oh thank Luna! He's alive!" the first voice cheered.

I heard some steps getting closer to me, only to stop mere inches away from me. It was now that I finally managed to open my eyes. And oh tore I wish I kept them closed. It was bright violet with a purple mane with some pink highlights. Its eyes were massive, bigger than anything I'd ever seen on my journey's around the world, but the weirdest part about it was the one horn on its head. It was a freaking unicorn, straight out of legend! I wanted to run, to get away from it, but my body still wouldn't move, so all I could do was stare at the creature with fear in my eyes. I mean I’ve fought monsters that are way scarier looking before, but back then I could actually fight back. Here I was completely helpless, barely able to move, much less fight.

"Oh! You're awake!" The unicorn gasped, taking a step back, "I am so sorry about all this! My friend AppleJack didn't mean to kick nearly that hard! But hopefully, you understand because of...you know...whole changeling invasion...hehe....".

I didn't know how to feel at the moment. I mean, a violet unicorn was talking to me in perfect English, how do you honestly react to that? I started to regain control of my body, and I instinctively crawled back, but only a few inches before I felt my new body hit the back of a wall.

"Uh, Twi? I think we've scared the poor pony." The tomboyish voice pointed out. I saw that the tomboyish voice had come from a bright blue creature with a mane dyed the colors of the rainbow, an exact copy of the girl I saw in Ponyville. Except this one had wings and a tail obviously and had some kind of tattoo on its body, a cloud with a rainbow colored lightning bolt coming out of it.

"Wha...what are you...." I whispered, trying to find a way to get out of this.

"Please don't be scared! We're not going to hurt you!" The violet unicorn pleaded, "let me help you up!".

Its horn glowed pink, and soon after so did I! I felt my body getting raised off the ground, and my legs straighten out before I was let down, standing on four legs. I looked even more terrified now, my eyes felt like they were about to pop out of my eyes. This...things...knew telekinesis...and just used it on me...

"You're still scared! Come on! We already said you’re good to go!" The blue pony exclaimed, and somehow FLEW over to me and gave me a little nudge on my body with its hoof, "How about we go flying! I feel like you could actually pose a challenge to me with such impressive wings!"

"Rainbow! You don't even know his name and you want to race him?" The violet unicorn scolded, making the blue one land onto the ground.

"Fine! What's your name big guy?" The blue one asked, but when she looked at me I wasn't next to her, an outline of me made of dust in my place.

I was behind her, my lower half scrambling to get out of the window. All three of the horse creatures could only look with shock as I fell out of the window. Now I'm not proud of what I did there, but I was in a fight or flight situation and my body chose flight. Except it forgot one thing, I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO FLY!!!

I flailed my limbs around randomly as I fell down, screaming as I descended down towards my doom. I tried to get my new wings to flap, but they wouldn't respond, they were practically dead weight to me! I looked around, hopelessly trying to find some way out of this, until I saw what the land in front of me looked like. It was a beautiful landscape with all kinds of terrain, from lovely green grasslands to lush forests, I could even see what looked like a town in the distance, it was hard to tell with rushing wind in my eyes. Regardless of that, the view almost managed to calm me down somewhat, almost making me forget that I wasn't falling to my death. It reminded me of Terran when I was growing up before the world knew of our existence.

"Heh...what are the odds?" I thought to myself, mesmerized by the view.

I was so mesmerized by the view that I didn't notice what sounded like a fighter jet coming straight at me. The next thing I knew I had stopped falling, to my confusion. The blue pegasus from before was somehow holding me bridal style, her head held up high.

"Man! That hit must have REALLY hurt you if you weren't flying! But have no fear! For your savior has arrived! RAINBOW DA-Ack!" The blue Pegasus boasted before I started flailing my arms and legs again, one of my hoofs hitting her in the face. I really regret that, because the next thing I knew I was zooming around in random directions at speeds I thought impossible. The blue pegasus tried to avoid my flailing limbs as she zoomed around aimlessly, which was not helped by my various attempts to pry myself away from her. What? You try to stay calm when a talking, flying, bright blue sentient horse is carrying you in the sky! It's not easy!

"UGH! CALM DOWN! IM TRYING TO SAVE YOUR LIFE!" She screamed, "WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?!".

Today seemed to be a day of regrets for me. Because in my panicked state, I moved my head forward and bit into the blue pegasus's arm. She yelped in pain as she finally released me. And using my back legs, I pushed her away from me, almost cheering in my victory. But that was shortlived as I felt my body hit the floor on my back, sliding against the hard surface until I hit what felt like a wall. I moaned in pain as I looked up, my vision a little blurry from the "ride" I was just on, only to see an orange horse with a cowboy hat on its head. It had a blonde, long mane and one its body it also had a tattoo, but this one was of three apples.

"You done running?" It asked rhetorically, raising one of its eyebrows expectingly.

Before I could even think of getting back up, the orange horse pulled out a rope seemingly out of nowhere and lassoed my exposed legs, tieing them together. Oh, and it did all that WITH IT'S MOUTH! How is that even possible? Just then the blue Pegasus flew over to us, clearly annoyed with me for bitting her.

"Ugh! Can't believe he did that" It complained, "Oh! AJ! You got him! Nice work!"

The orange horse held it's head high, slightly blushing. Wait...blushing? HOW?!

"Ah shucks Rainbow! You did most of the work! He just kinda...fell at my hooves" It explained, "But honestly, what in Equestria could make a pony want to jump out a window like that?"

Wait...this land has a name? What’s next? Talking dragons?

"Eq...Equestria?" I stuttered, my curiosity getting the better of me.

Both of them looked back at me with surprise, like I said some great blasphemy.

"You... you don't know the name of your own nation?" The pegasus asked, flying closer to me, but making sure to be out of my bite range.

I didn't want to say anything else, I had no intention of letting these horses know anything about me. I kept my mouth shut, frustrating the pegasus. I almost wanted to smile but resisted the urge as the orange horse somehow wrapped another rope around my mouth...snout...THE PART OF MY HEAD THAT SPEAKS! The pegasus then grabbed the dangling end of the rope with its mouth and lifted me up, much to my horror.

"I think that head injury may have hurt him more than we thought. Put him somewhere safe until we gotta make sure the castle is secure. I don't want to overwhelm Twilight with another problem on top of this whole wedding mess!" The orange horse ordered.

After giving a comedic salute with its free hoof, the pegasus flew off with me, flying around the castle until it found another open window and flew through it, seemingly purposely flying too low as to cause me to hit my head on the bottom of the window. I grunted in pain as the pegasus flew through the hallways until it found a coat hanger nearby a massive white door outlined in solid gold. She landed, and like how an owner would tie their dog to a pole, she tied a knot on the coat hanger, except the knot was on one of the hangers, causing me to dangle upside down. How the coat hanger didn't fall from the massive amount of extra weight I don't know. She snickered to herself before she started to trot away.

"Just, hehe hang around here until we come to get you back!" The pegasus joked, making me groan through my makeshift muzzle.

After some time, (and one massive headache from the blood rushing to my head), I heard saw another one of the horse creatures. It was the violet unicorn, which after looking at me groaned in annoyance. It's horn started to glow again and I felt myself getting lifted off of the coat hanger and land onto the floor in front of it. The unicorn scrutinized me, walking around me, seemingly looking for something on me. After a minute or two of checking, the unicorn finally stopped and laid down in front of me.

"Ok, I'll need you to listen to me ok?" The unicorn asked, to which I nodded weakly, "good, I'm going to take off the rope off of you. But when I do, you'll need to calm down and not try to run ok? I've had one heck of a day and I don't need it getting anymore...chaotic...ok?".

I reluctantly nodded. I mean what else could I do? I've tried running twice, only to get caught both times. And I'm pretty sure a third time would be no different, even if third times the charm. The unicorn's horn glowed again, and I felt my ropes slowly fall away. Once the ropes were all gone, I gave a heavy sigh and awkwardly tried to lay down, much to the unicorns confusion.

"So...you mind telling me your name?" The unicorn asked. I could tell it was trying to sound as calm as possible, but it was as clear as day that it just went through a lot. "And how you managed to get into Canterlot Castle?"

"So this is a place of royalty. Good to know" I thought to myself, "But how will I be able to explain that I am an alien that I somehow got sent to its world, heck I might be in a different dimension the more I think about it."

I had to come up with a believable backstory, and fast! Think Cole think! Umm... wait! I got it!

"I...I can't remember anything..." I mumbled, trying to put on my best "amnesiac act".

YES! "The Amnesia story" always works! Heck, that's how I got into a cultist group that was worshipping an abomination as a god once! Gotta say that was one weird cult. They were blabbering something about a "giant spaghetti monster" if I remember correctly. I would have taken more time to remember them, but then again they were trying to sacrifice little blonde haired, green-eyed girls to the thing, so I had to intervene. ANYWAYS, I guess my act worked out...sort of. The unicorn looked somewhat convinced, but it still looked suspicious. It scrutinized my face, allowing me to notice it's dark purple eyes.

"You have...purple eyes..." I pointed out, making it rear it heads slightly in confusion.

"Yes... I do... what of it? " it asked, tilting its head slightly, "I mean you have red eyes but you don't see me pointing that out."

Well, at least that some semblance of old me. When I was born, it turned out that I had a minor genetic defect that made my eyes crimson red. Needless to say, that gave bullies at schools plenty of insults to throw at me. But having eyes like mine does add a little intimidation factor when interrogating people. I haven't actually got to see what I truly look like since first waking up here, but maybe that was for the best.

"Anyways, so you don't remember anything? Your home? Family? Friends? Your special Talent?" It inquired, with each question it looked more and more nervous.

I just shook my head. The unicorn lowered its head, sighing heavily. "Celestia give me strength. So um...while you're under our care, what do you want us to call you?" It asked, getting back up on its four legs.

Wait, what? "under our care"? no no no no NO! I need to find my way out of here!

"W-what? You don't have to do that! I would j-just be a burden! I'll be fine!" I stammered, trying to get back up but falling on my backside awkwardly.

"No, you won't! I don't know how, but those head injuries have almost completely impaired you! You can barely walk for Celestia's sake!" It yelled, using it's...magic I guess...to lift me up in the air. "If you won't stay with us for the long hall, at least let us help you with your basic motor functions.".

I wanted to argue more, but it had a point. I wouldn't find my way back home if I could barely walk, and having the natives help me with my "recovery", would boost my chances greatly of getting back home. Besides, I don't think I had much say on the matter regardless.

"Now do you want me to give you a name? Or would you prefer choosing one yourself?" It asked rhetorically, a slight look of mischief on its face.

I pondered for several seconds, trying to think of a believable name, but came up with nothing. I mean I knew nothing about this world's culture, and I didn't want to risk giving myself a suspicious name. The unicorn picked up on this, a slight smile growing on her face.

"Well...how about Signal Flare?" It suggested, pointing one of its hooves at me. “Since you seem to have a knack for attracting attention to yourself.”

"Signal Flare... Signal Flare..." I repeated to myself, "I like it.".

"Well now that that's out of the way!" It cheered, "I suppose proper introductions are in order huh?"

I chuckled slightly, at least these things had good manners or some of them at least.

"My name is Twilight Sparkle, current student of Princess Celestia and bearer of the element of magic!" Twilight stated, sounding more confident and proud than before.

"Nice to meet you Twilight, the names Signal Flare!" I stated back, "The new resident amnesiac.".

We both laughed for a couple of seconds, these creatures seemed pretty friendly at the least.

"Oh and by the way, why do you all have those weird tattoos on your bodies?" I asked, feeling for comfortable asking questions now that I had a viable explanation for my confusion.

"Our cutie marks?" Twilight asked back, looking at hers. It was a massive pinkish red star with several smaller white stars around it.

"A cutie what now?" I asked, suddenly getting goosebumps the moment I said that.

"Don't worry about it right now, I'll explain that later after we get you back on your hooves and walking again!" Twilight explained, "oh and before I forget, you might want to watch out for a certain pink pony named Pinkie Pie. She might get a little excited to see a new pony.".

I felt a sense of dread pass over me the moment Twilight mentioned that name. Tore have mercy on me if this world's Pinkie Pie was at least one percent like the Pinkie Pie in my world.

"I can tell this is going to be a LONG DAY." I thought to myself as I floated off with Twilight. "I only pray that Drake is safe."

Sunset Shimmer was hiding right now bellow some bleachers at Canterlot High, utterly confused at her current situation. Some strange man was examining the portal to Equestria, and despite it not being the time, had managed to open the portal and fell into it. Now if that wasn't odd enough, he left behind what looked like a dragon from her world, but it was made of literal fire. Nearly instantly after being completely sucked into Equestria, the dragon had latched onto her, forcefully entering her via her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Luckily no one was around to see it, but Sunset wanted to take zero chances with this thing. She was still breathing heavily from the exhaustion of having a dragon enter her like that, trying to make sense of her current situation.

"What just happened?" She thought to herself as she finally caught her breath, looking at her arms and hands in shock. Her normally yellow palms had what looked like a tattoo of a dragon's head, it's mouth roaring. Rolling down her sleeve, she found that the dragon head had a long body that slithered down her arm, it's body long and thin, it's arms and legs short and stubby, and it's wings tiny. She stretched it out to get a good look at it when the black tattoo started to glow a dark shade of red. Before Sunset could react, the tattoo seemingly came to life, shooting out of her hand as if it were a gun. Once the dragon was completely separated from her, it's body started to shrink while its arms, legs, and wings grew. Then it suddenly became three dimensional, it's body igniting into a blaze, forcing Sunset to shield her eyes.

Once she unshielded them, she was shocked to see that the dragon was see-through, almost like a ghost, but if the ghost was made of fire. Yet it was small for a dragon, no bigger than a parrot. It looked at her with curiosity, landing on the ground, somehow not lighting the grass on fire. It walked over to her, despite Sunset trying to back away, and readied itself, looking like it was going to pounce. Sunset instinctively raised her arms in defense, but as the dragon jumped, it simply phased through her. It felt like she just put her hand in a spa bath as the dragon phased through her, landing on her shoulder, somehow not falling through her, and pressed it's body against her neck, laying down and giving a tiny yawn. It almost sounded like a newborn puppy after a long day of playing.

Sunset could only look confused at what just happened. Did she just get a dragon as a pet? As tiny snores from the dragon could be heard, only one question ran through her mind, repeating itself over and over again.

"What in Equestria are you?"

Time does fly when you're trapped in an alternate world!

Author's Note

Ok, warning: the start might have a bit of darkfic in it, it depends on how much you can stomach. I'm not going to add dark or anything like that to the tags just because of one scene.

Time does fly when you're trapped in an alternate world!

It's been around a week since I first found myself in this world of pastel ponies. Yes, they're called ponies, despite the fact that in the short amount of time I've spent here I've met several "ponies" who could dwarf most normal horses, and no I, unfortunately, wasn't one of them. But the odd thing about me was that when Twilight measured my newly acquired wings, she said that they were the biggest recorded wings for a regular pony in Equestria, nearly twice the size of what the average pegasi's wings span. The only wings bigger than mine belonged to Equestria's ruler, Princess Celestia.

From the moment we were *ahem* "officially" introduced, Applejack couldn't stop apologizing for what she did to me. She went on for hours and hours in her southern accent how she was sorry and how she would make it up to me. She insisted that she help me learn to walk and despite my request to have medically trained professionals handle it, Twilight explained that it would be more efficient for Applejack to care so they could "care for two birds in one nest" , but I'm getting off topic! Since Applejack was now my new sorta caretaker, she had to make sure that I could get around town and do normal tasks. How might you ask? By strapping me to her back with her rope! I was...well...needlessly embarrassed to the point that my face was redder than my mane.

Right now I was in Sweet Apple Acres, Applejack's home, laying on her couch sleeping. I was having...nice dreams

There I was, standing in the middle of a war-torn city, abominations of all shapes and sizes fighting purifiers from all over Terran. My fully plated black Terran combat armor shined against the crimson red moon over the city, giving my armor a dark red highlight to it.Behind me stood my old squad, Squad Berconsits, or Squad Revelation when translated into English. Good old Alexia Vare "Diamond Breaker", Samuel Vare "Wall Breacher", Willson Deene "Keen Deadeye", and Johnathan Tark "Frostbite". In hindsight I never understood why we got such weird codenames from command, I mean mine was "Tamer" and Veronica's was "Heart Breaker", but that didn't matter now.

As I looked around the town, I realized that this was the town where I was sent as leader of Squad Revelation. Its Terran name is unpronounceable, but it would roughly translate into "Haven Oasis" in English. It was a fairly average town from what I remember, only memorable for its many dazzling caverns. Unfortunately, it turned out that these caves were home to a type of abomination called a siren, whose voice could hypnotize any nearby victims into a death-like sleep, where it would then drain the vital fluids from it like some kind of spider out of hell. We were sent in to exterminate these creatures, and we almost succeeded, almost killing all the sirens, only to have them use some kind of never before seen ability where they summoned a horde of abominations who mercilessly sacked the town, killing anyone in sight. This also revealed that there were dozens of more sirens than we thought were there, driving them into the town. Our only comfort was that we managed to build beacons that would counteract the sirens voices, allowing us to engage in open combat with them.

The sounds of bloodcurdling screams from those unfortunate enough to not evacuate the town yet were just as vivid in my mind as if no time had passed at all. I remember wanting to turn on the noise blockers on my helmet, but I needed to be able to hear my team, so I had to bear through the screams. The only thing I could listen to as to ignore the screams were the unnatural, terrifying roars of the abominations, which were just as vivid as the screams.

"Tamer, come on! We need to evacuate!" Johnathan yelled while pulling his arm back like he was about to punch someone, summoning his esper, a wolf made of lightning. Yes, we were all painfully aware that Johnathan's codename was ironic, probably some dumb joke some of the higher-ups thought would be funny. His wolf, named Varis, shot out of his wrist, quickly forming into a massive Terran wolf, massive lion-like mane and all, and propelled itself against a siren. It's three four-eyed heads screamed in pain until they all exploded into piles of black blood along with the rest of its body. "WE DON'T HAVE ANY MORE TIME TORE DAMMIT!".

"I JUST NEED A LITTLE MORE TIME!" I screamed back, "WE'VE ALMOST BEATEN THEM ALL!".

"UGHH!" John groaned, grabbing me by the shoulder. "DON'T BE STUPID! THIS TOWN WAS LOST THE MOMENT THOSE SIRENS SET UP SHOP IN THE CAVES! IM NOT GOING TO LET YOU PLAY SUPERHERO AND GET YOURSELF KILLED BECAUSE OF IT DAMMIT!".

I curled my hand into a fist, taking all of my mental strength to not beat his face to a pulp. "WILL YOU STOP AND THINK ABOUT SOMEONE OTHER THAN YOURSELF JOHN? OR DO YOU JUST NOT GIVE A TORE ABOUT THESE TOWNSFOLK?" I screamed, pushing him away with both of my hands.

"DAMMIT COLE! STOP LIVING IN YOUR FANTASY WORLD AND WAKE UP!" He screamed, "WAKE UP!!"

"WAKE UP SIGNAL"! he screamed again, his voices growing more high pitched and started to gain a western accent.

I looked around in confusion until I saw the sun above me. It had gone from a dark shade of red to a bright yellowish color, with giant bright orange eyes and a muzzle.

"C'MON SIGNAL WAKE UP!" the sun yelled, terrifying me. I tried to back up but fell on my back, my hands now hooves.

"WAKE UP!!! WAKE UP!!!"

"WAKE UP!!!" The tiny filly named Apple Bloom yelled, pulling off the blankets that covered me.

"ugh...Apple Bloom.... five more minutes..." I groaned, stretching my front legs towards my now fallen blankets in vain.

"Well ok then!" the filly responded, "A'h guess this'll be a good time to see if my special talent is a makeup artist!"

The filly dashed off for a moment, only to come back carrying some lipgloss in her mouth, a devilish look on her face.My eyes shot wide open in surprise, my body shooting upright. "GAH!!!! I'M AWAKE!!!" I But at that moment, my wings spread apart, the left wing pushing against the couch, propelling me off of the couch. I fell to the ground with a painful thud, much to the filly's amusement.

"hehe, don't worry Signal. Me and the other Cutie Mark Crusaders already tried something like that once, didn't work out so well!" Apple Bloom explained, trotting over to my head. She showed her flank to me, revealing that she, thank tore, had no such mark on it. "But A'h thought I should let ya know that AppleJacks looking for yah. Wants to start training early today!"

I loudly groaned, turning over on my stomach. Apple Bloom was the youngest one in the Apple Family here at Sweet Apple Acres and was the last one in her family at the moment to not have her Cutie Mark. Cutie Marks... it's been a week since I got here and yet nopony has explained to me what the Tore they are! And it doesn't help that I already have one! I noticed it after spending my first night here in Equestria. It was a classic Y shaped barbute helmet, my favorite kind of helmet back on Earth. Heck when I created my armor design, I made my helmet that exact kind of style! I even made little patches of the helmet that I would stitch into my clothing! So it was at least a little bit comforting to see that I had it on my new body, but that was a fleeting moment as I don't know why my cutie mark is that. I swear the longer I stay here I get more questions and fewer answers!

"Say, Apple Bloom, don't you ever worry that you'll never find your cutie mark?" I asked, changing Apple Bloom's cheerful face into one of worry and sadness. But that moment was fleeting as she immediately shook her head in denial, her smile quick to grow on her face.

"Nope! A'h know that someday I'll find mine! Everypony eventually gets one!" She explained, trotting over to my flank. "But still... it must be nice to have one.". I felt her hoof touch my flank, quickly turning my head over to her. She was touching my cutie mark, I could tell she was a little envious of me. "Say what does you cutie mark mea-" She asked, only to be interrupted by the front door slamming open to show AppleJack.

"Apple Bloom! Have you waken Signal up ye-" She started to ask, stopping when she saw me on the floor. "A'h see you have. Well, good morning Signal!". She trotted past me and into the kitchen, the sweet smell of pie filling the room. Now normally I would be ecstatic to smell a delicacy such as pie, but just after a week of living here, I had grown accustomed to that smell.

"Apple Pie?" I rhetorically asked, Applejack's head popping over the counter, giving me a pleasant nod. "You ponies sure do love apples don't you?" I asked, awkwardly climbing back onto the couch.

"We sure do! We do almost everything with apples! You could even say 🎵we're apple's to the core🎵" Apple Bloom hummed, climbing up beside me.

I gave a half-hearted smile as Applejack walked into the room, carrying a pie in her mouth, thankfully by a handle connected to the plate. The pie was perfectly divided into 6 pieces, one of each of us and three extra for their brother Big Mac, their grandmother Granny Smith, and their dog Winona. After the three of us, each had a slice of pie, Applejack got up and stretched out all for of her legs. Apple Bloom, on the other hoof, was cleaning up the plates and taking the extra pieces of pie back to the kitchen.

"Well, I reckon it's time now Signal. C'mon, let's go." She stated, walking over to the door, "it's time for your daily training!"

"Actually Applejack, I think I'll just skip training today and-" I tried to explain, but she wasn't having any of that. Before I could even finish my sentence, I was already lassoed by Applejack, who gave me a smug look before walking outside, dragging me along much to my dismay. She dragged me outside in front of the house, apple trees as far as the eye can see. I felt the lasso around my body loosen and fall off me, quickly massaging the area where I was lassoed.

"Ok, now Signal, let's start out with the basics," she said, "you want to do the one-two hoof or filly steps?".

"I think I'll go with one-two hoof today, my flank is still slightly sore from doing filly steps yesterday," I said back, "still don't understand how fillies learn by that.". I then got up quickly, I don't have much trouble standing anymore since getting here, but actually walking around was a different story.

Applejack gave me a simple nod and walked right in front of me. She then began to walk away, making deep imprints of her hoofs onto the dirt. Once she was around ten feet away from me, she turned around and motioned her head to me. I felt my face tense up as I focused on my legs.

"Front left, back right, front left, back right" I repeated to myself as I started to move my front left leg and back right leg, using all my mental focus to move my front left leg first, then my back right. For the past week, I'd been trying to walk, only to always fall on my face.

I could feel the sweat sliding down my face as I started moving forward, careful to land my hooves in Applejack's imprints. So far so good, I'd barely gotten past moving my front hooves at all before now! I looked at Applejack with glee, her face filled with the same glee I had.

"Well, I'll be! That's the farthest you've gotten so far!" She cheered, "Now let's see if you can go farther!".

"Ha! Watch me!" I said in my hubris, raising my head high into the sky.

Now I'm not normally the boastful or arrogant type, but when something finally goes my way, it can kinda go to my head. I tried to lift my right front leg, and to my surprise, it did move, but only for my right back leg to move with it. I could already feel my body starting to tilt to the side, and before I could think of trying to rebalance myself I was already back on the ground, creating a tiny dust storm around me.

I let out a loud grunt, followed by a low groan. I rolled onto my back, spreading all four of my legs out as I looked at the bright blue sky. I was given wings when I entered this world, and I honestly wanted nothing more than to fly across the land, the wind blowing against my skin, it was my childhood dream after all! But here I am, stuck on the ground, not even able to walk for Tore's sake! I knew that I would have to find my way back home as soon as possible, but at the same time that didn't mean, I couldn't fulfill my dreams right? I was brought out of my daze by the by the now familiar laughter of Applejack, who was practically on top of me when I noticed her.

She wasn't even trying to hold back her laughter, making me slightly blush in embarrassment. "Well Mr.lookatme, ah think y'ah still need some practice." she chuckled, "But don't worry! A sapling doesn't become a mighty apple tree overnight! We'll get yah back in shape in no time!".

I hope she was right. I know that in my world, just getting a prosthetic leg can take months if not years of training and practice to just do basic things, so how long until I get used to my new body? But all of this training would be pointless unless I could figure a way back home. And it doesn't help that the one place that might hold the answers is the castle of THE GODDESS OF THE SUN!!! I mean where would I even start even if I had access to the castle? The castle is huge, and I wasn't exactly paying attention to where in the massive castle I was in when being chased by the castle guards. Ugh! One thing at a time Cole! All this worry would also be for nothing if I couldn't even walk.

I looked back at Applejack, rolling back onto my stomach. "I know you're right, but still... it's frustrating not being to walk! How long until I don't have to rely on you for travel?" I asked, getting off of the floor.

"I don't know, but that doesn't mean you can rush through this like it's winter wrap up." Applejack explained Don't worry anyhow! I reckon that you'll be walking around like any ol' pony any day now!". She gave me a playful shove, giving me a slight smile on my face. "Now, how about we try that again? Just don't let it get to your head again ok?".

I nodded my head, getting back up to reattempt walking. "Any day now" I thought, my smile growing much bigger.

Any day now...any day now...days turned into weeks, then weeks turned into months. But hey, at least I wasn't bored when passing the time.

It had been quite some time since that day, and in that time I had grown accustomed to my new equestrian body. It took more time than I thought, but I eventually managed to walk mostly perfectly on my own. I couldn't exactly gallop or even walk fast, but I nevertheless I could still walk. After that, my next course of action was finding a home to stay in. Unsurprisingly, the entire mane six (as I prefer to call them because it's easier than saying the six bearers of the elements of harmony) offered to let me stay in their respective homes, but I declined their offers in the most humble and polite way possible.

"So what do you say? None of us would mind. At least until you got a job and made enough bits to buy your own house."Twilight asked. I was in her treehouse/library home, where I stood in front of the mane six. I had just mastered the complex art of walking on four hooves and Pinkie wanted to throw where to throw her "Signal just learned how to walk" party at.

"umm...." I mumbled, looking around frantically for anything to help me get out of this situation. I was married after all and had no intention of letting a pony harem ruin that bond we made.

I then looked at a nearby window an idea immediately sparking in my mind. With the speed of a Wonderbolt, I jumped out of the window. The mane six could only look with horror and shock as history repeated itself and I was outside, running, or more like walking kinda fast, as fast as I could before I heard the door to Twilight's treehouse slam open.

hehe... they did eventually catch me, but only after tearing up half of Ponyville to find me. I decided to crash with Fluttershy because at least with her I wouldn't have to worry about any of the *ahem* quirks the others had. But despite my brilliant plan, Angel Bunny made sure to remind me that pain takes many forms, and takes no prisoners...

ANYHOW!!! I did manage to get some odd jobs around Ponyville for a while, like walking pets or volunteering to be part of Twilights experiments. I have to say, growing extra limbs or being shrunken into the size of an ant was totally worth all those bits she gave me, guess being the prized pupil of the ruler of a nation has more advantages than I thought. I did eventually find a full-time job to help pay the bills. I was to help the Cake family at Sugarcube corner run the business alongside Pinkie Pie, much to my...joy actually. Pinkie Pie honestly grew on me since our first meeting, and while I couldn't exactly speak for human Pinkie, pony Pinkie and I got together quite well together, her being the most fun I had ever had since my wedding party with Veronica.

Right now I was preparing the display cakes when Pinkie came literally bouncing down. She had the same massive smile on her face as always, her light blue eyes beaming with energy.

"Morning Pinkie." I said, my smile already growing, Pinkie had that effect on me along with almost anypony she met. I swear that girl could get the entire town to burst into a musical number if she wanted to.

"GOOD MORNING SIGNAL!" She exclaimed, "Are you working on the display cakes?".

I finished putting up the last cake on its stand, backing up to admire my handiwork. I had organized them from biggest to smallest, creating an eye-catching experience for any pony who would walk past this shop. As I turned around to talk to Pinkie, I found that the pink pony was already right next to me, our muzzles practically bumping into each other. My eyes widened in shock...only to calm back down once I realized who it was. One can only be scared so many times by the Pinkie before adapting to her hijinks.

"Why yes, I am! I just finished in fact. What do you think?" I asked, stepping to the side to let Pinkie inspect it.

She examined the sweets, her face practically pressing against it. She was almost like a mother wolf, carefully examining her cubs for any signs of injury, scrutinizing each sweet. This went on for what felt like forever until she finally backed up, her head held high up.

"You did good Signal, but you missed just one tinny tiny little thing!" She explained, but before I could ask she already went to work.

She was like a pink bolt of lightning, rushing around the display case faster than I could see, spinning around the display case like a tornado. After several seconds she stopped, somehow while standing on two legs, and pointed at the display. It was...It was...

"The exact same way as before," I said deadpanned, my head lowered to the ground.

"No, it's not silly! look!" Pinkie exclaimed, somehow grabbing my head using her hooves, dragging me over to the display. It looked exactly the same, that was until at the very bottom, I noticed that two cupcakes were switched around. Strangely enough, they were rainbow colored, and I don't know why, but that gave me chills down my spine.

Quietly sighing, I managed to get out her grasp, slightly chuckling as the Pinke bounced over to the door and opened it.

"You going somewhere? Got some party to start somewhere?" I asked, slowly walking behind the counter, careful not to fall.

"Yah!. I heard Twilight scream something about a test and thought I should go over to check up on her." She explained, "Didn't you hear the high pitched screams?".

"Who didn't? I think she woke up half of Equestria with that one scream." I joked. Earlier that day I remember being woken up by the familiar high pitched screams of a certain unicorn, she was screaming something about a test if I recall.

"Are you sure you'll be able to handle the shop without me? You've only been here for a few months." Pinkie asked, looking at me nervously.

As if I was asking the gods of this world to curse me, I said the one thing YOU NEVER SAY EVER!!!

"Phftt! I got this!" I said boastfully, not realizing the fatal mistake I made by saying that.

Pinkie's nervous face turned back into a carefree one as she bounced away, saying goodbye to me in the distance. I got behind the counter, putting on the cap Mr.Cake gave me when I started working here. A couple of hours went by uneventfully, the most exciting thing to happen to be Lyra coming in and ordering her custom-made "hand cake". If only she knew... But later that day we got one more customer.

It was around noon when we got a new customer. I was about to fall asleep from boredom when the I heard the door open. At the door was a pony...obviously, but this one was wearing a completely grey cloak and hood, like something straight out of the start of a cliche sci-fi movie. It was hard to tell what kind of pony it was, much less it's gender, but all I could barely make out were a pair of ocean blue eyes.

"Welcome to Sugar Cube Corner, we got sweets, treats, and every delicacy you could seek. What can I do for you today?" I asked, only for the pony to tilt its head to the side in confusion. "hehe... it's a work in progress. Anything catch your eye?".

The pony shook its head, causing its hood to slightly come off, revealing a long brown mane that went down to its neck. "I'm here for a custom order I requested the Cakes made me" she explained, her voice somehow...familiar.

"Umm... Ok, under what name did you put this order?" I asked. I swore I knew this pony from somewhere, but I couldn't put my hoof on it.

The unicorn, yes unicorn, took off her hood to reveal a bright blue fur. She wore a whole assortment of clothes from a dark redshirt that covered her entire body, slightly dark blue boots and straps on her legs, a long cape covering her lower body, and a dark red hat similar to Applejacks. She had a serious expression on her face, an all too familiar serious face if you asked me. But her voice is what made me realize something about her.

"Yes, it should be under the name "Heart Breaker", I ordered a custom cake for my friend’s “welcome home party”." She explained, her voice word for word the same as my wife's voice, Veronica Marksen. She even had the same name as her code name, "Heart Breaker".

My jaw dropped to the floor, I couldn't wrap my head around this situation. Did she find a way here? Was I dreaming? Did I mishear her?

"Um...excuse me?" She asked, waving her front hoof in front of my face, "You ok?".

What is going on here?

In the human world at Canterlot High, three little girls were running down the halls in glee. The three in question were Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle, and they were on a mission. The three girls for months were collecting info on the school's resident bully, Sunset Shimmer, trying to gather as much dirt on her to bring to Principle Celestia. And after months of searching, digging, and spying, they finally had more than enough to get her expelled from CHS.

"C'mon girls! We got to hurry!" exclaimed Apple Bloom, dodging and weaving through the busy halls of Canterlot High.

"We're running as fast as we can!" cried Scootaloo, who was holding the folder that held all of the info they had gathered. They had come so far and had no intentions of letting anything slow them down.

The three just turned a corner when out of nowhere a rouge foot stretched out, tripping the poor girls to the ground. The folder went flying out of Scootaloo's hands and fell to the floor, landing right in front of a familiar pair of shoes.

"Well well, what do we have here?" Asked Sunset Shimmer, who grabbed the folder before the girls could get it back, "you know running down the halls is against the rules right?".

She opened the folder and grabbed some random pictures the girls had taken. Some showed her sabotaging lockers with firecrackers, others showed her blatantly cheating on tests. One even showed her graffitiing on school grounds. This info alone could have gotten her in serious trouble with the school, clearly, these girls went through quite some trouble to find all this.

"HEY! Give it back!" barked Scootaloo, who was jumping at Sunset, trying to get the folder out of her hands.

"Now why would I give up such juicy information?" Sunset asked, pushing Scootaloo away with her free hand. "But if you ask me, this info is a little undercooked.". Sunset then put the pictures back in the folder and proceeded to raise the folder up to the ceiling.

The three girls looked at Sunset confused as Sunset closed her eyes, her arm starting to glow red. Before the three knew what happened, the folder had caught fire and quickly turned into a pile of ashes. Sunset then proceeded to pour the ashes on top of poor Sweetie Belle, who could only look in horror as all their hard work was ruined in one swift motion.

"oops, your info looks a little burnt." Sunset laughed, the three girls started to back away in fear, "Now run along before I make three well-done brats!".

The three girls ran away in terror, screaming as Sunset laughed at their misfortune. Ever since the incident with the strange man and getting this odd dragon tattoo thing, she had slowly learned how to control the creature. It was odd at first, but she quickly got the hang of using it, most likely because using it was like using magic back at Equestria. She never knew what this thing truly was, but she didn't really care now. This thing allowed her to do so much more than she could imagine, and it also gave her company! She even named it, deciding on "Scales". The only negative of Scales was that she couldn't risk showing him around in public, it was already a big risk revealing her new abilities today to those girls, but she couldn't even imagine what would happen if she summoned him out in the open. Starting to walk off she noticed a nearby poster, showing that in a couple of months the Fall formal would start. She let out a deep sigh as she walked away, going over her plan on how to get her revenge on Celestia.

"So close Sunset...just a little bit longer," She thought to herself as she kept on walking, soon her plans would come to fruition, and she would get the power she deserved. She just needed to wait a little while longer.

Since when has my wife had hooves?

Author's Note

Ok, Three things.
1. Edit as of June 1. Ponyville is now just a small community that is part of Canterlot. I did this because it made more sense to me.

I want to talk about my schedule. I hope to publish one chapter every one or two Fridays, but if I finish early and am satisfied with what I wrote I will publish early, and I might occasionally be late every now and then, so be warned.

3~~.I got a southern accent translator for Applejack's lines since I was having some trouble giving her lines her proper southern accent.~~ I’m not using it anymore because I got some help with her lines

Since when has my wife had hooves?

In the community of Ponyville USA, four hooded figures sat in a cafe, all of them staring at their menus.

"So you think I should get the "Ultra Colt" muffin or a slice of the "Iron Pony" cake?" asked the first person. She was smaller than the others by a foot and had a higher pitched yet mellow voice.

"You had the "Ultra Colt" yesterday Alexia, I say try the cake." The second person said. He was the tallest out of the four by two feet and had a deep voice.

"I don't understand why all these food items are horse themed. I mean have any of you three seen anything that doesn't have something to do with horses? It's starting to get annoying!" The third person groaned. He had a low and hoarse voice and sounded like a longtime smoker was choking on his lighter.

"Ugh... That isn't why I called you three." The fourth person complained. She lowered her hood to reveal a woman with brown hair and ocean blue eyes, Veronica Marksen. "I called you here because you've have seen the power spikes around here.". Despite her voice being mostly devoid of emotion, it was clear she was mad.

The short girl, Alexia Vare, lowered her hood and menu in agitation. She had short black hair with gold highlights and emerald green eyes. "And you think this is part of another one of your crackpot theories about how this is connected to your husband's death." She raised her arm to massage her head, clearly annoyed at Veronica's actions. "I think I speak for all of us when I say you need to let it go.".

"What did you do to your hair? It looks ridiculous!" The second person laughed, lowering his hood. It was Samuel Vare, who was bald with light brown eyes. He had one scar going down his right cheek, a wound he got when he fell through a car window in Greece while fighting a multi-headed abomination.

"I got it dyed, what do you think?"

"didn't I just say it was-"

"Can we please get back on topic? Anyways, I have to agree with Valety here Hespot, Dragosn hasn't contacted us in months! You've had more than enough time to grieve!" The third person, Wilson Deene, said, putting his hand on Veronica's shoulder. He wore a fake skin mask, hiding the scars he gained after an acid-spitting abomination managed to spray acid on his exposed face. It was a miracle he survived at all, much less be able to blow the things head off seconds after it attacked him. His light grey eyes may have given the idea he was blind, but in truth, he could hit eight different targets moving at extreme speeds with just one arrow.

She quickly knocked his hand off, slamming both hands against the table. Her eyes started to glow yellow in anger, along with the rest of her body, making the other three slightly reel back.

"First off Wilson, use our English names. Second off, I have proof.". Veronica then grabbed something out of her pocket. When she pulled it out, it was a small silver box with a T shaped barbute helmet symbol on each side. She threw it on the table, which made the box start to beep rapidly for several seconds until out of it came a 3d map of the United States. All over the country, tiny red spikes rose and fall, some not lasting for even a second.

"Since when did we use technology that looks like it came out of a crappy sci-fi movie?" asked Alexia, only to get a spine-chilling glare from Veronica. "Uh...forget I asked...".

Veronica then pointed her finger at a certain red spike, which seemed like the others at first, but when it fell, the spike was quick to rise at the same exact location. Tapping on the spike, the map zoomed in and showed that the spike's origin was in Ponyville, California. Zooming even closer in, the spike was most frequent at Canterlot High School, the same place Cole Marksen disappeared all those months ago.

"As you see, this energy spike seems to hang around CHS, and it just so happens that after looking into this spikes history, it started occurring right after my husband disappeared," Veronica explained, her bright yellow glow settling down.

"So? Like you said, we've all seen this spike before, so what do you have to add that me, Alexia, and Wilson don't already don't know?" Samuel asked, accusingly pointing his finger at Veronica.

Veronica gave Samuel the same glare she gave Alexia, making him lower his arm. "I modified the energy tracker to track specific kinds of energy waves, including esper waves. I was working on it even before Cole disappeared, and I now finally got it working." Alexia when waved her hand over the map, making the spike suddenly transform into a dragon, specifically the kind of dragon Drake, Cole's Esper, was. "I believe you three can tell where I'm going with this."

Collectively the three purifier's eyes widened, shocked at her discovery. This was their chance to find out what happened to their old friend, and a chance to get the team back together.

"Well I be damned, you might actually be on to something for once!" Wilson exclaimed in his hoarse voice, "Who would have thought?”

"I know it's been a long time since we've worked together but please, not as purifiers, but as comrades, help me at least put this case to rest." Veronica pleaded, "But If you don't want to, I won't stop you from leaving.".

All three of the purifiers stood sitting in their chairs, new looks of determination on their faces.

"Veronica, you know us better than that! LIke Tore are we going to let an opportunity to help an old friend like this pass!" exclaimed Alexia, followed by several nods by Samuel and Wilson. Veronica grew a small smile on her face, she would finally get the love of her life back. Or at the very least put the mystery of his disappearance to rest.

"Ok! What's the plan?" Wilson asked, his voice filled with determination.

But before she got a chance to explain, the sound of a slight gasp filled the room. Turning their heads to the side, all four purifiers saw a shocked waitress, flabbergasted at the advanced technology on the table. Veronica was quick to snatch the device off of the table, just was quick to give a fake smile.

"Hehe...sorry! My friend over here-" Veronica explained, giving a surprisingly convincing imitation of an average high school girl, pointing a finger at Alexia, "loves to tinker with things, and we were just using it to help practice a school play we have later this month!".

The waitress, to their surprise, started to calm down, but that was short lived as she quickly returned to a state of panic.

"WHAT?! THE DRAMA CLUB IS HAVING A PLAY THIS MONTH? WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME!" She yelled, dashing out of the door in a fit of panic.

After a second to take that all in, all four purifiers started to laugh uncontrollably, even Wilson to everyone's misfortune.

"Haha! Oh, my tore! Where did you learn to talk like that?" Alexia laughed, trying to catch her breath.

"Well... remember that time we all went to that convention with all of those people dressed up in weird costumes?"

I was completely speechless, I mean the ponified version of my wife was standing right in front of me! How would you react to seeing someone you know and love be right in front of you but as an animal? She, "Heart Breaker" on the other hand, only looked at me with confusion.

"What the Tore is going on? Veronica? Did she find a way here? Am I just seeing things? Maybe I've had one too many sweets and I've somehow gone high on sugar."

"Um... hello? You ok? You look like you just studied for a big test but forgot your quills" She asked, waving her hooves in front of me.

"Crap! She's talking to me! Just...calm down Marksen, just act like she's another pony, and then when she leaves, then you can freak out."

I shook my head, trying to get a hold of myself. "Sorry about that, I, uh, thought you were somepony I knew. You said you had a custom order, what name would that be under again?"

"Heart Breaker. I asked for a custom cake for my...friend who I just heard was coming to live here." Her horn started to glow bright yellow and out of nowhere a picture of three little ponies appeared, with one just barely visible hiding behind the biggest of the three. Looking at their color pallets, I guessed that the two up front ponies were Twilight Sparkle and her big brother Shining Armor but as fillies.

I got a chance to meet Shining Armor at his wedding, and he seemed, for the most part, a nice guy who I could drink with if I knew him on Earth. I felt bad for the guy, almost marrying a love sucking, shape-shifting evil changeling queen is not how I would want my wedding to be remembered by.

"Are you talking about Twilight Sparkle? You know her? What is she an ff-friend from back home?" Ok, this was going horribly, I haven't ever stuttered in my entire life until now!

She nodded her head, teleporting a tiny bag of bits.

"Ok... but you said it like she j-just moved here recently. I just moved here and T-Twilight was already living here.".

I saw her eyes widen, but ever so slightly, as she dropped the bag of bits and picture on the counter. For most ponies, it would look she was just slightly surprised at something, but I knew better. Whenever the Veronica I knew would get surprised or nervous, she would start to rub her legs against the floor, and wouldn't you know it when I looked down I saw her rubbing her hind legs against the floor. As this was happening, I saw out of the corner of my eye Mr.Cake walk in from the kitchen with a light blue box.

"I don't understand, I just got the letter last week..."

"Anyhow, I shouldn't kk-keep you waiting. Now, w-where would your order be?"

"Don't worry about it Signal! I got it ready the moment I heard her name!" Mr.Cake explained, walking out of the kitchen with a box on his back. "I must say I'm glad you called in that order in advance, it took quite a while to properly prepare it!".

"Then I'm glad you got a chance to prepare. Say, would you mind if..uh..."

"Signal Flare"

"If Signal over here could help me find the home of my dearest...friend? I am new here and don't know where to go."

I looked at Mr.Cake worried, but he just smiled as he walked over to me.

"Sure! Bussiness is slow today so I think Me and Mrs.Cake can handle things here.".

"Wait don't I-"

"Then it's settled! Let's go Mr.Flare."

Before I knew it, Heart Breaker used her magic to lift me in the air and walked out of the store with the cake, leaving me confused as to what was going on.

"Ok...I guess freak out time will have to wait until this mare lets me go!"

Once we left the shop she thankfully let me go of her spell and allowed me to show her around town. Ponyville was quite the quaint little town, a nice reminder of the town I grew up in. After showing her around, we finally made it to Twilight's treehouse/library, the sun beaming light down on us as we approached it. In all of my time I spent in Equestria, that library was definitely one of my favorite places to visit. I learned very quickly that with my arrival into this world, I somehow understood the written language of these ponies, and was able to easily read their literature (my writing was another story). And the library in Ponyville had so much information about the world, fiction or non-fiction, that I often found myself reading in my free time. So I couldn't help but smile as I gazed upon the treehouse, which Heart Breaker took note of.

"Can I assume you come here often?"

"Yes, I do. When you live in an "exciting" town like Ponyville, The library here is almost always a peaceful place where I could go and just relax." It also helped that in Terran, reading books for fun was seen as a luxury since almost all books were dedicated to our history or battle tactics.

"JUST A TEST?!"

And right as I say that the entire treehouse went flying into the sky, one could probably see the flying tree house from the very edge of town if I had to wager. As the treehouse went crashing back down, Heart Breaker's horn once again glowed, creating a small bubble around us, blocking the waves of dust and rock that were sent flying. Once the dust settled, we looked to see that the treehouse was miraculously one hundred percent intact, as if nothing had just happened to it. Heart Breaker gave me a doubting glare as I tried to laugh the little incident off.

"Hehe...I did say almost peacful".

She just rolled her eyes slightly as she removed the bubble, using magic to levitate her hood back on. "I see she hasn't changed since the last time we met."

I heard her say something else, but it was under her breath. I think I caught "hope *something* works". But I didn't have time to dwell on that as shortly after the treehouse landed, the door opened and revealed a familiar violet unicorn and five other familiar ponies. Twilight looked extremely nervous, almost like she was on the verge of snapping, but her face quickly turned to confusion as she noticed me and Heart Breaker.

"Oh! Signal! Have you come to finally read the next "Daring Do" book? Also whose the pony next to you?"

I wanted to groan at the mention of that book series but managed to keep the anguish to myself. When Rainbow Dash tried teaching me how to fly shortly after I managed to start walking on my own, I found myself in the hospital dozens of times from her "lessons" and she insisted that I read a book about somepony named "Daring Do". I gave it a shot, but I quickly found out that the book was the most cliche action adventure book I ever had the displeasure of reading. But then again, I guess this was the most action a regular pony would be able to see in this world, but that still didn't make me roll my eyes several times when reading the book. But since I didn't have the heart to tell Rainbow how I felt about the book, I had to lie through my teeth about it and that ended up with Twilight giving me the rest of the "Daring Do" novels to read, of which my opinion still stands of their quality.

"No, I was just showing this pony around town she said something about knowing you Twilight so I decided to help her find you."

Twilight looked slightly surprised as she stared at Heart Breaker, almost like she was entranced by the mere presence of her. The other five ponies were quick to walk next to Twilight, all suspicious of Heart Breaker, especially Pinkie Pie of all ponies for some reason.

"Is that so?" asked Applejack, "Might A'h ask where ya know Twilight from?"

"And where did you find that cloak and hood? The design is simply dreadful!" cried Rarity, only to get a hard push from Twilight.

"I'm so sorry about that, but I sadly don't have time for any surprise visits from ponies, I'm incredibly busy right now."

I heard Heart Breaker give a reluctant sigh as she stepped forward. "Sunshine, Sunshine, ladybugs awake. Clap your hooves and do a little shake." She...sang? There was so little emotion put into it that it sounded more like a robot trying to sing. "Moonlight, Moonlight, butterflies asleep. Stomp your hooves and give a big leap.".

Twilight gasped loudly as everypony looked at her confused. "I only sang that with one other pony... no way... IT CAN'T BE!"

Heart Breaker lowered her hood, revealing her face once again. "Don't you think you can make time for your little sister?"

"WAIT, WHAT?!" Me, along with every other pony yelled, especially me. I mean, the Veronica I know didn't have any siblings, but yet this one did? And to add onto that, THE SISTER OF TWILIGHT SPARKLE?

"Oh.My.Gosh! SAPPHIRE!" Twilight exclaimed, who ran over to...Sapphire... and hugged her tight. So tight in fact that I could hear her gasp for air. "You're here! Your're actually here!"

"YOU HAVE A SISTER?!" screamed Rarity, "DARLING! WHY DID YOU NEVER TELL US ABOUT HER?!"

"and more importantly, why didn't we see her at the Canterlot Wedding?" Rainbow Dash added, clearly trying to wrap her head around this.

"hehe... I guess it never came up. Also, she's a very busy pony who travels a lot. The last time I heard from you, you were heading to Griffonstone to discover some lost griffon artifacts right?"

"I didn't even make it past the border before some griffons tried to steal my stuff. I decided after that that even if I did get find something, it would probably get stolen so I choose to leave and save me the trouble. But that was over three years ago, and I've found much more interesting things since then."

"THREE YEARS?!" Applejack screamed, "How do ya not write to your big sis for over three years?!".

Twilight let go of Sapphire, her face completely devoid of the anxiety from earlier. "That's more than likely my fault girls. I got really devoted to my studies around after I wrote my last letter to her, I didn't really make the time to write that much."

"Anyhow. While it was nice meetin' ya Miss Sapphire, but twilight's got ta gitty-up ta Canterlot ta talk ta the princess. Ah'm afraid that ya got ta put a rain check on your little git together."

Sapphire looked saddened by AppleJack's explanation but quickly grew back her fake smile. "Is that so? Would you be ok with letting your little sister come with you Twilight? I could even quiz you on the way there!".

I didn't have the heart to tell her, but not just any pony can go and talk to the Princess of Equestria. You either have to be a major political figure, her personal student or have more connections than the average Purifier does in the black market. Even if Twilight agreed, I doubt all the royal guards and such would let some new pony meet the princes-

"Sure! I don't think Princess Celestia would mind!"

Or Twilight could just throw common sense out the window and let somepony who she hasn't talked to in three years see one, of if not the most, important pony in Equestria.

"Just like that?! Do you really think the princess would be ok with that?" The purple baby dragon Spike asked. He walked out the door with a slightly broken army helmet and with some feathers caught between his scales.

Ah yes, Spike, Twilight's faithful assistant and the closest thing I had to a best friend in Equestria. Don't get me wrong, I've gotten to know lots of ponies who I would consider being my friends, but Spike is the only one to really made an effort to hang out with me. I would actually find myself commonly coming to Twilight's house just to talk to Spike. Heck Spike, me, and Big Mac got together and decided to play this board game called "O&O", which I guess is this worlds "D&D". And unlike almost every other thing in this world, I was actually good at this game. But when you spend months stalking a suspected shape-shifting abomination who turns out to be a nerd who eats, drinks and sleeps D&D, you're practically guaranteed to learn the rules of the game.

"Hey Twilight, can I come along? I've been wanting to visit Canterlot for a while, and without being chased by the royal guards."

Twilight was practically jumping for joy, taking a complete one-eighty on her personality."Sure! Who knows, maybe exploring the city will give you some of your memories back!".

As Twilight and the others left to go the train station, only me and Spike remained by the treehouse. I could hear the others practically swarming on Sapphire, asking all kinds of questions to her.

"Spike, did you know Twilight had a little sister?" I asked, Spike, jumping on my back like I was some kind of- oh wait.

"I've known Twilight for my entire life, but she never mentioned a little sister, much less anypony named "Sapphire".". Spike looked slightly confused as we started to walk off.

That worried me. Spike didn't know of Sapphire's supposed relation to Twilight, and he's been living with her since his birth. And a little sister isn't exactly something you forget to mention to a friend. I'll get plenty of chances of pick at her brain on the train to Canterlot though...

After saying goodbye to her friends, the three of us boarded the train and were speeding off to Canterlot. I was sat across Twilight and Saphire, my window down so I could feel the air fly against my neck. For most of the trip, Sapphire and Twilight were catching up with each other, but most of it was background noise for me.

"Say, Sapphire, not once since moving to Ponyville did I ever hear Twilight mention having a little sister. Why do you think that is?" I asked, trying to remember the lessons on interrogation I learned in boot camp, but I don’t think breaking fingers would work on ponies.

"To be honest, I was pretty anti-social when I was little. I rarely talked to anyone, even Twilight, Shining Armor, or even my parents. And I don't want to even talk about how I treated Cadence."

She lowered her head like she was shameful of something she did. That look alone made me both curious yet wary of going into detail about the topic.

"I studied almost twice as hard as Twilight ever did to become Celestia's student, spending every waking second with a book in my face or trying out spells. But I was late that day and Twilight got to go first. You can see how that turned out."

Her face said a thousand words I mean, to any regular pony/person, it would look like she was ok, but I knew better. It was apparent to me that one of the things this version of Veronica had in common with mine was her tendency to not show her emotions. It would take something extreme for her to give something bigger than a smile or tears. I should know, the first time I got her to smile when I proposed to her!

"I remember the anger and jealousy I had against Twilight after that day, I felt like all my hard work was for nothing. So like any emotionally confused filly, I ran away from home. Of course, I didn't get far before they found me, but that day I found my cutie mark."

She moved her body to the side, showing her cutie mark. It was... a T shaped barbute helmet, the kind of helmet Veronica used, but this one had stars similar to Twilight's surrounding it.

"A royal guard found me in an alleyway balling my eyes out. When he tried to take me back to my family, I remember freaking out and some kind of bright light coming out of nowhere. When I opened my eyes I found that I turned the nearby trashcans into some kind of odd armor and was wearing it. Of course, it didn't do much besides make me slightly heavier to carry so he still brought me back home. I found out later that I got my cutie mark, but my parents didn't know what it meant. After talking to some historians, they found out that the helmet was the symbol of an old magic group that was dedicated to finding new magic to protect Equestria shortly after Princess Luna turned into Nightmare Moon."

Twilights head shot up as she leviated through dozens of scrolls."They were so secretive that we don't even know their name! Scholars have taken to calling them "the nameless"! In fact, the only reason why we know they existed in the first is because of stories passed down through families that claimed to have had members that were part of their group!"

Ignoring Twilights little tidbit, I raised one of my eyebrows at her, suspicious of her story. "They got all of that from a helmet that sparkles?

"Yes, they did. A symbol can tell a whole story on its own. And believe me, this symbol tells quite the story." Sapphire looked at her cutie mark longingly, almost like she was entranced by it.

While I appreciated the backstory, something was still off for me. I mean I heard Twilight talk about her big brother Shining Armor on occasion, but not once did she come up. I also didn't understand how Twilight could be so calm when before she showed up, she was a nervous wreck. From what I knew about her, Twilight wasn't one to just forget something like a test.

"Anyhow, sorry if I was boring you with my life story. Do you want me to quiz you before you take your big test with Celestia, Twilight?"

Twilight almost fell off of her seat at the mention of the test. "OH MY GOSH! HOW COULD I FORGET?! And yes I would love it if you quizzed me."

Apparently, I don't Twilight well enough.

I saw Spike, who was sitting next to me, get a disappointed look on his face. "Actually Twilight wasn't I supposed to quiz-". But Spike was interrupted when the train entered a cave. Once it finally exited the cave, Sapphire was already quizzing Twilight. I heard Spike give a deep sigh as he slouched back into his seat. The rest of the ride was just Sapphire quizzing Twilight on seemingly random things. I mean how would knowing how to defeat a chimera be relevant to her? But at the very least I now know the exact number of bells StarSwirl the bearded had on his hat.

"I am so happy to see you again Sapphire!" Twilight then went and hugged Sapphire again, but this time I noticed something.

It was brief, only for a quick second, but in Twilight's eyes flashed bright green for a moment. It was quick and most likely nopony would have noticed it, but being a purifier, or honestly, an ex-purifier, means I was trained to notice the tiniest details. Then it hit me, something that I wouldn't have thought otherwise. Something that could change everything.

"Wait... How did you contact the Cakes if that was your first time in Ponyville?"

The world's strangest case of identity theft

In the strangely built home of Sunset Shimmer

Sunset Shimmer was sitting on her bed, reading a book on different kinds of mythological dragons throughout history. It had been months since gaining her odd new power from the strange man, but only now did her interest in her new tattoo pet start to rise, so she got a brand new book on different kinds of dragons to see if she could determine what kind of dragon Scales was.

“ugh... hey buddy can you come out for a quick second? ” she asked seemingly to herself, extending her hand which caused her familiar reptilian pet to shoot out of her hand, flying around the room with grace. After several seconds of flying, Scales landed right next to her on the bed, stretching out its legs like some kind of dog coming out of a deep sleep, much to Sunset’s enjoyment.

“Hey Scales, can you stand still for a minute? I need to get a good look at your wings.”

Then like it understood her perfectly, the dragon stood up on its four legs, stretching its wings out. Despite Scales being no bigger than a puppy now, its wings gave it an extra two feet in both length and width. Scrutinizing the book, Sunset groaned once again in frustration as she tossed the book to the side, laying her head on the pillows.

“I mean, you look like some pictures of the Italian dragon Thyrus, but the most similar looking pictures of it still don’t look like you that much!”

Suddenly a knock came from the door downstairs, alerting Sunset who quickly resummoned Scales back into her arm. Sunset was fortunate that she wore a jacket, it was the perfect way to hide her new tattoo after all, and quickly put it on before running down to the door, fixing her hair while doing so. As she reached the door, she suddenly felt a chilling cold at her feet, despite the fact that she was wearing shoes, which left as soon as it appeared. She also noticed that the tiny hairs on her arms were sticking up like she had just rubbed a balloon on her arms, again despite not doing so.

“Who is it?!”

She got no answer from the door, slightly frustrating her.

“HELLO?!”

Again no answer, frustrating her even more. She decided to open the door if only to punch whoever was taking up her time.

“ARE YOU DEAF OR SOMETH-”

When she opened the door, she found that no one was there. Peeking her head out and looking around, she saw no one else on the street other than the random stranger walking down the road. Groaning again, she slammed the door and turned around, massaging her face with her hands in annoyance.

“Must have been a prank by those “CMC” kids. But how did they find out where I live?”

“I think you have more pressing matters at the moment” A metallic, raspy voice answered, making Sunset jump in fright. “Like the man standing behind you contemplating whether I should kill you or not.”

Sunset turned around to see what looked like a man in a suit of strange looking armor, head to toe in strange chrome colored metal plates that gave it a somewhat crude look. Its helmet had a strange faceplate, the only thing discerning it from the rest of the helmet being two parallel lighting bolts which she could only assume was its visor, which glowed bright blue.

Sunset went for her phone, which she left charging on a table next to her, but with the snap of the stranger’s hand, she was forced to reel her hand back in pain as a jolt of electricity shot out of the phone.

“Are all teenagers this stupid? I mean seriously! Even if you did grab your phone, do you really think you could call those pathetic weaklings you call law enforcement in time?”

Sunset was lost for words as the stranger approached her, a flurry of emotions rushing through her. The stranger stopped right in front of her, the sound of tiny mechanisms could be heard working inside the armor.

“Now I’m not going to sugarcoat anything I’m about to say. I’m not your friend, I don’t have your best interests in mind or heart, I honestly loath at the thought of working with a kid like you, and if you were anybody else, I would most likely stab you in the back the moment I would think your usefulness came to an end.”.

Sunset could only look with both confusion and shock at the stranger's bluntness.

“BUT...and this is a big but, not as big as yours, but regardless you have what I can’t have so it only makes sense that I work with you. Now I understand this a lot to take in, but as a sign that I won’t kill you, I’ll teach you how to use your new powers.”

Now understandably confused, angry and somewhat offended, Sunset decided to finally speak up. She took a step forward, balling her hands into fists. “Wait wait wait wait! WHO ARE YOU?! AND HOW DO YOU KNOW ABOUT SCALES?!”

“Oh! How could I be so rude?! The name’s Snowfall Frost, and believe me, my little HUMAN, I know so much more about you than just your little dragon pet.”

Despite her attempt to gain the most basic of knowledge about him, she was only rewarded with even more questions. Snowfall Frost was a character from a Hearths Warming story she was told as a foal, the very thought of the holiday gave her a brief moment of nostalgia. But the moment was fleeting as she remembered Snowfall being a female, living in a completely different time period, and not in a strange, almost alien suit of armor.

“My armor may not be current gen, but even this suit detects the strange energy reading coming off of you along with Marksen’s esper. I’m actually surprised you weren’t found out sooner! But I do want to know something first if you don’t mind, which you probably do but let’s just ignore that.”. Then out of what would have been the calf of his leg, a compartment popped out revealing a small box of what appeared to be cigarettes. Pulling one out, he pointed it at Sunset.

Before she could even wonder what he was doing, the sound of several loud gears filled the room as the lower part of Snowfall’s helmet detached itself from the rest, lowering itself to where it was in front of the neck, revealing part of his face, much to Sunset’s horror. The skin was ghostly white as if the man had never been in the sunlight before, and it appeared as though the man had no lips, his teeth all visible for all the world to see. Sunset was naturally taken aback by this, taking a step backward, only for Snowfall to take a step forward. But most disturbing at all was that his voice sounded the same even after taking off the portion of his helmet as if his voice was always that metallic.

“I need to know, can you truly wield the power you have. I need to know, are you a baby rattlesnake who has yet to learn how to control it’s venom or are you just a dog with an oversized bark? Show me what you got, and if I’m impressed enough I’ll tell you everything you want to know.Or leave and prove that you are just as pathetic as the others.”

Sunset just looked at the man with first confusion, but then determination. Her gut feeling told her to run, find help, anything to get away from this man, but her conscious told me otherwise. She needed to know, for with knowledge comes power, and she craved power above all else.

“Hey kid, while you’re at it, light my cigarette, will you?”

Sunset looked at the cigarette with caution, giving Snowfall a suspicious glare, but still reluctantly took the cigarette. Closing her eyes as she focused her energy on the cigarette. Her arm started to glow bright red, a faint humming coming from her hand. A tiny fire suddenly appearing on her hand, almost instantly lighting the cigarette. Snowfall quickly took it back and put it in his mouth, somehow holding it like he still had lips, like it was levitating. After breathing some of it in, Snowfall but the cigarette back in his hand, breathing out a tiny cloud of smoke. It was only now that Sunset noticed that Snowfall’s lips were...healing itself, the process almost like watching a spider spin its web but at three times the normal speed, but that wasn’t the oddest thing she saw. She saw the cloud of smoke start to spin. It spun faster and faster until Snowfall reached his hand into the cloud, making it dissipate immediately. In his hand was a red crystal-like object that looked to be the size of a baseball in the palm of his hand and casually tossed it to Sunset, who caught it in her hand. It was warm to the touch like a fresh blanket out of the dryer, and it brightly glowed several shades of red when it touched her, it’s glow almost hypnotizing to her.

“Thanks kid. Now I want you to take a bite out of that, it will show me if you’re ready.”

“Wait... take a bite? Like, eat it?!”

Suddenly, Snowfall Frost fell on his knees, growling like some kind of animal. His body started to glow bright blue, only to quickly fade away.

“ Ugh! Not now! Sorry about that, anyhow I got to go. Meet behind that dumpster fire of a building you call a school tomorrow. That is... if you survive the process.”

It was only now that Sunset had enough. This “Snowfall Frost” had broken into her home and was acting like he knew everything about her, and now was giving what felt like vague threats while seemingly in pain. she needed answers and she needed them now! Before Sunset could try to get more answers out of him, Snowfall started to seemingly melt into the floor, the lower face plate covering his mouth as he sunk.

“Oh and remember Sunset Shimmer, Hliet Forsettean pliht.”

Before he fully melted into the floor, he took his right hand and made some kind of two-finger salute, tapping his hand against his chin three times before completely sinking into the floor. For a brief moment, Sunset saw something that appeared to be some kind of odd shadow on her floor rush past her, exiting the room at lightning fast speed. Sunset didn’t want to move, cautious that this was some kind of trick, so she slowly went and grabbed her phone, which didn’t shoot bolts of electricity at her now. Fully sure he was gone now, Sunset stared back at the crystal, a million questions going through her head. Yet one question echoed through her mind, a question that was more important than the rest. Looking down at her arm where Scales resided, her face filled with both fear and confusion.

”How much does this Snowfall Frost know?”

It was late in the afternoon when Twilight, Spike, “Heart Breaker” and I made it to Canterlot, walking off of the train to take in the view. I looked at the castle, wincing while looking at the honestly ridiculous city. Seriously, who builds a castle, especially THE CAPITAL CITY on a cliffside and then build a high-class city right next to it? All it would take would be one big earthquake and bye bye Canterlot and the princesses.

“I’ll never get used to the sight of that castle I swear,” I said, stretching my legs as the other passengers pass us.

“You worry way too much Signal, Canterlot has been here for thousands of years and not once has anything horrible happened...to...ehehe” Twilight nervously giggled, most likely recalling the events of the “Canterlot Wedding” that I either slept through or just missed out on.

“I heard about it while coming to Ponyville, still can’t believe a changeling managed to defeat Celestia in combat. And to think my job is to stop things like this from happening” Sapphire said, looking slightly ashamed.

“Well, no use dwelling on the past. By the way, Sapphire, if that’s your name then why did you use the name “Heart Breaker” when we first met?”

Twilight looked at me confused, only for Sapphire to put a hoof on her. “That was the codename given to me by some Canterlot officials. But since this was somewhat of a vacation for me, I decided my real name would be better. Anyways, shouldn’t you be going to princesses Twilight?”

“OHMYGOSH OHMYGOSH! I NEED TO HURRY TO CELESTIA! C’MON SPIKE WE NEED TO HURRY!” Spike quickly got her side, suspiciously quite now that I realized, and hurried off towards the castle. “YOU TWO HAVE FUN! MEET ME AT THE ROYAL COURTYARD IN TWO HOURS!”

I scratched my hoof against my head in “Who takes two hours to take a test?”

Sapphire walked up next to me, slightly grinning as she watched her sister run off. “Twilight was always like that, she always liked to have extra time on her hooves if she could.”

We stood there for a couple of minutes, an awkward silence filling the air around us despite all the noise from the Canterlot ponies doing their daily routines. But despite the awkward silence, it was actually somewhat nostalgic for me as It reminded me of when I was training to become a Purifier and I would climb on top of the radio tower after practice. I would just sit there, where I would block out our instructor's screams and cries at the trainees to work harder and just focus on the winds that blew up there. In fact, it was on top of that radio tower that I first asked Veronica to be my potential soul mate, where she accepted my offer only to then playfully push me off the tower. The only reason I got out of there ok was due to the fact that my Esper could fly and catch me, something that was strangely looked down upon at boot camp there.

“Hey Signal, can I ask you something?” Sapphire asked, finally breaking the silence between us. “I mean you were kinda hounding me with questions on the train so I just thought it to return the favor.”

“Sure go ahead, shoot,” I said casually. I don’t know if it was because she had the same voice as my wife, acted a lot like my wife, or that she gave off the same vibes as my wife, but I strangely felt off guard around her, like I could relax for once despite the current situation.

“Your wings. I noticed them the moment we first met but I didn’t want to sound rude to somepony I didn’t know but now I feel like I can ask. Why are they so big? I’ve never seen pegasi wings that big before in my entire life. And on top of that, how good of a flyer are you?”

I lowered my head to the ground, my cheeks blushing in embarrassment. “Well...to answer your first question, I honestly don’t know. Like you mentioned before, I got amnesia here at Canterlot so I have no idea about how my wings got so big. And to answer your second question... I um......I can’t fly...”

Sapphire moved her head closer to mine, her ears slightly flickering. “I didn’t catch that last part Signal, could you speak up?”

I moved my head away from hers, my ears lowered to my head. “I... can’t fly ok...”

It was pretty embarrassing to tell other ponies, but despite my wings impressive size, I could barely get a foot off the ground. It turned out that my wings were in fact, too heavy for my body to flap correctly to create lift, it would be like trying to balance two iron support beams twice your size while trying to make them fly. It was pretty depressing when I found that out, but I wasn’t one to let something keep me down for long.

“Oh... so does your body not have the strength to create the lift needed to fly? I guess that would make sense looking at their size compared to the rest of your body. Though I bet if you found some way of distributing the weight of the wings throughout the body or some kind of device to help handle the weight, you could be flying out there with the others.”.

Yet another thing this “Veronica” had in common with mine, her natural affinity for technology. If something was broken and had wires, levers, or any of the sort Veronica would know how to fix it, she even used to carry around a pistol just to break it so she could repair it when she was bored.

“I suppose so, but even if I had something like that, I would still have to figure out how to control my wings.” I motioned my body towards her, showing my massive wings, where she saw the large belt that kept my wings tucked against my body, but even then I could feel the tiny twitches and spasms of my wings trying to break free. “Its honestly like these wings have a mind of their own.”

“Interesting... you know that does remind me of this one unicorn I met while exploring the areas beyond Equestria. She had a broken horn that gave off sparks of magic randomly, kinda like how your wings act. We didn’t talk much beyond a simple greeting, so while I don’t know how she got that injury, she does give me an idea.”

It was a tiny relief for me to know that I wasn’t the only pony to suffer from things like this, but it was fleeting as I imagined what could have gotten a pony such an injury like that. But I then noticed that Sapphire’s eyes slightly widened followed by a tiny grin.

“I know an Earth Pony who is the best with metal and mechanical problems, and it just so happens that he lives here in Canterlot as a blacksmith.Want to go see him?”

It surprised me to learn that there was an earth pony living in Canterlot. From what I understood, Canterlot was a primary unicorn based city, not to say that pegasi or earth ponies didn’t come here, but so few non-unicorns actually resided full time in this city. It was just like the social classes on Earth, suppose some things do never change.

“We’re actually nearby his shop, and I do need to pick up my armor since one time a manticore thought it would be fun to bite holes and gashes into it while I was deep in the Everfree forest. Don’t ask how I managed got away, I would rather not say.”

“Eh, why not?”

After that we started to walk, going down the many roads of Canterlot. The smell of fresh, fancy kinds of food filled my nose, and the sound of snobby rich folk filled my ears as we passed by the many shops. After some time walking, We stopped in front of an odd shop. Now, most shops in Canterlot looked very visually similar, in both design and color, but this shop was just...odd. It was much taller than most of the other shops, dwarfing the biggest shops by around two or three stories, and it was just colored black, whereas all other shops used bright colors like white. Outside the shop stood rows upon rows of armor stands, each row wearing different armor. It ranged from the standard yet impractical royal guard armor to silver full plated suits, there were even sets of armor for what looked like griffins and yaks of all species. A huge sign hung above the door of the store, which read

“Smith’s Armor Emporium”
“protecting ponies for over a thousand years.”

“Must be a pretty successful business if its still in business after over a thousand years.”, I said, looking at one of the armor stands “Say, how well do you know this guy?”

“We met after I started working for the princesses, his family has pretty deep connections with the princess, so he was more than willing to be my sort of personal blacksmith.”, Sapphire explained, walking up to the door. “But don’t get the wrong idea, he still does custom orders for other ponies.”

I hurried up to her, making it to her just as she opened the door, to reveal that the inside had even more armor stands with even more unique sets of armor. It was practically like a maze trying to navigate through the shop, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these days someone found a skeleton of some poor pony in here, but it seemed like Sapphire knew where to go, turning corners without hesitation. After some time we seemed to finally make it to the end of the maze, the sound of metal banging filling the room. When we turned another corner, we finally made it to the shop's owner. He was hard at work at a furnace, using his bare hooves to bend metal like he was using a hammer. But the moment I saw him, my jaw slightly dropped.

He was massive, almost as big as Big Mac from the looks of it, his shadow practically engulfing us. He had dark brown fur, yet strangely had no tail hair or a mane. He didn’t hear us come in from the looks of it, as he was still hammering the metal, so Sapphire gave a comically loud cough. Hearing the cough, he turned around to see the two of us, a big smile growing on his face when he saw Sapphire.

“Ah! Heart Breaker! How’s my favorite adventurer? Come here for your mithril armor? I just finished it yesterday!” He exclaimed, running over to Sapphire before hugging her.

It was then that I noticed something about him, something somewhat terrifying to me. On his right cheek was a massive scar, in the exact same position as Samuel Vare. He also sounded the exact same as Samuel, except he sounded more upbeat than his human counterpart, which was saying something. His eyes were actually different, being dark green instead of the normal light brown, which was odd. I mean, other than looking like she dunked herself in blue paint, Sapphire was almost perfectly identical to what Veronica looked like, but this stallion only had a couple of similarities to Samuel. I guess that was a part of the reason why I wasn’t as surprised to see him as I was with Sapphire, that and the fact that seeing pony versions of my closest friends starts to lose its shock value after the first time it happens. But I guess it was par for the course for me, not much shocks me anymore.

When I was a purifier, I quickly learned that fighting monsters and cults gets kinda boring. There are only so many ways you can put a twist on “Go to a place, find the monster, kill the monster” or “find the cult, infiltrate the cult, find the monster, kill the monster, kill cult leader”, so in time it became more of a chore than anything else. Veronica would constantly say that “We don’t kill abominations because it’s “fun”, we kill them because it’s our job.”, but I knew she was just as bored as I was. The same was true for when I first came here to Equestria, at first it was all mysterious and amazing, but after a while, I just kinda got used to my life here.

Once the massive Stallion let her go, Sapphire took a deep breath before talking. “Ah, Mithril, upfront as always I see.Yes, I have come for my armor, but also because I thought I would introduce someone to you. Signal Flare, meet Mithril Smith.”.

Mythril walked up to me, his gigantic size daunting, to say the least when up close, and bowed slightly at me. Looking at his him up close I could tell that something was clearly off about his hooves, they weren’t natural. All four of his hooves were made out of what appeared to be silver, but it couldn’t have been silver since I saw him bending what seemed to be steel with those hooves. Not wanting to look rude, I bowed back at him, trying to not stare at his hooves, only for him to laugh.

“Do not worry my pegasi friend, I am used to ponies staring at my strange hooves. I got them made after I got into a scuffle with a pack of Timberwolves when I went to Sweet Apple acres to get my hooves on some Zap Apples, they also gave me this scar on my cheek. But I doubt you came here to hear me talk about myself, why did you bring this Pegasi with you here Heart Breaker?”

Sapphire shrugged as Mithril walked over to her, engaging in small talk, but I wasn’t paying attention to that. What I was paying attention to was a specific set of armor on a nearby wall. Pony armor, or at least what was standard issue for the royal guard, seemed to be made with grandeur in mind instead of practicality, but this set was different. It was practically a full body suit of armor, the only part not covered in metal being the knee’s and elbows, which even then could be easily protected by a simple set of chainmail. The armor was entirely painted with a coat of chrome paint, unlike the normal royal guard armor which was ornate with gold and other such flashy colors, giving it a more dignified look. Now the worst part about the royal guard armor was that the helmets did exactly nothing to protect the face, with ninety percent of the helmet acting as one big open visor, making it useless in actual combat, but this one was SO different. Unlike the royal guards, the visor only covered the eyes, which even then were protected by what seemed to be stained glass, giving me a nostalgic throwback to when I was a Purifier and used the exact same kind of helmet. In fact, minus the advanced technology and color pallet, this suit was practically an inch for inch copy of the armor I used, how that was possible I had no idea.

“Say, Mithril, mind telling me about this certain set?” I asked, pointing at it.

“Hmm? Oh, that set. One day a while ago I was sent several crates worth of rare metal with schematics to make that suit and a massive bag of bits. Took me over a year to finish it, but when I was finally done making it, I realized that I had no address to send the armor to. Now it just sits there, gaining dust. Shame really, I had plenty of fun making it, but nopony is interested in it.”

I looked back at the armor, a look of determination on my face. “How much?” I asked, turning back around to face them. So far I’ve met both my wife and one of my closest friends in their pony forms, it didn’t take a genius to see that a pattern was forming. Since if my closest friends and loved one were showing up here, who was to say that my enemies would start to pop up? Over the years I made plenty of human enemies ranging from corrupt politicians, fallen purifiers, and even strange human/abomination hybrids, each of them a threat in their own right. And comparing them to the threats Equestria has faced in recent memory, they could even be greater threats than they were on Earth. I may have been a pegasus who couldn’t fly, but I wouldn’t just stand there while the villains I knew wreck havoc across the land. Besides, even if I was wrong, the suit looked freaking awesome anyway so it would be a cool keepsake to keep around the house.

Author's Note

Sorry if the ending felt kinda off, I originally had this chapter twice as long, but I felt like extra long chapters would be reserved for either fight scenes or final chapter so maybe the next chapter will come out sooner than I expected.

My complicated call to action

Princess Celestia was looking at a piece of the dark crystal she made using dark magic, her mane blowing against the nonexistent wind. She along with her sister had just sent Twilight Sparkle, her faithful student, out to save the Crystal Empire from the evil King Sombra. She chose to send Twilight so that it could be a chance to see if Twilight was indeed ready to begin the process of becoming an alicorn, though she wished she didn’t have to lie about her knowledge of the kingdom for the test to work. She may have had complete faith in Twilight, yet doubts still lingered in her mind. For while the young unicorn and her friends had defeated the corrupted Nightmare moon, the trickster god Discord and the vile changeling Queen Chrysalis, King Sombra was a unicorn who could be considered an even greater threat on some levels. King Sombra was an evil unicorn who abused his power and conquered the entirety of the powerful Crystal Empire by himself but was defeated with the combined power of her dear sister and herself, or at least that was that she told her faithful student. She wished she didn’t have to lie about her knowledge of the kingdom, but she had to make sure Twilight was ready.

Despite how she made it seem to Twilight, King Sombra was not so easily defeated by the two of them, almost losing to the corrupt Unicron several times before finally getting the upper hand that one fateful day. And King Sombra was not alone in his conquest, there was a cult of unicorns that helped him. Next to nothing was known of the mysterious unicorns, other than that they were related to the evil unicorn, but for some reason one of them would show up right before Sombra would be defeated and would attack her and her sister, allowing Sombra to escape, and every time he/she showed up, they would disappear just as fast as they came. She remembered none of the unicorns not being particularly powerful, stronger than the average unicorn perhaps but nowhere near as strong as Sombra or either of them, yet they still chose to fight alongside the evil king. Interestingly enough, the unicorns were nowhere to be seen on the day Sombra was finally vanquished and cursed into his icy prison, an odd detail that always haunted her mind to this day.

What Princess Celestia was wary of was that if both the Crystal Empire and Sombra had returned, that would mean that the mysterious unicorn might return as well, a factor that slipped her mind until now. It didn’t help that she was using this as a test for Twilight Sparkle, all be it reluctantly, so she could not be there to help her prized pupil. Her sister, Princess Luna, wanted to go to the empire and stop Sombra before it could get out of hoof, but she insisted that Luna should have faith in Twilight, but she knew faith wouldn’t be enough to calm either of them. The princess’s contemplated going on their own but quickly threw that idea out as everpony would notice if they left, forcing them back to the metaphorical drawing board.

”Perhaps I could get somepony to keep an eye on young Twilight, to act as our eyes and ears” The princess thought, trying to think of somepony she could contact that she trusted enough to make sure Twilight would be safe, but she could not think of anypony who she would be willing to send into such danger. ”Wait... I think I know!”.

She may not have been willing to send anypony into such danger, but she knew somebody who could. Princess Celestia was one of the only ponies that knew of Singal Flare’s secret, the only others being her sister Princess Luna and the newlywed Princess Cadence. She found out when her sister explained that when she entered Signal’s dream, she found herself in what he called “Haven Oasis”, and the strange and terrifying creatures he was forced to fight. He begged that we not reveal this to the others, for which we gladly agreed, but in return, he agreed to stay in Ponyville, where they could keep a close eye on him. While it still pained her to even think of sending any living thing into such danger, the thought of her student being harmed or even worse pained her even more, so looking up at her sister, she cleared her throat before speaking.

“My dear sister,” she said, “you remember our special “visitor” you’ve been watching over correct?”

Her sister looked at her, looking slightly ashamed at the mention of the “visitor”. “You mean Signal Flare correct? I remember him, but I am sad to say that recently I was unable to reach his dream in time before he woke up. The poor thing... But why do you bring him up, my dear sister?”

“I have given it much thought, and I must agree that somepony should go with Twilight Sparkle to protect her, and I think Signal Flare would be the best choice for such a mission.”

Princess Luna looked shocked, taking a step forward in protest. “Are you sure he is the best option sister? The young pegasus has only just mastered the ability to walk, he can’t even fly right now! What makes you think young Twilight wouldn’t end up protecting him instead of him protecting her?”.

“I understand your fears sister, but you know better than anypony that he was a great warrior from where he came from. I believe that somepony with that much experience would be beneficial for the task. I only hope he is ready to fight for a nation once again, especially one he is not native to.” Princess Celestia then started to play with the bit of crystal, levitating it and making it spin around.

“But do you expect him to protect all of them by himself? Surely you must know he had others fight alongside him, correct?” Luna asked, walking to her sister’s side. “Perhaps I could gather the best of our guards with him and-”. But before she could continue, Princess Celestia interrupted her.

“True, but the guards will not need to get involved. I believe that I already know who will go with him.” Princess Luna looked confused as her sister stared at what seemed like nothing in front of her. “Equestria is changing my dear sister, somethings changing it, but for better or for worse I don’t know. I felt it when he first came here, and now I feel it again, only stronger this time.” Princess Celestia dropped the crystal on the floor, making it shatter into a million pieces. “I believe that the Crystal Heart will be the thing to show us what is changing our world. My only fear is how we might react to it.”

Princess Luna raised her eyebrow at her sister, almost needing to hold back a giggle. “Tia, you are not that well suited to the “vague and mysterious” type, that is better suited to me. You should stick to sitting on your throne and smiling to ponies all day.”

Princess Celestia forced herself to hold back a groan as her sister started to walk off.

“You’re going to send one of your royal guards to watch over them anyways aren’t you?” she asked, only to be greeted with a cheerful and almost childish nod from her sister. “Fine... just please have him stay in shadows unless necessary, it ruins the point of the adventure if some other pony does all the work for them.”

After parting ways with a couple bags worth of bits, (and one hour of crying on the inside), Sapphire, Mithirl and I were walking outside, a box holding my new armor on Mithril’s back. Sapphire was looking at her armor, holding it with a levitation spell as she scrutinized every inch of the chest plate. Her armor, or at least from what I saw, was like traditional guard armor minus the shiny bling, being solid chrome like mine. She then put the chest plate on her body, somehow managing to put it on while walking as we made it to the royal courtyard. Surprisingly, we ran into zero guards while walking here, making me wonder whether or not the guards here were just ponies playing dress up and right now was their lunch break.

“Say Signal, how much has Ponyville changed since I went there? It’s been so long since I went there and I would like to know how that town has changed since my “incident” with the Timber Wolves.”

“I’m not the pony you should be asking. I’m the newest pony there, so you might want to ask Twilight or some other pony whose actually been there for more than a couple of months.”

There was an awkward silence between the three of us, the faint sound of... singing of all things filled the air. This lasted for several more minutes until Mithril once again tried to fill the silence.

“So... Heart Breaker, how come you’re sticking around with Signal over here? You’re not the kind of pony to hang around with other ponies unless you have to, and as far as I can tell you’re not being forced to be with him.” Mithril asked, “I mean, you normally just send in and receive your armor via mailpony, but today you actually came into the shop.”.

“I don’t know, he reminds me of somepony I knew once I guess. I don’t know who though... odd.” Sapphire answered, her odd answer distracting me long enough that I didn’t notice a tiny flight of stairs that lead to the courtyard, making me fall down and roll for several feet into Twilight.

“Oof! What just- oh it’s just you Signal... Is Sapphire here too?” she asked, her voice more depressed than usual. I tried to get up, only to fall back down on my flank. Twilight slightly sighed as she picked me up with her magic and put me back on my hooves.

“Um yeah,... going to feel that in the morning, say... are you ok Twilight? What happened?” I asked, instantly wanting to facepalm (or would it be facehoof since ponies don’t have palms?) myself for that dumb question. She probably just came from her test with Celestia and was looking like she just found out that there was no such thing as Santa Hooves, (which sounds just as ridiculous in Equestria as it did on Earth), what did I think happened?

“Did no one hear the aria she just sang?” Spike mumbled, myself barely catching it.

“It’s nothing Signal, Other than the fate of Equestria resting in my hooves yet again, but enough about me! Did walking around Canterlot jog some of your memories back?”

I shook my head, only making Twilight even sadder as Sapphire and Mithril walked over to us.

“There you are Twilight. How did the te-” But before Sapphire could continue, she noticed Twilight’s face and stopped herself, “uh... nevermind.”.

“Wait! So this is Twilight Sparkle, the savior of Equestria?Thought she would be taller And you two know her?! What luck!” Mithril exclaimed, rushing over to Twilight and bowing at her. “ My name is Mithril Smith, a friend of Heart Breaker over here. Now you must get this a lot but thank you so much for putting your flank on the line for us ponies. If it weren’t for you I would still be stuck in my shop fighting off a horde of those cursed changelings.”

Now I could tell you first hand/hoof that despite saving this entire land from three separate world-conquering threats, almost nopony ever actually thanked the mane six besides when they were being thanked by the princesses right after saving the day. At least I hope they did, I mean I only know the mane six did this because other ponies told me about these events, so I could only assume they got an official “thank you” from Celestia and Luna. I could relate somewhat, being a Purifier was a thankless job that, if you were lucky, got you one thank you from a hostage or child right before you leave to go on your next assignment. Heck, we never even got a medal, much less a thank you, for saving the world by our own government. We would just get a “good job” and have our next assignment given. But I guess that was a good thing somewhat, as I don’t think I could do my job if I had a crowd of fanboys following my every move.

“It’s uh... nice to meet you Mithril. You’d be surprised how many ponies go out of their way just to thank me.”

“You mean zero.” I muttered, “Tell you what; how about we go for a walk to one of the bakeries and see if we can’t find you a nice sweet treat for you. I think you need it right now.”

“I second that!” Spike exclaimed, running over to Twilight’s side. I saw the surprise on Mithril’s face as he looked at the baby dragon, his jaw dropping to the floor.

“Is...that s-s-s”

“Spike the dragon? You’re looking at him! And you are?” Spike asked, looking at Mithril, noticing his metal hooves. “Cool hooves! Where’d you get them?”

Twilight, just noticing his hooves, gave Spike a glare that gave me chills. She walked in front of Spike, blushing “Spike! You can’t just ask somepony about something like that!” Twilight chastised, “I am so sorry about that!”.

Mithril chuckled at her apology, saying the same thing to her that he did to me when I saw his hooves. While this was going on, Spike walked over to me, grabbing my head and forcing my ear down to his mouth.

“Are we still on for O&O at your house this weekend, “Druid Marksen”?” He whispered, making me smile. The great thing about O&O was that I got to use my real name as my character name, though honestly, I am so unoriginal when it comes to names that I would still probably use that name even if I was on Earth.

“You bet “Garbunkle”.” I whispered back, playing along with the “secret” that we played the game.

I looked at Twilight and saw her face when she heard Mithril’s story, an appropriate response considering how I doubt she had met many ponies who got injuries like that. “I am sorry to hear that.” Twilight apologized, then looking over at me. “And sorry Signal, but I’ll have to pass on your offer. I need to get back to Ponyville right now.”. She then looked at Sapphire, who was just sitting there, looking at the castle. “Sorry sister, but it looks like you won’t be able to meet the princess today. Maybe another time?”.

Sapphire looked back at Twilight, her face just as emotionless as always. “It’s ok Twilight, but could you at least explain why you look so down?”.

“I’ll explain everything when we make it back to Ponyville.” She explained, “C’mon Spike! We’re going!”.Spike hurried off to Twilight, who was walking off, seemingly forgetting about the three of us.

Mithril came to my side, his face filled with concern. “Is she always like that?” he asked, “also since when did you know the Princess of Friendship?”.

There it was again! I still remember how Rainbow Dash called her the “Princess of Friendship” when we first met, only for Twilight to correct her. “Why did you call her a princess? Do you see any wings on her?” I asked, only for him to, yet again, chuckle like my question was some kind of joke.

“Have you seen what her element of harmony looks like? It’s a crown for Celestia’s sake Hehe!! She may not be an alicorn, but heck if she isn’t some kind of royalty!” He explained, walking past me and following Twilight.

“I guess that...sorta makes sense when you think about it...” I thought, only now realizing that I was alone in the courtyard. HEY! WAIT FOR ME!”

After an awkwardly quiet and might I add long, (the trip is one day), trip back to Ponyville, we finally made it and got off the train. It was around noon by the time we made it back, the sun’s rays hitting my fur as I got off. When I looked around to see where Twilight was, I wasn’t surprised to see her being surrounded by the other Mane five.

“TWILIGHT! How did you do? Did you pass? C’mon! Give us the scoop!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed, her face practically pressed against Twilights.

Rolling her eyes, Applejack grabbed a rope out of nowhere and lassoed Rainbow Dash away, walking up to Twilight.

“Ya ok, Twi? Ya look like ya jus' found out that Santa Hoove’s is fake”

“*sniff* *sniff* Why do I smell plagiarism?”

“He’s WHAT?!” Pinkie Pie screamed, jumping in the air and somehow staying up there longer than physically possible. So nothing out of the ordinary for the pink pony.

“Uh!... he lives in a lake! That’s what she said! Yeah!” Rainbow Dash lied, a nervous smile on her face. That just earned her a confused glare from everypony around her.

Ignoring the other ponies, Rarity walked in front of Applejack, carefully analyzing Twilight’s face. “She isn’t wrong darling. You look absolutely dreadful! *GASP* don’t tell us you...FAILED?! OH, YOU POOR THING!” she then quickly wrapped her front legs around Twilight, stroking part of her mane. “Do you want some of my emergency self-pity ice cream? I always keep a bucket nearby for emergencies like these!”

I couldn’t tell what was sadder, the fact that she actually did have a personal stash of ice cream she used to comfort herself, or the fact that ponies actually did that here just like people did on Earth.

“Thanks... but that won’t be necessary. Right now I’m tired, so can you come to my place later? Besides, I think me and a certain somepony have to catch up.”. She nudged her head over to Sapphire, who was standing by me and Mithril.

“That’s ok Twilight, we’ll respect your privacy.” Fluttershy said, her voice as quiet and mellow as usual, “Isn’t that right, Rainbow Dash?”.

“What? Uh...Right! We’ll leave you be! Totally!” Rainbow Dash said, a pair of night vision goggles suddenly on her face somehow. Before I could ask how she got those and put them on so fast, Sapphire stepped in front of me.

Rolling her eyes, Sapphire’s horn glowed and the next thing we knew, Rainbow Dash was flying away, screaming bloody murder as the goggles were now over her eyes. I looked at her, surprised, scared, and slightly amused all at the same time.

“What? I would actually like some privacy with my sister.” She said deadpanned, levitating the box that held the rest of her armor. She walked over to Twilight, who now grew a smile on her face as the two of them walked off, small talking as Applejack and Rarity were trying to get the goggles off of Rainbow Dash.

After saying our goodbyes, I walked Mithril back to my house. It was a nice house that I got after months of doing odd jobs, but it was worth every bit. It was near the edge of town, almost isolated from every other house in the town, which was good for me seeing as how crazy the town could get at times. Behind the house was acres of clear meadows and hills, which surprisingly didn’t affect the cost of the house, confirming that ponies here understood almost nothing of how to keep a stable economy. The house was about as big as the average house in Ponyville, with the same color scheme as the other houses, giving it a nice small-town feel which grew on me over time.

“Then the next thing I knew, I was stuck on a cloud for the rest of the day.”, I explained, making Mithril give a hearty laugh as we approached the house. “Took the pegasi over three hours to find me. It’s surprising how well my fur blends into the cloud.”.

“Could you say that was the Highlight of your day?” Mithril joked, not able to hold back the laughter. He almost fell to the ground he was laughing so hard, but I was quick to lean up against him, stopping him from doing so.

“Ugh...why did I tell you that story out of all my stories?” I asked but quickly grew a big smile as I saw how happy he seemed. ”Is this how Pinkie Pie feels all the time?”.

But after that, the sound of glass breaking filled our ears, instantly make both of us look at the house.

“Um... you got a pet?” Mithril asked, but I think he already knew what my answer was. Dropping the armor, in a way that made me wince for a second, we both rushed into the house, or by rush I mean I walked as fast as I could, I just got used to walking after all.

I slammed the door open, mentally face-hoofing myself as I realized that I left the door unlocked. Mithril on the other hoof...well... he at least lived up to his counterpart’s codename, “Wall Breacher”. He made a hole that was somehow an exact outline of his body through the wall right next to the door, with dust, and chips of wood covering his body. I looked at him irritated as we rushed into the kitchen. It was a basic kitchen, an island in the middle of the room, surrounded by the basic amenities of a kitchen. Above the sink, where normally a window stood, yet another perfect outline of what seemed to be a pony remained.

“I swear sometimes I’m living in some cartoon sometimes” I thought, slowly walking over to the window. Broken glass littered the floor, yet strangely no signs of blood stained the room. Even stranger, the broken glass was organized by, from what I could tell, size. “Didn’t this pony at least cut himself a little bit on the glass? At least he’s neat though”. “Samu- I mean Mithril, stay sharp, I think whoever did this is still inside the house.”

“Ok then. Singal, I’m going to go check upstairs... if you're ok with that that is...” Mithril stated, but I gave him a nod, letting him upstairs.

Walking out of the kitchen, I noticed that it was practically pitch black inside, despite it being the middle of the day and two separate holes and an opened door exposing the light into the house. My house wasn’t very big, so it wasn’t like whoever broke in had many places to hide. I tried to turn on a nearby lamp, using my mouth to do so, only for the room to remain dark. The room, like I was in some kind of horror movie, feel almost completely silent, save for my breaths. My body grew tense, my eyes scouring the room for any possible signs of an intruder. Just then, I heard what sounded like somepony slightly moving their hoof above me, making me jump out of way as soon as possible, and just in time too. Not a second after moving out of the way, a shadowy figure came flying down on where I just stood. I couldn’t get a good look the intruder, all I could make out was some strange wings on his body.

I was at a massive disadvantage in this fight. I just got used to walking, much less self-defense, and now I’m being thrust into a fight with some kind of ninja pony. It was drilled into our heads in Purifier boot camp that we were not invincible and as such we should know when to retreat, unfortunately, I doubted that I would be able to outrun (more like outwalk) somepony like him. My only hope now was to stall long enough for Mithril to come back down and pray that he knew how to fight.

“You know I’ve not had that many visitors in this house, but at least they went through the front door.” I retorted, saying it loud enough to hopefully catch Mithril’s attention.

“Tell me about it, one time during rush hour a customer jumped through a window just to get past the line. You’d be surprised at what lengths Canterlot ponies will go to just to get some boots.” Mithril responded, making me groan in annoyance. The whole plan hinged on him not talking so he could get the jump on her, and here he was blurting out his presence!

I nervously laughed as I saw the outline of the intruders head turn over to upstairs before going back to me. Now I don’t how, perhaps my new body somehow remembered somethings from my other life or it was using it’s natural instincts because as soon as the intruder jumped at me, my body instinctively jumped to the side and turned to its side, rearing to buck at the intruder. I don’t know how or why I did it, But I soon regretted it as I felt a surge of pain come through my legs, it felt like I just kicked solid steel when I bucked him but at the least, it did send him back a little bit. I quickly turned back around, the adrenaline starting to run through my body, only to trip on myself like an idiot in my haste and fall to the ground.

The intruder saw this chance and took it, quickly leaping at me. This pony was like a blur, making each moment he made near impossible to react too. He was on top of me now, giving him easy access to my limbs, pinning them down to the floor with his. His hooves felt like cold steel, sending chills throughout my body just at the touch of them. In all the chaos, I felt the belt that held my wings still start to loosen, giving me a great idea. When I tried using my wings in my spare time, my wings would go crazy, flapping all around faster than I thought possible. I could use that to my advantage, so focusing on my wings, I started to feel them steadily rise in activity until eventually, they broke through the belt. Now, most experts in Equestria agreed that if I had some of the strongest wings in Equestria, and if properly mastered, could make me one of the fastest fliers in the land. However, in their current state, my wings were more of a hazard. When I first tried controlling them, I somehow created a tornado that was able to almost destroy Sweet Apple Acres, something I still don’t understand to this day but imagine what happens when wings that strong hit a pony full force.

The intruder was sent flying away from me, my wings fully extended, surprisingly not flailing around like a maniac for once. As he got up I was quick to run at him, ready to slam his head with my hooves, but as I tried to slam them down he somehow became a blur for a quick second. The next thing I knew he was right next to me, slamming his entire body into me, sending me flying into a wall. “OOF!” I grunted, falling to the floor in pain as my wings went limp. ”There goes that advantage.” I thought as the intruder walked over to me, pressing a hoof down on my neck. I felt the air slowly squeeze out of me as the intruder applied more and more pressure. I tried to focus on my wings again, but the lack of oxygen was starting to get to me as everything started to get blurry.

”OH COME ON! I can’t die like this! I REFUSE TO DIE TO A FREAKING PONY, AFTER ALL, I WENT THROUGH! I screamed in my head, trying desperately to breathe to no avail.

But before he could apply any more pressure to my body, I felt the hoof suddenly lift off me, allowing me to take in a deep breath in relief. Looking up I saw what caused the intruder to stop his assault, for above me now stood Mithril Smith. Looking around I saw that the intruder was halfway across the room from us, slightly groaning as his body laid on a broken table.

“*Cough* About time you *cough* showed up!” I said in between my heavy breaths, slowly getting up as my wings slowly extended.

“You’re welcome. Mind introducing your friend?” Mithril joked, trying to avoid my wings.

We then both looked back at the intruder, who was just getting back up from Mithril’s attack. We both readied ourselves, me finally catching my breath. “Filthy thieves! You may have *cough* got the jump on me, but you are foolish if you think you can defeat the greatest soldier in the Lunar Royal Guard!” The intruder hollered, spreading his wings out. Listening to his voice, it sounded familiar yet it was hard to tell as he sounded muffled.

“Wait...what?! YOU BROKE INTO MY HOUSE!” I yelled, my wings flaring (hehe) up.

“Wait...are you the Pegasi known as “Signal Flare”?” The pony asked, taking a step back.

“ugh... it’s going to be one of those days, isn't it? No, I’m Princess Celestia, and this is Princess Luna.” I retorted, “WHO DO YOU THINK WE ARE?!”

After cleaning up the mess, Mithril and I were sat on a couch, with the new pony sat across on the floor. Well, I shouldn’t say pony, turns out he’s a thestral, or bat pony as they are commonly called in Equestria, and apparently the best fighter they have to offer. And I assume it’s a he, kinda hard to tell when its face is covered in armor, along with almost all its body. It was a beautiful set of armor, a grey and black color design with a dark blue outline, which explained why I had a hard time making him out in the dark. The armor design itself was amazing, as it was a plated suit, several plates overlapping each other, which would make it hard for a blade to pierce it. The helmet was a take on th medieval great helmet, a part of the visor being slightly wider where the eyes would be, and a horn protruding from the top of the helmet.

The pony himself stood silently, staring at us. It had been several minutes since he had said anything, giving the room an awkward silence.

“*cough* So uh... what’s your name?” I asked, trying to break the already pretty thick ice.

“And would you mind taking off the helmet? It’s rude to not show your face in an event like this.” Mithril added, attempting to help me break said ice.

The thestral loudly sighed, the helmet blurring his voice.”If you must know-” he murmured, putting his two hooves on his face. He slowly took it off, revealing a short black mane and dark grey skin. Once he fully took it off, my eyes widened while Mithril’s mouth was hanging. SHE had a really short mane, barely passing her ears, and had long eyelashes. The oddest thing, and most disturbing for me, was that on one half of her face, she had a fully white plastic mask covering it. It perfectly covered her one side, with the only visible thing being her other eye. Her eyes were the oddest thing, with a bright yellow iris, but a light grey pupil of all things. “My name is Keen Eye, loyal soldier, guard, and most trusted advisor of Princess Luna. I hope my voice does not catch you off guard.”

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I mean I could handle their voices being practically the same, their faces being covered by something, and their eyes being messed up, but their genders?! Never in my life had the question “what would Wilson look like as a girl?” come up, yet somehow the universe decided to give it an answer!

“Don’t worry... it...doesn’t. And uh... why did you come here?” I asked, trying to play cool and failing.

“Her royal highness sent me to deliver you a message. You shall be accompanying the unicorn “Twilight Sparkle” and her friends on an adventure to a long forgotten kingdom. It shall start early in the morning tomorrow. I shall be there as well, as she has deemed me worthy of accompanying you.” she explained, her hoarse voice almost distracting me from what she was saying herself.

I was both excited and confused by all of this, I would finally get to do something new, but honestly, I had no idea why the Princess thought I should go. “What? Why me? I’m just an average, everyday pegasus. Oh tore yes! Finally something EXCITING”

“All her highness said was *ahem* “The young pegasi’s abilities should prove useful on her quest.” For a pony with a hoarse voice (oh the puns), she did a surprisingly accurate imitation of Princess Luna.

“Hold on a second!” Mithril interjected, “What kind of adventure are we talking about here? Is it an “over the weekend” kind of adventure or a “weeks will pass yet it will feel like days” kind of adventure?”.

“Why do you care?” I asked, raising my eyebrow at him.

“I got a shop to take care of remember? However, I got a good feeling about this “adventure”. He then banged his front two hooves together, making a couple sparks fly.

“You're sure? I don’t want to be the one responsible for you getting hurt. I won’t try to stop you, I know that I can’t, but still...”

“Quite frankly, I think some danger is just what I need to spice up my life.”

“To answer your question, the journey shall begin tomorrow and end in at most two days from now.”

“Was I supposed to not have a say in this? I’ll go but I had a choice to go right?”

“Then it’s settled! We leave tomorrow! May Luna watch over your dreams!”

“Hey! Answer my question!”

It was early in the morning in Ponyville as a person walked up to Canterlot High. The person in question was the timid Fluttershy, who had piles of flyers in her arms, each one advertising the local animal shelter that she worked at. The shelter was sadly both low on volunteers and high on animals, with next to no room for any more poor creatures. The shelter advertised itself as a “No kill” shelter, yet it seemed that soon they would have to put down some animals so they could make more room, something Fluttershy was very much against. Ever since then she woke up even earlier than normal so she could both check up on the shelter in the morning and then go to school early where she would try to get others to adopt a pet and possibly lend their help with the shelter. She was initially successful at first, getting the eco-kids to volunteer and a couple adoptions. But after that, she had no such luck, but she refused to let any defenseless animal die when she could have done something.

Standing in front of the Canterlot Wondercolt statue, she readied herself as students started to walk into the school. “Please go to the Ponyville Animal Shelter!” She chanted, this being one of the few things she was openly avid about. “Won’t you help a pet that can’t help itself?” She repeated this chat, asking others to be selfless and help poor animals that never had a home. But yet again she was met with no response, students ignoring her as they went about their day. By the time class was about to start, Fluttershy had gotten, yet again, zero people to help. She felt tears try to escape her eyes, but she held them back with all her might as she opened her backpack, careful to not open the zipper that hid her pets, and attempted to store her flyers, only for one to escape her grasp and fly in the cold morning wind. She tried to grab it but was not fast enough as the flyer flew straight into a random stranger.

”Oh my gosh! I am so sorry! I didn’t mean for that to happen!” She apologized, quickly running over to the man. Upon closer inspection, she was taken aback by the stranger. He was massive, probably as tall as Bulk Biceps if not taller, easily dwarfing her. He wore a basic grey t-shirt with blue pants, the muscles on his arms massive yet modest compared to Bulk. On his head was a basic cap and sunglasses, hiding his eyes from her. One of the odder things about the man to her was his skin color, he was just pale white, not nearly as colorful as anyone she had met in her life. ”Oh...oh my...”.

The man looked at her confused at first until he noticed the flyer on his chest, grabbing the flyer and raising it to his head. “hmm... animal shelter huh?” the man muttered to himself, his voice deeper than she expected. “You work there?”.

Fluttershy slowly nodded her head, reverting herself back to her timid shy self. “W-we’re both understaffed and overfilled with animals, every bit of help counts. A-a-are you i-interested?” She asked, the man bending down slightly to hear her.

“Hm... It’s always nice to have a local as a friend Sure!” The man exclaimed, playfully slapping Fluttershy on the back, making her squeal slightly. “The names...uh... Wall Breacher! Might I ask you a question?”. Fluttershy quickly nodded. “Do you know anything about the strange noises last night?”.

Fluttershy shivered at the mere mention of the “noises” the entire city of Canterlot heard. Late last night the entire city was awoken by a terrifying roar that was like nothing anyone had ever heard before. The roar was so loud in fact that the next day several trees were knocked down and dozens of windows close to the origin of the roar were shattered. The roar came from the neighborhood where Sunset Shimmer lived by, further proof that that girl was nothing but trouble. All I know is that the roar was near a neighborhood of a girl called “Sunset Shimmer”. If you ask me, she has something to do with that scary noise.” She explained, all while “Wall Breacher” looked at her and nodded.

“You got an address?”

”Um...if I may ask... why do you want to know? But you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“No reason, I’m just curious.”

”Oh...umm...ok”

The sound of the bell ringing filled their ears as Fluttershy gasped.

“Oh no! I’m going to be late!”

After giving him the address, Fluttershy quickly ran off, waving goodbye to Wall Breacher as she grew a small smile on her face. For once in what felt like forever she got someone new to help with the shelter, just one yes, but just the act of someone else to go out of their way to help her meant more to her than anyone could imagine.

Yet unbeknownst to the girl, she was being watched by someone from atop the school.

”Hespot wasn’t kidding when she said people had weird names here. But you weren’t actually serious about going to flea central were you?” Wilson asked, sitting on the edge of the school in his purifier armor. No one would have been able to see it as his suit could produce a kind of energy wave that perfectly matched his surroundings like some kind of technological cuttlefish.

Samuel pressed two of his fingers down against his neck, creating a tiny click. “Yes I AM serious WILSON. We’re not going to get anywhere here by just sticking to the shadows and eavesdropping on random people. If we’re going to get any solid leads, we need to talk to people up front and get their trust. Besides I pretty sure they check for fleas before letting them near people.” Samuel explained, chuckling at the idea of a manager explaining why they let kids near flea-infested dogs.

”So... you think you know who's behind this? It’s been a while but I wouldn’t put it past that maniac to do something like this.”

”Sorry to disappoint you boys, but I’m afraid I’m almost just as lost as you are on this.” A new, familiar metallic, voice interjected, making the two look around confused and angry.

“Tore dammit How did you get on this frequency you damn traitor?!” Samuel demanded, trying to keep calm as the cursed voice filled his ears.

”I’d love to tell you, really I would, but that would-”

”-Ruin the surprise; Tore, your cliche. Just say what you want to say and get the hell off of this frequency!”

“....rude... anyhow I just wanted to hi to some old friends! What’s wrong with that?”

“You were never our friend murderer!”

“Hello kettle, meet pot. You’re just as much a killer as I am! Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten Haven Oasis!”

“YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SPEAK OF THAT YOU PIECE OF CHEV!” Wilson screamed, almost losing balance as he got up from the edge.

And you do? Anyhow, Y'all better pony up before I come into town hear me?” He warned with a new western accent before abruptly breaking off. Then just like that, the new voice left, leaving the two back alone. They both stood silent for several minutes before either of them spoke up.

“You had to open your Tore dam mouth, didn’t you?” Samuel asked, putting his other hand on his face.

”At least we got another lead... but you know what this means right? If he’s here...”

“Then troubles a’ brewing in Ponyville. Get Veronica on the line... Frostbite’s back...”

When the abnormal becomes normal

Author's Note

Major thanks to Golarla for proofreading this chapter. Some things went down with him so that’s why the chapter is late. Sorry for that but I intend to get back on schedule now!

When the abnormal becomes normal

At Canterlot High

Sunset Shimmer was staring at the clock intently, waiting as the minutes slowly ticked by. To say she was furious would be like saying she was slightly confused by what her strange dragon tattoo was, she felt as though her anger could melt the very desk she was sitting on if it could.

”Just five more minutes... you can wait five more minutes Sunset” She thought to herself, tapping her foot on the ground.

After her unorthodox meeting with “Snowfall Frost” and being given the strange rock, she had attempted to get more research on what it could have been only to come up empty-handed. She was extremely hesitant to put it anywhere near her mouth, but after much thought decided that the strange man wouldn’t go through all that trouble just to lie to her, so she did indeed take a bite of the rock. After doing so she awoke to find herself in the local park during the middle of the night with cuts and scrapes on her skin and her clothes tattered. She had returned to her home only to find one of her windows broken and the inside almost completely trashed like some large animal had come in and gone crazy. It was at that point that she really had enough, and intended to give “Snowfall Frost” a piece of her mind.

“Ok class! Now before the bell rings, I would like to tell you all some exciting news!” Miss Cheerilee said, her voice as annoyingly chipper as usual, “Today we have some new Wonder Colts joining us!”

The classroom was suddenly filled with chatter from the other students, discussing who these new students could be. But Sunset Shimmer heard something else, a faint noise that caught her attention.

”This is a horrible idea! And why am I coming with you? Wouldn’t Samuel be better for this?”

“Come on it’ll be fun! You’re the best actor out of all of us, and musically gifted to boot! Besides this is where he disappeared and where those energy signals are popping up, it’s perfect!”

Sunset checked to see if something was wrong with her ears, quickly ending the strange noises.

“That’s right! But you’ll be surprised to find that we have two new students now! Please welcome your two new classmates!”.

The doors opened and two women entered the room. The first one had long brown hair and ocean blue eyes, her very presence demanded Sunset’s attention. She wore dark blue jeans with a black shirt, covered up by a beaten, torn up brown aviator jacket, but it looked like a men’s jacket instead of a woman's for some reason. She didn’t know why, but the woman looked very much familiar to Sunset, despite this being the first time she ever saw her.

The second woman was at least a foot shorter than the first. She had short black hair with gold highlights and emerald green eyes, her face filled with the familiar joy that this place seemed to have on people. She had a pair of ripped black jeans and a strange kind of bright red colored dress-short sleeve shirt hybrid on, her hands covered in what looked like hand wraps. Sunset then noticed that these two women looked nothing like each other, despite having the exact same last name as the other, both of which sounded more violent than any name she had heard of before. What was even odder was that they looked much older than anyone else in CHS, looking like they would be in a college instead of a high school.

“Why don’t you introduce yourselves?” Miss Cheerilee asked, the first woman then stepped forward.

“Hello! My name is Heart Breaker. It’s a pleasure to meet you all!” She said, and while she sounded happy Sunset could tell from personal experience that she was just putting on an act. Oddly she was rubbing her feet against the floor like she was trying to squish some bug.

The second woman, presumingly Diamond Breaker, stepped up next. “And my name is Diamond Breaker! I hope to get to know each and every one of you!” She almost screamed, her excitement sounding more authentic than Heart Breaker’s cheer.

“Isn’t this exciting?! It’s always wonderful to have some new students!” Miss Cheerilee...well cheered, but after that, Sunset noticed that “Heart Breaker’s” eyes widened for seemingly no reason. She then placed her entire hand on her neck, seemingly scratching it.

Yet again Sunset heard that faint noise, it almost crystal clear in her mind.

“What?! Meet me at the usual place asap!”

Before she could start to question what was happening, the school bell rang, signaling for everyone to leave. Sunset, along with everyone else, quickly got up and made a beeline for the door, the sound of Miss Cheerilee talking about homework being blurred out by the noise of talking students. But then for the third time, she heard the same faint voice as before.

“As if I didn’t already have enough to worry about. Now he’s here!”

“Do you think he has something to do with Marksen?”

”Most likely. We’ll talk more about this later.”

After putting her stuff back in her locker, Sunset made her way past the crowd of students and outside, once again ignoring pointless pleas of Fluttershy and her “animal shelter” as she rushed to the back of the school. When she made it there she was surprised to see that no one was there, despite this place normally being filled with students doing their meaningless activities. After taking several quick looks around, she finally found “Snowfall Frost” sitting down on one knee with his back against a dumpster, still wearing his full body armor.

“YOU!” Sunset yelled, not even attempting to hold back her anger at this point, “WHAT DID THAT ROCK DO TO ME?.

At this point, she had caught “Snowfall’s” attention, and even though she couldn’t see his face she knew he was giving her a smug look.

”Ah, Sunset Bitter! Sleep well last night?” He asked, twirling an odd looking knife between his fingers in his right hand. Sunset couldn’t get a good view of it, but then again that wasn’t her priority at the moment.

Sunset stomped over to him, clenching her hand into a fist. “I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS! WHAT.DID.IT.DO?!” She growled, stopping when she was a couple of feet away from him.

Well somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed. That would also explain your hair now that I think about it.” He then proceeded to get up while juggling the knife between his hands, doing so with great ease.

Sunset couldn’t take it anymore, her emotions took over. She ran at him as fast as she could, reeling her arm back for a punch, not thinking about how she was trying to punch a man in metal armor. Snowfall gave a fake yawn as he leaned to the left, perfectly dodging her punch as her body slammed against the dumpster.

“Was that supposed to be an attack? That one girl with the messed up eyes could do better!” At this point “Snowfall Frost” was two feet behind her, his insult only making her angrier. He was also still juggling his knife around like nothing was happening, frustrating her even more.

She turned around and went to punch him with her right hand, yet despite the fact he wasn't even facing her he still perfectly dodged the punch, taking one step backward to her as he elbowed her in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her. He then went and back kicked her knees, sending her face first into the ground.

“You done? Did you get all that pent up stress out? Or do you want to go for round two?” He didn’t even sound interested at all at the moment

Sunset was in major pain, more pain than she had experienced in a long time, but yet, she somehow did feel calmer. After catching her breath, she got up and wiped the dirt and grass off of her clothes, taking several deep breaths.

“I ate your rock and the next thing I knew I wake up in the middle of the park all banged up and went back to find my house was trashed. You better give the best explanation in the world or I swear...”

”Calm your horses,hehe, I am a man of my word. What do you want to know?”

“EVERYTHING.”

”Everything huh? Ok then, but first a story.”

Let me ask you a question. What would you do If you had a material that could do almost anything you needed it to do? And what if this material was practically infinite, never would you have to worry about running out?

I can tell you what the people of Terran did with something like that. They had access to a farmable metal unlike anything the rest of the world had seen called Tore, and due to reasons we still don’t understand, it could do almost everything the Terran people needed it to do. Using it they formed a great empire on the island of Terran, boosting their empire into a technological age that the rest of the world would have to wait centuries to reach.

At the height of their power, the Terran government made a program that was meant to discover if the legends of people gaining amazing powers by consuming Tore were true. To their surprise, it actually did work, though only a small portion of the test subjects did survive the process. But for those who did survive, all their senses were enhanced along with strength, intellect, and speed. But the most interesting part was that these people were able to summon strange spectral creatures that could do amazing things that were once thought to be only possible in fiction. These creatures, dubbed “Espers”, were, and still are, a complete mystery to us. We don’t know why it happens, why Tore makes them, if at all! Hell! We don’t even know why each person’s Esper is different! But that didn’t matter to the ones in command, all that mattered was that this power could make them an unstoppable army that could conquer-

“Wait wait wait!” Sunset interjected, stopping Snowfall from continuing. “I said I wanted answers, not a history lesson!”

“I would think you would appreciate context to this, but I guess not. . So what do you actually want to know?”

“I want to know a couple things. One: What did this “Tore” do to me when I took a bite of it? Two: How can I fully control this new power? And three: How much do you really know about my past?”

Ok then. One: The Tore unlocked full access to your esper now, how you were able to use it before I’ll chalk up to your special past. Two: With some practice and patience, I can teach you the full powers of your Esper. And three: I read your mind.”

“YOU WHAT?” Sunset screamed, taking several steps back in fear and embarrassment.

“You’d be surprised what Tore can do when you throw things like rules and ethics out the window into a speeding highway. But don’t worry, I didn’t see you in any “compromising positions”, I still have tact you know.”

“Another thing, what did that Tore do to me when I ate it? I can’t remember a thing.”

”Oh that! Funny thing that is! It seems that when a person unlocks access to their espers power, they tend to lose control of their bodies and start acting like their Esper for a short amount of time. Yours is a dragon so I imagine you were trying to fly and destroy the city only to fall out your window like a fool and hurt yourself. At least that’s what I theorize, but then again you could just be crazy.” Snowfall chuckled, much to Sunset’s irritation.

“Ok, then wise guy, I want to know something else. why does your skin look so weird-”

In a flash, Snowfall appeared in front of her, the blade of the knife aimed straight at Sunset’s throat, completely catching her off guard. She had a perfect view of it at this point, it was a long one edged knife, the blade longer than her neck. The blade was black with a gold outline, a dragon that looked exactly like the one on her arm encrusted on the blade. He held it in his right hand with ease, his left hand reeled back like he was about to punch her.

”DO. NOT. BRING. THAT. UP!” He coldly stated, all sense of emotion gone. His body started to glow a bright blue outline, his right hand starting to glow a new shade of dark orange. Sunset slowly nodded her head, all of her self-confidence gone in an instant. He then immediately put the knife in it sheathes on his chest, allowing her to breath easier. He stopped glowing, lowering his right hand as he took a deep breath. Sorry... I just... It’s a touchy subject, ok? You think I wear this armor because I want to? If I didn’t I would quite literally drop dead! It maintains my ailing body. If you saw it it would, oh how did it go? “Look like an avocado had...something with an older avocado.” or something along those lines.”

Sunset was now even more curious than ever, but she knew that she should leave it alone for now. “So... are you still willing to help me master my “Esper”?” She asked, more hesitant than she usually was.

After a couple seconds of silence, he finally spoke up again. “Yes, I will, but don't expect it to be easy. Especially so since your little plan starts in a couple of months, If you consider a disaster waiting to happen a plan, that is, and please don’t whine about your day or whatever you kids do these days to me; I will kill you if you do.”
.

Sunset looked down at her arm, unrolling her sleeve to show her tattoo of Scales. It’s black body snaked down her arm, just looking at it made her more and more determined to fully master it. She clenched her hand into a fist, looking back up at “Snowfall Frost” with new determination.

“When do we start?”

on the train to the Crystal Empire

When I was a Purifier, there were many nights where I would have to stay awake, be it scouting missions, guard duty, or even just average restless nights, and I was completely fine the next day, but that was with my human body. My pegasi body on the other hoof was a different story. Both Keene and Mithril decided to crash at my place since neither of them had a place to stay for the night, and both of them were very loud snorers, much to my dismay. That meant I was exhausted by the time we got on the train to the “Crystal Empire” as Twilight called it. I was too exhausted to even point out how there is no such thing as “pure evil” and how life is never that black and white. I was sitting at a window, looking out at the snowstorm picked up.

I was laying down on a seat as I heard everypony around me talking to themselves. Many things were going through my head, which wasn’t helping the massive headache I had from my lack of sleep, but one thing stuck out from all the thoughts.

“Why me?” I thought to myself out loud, catching the attention of Sapphire.

“Why you what?” She asked, understandably confused I suppose.

“Why did the princesses chose me of all ponies to protect the Elements of Harmony? I mean I’m an amnesiac flightless pegasi who only just recently mastered walking. I would think they would go and ask somepony like you to protect them, but no! It’s pure luck that you just happened to come by when you did! What do they see in me?”

“I don’t know. But I trust the princesses' judgment, and if they trust somepony like you to protect Equestria’s greatest line of defense, then they must have good reason to do so.”

“But still...What would I do if something threatens them? Mildly annoy it into submission?”

“Perhaps. It may not be the best advice, but I think you should have a little faith in them. If the princesses believe in you, then you should believe in yourself as well.”

“Faith isn’t my style. It may sound cliche, but I believe what I can see, and quite frankly I see zero reasons why they would choose me for such a task.”

Sapphire looked at me slightly confused and suspicious, her eyebrow raised at me.

“Then what do you see?”

“I see a million things going wrong with me protecting them. I’ll ask you again, what could I do that nopony else could?”

“I’ll say it again, I don’t know but You shouldn’t worry about that right now, you look like you’re about to collapse. Did you get any sleep last night?”

“No, but don’t worry about-”

Just then I felt a sudden wave of fatigue fall over me, my eyelids felt like they weighed as much as a ton of bricks. I looked up at Sapphire, only to see her horn glowing. It didn’t take a genius to know what she did.

“You’ll thank me later.” She said, a smile bigger than normal on her face.

I didn’t even have time to protest as I felt my head fall on the pillow, falling into a deep sleep

Oh come on! Wait a second...where am I? Why is everything so dark? Am I lucid dreaming?

Dear Tore no! I don’t want to think about what you would come up with in your dreams!

HEY! Who was that?

The ghost of Christmas past... I’m you, idiot! Or the part of you that has any common sense that is.

...It’s official... I’ve gone insane...

Believe me, pal, we’re way past that point now. You went insane the moment you thought talking pastel horses were normal.

What do you want? I don’t go to sleep just to be insulted by...myself I guess...

I’m here because you’ve forgotten what you’re supposed to be doing! Instead of trying to find a way back home, you’ve just sat around doing jack! I know you wanted to go on a vacation but this has gone too far!

If you’re really me, then you remember that the only clue I have is smack dab in the middle of the castle of the Goddess who moves the sun!

Oh yes, it’s not like you’ve done things like that before a million times before!

I had opposable thumbs back then! But as you can see, I am lacking in that department now!

You personally know the student of the RULER OF THIS NATION! You have a believable reason for looking around the castle! You had zero reasons to not go with her!

...

On Earth, you have a job that lets you do the impossible! On Earth, you have a wife who is more likely to kill you every second we stay here! What do you have here? A job at a bakery and a house with no one else to live in it but you!

...

Let me ask you this, what is your name?

Easy, it’s Signal Fla... Oh crap...

Yep...

I need to get out of this place!

Too bad you decided to help these talking horses free an empire from a power-crazed tyrant.

What am I going to do?

You made your bed, now sleep in it. Protect these ponies until they fix the mess, then we can start to think of getting you back home!”

If-

When-

-When we get out of here, how am I going to explain to the others that they have doppelgangers here?

You don’t. They may act, look, and sound like Veronica and the others, but they are not the people you fought alongside with!

I’m guessing we’re still not revealing our identity to them, right?

Tore yes! Oh, and you might want to ready yourself in a couple of seconds.

What?

Open up your eyes

Author's Note

Major thanks to Battlecat for letting me use his OC Silver Spark at the start of the chapter. Go check out his stories!

Open up your eyes

In Canterlot High

It was the just past noon as Alexia Vare watched her partner, Veronica Marksen, was pacing back and forth in front of “Canterlot High School”, looking more worried than she had ever seen the normally calm and collected woman be before.

“You’re sure he’s here? You could have misheard them!” Alexia asked, saying it in as calmingly as she could as she tried to calm her comrade down.

“It came straight from our neck communicators, it is quite literally impossible to mishear anything through it. Frostbite is here in “Ponyville” and he’s undoubtedly here for the same reasons we are!” Veronica rebutted, resting her head against a wall of the “wonder colt” statue. “I thought he still had at least a fraction of honor left...but I see he really is the shell of man everyone called him…”

“He slaughtered over fifty purifiers in cold blood remember?” Alexia reminded Veronica, sitting down on the floor next to Veronica. “I mean, even I didn’t think he had any good left in him after doing something like that…”

“We all tried to cope after Haven… He just didn’t cope with it properly. I’m not defending his actions… but he didn’t kill them to satiate some kind of bloodlust… if only we got him the help he needed…” Veronica rubbed her forehead with her hand.

“It’s too late to think about that. He did what he did and we can’t change that. But we can’t think about him for now…”

Veronica stood up in anger, slamming her fist against the statue, creating a visible crack in the wall.“Can’t think of him?! You know as well as I do that he’s more than willing to do anything just to slow us down! Add that to finding my husband, figuring out why his esper signal is still active, dealing with this stupid school idea you had,”, Alexia wanted to giggle at that one, but stood silent, “, it’s just too much for me to handle!”. Veronica started to breathe at a faster rate, she was visibly sweating.

“Veronica...you’re not acting like yourself. You need to calm down!” Alexia said, getting up and putting an arm on her shoulder. For all the time she knew Veronica, Alexia had only seen Veronica act like this once before, and it was after the “Haven” incident. The statue would be as good as gone if she didn’t calm her down soon. “We’ll deal with all of these problems, but we’ll deal with them one at a time. Let’s find your husband first, then let’s worry about Frostbite ok?”

Her calming voice started to sooth Veronica, her breathing slowing down. “Fine...I’ll stop worrying for now, but we will need to think up of a plan later. Now let’s head back to the rendezvous point and-”

Veronica was interrupted when the sound of something slamming against a wall from the school wall to their left broke her train of thought. Both looked to see two figures pushing another against the wall. From the looks of it was a case of a “bully mugging”. Veronica growled as she started to walk to the two figures, fists clenched, only for Alexia to grab her arm, stopping her. She looked around to see Alexia shaking her head, a smile on her face.

“You already have enough to deal with now. Head back to the rendezvous point, I’ll catch up soon ok?” she said, tapping her chin with two fingers.

Veronica took a couple deep breaths before nodding and did also tapping her chin with two fingers. “Just... don’t put anyone in a hospital while I’m gone ok?”

Alexia gave her a playful smirk as she walked off to the two figures, “I can’t promise anything!”

Silver Spark groaned in pain as Lightning Dust pushed him against the wall. He looked at her as she and Gilda surrounded him, his backpack now several feet from him.

“Hey, buddy!” Lightning said, her voice sounded happy but it was obvious it was a ruse.

“You two again,” he groaned “, look, whatever you two want, I don’t care. Now if you’ll excuse me” He tried to get past them until Gida stopped him with her hands. She had the same face of malice intent as Lightning, it was a wonder how these two weren’t expelled already.

“We need to have a chat Silver. You ran from us earlier today and made us look like fools in front of the football team!” Gilda explained, cracking her knuckles and shoulders as Silver clenched his fists. When these two had one of their “chats” with someone, it always ended with the unlucky victim on the ground in pain. But not him, he was not going to just let these two beat him senseless without a fight. He readied his fists, looking at the two for possible ways he could trip the two and run like hell back home.

“A chat? I love chats! Or talking in general! But I don’t recall chats being so physical.” A new voice almost shouted, catching all of their attention. Looking at where the voice came from, he saw a woman with emerald green eyes and short black hair with gold highlights. She was at least as tall as Gilda, if not then just a little bit bigger. She seemed oblivious to the current situation though, casually walking over to them.

“Well, this chat is! Now if I were you, I would buzz off before you get involved in this “chat”.” Lightning warned, waving a fist at the new girl. “and believe me, you don’t want to be apart of our chats.”

“Was that a threat?” The new girl asked, tilting her head to the side, “Because it’s not nice to threaten people you know.”

Lightning Dust walked up to the new girl, Gilda stopping Silver from leaving with a strong sucker punch to his gut, forcing him down to the ground, as Lightning got her face mere inches from the new girls.

“So what?! And what are you going to do about it huh?!” She asked aggressively, cocking her fist back for a punch, then started laughing at her in a mocking tone.

“How old are you two?” The new girl asked, unaffected by her laughter.

“What?” Lightning asked, “why...what does age have to do with this?!”

“Answer the question already”

“We’re both eighteen.” Gilda answered, Why do you care?”

Silver was catching his breath as Gilda picked him up by the neck and slammed his body against the wall. He groaned again as he felt Gilda continue hit his body, it wasn’t a surprise seeing these two beating someone while they’re down. What was a surprise was when the new girl reeled her head back and headbutted Lightning Dust’s head. Lightning reeled back in pain as the new girl grabbed Lightning's shoulders and delivered a strong knee to her stomach. Lightning’s body bent forward to clench her stomach, but the new girl grabbed her right arm and spun Lightning’s body into the wall, her body falling down to the ground. She was groaning in pain, clenching her stomach as the new girl stepped over her. Gilda could only look on flabbergasted as the new girl looked at Gilda with the same seemingly oblivious face as before.

“Just making sure I won’t get arrested for that.” She stated, retightening her hand straps.

Gilda grew furious seeing her friend beat around like that and charged at the new girl. She cocked her left hand back as she swung at her, only for the new girl to grab it mid swing and redirect it to the wall. Silver cringed as Gilda’s hand punched the wall, a loud thud crack emanating from the wall. Gilda bit her lower lip in pain as the new girl proceeded to left hook Gilda in the face twice, sending her face against the wall, and gave a painful looking roundhouse kick to her side, slamming her body even harder against the wall. Looking at Gilda, Silver saw that her left hand was all beaten up and bleeding, a tiny hole in the wall where her fist once was. He was surprised this new girl could such damage and how she did all of that so quickly like it was some kind of natural reflex.

Silver didn’t even notice Lightning creep up behind the new girl, grabbing her arms behind her back. She didn’t even resist, giving a small laugh as she rubbed her feet against the ground. Gilda, getting up and seeing the opportunity, was quick to try to deliver a right hook to the new girl’s face. But at the last second, the new girl cocked her head forward and headbutted Lightning right in the face, forcing her to release her as she quickly ducked. Gilda ended up right hooking Lightning right in the face as the new girl rolled under Gilda’s legs and quickly stood up. She turned around and kicked Gilda directly on her spine, making her stumble and fall on Lightning, forcing them to fall to the ground. They were both groaning as Silver noticed that Gilda was bleeding slightly from the side of her head, an injury she must have gotten from her head colliding with the wall.

The new girl walked a couple of feet away from the two, she barely even broke a sweat from the fight it seemed. “Where did you two learn to fight? Old kung fu movies?” She asked sarcastically, stretching her arms forward as the two girls got up, groaning in pain. “Actually scratch that, at least old kung fu movies had a basic understanding of how to fight, something you two clearly don’t understand.”

Silver thought he heard what sounded like a dart gun firing for a moment, but shrugged it off as he backed up. Lightning pushed Gilda out of her way with a grunt, breathing heavily as she reached for something in her pocket. “You goddamn *YAY*! It’s time you learned your place!” Lightning growled, reaching for something in her pocket. The new girl looked around rolled her eyes as Lighting pulled out a switchblade from her pocket. The blade flicked up as Lightning slowly walked over to the new girl.

Her walk quickly turned into a run as she ran at the new girl, ready to strike her down with her knife. She yelled as she swung the blade, but the new girl comically yawned and easily dodged Lighting’s attempt at a slash. Lightning growled as she gave an unexpected kick to the new girl's side, putting her off balance as Lighting swung her knife at the new girl’s face. She stumbled back a couple of feet as Lighting kicked her in the chest, making her fall to the ground in front of Silver. The new girl put her hands put over her face, Lightning's knife now dripping blood.

“Oh my god!” Silver shouted, rushing over to her side as Lightning gave another sadistic laugh. He prayed to God that she didn’t do too much damage to the new girl, angry he just stood there while this girl he never met before was fighting his battle. He could have done something...he could have stepped up and protected her, but he didn’t. He just stood there and looked on, memories of his family rushing through his head.

“SEE?! That is what happens! Maybe next time you’ll be smart and stay out of things you aren’t apart of!” She mocked, waving her knife around playfully.

She was laughing hysterically as Silver lifted her upper body up, checking to see if she was cut anywhere else. Thankfully there seemed to be none. “That’s enough Lightning! Your beef is with me, not her!” Silver said, standing up and in front of the new girl. He may not have been a fan of willingly joining fights, but he refused to let Lightning hurt this girl any more than she already did.

“We’ll deal with you later! This new girl made punching bags out of us! I think that’s more than enough reason to have some beef with her!” Lightning explained, aiming her knife at Silver. “Now get out of the way so I can make sure this *YAY* remembers not to mess with us!”

“Um...Lightning...maybe’s that enough… if the school finds out about this-” Gilda said, her voice full of uncertainty, but Lightning interrupted her.

“Who says they will? This could be our little secret!” Her voice seemed to have changed, becoming more raspy and deep than before. “Now help me out and beat Silver Freak senseless while I gut this girl like the pig she is!” This caught Gilda off guard so she started to back off, then proceeded to just run like hell from Lightning, soon becoming out of sight.

“Ugh! Fine! Guess I’ll just have to deal with both problems on my own!”

When Lightning started to get close to him, Silver went and ran at Lightning, careful to avoid her blade as he tackled her to the ground, grabbing her arms with his. The two struggled for what felt like hours, Lightning never letting go of the knife, until finally, Lightning rolled on top of Silver, freeing her arms as she raised her arms above her head, bringing her blade down upon Silver. He quickly grabbed her arms again, fighting to keep the blade from coming down upon him. Despite Silver training daily, he was unprepared for Lightning’s strength as she slowly overpowered him, the blade inching closer to his face. While Lightning was a jerk and may not have been above using physical to get what she wanted, Silver felt like he was fighting a different person when he looked into her eyes. They weren’t the eyes of a bully who only cared for herself, they were like the eyes of a wild animal, going in for the kill. It was unnatural, to say the least, something he had never seen before in his life. The most he could do to avoid getting his face stabbed was move the blade to the side, making it land on the shoulder. His eyes widening as he felt it’s blade start to dig into his skin, making him bite his teeth as Lightning laughed.

“Guess I need to teach you a lesson too! Oh, how lucky I am!” She laughed, digging the entire blade into his shoulder, making him let go of the blade as she raised it up again. He felt so tired Silver wasn’t even able to raise his arms again in defense, so he closed his eyes, feeling regret that he wasn’t able to do more.

He waited for the killing blow, but it never came, much to his confusion. Suddenly he heard what he could only describe as a mixture of a lion’s roar and a Komodo dragon’s hiss as he felt Lightning’s body suddenly get off of him. Naturally confused, he opened his eyes to find the girl standing on top of him, Lightning several feet away on the ground. Her hands were closed together, her arms aimed at the ground. Silver swore he saw something purple go into her hands, so he rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t seeing things from the pain. Surely enough the glow was not there once he was done.

“This is getting out of hand, I need to finish this here and now!” The girl stated, her face and voice expressing anger, “But first.” She unwrapped on her hand wraps and tied it around Silver’s wound. She did it quickly, but he noticed that on the back of her hand the girl had a detailed tattoo of what he could only describe as the head of a raptor straight out of a museum. He also noticed to his horror that she had a deep cut running from her cheek to the very bottom edge of her eye, blood still coming out of it.

“Keep pressure on the wound, for now, this should stop the bleeding until we can get professional help.” She explained, forcing his hand over his wound and put pressure on it.

Lightning groaned in annoyance as she charged at the new girl, raising her knife over her head as she swung it down at the new girl. But to her surprise, the new girl went for something behind her back and unsheathed a massive blade.

It looked like the unholy child of a kukri and a ballistic knife. Its blade was long and bending, a dark purple symbol of what looked like some dinosaur encrusted on the blade. Its hilt was short and basic, a pin on where the blade and the hilt met. It was at least three times the size of Lightning’s tiny switchblade, overkill, to say the least.

She blocked Lightning’s attack with her own blade, kicking Lightning back as she twirled the blade with surprising speed and perfect balance. Lightning looked at the blade with fear, backing up slightly before taking a step forward, with a newfound sense of determination.

“You think an oversized butcher knife and some fancy moves are going to scare me? Let’s see what you got!” She screamed, running at her ready to swing again, “Take this!”. The girl readied herself as Lightning swung down her knife over her head, the girl dodging to the left. Lightning growled as she attempted to swing again, the girl deflecting with her blade, throwing Lightning off balance. The girl then used her free hand to grab Lightning’s and put her blade against Lightning’s neck. Silver swore he saw the girl’s eyes glow purple as she squeezed Lightning’s hand, an audible crack coming from it. Lightning screamed as she dropped her knife, the girl quickly letting go and grabbing the knife. Then to Silver’s shock, the girl flipped the blade facing down and stabbed Lightning in her shoulder, making her scream more.

Silver was feeling a sense of dread as the girl kicked Lightning square in the chest, sending her flying against the wall. He heard what sounded like bones cracking as Lightning’s body fell to the ground, still somehow conscious. She walked over to Lightning, squatting down as Lightning started to half heartedly laugh. “Hehe...do *cough* it then…*cough* kill me *cough*...finish it.” she coughed, “I know you want to.”. The girl just chuckled as she grabbed the switchblade and forcefully removed it from Lightning’s shoulder, much to her displeasure and pain.

“Death would be a mercy to a brat like you. No...I’m going to call the police and go about my day. Be lucky I was going easy on you.” She warned, still looking at Lightning. She reached behind Lightning’s back and seemed to grab something, putting it in her pocket before Silver could see.

The girl backed up a couple of feet, dusting her pants and skirt off as she took a deep breath. “That got out of hand fast...I mean that girl went from zero to coo-coo crazy in like one second…” She looked at Silver, making him take a step back in fear, “you ok? I saw them rough you up a little.”

He took some time to gather himself before reluctantly responding. “I’m fine. Thanks for the help, even if it got out of hand at the end. Shouldn’t we call an ambulance now?” He asked, fixing his hoodie as the new girl stretched her arms to the sky.

“Yes, but they’ll live regardless if we call or not. You got a phone?”

Silver nodded and got his phone out of his pocket, dialing 911.

“What’s your name?” she asked, sheathing her blade back behind her.

“Silver Spark...yours?” he asked in return, waiting for the operator to pick up.

“It’s Diamond...Diamond Breaker.”

Soon the police arrived, an ambulance taking Lightning away as Silver and Diamond sat on the ground. They were covered by tin foil coats as a nurse finished bandaging Diamond’s cut, her left cheek and eye now covered in bandages, his shoulder also bandaged.

“I saw you fight “Lightning”, and let me say you’re not half bad in a tussle...where’d you learn to fight?” She asked, grabbing a roll of hand tape out of her pocket and wrapping it around her exposed hand.

“My guardian...he’s runs a dojo right under our apartment so I have easy access to training. Speaking of which, where did you learn to fight like that?”

“My siblings and I were abandoned from a young age, we learned how to survive on the streets until we were... taken in by a military family and got some proper training. They taught us how to use weapons, disarm opponents, usual military stuff. Combine that with what I learned on the street and that makes for one killer combination. Just never thought I would have to use them in “Ponyville” of all places.”

Silver stopped and looked at Diamond confused. “What is that supposed to mean?” He asked, confused yet curious by her statement.

“It’s the name. “Ponyville”, “Canterlot”. I wouldn’t expect things like school muggings to be common in such...happy sounding and looking places.”
“Heh...it may look like that at first glance,that’s partially the reason why me and my guardian came here in the first place. But Canterlot as a whole can be just as bad as any other city. You just got to open your eyes wide enough…”

“DIAMOND BREAKER!!!!” A voice screamed, catching both by surprise. Silver looked to see where the voice came from, but he then noticed that Diamond looked very much afraid.

“Crap...I’m so dead…”

I woke up with a massive headache, it felt like someone had just beat my head over with a baseball bat. The world was blurry, so it took my eyes a moment to adjust. When they finally adjusted, I saw that I was still in my seat. Though what did change was a furious Twilight and a slightly embarrassed Sapphire, who didn’t seem all that invested in what Twilight was saying.

“I can’t believe you just used an untested spell like that on a pony! You could have hurt him!!” Twilight scowled, lifting my head up with her hoof and shining a light from her horn into my eye.

“I’ve tested the spell before.” Sapphire protested, still not sounding interested, “ The rats and other small creatures were perfectly fine most of the time.”

I winced my eyes as I groaned, forcing my head away from the light. “How come whenever I wake up from something out of my control, it’s always Twilight’s face that’s in front of mine?” I asked sarcastically, getting up to see that snowstorm had only gotten worse since I was put to sleep.

“Oh thank Celestia! You can talk! I am so so so so so sorry Signal! I guess my sister forgot that she can’t just go putting spells on anypony she wants!”

“She’s one to talk. Didn’t the gay pride horse tell us about that “smartie pants” incident for something? a strangely familiar voice asked.

“WHAT?!” I exclaimed, almost jumping out of my seat to their surprise, “Who said that?!”

“Did that spell give you short term memory loss? We literally just talked like not two minutes ago!

“Um...we didn’t say anything... are you all right?” Twilight awkwardly asked, looking at me like I was insane or something.

“He must be hearing voices. Must be a side effect of being forcefully taken out of the spell.” Sapphire explained, “I told you we should have waited until we got there.”

“Oh great then! Is it permanent?” Twilight asked, facehoofing herself.

“It should wear off soon...hopefully....”

Sorry! I’m here to stay!

“Great...now I have voices in my head... are we at least anywhere near the “Crystal Empire”?” I asked, rubbing my head with my hoof.

“That’s was the original reason why I came here actually. We should be reaching the Crystal Empire soon so I would recommend that you two get dressed.” Twilight explained, two suits of silver armor laying on the chairs across from us.

That reminds me! Almost everybody here is naked, yet did you notice how well dressed this “Sapphire” is?

“No it never really did cross my mind...odd...”

After getting adorned in the less flashy, but still useless, personal royal guard armor, I struggled to get the helmet on my head.

It’s moments like this that make you realize how much of an advantage unicorns have in this world huh?

“Shut up...”

I tried to balance it on my hooves as I slowly went to raise it over my head, only for it to fall off and fall on the floor. I groaned in frustration as I wanted face hoofed myself, only stopping because I was wearing metal boots and didn’t want to hurt myself.

Say...do ponies here call normal shoes “horseshoes” or do they just call them “shoes”?

”I think they just call them regular shoes...”

Lame

It was then that the helmet glowed bright yellow and it floated onto my head, fitting quite nicely on me.

“I wish I could wear my mithril armor, but I suppose this armor will have to do too.” Sapphire sighed, magically lifting her own helmet over her head.

“Uniforms are the way ponies can differentiate you from some kind of hired hoof. Though I wish these helmets didn’t have to show so much of my face.” I complained, “They could at least try to hide it with glass or something...”

Have you seen how big these pony’s eyes are? I think they have to make the helmets like this or they would be blind.

“The equestrian military used to make less revealing helmets, but they were too costly so they stopped mass producing them.” Sapphire explained, “Only the very highest ranks of the military get those helmets anymore.”.

We both walked into the next train car to see the mane six talking to themselves while Mithril and Keen were standing by the door, looking out the window. We walked next to them, looking out to see the unending snowstorm.

”That Pinkie Pie is quite the... “interesting” pony isn’t she?” Keen asked, wearing a similar helmet as ours but one side was completely covered in metal save for a small eyehole.

“I heard stories about her hyperactiveness, but to see it with my own two eyes...” Mithril mumbled, shaking his helmet loose of confetti before putting it on his head.

I chuckled as I stood next to them, looking out at the snowstorm. “Take it from somepony who works with her, you’ve only seen the tip of this gargantuan iceberg.” I joked, the snowstorm almost mystifying me as I looked on into it.

”I do not envy you Flare. I don’t think I would survive a day with that living embodiment of chaos.” Keene explained, extending her front hoof on my body.

I laughed at her comment, though I couldn’t deny it was hard getting used to her at first. “She’s actually quite nice once you get past her childish tendencies.”

And her god like physic breaking powers.

The train started to slow down as I felt my body shiver uncontrollably for a couple of seconds. I got an overwhelming sense of dread as the train stopped, the doors opening to let in a gust of cold wind and snow. I had to back up as my lungs felt clogged up, breathing almost impossible for a couple of moments. I eventually got my breath back, the dread wearing off as everypo-body stared at me confused and concerned.

“Y’a alright? Y’a looked more scared than Fluttershy on Nightmare night.” Applejack asked, Fluttershy lowering her head blushing as everybody walked off the train.

“I’m alright... just got a little headache for a second...” I lied, walking off the train with the rest to be met with nothing but more snow.

I hate snow. It’s cold and wet, and it gets-

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Geez, it’s cold!” Rainbow complained, rubbing her front hooves together as Rarity scoffed at her.

“Ha! and you all mocked me for bringing extra scarfs!” She laughed, levitating a scarf around her neck as the train left behind us. Next to her was Spike, who was holding a comically large amount of scarves for Rarity.

I looked around and saw a frozen train station, it looked like a ghost town. There wasn’t a single soul in sight like everybody had just abandoned everything and left. I’d been to situations like this plenty of times before as a purifier and never been scared, but this one in particular was the first that gave me goosebumps. I heard the train leave, going back as we all looked back for a second before looking forward.

I hope nobody forgot anything in there, because that train is gone!

“Where the heck is the crystal empire?” I asked, looking around as my armor did nothing to protect my body from the cold.

“You’re standing in it. Welcome to the Crystal Empire.” A new voice explained, a new figure walking out of the snow storm and onto the boarding station. The figure was wearing a black scarf around his neck and muzzle with some weird looking goggles over his eyes, his fur white, and his mane bright and dark blue. He took off his goggles to show his bright blue eyes, though it looked like he was trying too hard to look cool.

“Shining!” Twilight exclaimed, running over to her B.B.B.F.F, (big brother, best friend forever), and hugging him.

“Twiley! It’s great to see you again!” He returned the hug, looking at the rest of the mane six. “It’s great to see all of you!”. His head turned to me and my pony counterparts, tilting his head in confusion. “Aren’t you that one pony with amnesia at our wedding? “Signal” wasn’t it?”

I nodded my head, walking up to him as he let go of his sister. “I never got to congratulate you on your marriage, so congrats on finding your love.” I extended my hoof out to shake his, for which he extended his out to shake mine.

“Thanks. You seem to be doing better than the last time we met, I mean you’re protecting my little sister now!”

“Why she choose me, only Celestia knows, quite literally.”

“That’s not all! You’ll never guess who came to visit me in Ponyville and is here to help us! Sapphire!” Twilight said, full of excitement.

“Sapphire Shores? Why is she here?” He asked, perplexed as Twilight rolled her eyes.

“No! Sapphire Dazzle! Our little sister! She came back!” Twilight went and dragged Sapphire in front of Shining Armor.

Huh...how convient. She never did tell us her last name.

He looked even more confused as he stared at Sapphire, looking back at Twilight. “Twiley we never... maybe the stress is getting to me because I can’t remember having another little sister.”

Sapphire put her hoof on Shining Armor, slightly smiling. “It is probably the stress, but let’s not worry about that now, we have an empire to save.”

Shining smiled as she took her hoof off of him and he lowered his goggles, turning around to the snowstorm. “Ok then. We should hurry, there are things we really don’t want to run into after dark.”

“What kind of things?” Fluttershy asked, her voice filled with fear.

“The Crystal Empire wasn’t the only thing to return, It came too.”

Oh joy! The pronoun game!

We followed Shining into the snowstorm, our metal armor making it slightly harder to move through the thick layers of snow. It felt like we were walking against a strong wind, each step we took seemingly harder than the last. The snow was unrelenting in its assault against us, each one of us struggling to move except for Pinkie Pie who was just hopping through the snow with glee.

“How much farther?!” I asked, yelling since the storm was trying to deafen my question.

“Shouldn’t be too much further! Just keep going!” Shining answered, moving forward undaunted by the storm. He pointed at a bright light in the distance, that was the Crystal Empire apparently.

I fell back a couple of feet to Sapphire as I sighed loudly, catching her attention.

“You ok?!” she asked, managing to speak over the storm.

“It’s just about this “King Sombra”! Can you really think he is a “being of pure evil”?!”

“According to Twilight, this was the pony who enslaved an entire empire for his own personal gain! So he could be!”

“Have you ever head the saying “history is written by the winners”?! He may have been a bad pony for enslaving an empire, but a being of pure evil would be like a giant black smoke monster with a raspy evil voice! And I doubt this “Sombra” is anything like that!” Just then an ominous roar filled our ears, the storm died down as though it feared the voice as well.

“W-w-what was that?!” Fluttershy asked, looking around terrified.

“Probably just some predator. It should leave us alone, as long as we stick together.” I explained, looking back to see nothing but snowy terrain.

“W-w-w-what if’s it’s some horrible monster? Or worse! Kind Sombra?!” Fluttershy asked, panicking as she hugged Mithril by his neck.

“If it’s a monster then we’ll just kick its sorry butt! And King Sombra was trapped under several thick sheets of ice for Celestia knows how long! He’s probably long de-” I went on, but I saw noticed that everybody was looking behind me in terror, some already backing up. Now I’ve been in enough situations to know what was going to happen next. I sighed as I lowered my head.

“Something’s right behind, isn’t it?”

They all nodded their heads in unison.

“How far we talking? Is he several miles away or...”

CRRRRYYYSSSSTTTALS!!!!! A raspy, and honestly terrifying, voice bellowed from behind me.

I slowly turned around to see a massive black smoke monster with the head shaped like that of a unicorn. It had spiked teeth with red eyes, it also had a red horn that was long and slightly bent. Dark purple smoke flowed out of its eyes, Bright green colors surrounding said eyes. It looked down at me angrily and let out an ear-piercing roar that created a shockwave that sent us back a couple of feet.

Let’s see... giant smoke cloud with a demonic horse head, black and red color scheme, raspy intimidating voice... I think he’s the villain.

“Ok let’s not panic... maybe if we just slowly walk away we can-”

“RUN!!!!!” Shining yelled, none of us arguing as we booked it from the monster, it taking a moment to move and chase after us.

We ran as fast as our hooves could move, looking back every now and then to see the smoke beast getting closer. As I ran I looked to my side to see something black growing out from the snow. I didn’t have a chance to think of what it was as a giant black jagged crystal came shooting out of the floor at me, but luckily slowly enough so that I could easily outrun it. More crystals started to shoot out of the ground at all of us, Twilight and Shining Armor occasionally destroying ones in front of them with their magic. But as we got closer to the light, the crystals started to get faster and faster, making it more difficult to dodge them.

Twilight was in front of me as I saw three crystals shoot out in front of her at a slant angle. She managed to shoot the one in the middle with a spell, but I could see that she wouldn’t be able to shoot the other two in time.

Unless you intend on eating talking horse on a stick, I recommend hurrying your...eh... flank... up and save her!

“WORKING ON IT!”

I felt the adrenaline kick in as I ran as fast as I could to Twilight, managing to make it right next to her before the crystals got to her. With all my strength, I shoved my body as hard as I could against her’s, pushing her away as the crystals shot up upon me. I definitely would not be able to dodge those crystals in time, so I braced myself for the inevitable.

THAT WAS YOUR PLAN?! GET YOURSELF KILLED?!?!

“On the bright side, at least I won’t have to listen to you anymore!”

I turned to my side in an attempt to protect my vital organs as the crystals slammed against my body. It created several dents in my armor, making me grunt in pain, as I was sent flying into the air and back towards the smoke monster.

“SIGNAL!” Twilight cried out, still running as she looked at me helplessly.

I was spinning around as I saw another big crystal shoot out of the ground, a last-ditch plan popping into my mind. The crystal was coming at me from a slant angle, and it was wide enough to comfortably stand on, perfect for the plan I was cooking up.

I managed to regain control of my body as the crystal was approaching me. I used my weight to move my legs to face the crystal, bending my knees in preparation for what was to come. I closed my eyes as I got closer and closer to it, praying that my plan would work. When my legs hit the crystal, no amount of preparation could have prepared me for the pain that flew through my four legs, a single tear leaving my eye.

How the actual hell did that not break you legs?!

I didn’t respond as I looked at where the group was, and taking a big breath I sprung my legs up. My own force combined with the crystals momentum allowed me to go launch like a cannonball, launching off the crystal and towards the group. More crystals started to shoot out at me, but by some miracle I managed to land and propel myself even further with them, not tripping as I neared the group.

“OH MY CELESTIA, THAT ACTUALLY WORKED!!! HOW DID THAT WORK?!” I exclaimed, the barrage of crystals ending. I started to lose altitude as I saw the group lookup and see me flying towards them.

Why you asking me? I’m just a voice in your head released by a spell from a talking pastel colored unicorn.

“Hey! Signal Flare can fly! Fly Signal fly!!!” Pinke exclaimed, a party horn suddenly in her mouth as she blew it.

“WE’RE ALMOST THERE! KEEP GOING!” Shining yelled bellow me, slowing down as everybody else ran ahead. I saw Shining stop and turn around, firing a blast of magic at the beast, who just dodged as it started to envelop him.

“WHAT ARE YOU-” I tried to ask, but out from the corner of my eye, a red light appeared from the smoke and started to get brighter. It kept getting brighter until I realized that it was a spell heading straight for me. I was helpless to dodge as the red spell hit my underbelly, pain washing over me yet again as I gained more altitude from the blast, flying straight through the light. As I passed the light, I looked to see an amazing sight. The cold, snowy ground was now replaced with a warm, grassy one, the sun now shining brightly on top of me. The cloudy sky was replaced with a perfectly clear blue sky, a gust of warm wind blowing against my exposed body. But I didn’t have much time to admire the beauty for long as I realized I was flying straight towards a giant pink crystal collum.

“NO NO NO NO!!!” I cried out, flailing my legs around as I started to spin out of control again. I crashed into the collum with my head facing the ground, the sound of something cracking filling my ears. “Why....me...?” I groaned in pain as I started to fall, unable to fix myself as I landed face first on the floor. How I wasn’t knocked out now I didn’t know as I saw Fluttershy, Keen, and Pinkie hold up some signs. “9.5” “3”, and “happy face” respectively.

Where did they get the signs?

“If Pinkies involved, don’t question it.”

But-

“DON’T QUESTION IT!”

I was in so much pain that I could barely move, not caring as I felt something drag me by my legs away from the pillar. I closed my eyes in pain, so I didn’t see who dragged me but, a minute or two later I felt my body stop moving and a sense of relaxation washed over me, soothing the pain. Once the pain started to die down, I looked up and opened my eyes to see to my amazement, a city that looked like it was made of crystals in the distance. It was mesmerizing, the architecture like something straight out of a fairy tale (which makes sense seeing what world I’m in), and the colors breathtaking. It almost made me forget about what just happened as I heard somebody else fall through the wall of light. I looked around to see Shining Armor on the floor, pieces of what looked like the crystals that attacked us attached to his horn. Twilight went to help him up as I felt my body be raised with magic, I looked to see that Sapphire had just helped me up.

“I saw what you did to save Twilight. Thank you” Sapphire said thankful, cringing as she looked at my armor.

“OK! What in the name of the two sisters was THAT?!” Mithril asked, breathing heavily as he took his helmet off.

”I too am confused by what that beast was. Was it a monster created by King Sombra?” Keene asked, also breathing heavily as she caught her breath. ”If so then what kind of dark magic are we up against?”

Shining Armor got up, trying to activate his magic but it was like the crystals canceled it out, then proceeding to look at everyone. “That was King Sombra. He’s been trying to get through the barrier ever since we put it up, but the magic holds him back.”

Twilight looked confused as she looked at her brother’s horn. “But Princess Celestia sent me to protect the empire from King Sombra, but it looks like you’ve already got it handled with the shield!”

“How do you think the shield is cast? We can’t do this forever and we need a permanent answer to this problem. It doesn’t help that somepony else keeps attacking the shield. That must be the reason why she sent you.”

I walked in front of everybody, hearing a gasp or two but I didn’t care as I cleared my voice.“I don’t know what would make somebo-pony want to work with a terrifying, but generic beast like Sombra, But I do know that now that we’re safe, we can properly prepare for him. Nothing can stop us now!” I stated, walking forward only to feel lightheaded and fall down on the ground.

Oh, almost forgot! You’re bleeding from those first two crystals that hit you!

“Oh now you tell me as I pass out from blood loss! Thanks a lot!”

I felt my vision blur as my eyebrows started to feel heavy, I used what energy I had left

“SWEET CELESTIA! SIGNAL! We need to hurry!” I heard somebody say, but I couldn’t tell who it was as my consciousness faded in and out.

We should play a drinking game! Everytime you get knocked out/pass out, take a shot!

I finally lost my battle with my eyebrows as my eyes closed, my body slowly shutting down, but I was able to let out one last response.

Oh screw you...

It was late in the afternoon as Applejack was walking through a part of Sweet Apple Acres. She was carrying her basket of apples in one hand and a small ladder in the other as she approached another tree for apple picking. Winona was with her, happily running around as she put her basket on the floor and rested the ladder against the tree, ready to pick some apples. She reached and grabbed the lowest hanging apples first, putting the good ones in the basket and throwing the bad ones away.

She was humming a little tune as she started singing.“♫We’re apples forever. Apples together. We’re family but so much more. No matter what comes we will face the weather. We’re apples to the-♫”

*squish!*

But her song was interrupted by what sounded like something piercing an apple. That was odd to her because the fruit bat sanctuary was nowhere near where she was, that fact made her think of the worst-case scenario.

“If that’s one of them pesky apple stealing vampire fruit bat varmin, I’m a go get the shovel!” she grumbled as she walked over to the noise, careful not to step on any fallen apples.

She kept on walking, reaching the origin of the sound, which was behind one particularly thick apple tree. As she got closer, she then heard another sound, which sounded more like an arrow firing from a bow, which was then followed by the sound of something piercing the tree. Then to her surprise, a voice she never heard before appeared.

“Damnit! The voice complained. It sounded hoarse and very unnatural, just hearing it sent shivers down Applejack’s spine. “Ugh...why here Frostbite? Why now?”.

Applejack quickly hid behind the tree as she heard some footsteps approach the tree. The sound of something being forcefully removed from the tree followed the footsteps, which was then followed by silence. Applejack didn’t know what to make of the situation, so she just stood there not making a noise. After several seconds she decided to take action by slowly poking her head around the tree. To her confusion, all she saw was a bow laying against a tree stump with some arrows nearby in a quiver, neatly organized together into rows. Winona started to growl next to her, catching her attention, but then quickly started whimpering and ran off back to the house.

“What in tarnation?! Winona! Come back!” She called out, but Winona was too far away at that point. “What could have scared her like that?” she asked out loud, soon answered when she felt something sharp poke the skin of her neck.

“I’m only going to ask you this once.” The voice coldly explained,“Who the hell are you and what the hell are you doing here? Don’t make me ask twice!”

Applejack froze up, too scared to move a muscle. “M’ah names Applejack! Me and my family live on this here apple farm! Who the hay are you?!” She asked, the sharp object soon leaving her neck.

She turned around as soon as the object left her, making a small gasp as she looked at the stranger. He wore a basic grey tank top with black pants, his arms and what she could see of his chest covered in what looked like burn scars. He had a pair of black gloves on with little holes at the end of them, a symbol of a white feather on each of gloves. Around his neck was a golden necklace with a blue rock attached to it, it looked as though it was glowing. Most glaring to Applejack about him was his face, it seemed off to her. It looked like a face, but at the same time seemed fake, like some really well-made face mask. That, combined with his voice, just overall creeped her out.

His grey eyes glared at her, a one edged knife with a long blade with the symbol of some kind of four-winged bird encrusted on the blade in his hand. “I don’t have to say jack. Now leave, I want to be alone...”

Now that Applejack knew what she was dealing with, she could properly deal with him.“Now, wait just a darn-tootin' minute! Not only are you tresspassin’ on private property, but you’re also shooting the apples we sell to pay the bills! If anyone’s leaving it’s you!” Applejack argued, pointing a finger at him angrily.

He groaned in annoyance as he walked away from her, walking to his bow and picking it up. “Damn it kid... I don’t have time to deal with you!” He complained, taking an arrow out of his quiver. “Tell you what, if you want, you can watch me. All I ask is you just let me stay... please...”

She honestly wanted to go get big Mac and kick this stranger out of their orchard, but something about the stranger’s tone shift from angry to stressed made her doubt her decision. “oh...fine...but after this, You’ll have to find somewhere else to go shoot yer arrows!”

“Fine by me.”

Applejack put her hands on her sides as she went behind the stranger. He notched another arrow into his bow. As he pulled it back, he moved the bow up towards one of the many apple trees, letting it go as it perfectly hit another apple.

He was completely silent, not saying a word as he grabbed another arrow. “You ah...got a name?” She asked, trying to make small talk with him. She didn’t want to bring up his scarred skin or his offputting voice, so his name seemed like a good starting point.

“Keen Eye. My mother had a sick sense of humor when she named me.” He explained, aiming his bow.

“Ever since I was a kid I loved watch’en archery on tv. It used to be my dream to join up with them and bring home the gold, but I never found the time to join a class and learn how to use one.”

“If you’re passionate enough about anything, you’ll make time to practice. Just don’t expect your dream to come true all time.

He then just went quiet, creating an awkward silence between the two save for the occasional sound of an arrow being fired. “A’h noticed yer eyes. You blind?” It may have been blunt and perhaps offensive, but she didn’t have much else to go on at the moment.

“If I was then how could I warn you about the wolf spider in front of you?”

“There ain’t a-” she looked down and indeed a wolf spider was right in front of her, soon scurrying away from the two of them. “Won’t you look at that! But if you’re not blind, then why are your eye’s-”

“Grey? I was born with them. And not all blind people have grey eyes.”

“Uh...right... You knew to this little part of Canterlot?”

“Just got here yesterday.”

“Any reason for coming here?”

“Personal matters”

“Where do you live?”

“You ask a lot of questions... I live in a hotel.”

“You don’t have any family here you can live with?”

He fired another arrow as soon as she said “family”, except he missed the tree completely and the arrow was sent flying through the orchard. His hands were shaking violently as he hung the bow around his body. He stood there silent for what felt like forever, Applejack afraid to say anything else.

”Won’t you look at the time. I should go...sorry for bothering you.” He said coldly, finally breaking the silence as he walking past her as he grabbed his quiver.

Applejack knew she said something wrong to him, something that may have hit to close to home for the man. “Did I say something wrong? I’m awfully sorry if I did!” She reached out to him, but he avoided her hand.

“No...it’s fine...here, catch” He tossed one of his arrow at her, Applejack easily catching it as Keen started to walk off. “It’s my way of saying “Thanks”...If you want I can pay for all those apples I shot...”

Applejack shook her head as she looked at him.“Don’t mention it, and you don’t have to pay...We’ll be fine.”

Keen Eye nodded at her, a small smile growing on his face. He said nothing as he walked away, soon hidden by the dozens of apple trees. As soon as he left, Applejack looked at the arrow he gave her. It was cold in her hand, feeling like some kind of metal. It was completely black, save for some white writing on the body she had never seen before in her life. It looked like nothing she had ever seen before, almost indescribable, she would have to look up what it said later.

As she walked off, Applejack pondered why he reacted so oddly to the word “family”. “Must have had something bad happen to him with his family...I won’t pester him about it, assuming we see each other again that is” she said to herself out loud, walking back to the farm.

Applejack was so busy pondering and walking that she didn’t notice the bright blue lightning shaped eyes peering at her from the bushes. When she was out of sight, Frostbite appeared out of some bushes and walked over to the tree where Keen was shooting arrows at.

“Pathetic. Breaking down that quickly by some dumb teenage girl. I thought you were better than that “Keen Deadeye”.”

Just barely within earshot, he heard the sound of a bow being drawn. Quickly responding he bent his body to the side as an arrow shot out of the orchard and flew past him, hitting a nearby tree.

“And I used to think you had some honor left in you “Frostbite”. But I guess we’re all wrong every now and then.” Keen retorted, walking out of the tree’s and dropping the normal bow in his hand. He was wearing a grey and black suit of armor, his face covered by a barbuta style helmet. It had two eyeholes covered by a green visor, which glowed brightly as he grabbed his custom-made collapsable compound bow from his back. He unfolded it as Frostbite unsheathed a one-handed longsword from his back.

“What are you doing here Johnathan? You knew revealing yourself to us would only make your life here harder so whats your endgame?”

“You hurt me deeply Wilson! Perhaps I just simply intended on retiring and living here” He said, purposefully going over the top as he clenched where his heart would be.

“We both know that’s a lie John. Why expose yourself to me? Especially after all you did to us?

“Can’t a man just want to talk to an old friend? Say, where’s your wife? You two were inseparable if I remember.”

Keen stood silent, seemingly unaffected by his comment. But behind his mask, Keen was fighting back tears from forming as Frostbite snapped his fingers.

“Oh right! She’s six feet under!” He laughed, Easy to forget that. She was never that memorable honestly.”

Keen audibly growled as his body lit up bright green, notching an arrow in his bow and aiming at Frostbite. “You WILL pay for her death!”

Frostbite laughed as he raised his blade at Keen. “Save me your melodrama. And what about the other forty-nine plus Purifiers I killed? Don’t I need to pay for their deaths too? Or do they not matter? I don’t even understand why you cared so much about her, I mean she wasn’t that good looking.”

It took every ounce of Keen’s mental energy to not run up and try to beat Frostbite to death with his bow. “This isn’t just about her! It’s about the community here! These people don’t deserve to die for our mistakes!”

“Have you started to believe the lies the government said about me? I don’t needlessly kill innocent people like the rest of you did at Haven. Unlike them, I killed with a just reason behind me.”

That line threw Keen over the edge, anger taking control of him.

“SAREN WAS INNOCENT YOU TORE DAMN MONSTER!!!!!!!!” He screamed, firing another arrow then running at Frostbite.

Frostbite smirked under his helmet as he dodged the arrow and readied his blade. Keen feel right into his trap, setting his plan into motion.

”Too easy”

A life they never asked for

In the local abandoned warehouse district that exists for some reason

In the middle of one of the many abandoned warehouses, Veronica Marksen and Samuel Vare sat at a table angrily looking at Alexia Vare. Alexia was sat across from them, looking at the two with awkward silence.

“So... did you find anything about the mysterious roar, little bro?” Alexia asked, growing a fake smile as she looked at her brother.

“All I could see was a broken window at the place. There were too many people to- wait... don’t change the subject! How the hell could you put that girl in the hospital!?” He asked angrily.

“It was self-defense! She was trying to gut us with a knife!” Alexia snapped, raising her arms in defense.

Samuel looked even angrier as she said that. “You gave her several broken bones, multiple puncture wounds, and even a Tore damn fractured skull! Since when is overkill a part of self-defense?!”

“And revealing your esper in public? Do you know how lucky you are that the only witness who saw it was that drugged up psycho?” Veronica added, who was equally as mad.

“What else could I do? She was about to kill Silver and I didn’t have enough time to grab my blade! Was I supposed to do nothing and let her kill him?” Alexia asked, angrier than before.

“Of course not! But did you have to put this girl in the hospital for Tore knows how long?!” Veronica asked, “You’re lucky that little attack didn’t kill the poor girl!”

“Then what should I have done?! Because clearly, all I get for saving his life are glares and disappointment!” She yelled, getting up and slamming her fists against the table. “Is that was being a Purifier is about?! Allowing innocents to die so we can do our job easier?!”

Veronica started to speak up. “No, but-”

“So what is it about? Is it about saving and protecting the innocent, or following stupid self-defeating directives!? Because last time that happened I remember it not ending well for us!!”

“Alexia Boren Vare! How could you say that?! This is nothing like Hav-”

“THIS IS EXACTLY LIKE HAVEN!!!!”

The room stood silent, not a single person making a sound or move. After several moments of tense silence, Alexia’s eyes widened at what she said. She slowly sat back down at her realization, putting her hands over her face as she leaned her body against the table. Veronica and Samuel just stared at Alexia, both trying to think of a reasonable response to what she said, but came up with nothing.

After several minutes, Samuel was the one to break the silence. He got up and walked over to Alexia, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Alexia, we’re happy you saved that boys life, don’t think we’re mad at you because of it. We’re just frustrated because of how you did it. If anyone else saw that, the public could have learned about Terran and make our job a million times worse.”

Alexia looked up at her little brother, tears building up in her eyes. “I know...but...it was my only option if I wanted to save him...”

Samuel smiled, thus making her sister smile. “We know. All we’re asking is for you to try to play it safer next time.”

Alexia nodded her head, rubbing her eyes with her hands.

“We all have to consider our esper use out in public too you know. Me, Samuel, and Wilson all understand what you’re feeling.” Veronica explained, “So don’t think we’re happy about us not being able to use our espers.”

Speaking of which, where is Wilson?” Alexia asked as Samuel, who returned to his seat and sat down. “I haven’t seen him all day.”

Samuel raised his hand for a moment before resting it on the table. “He said he was heading out to some orchard after Frostbite revealed himself. Haven’t heard from him since.”

Veronica rested her chin on her hand. “hmm... it isn’t like him to go silent for this long. Something must be up...”

”Oh som-zzz-ething i-zzzzz-s u-zzz-p.” A distorted voice answered, making everyone jerk their heads up to see a banged up Wilson in front of the door to the warehouse.

His armor was either bent, scratched, pierced, broken or all four combined. His helmet had a quarter of it seemingly forcefully removed, showing his mangled and ghostly white skin that was hidden under his mask. His armor flickered between invisible and visible as he limped forward, only making it a couple of inches before collapsing to the floor.

“What the Tore?! Wilson!!” Samuel screamed, him and Veronica running over to Wilson’s side, picking him up carefully.

Alexia was quick to follow the two, running up to Wilson and taking his helmet off to fully reveal his face. “I think those farmers didn’t appreciate him trespassing!”

“Not the time Alexia!” Veronica yelled, guiding Wilson’s body onto the table.

“Thank Tore you three are alright. I thought Frostbite got to you all. Wilson said as his comrades started to remove his armor pieces.

“Frostbite? What the hell happened?!” Samuel inquired, successfully removing Wilson’s chest plate to reveal several stab and claw wounds in his upper chest.

“What do you think happened? That son of a chet nearly killed me!” He explained, “Left me for dead. Thank Tore he didn’t stick around to make sure I kicked the bucket.”.

“As if we didn’t have enough problems right now,” Alexia complained, pressing her hands against the biggest wounds on his chest.

Veronica ran over to a pile of backpacks she had packed and rummaged through them, looking until she found a medical kit. She ran back over and opened it, grabbing what looked like a needle gun, and filled with a glowing green substance. “Just relax! We’ll get you fixed up soon!” She explained, pressing the needle gun against his skin.

But out of nowhere, Wilson grabbed her arm, looking at her with his grey eyes. “He...he said something about Marksen... he said, still looking into Veronica’s eyes.“He might still be alive...”

She stood still, not moving a muscle as she looked into his eyes, seemingly paralyzed by what he said. “ “Marksen?” she muttered, “He’s alive?”

“VERONICA! MUMBLE LATER! NEEDLES NOW!” Alexia yelled, snapping Veronica out of her daze.

She swiftly inserted the needle gun into Wilson’s arm, carefully injecting the correct amount of serum as to not overdose him. When looking at his body, She was relieved to see his body start to slowly repair itself, which would soon create more scars on his body. “Ok so while we’re waiting, care to explain how Frostbite almost killed you?”

Wilson clenched his teeth for a moment as his body was healing, but he soon adjusted to the pain. “Where to begin...”

Once his body was finished repairing itself and he finished telling his story, Veronica and the other’s helped Wilson off the table. He flexed his arm as Veronica tossed him a grey tank top, which he grabbed and put on.

“I know we don’t believe in gods, but what deity did you piss off to get this many scars on your body?” Alexia asked, walking over to the pile of backpacks pulling out a water bottle.

“Who knows. Heh, perhaps our ancestors were right and I was cursed when we blew up that temple in South America. ” Wilson quipped, chuckling for a moment.

Veronica wasn’t paying attention to him, instead, she was looking around at the big empty warehouse the four considered “home”. She thought about how isolated they were from everybody else in the little community, and how suspicious it would be if anyone saw them leave here. She knew how easy it would be for Frostbite to find them and attack them, something they could not afford at the moment. If she and the others were going to get anywhere on this while avoiding Frostbite, they would have to do something crazy. And luckily for her, she had an idea. The idea first came to her when she was first told Frostbite was here and had been wrestling with it for the entire day. It was only now, with her comrade bloody and bandaged, that she came to her decision.

“Get ready to move.” She coldly stated, walking over to the pile of backpacks and searching through them. Alexia and Samuel looked confused as Veronica pulled out a big black case and opened it, showing her full set of Terran armor. She pulled out her helmet, personally stylized after the T shaped barbute style of helmet she loved, and looked at it longingly.

“Umm...why? We aren’t under attack or anything.” Alexia pointed out, walking away from Veronica while opening the lid on a bottle of water.

“That’s what bothers me. We’re living in the middle of the abandoned warehouse section, far away from any civilian areas. No one comes here, the perfect place for us to hide.” She explained, putting the helmet on over her head.

“I don’t follow. Would you rather we be in a heavily populated area?” Samuel asked.

“Yes actually. I looked into the footage through what was left of Wilson’s helmet while he was telling his story and saw the fight. Frostbite attacked him when he was alone at the orchard, it was like he knew where he was.”

“So he must somehow know where we are. So where we can go?” Alexia asked.

“That's what I was wondering until I also thought about Wilson’s story. You said you were talking with a girl at the orchard for some time, but it was only after she left that Frostbite reared his ugly head right?” Wilson nodded his head before Veronica kept going on. “It’s possible he doesn’t want to be around civilians since he could have easily attacked you when the girl was there.” As she looked back at the three, she could tell by their faces that they understood what she was implying. “Now I know it sounds bad, but-”

“Sounds bad? Nails on a chalkboard sound bad!” Wilson yelled, “You want to use the people here as a shield! That sounds horrible!”

“It sounds like something a comic book villain would do.” Samuel added, “ Which only sounds worse coming from you.”

“It’s too much of a risk! And if I’m the one saying it, you know it’s too risky!”

Veronica sighed, taking off her helmet as she walked over to them. “I am completely aware of how dangerous this is. I know that if my hunch is wrong, plenty of innocent people will die. To be honest I don’t like this plan any more than you guys do.”

“Then why are you telling us it?!” Alexia angrily asked.

“Because even if I don’t like it, I know it’s our only choice.”, Veronica explained, her voice more agitated. “Now if it makes you feel better, you can blame me if anyone gets hurt.”.

Alexia, Wilson, and Samuel all looked at each other, not saying a word for what felt like forever. The room was eerily silent, Veronica swearing she could hear her own heartbeat as the seconds passed by. She didn’t know how but those three always had some strange connection with each other, always being able to seemingly talk with each other without saying a word. before giving a reluctant nod.

“The only reason we’re going through with this is that we trust you, Veronica. We know you must have thought long and hard about this to propose an idea like that to us.” Samuel explained, “I just hope you’re right.”

Veronica smiled for a moment before putting on her helmet again. It’s T shaped visor glowed bright yellow as she turned it on. “I do too Samuel. Now let’s go see if any of my black market contacts have their fingers in the housing industry.” She said in her metallic voice as she walked away. Veronica was taking a huge risk with this plan, living in such a populated area. If she was wrong, then she would be putting innocent lives in danger. It would be Haven Oasis but worse. But if she was right, and Frostbite wouldn’t endanger civilians, then it would be a worthwhile gamble. After all, as the old Terran saying goes, “Hliet Forsettean pliht.”, or when translated into English, “Reward prefers risk.”.

Sapphire Dazzle, or as she somewhat preferred to be called “Heart Breaker”, was walking back to the crystal castle after a less than successful attempt to find any information from the locals. Yet the fact that these locals seemed to have a strange case of amnesia didn’t worry her. What did worry her was how Signal Flare was doing. She didn’t know why but she couldn’t stop thinking about him after they rushed him to the castle’s medical room, and that actually worried her. ”Why can’t I stop thinking about that stallion?” She thought, trying to wrap her head around this strange obsession she suddenly had. ”I mean, it’s not like I like him. I barely know him after all...so why can’t I get him out of my head? I guess he’s kinda-”. Then out of nowhere, her train of thought was broken by a familiar hyperactive voice.

“HI, Sapphire!!!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed, her voice as joyful as ever. But when she looked around, Sapphire did not see the pink pony, much to her confusion. “I’M UP HERE!”. As Sapphire looked up, she was surprised to see Pinkie Pie on top of the roof of a building, wearing a white outfit with a hood over her head. Sapphire could only look on confused as Pinkie bent her knees and leaped into the sky. She raised her arms over her head as she dove down to the ground, seemingly aiming for the large barrel of hay laying in front of Sapphire. Pinkie somehow managed to do a triple front flip, an angel, a quadruple backflip, and several other ridiculous poses while falling from the two-story building; how she was able to do so Sapphire didn’t know. So how else would such a performance end than by Pinkie completely overshooting her jump and landing face first on the floor several feet behind Sapphire?

“Celestia protect me.” Sapphire mumbled, taking several deep breaths before walking over to Pinkie. Sapphire saw that Pinkie’s face was at flat as a pancake on the floor, which naturally slightly unnerved her. “Um...are you ok Pinkamina?” she asked as she cautiously approaching Pinkie Pie.

“mmmhhhmmhm!” Was all Pinkie could say with her head stuck to the floor, which thankfully didn’t last long. She managed to get her head off the floor and then proceeded to shake it around like a dog. “I meant, I’m great Sapphire!! And you can just call me Pinkie! All my friends do after all!”

“Alright then...” Sapphire didn’t really know how to talk to Pinkie. They were almost complete opposites of each other, so Sapphire found it hard to approach the party pony in conversation. “Did...you find anything about the ponies here?”

“Nope!” Pinkie cheerfully answered, her carefree voice still offsetting to Sapphire. “But don’t worry! I know I’ll find something or my name isn’t Pinkimina “Secret finder” Pie!!”

Sapphire sighed, facehoofing herself at Pinkie Pie’s childishness. “But that isn’t...nevermind. Good luck on finding any info.” She then started to walk away, wanting to gain some distance from the childish pony. ”Ok, back to the matter at hand. Signals somewhat familiar..but I don’t know how he’s GAH!” Sapphire was caught off guard again when Pinkie seemingly teleported right in front of her, their muzzles practically touching. She stumbled back a couple of feet in shock, almost tripping over herself as Pinkie stared at her with a concerned expression.

“You don’t seem happy. Are you still sad about Princess Cadence not remembering you? Because she hasn’t had sleep in like a LONG time! Your mind does funny things when that happens!”

“No Pinkie it’s not that...”

“OH! Are you sad that Signal was really really hurt?”

“Maybe...I don’t know”

“Aren’t you two friends?”

“I wouldn’t say that...”

“GASP!!! Do you LIKE him?!”

“What?! Pinkie no!”

“Oh, now I know you do!”

“Did you not just hear what I said?”

“But you’re too shy to admit it and try to keep it to yourself! But you’ll keep doing so, the tension only getting bigger and bigger and bigger! You’ll try to stay away from him, but that will only make him want to be closer, creating a never-ending cycle of tension! And when the tension is at their highest, unforeseen circumstances will force you to confess! It will be AMAZING!!!!”

Sapphire attempted to process all of what Pinkie just said, staring at her for a couple of seconds before responding. “Pinkie...what makes you think something that farfetched could happen?” Implying you think at all

Pinkie just nonchalantly shrugged at her question. “Just a feeling.”

Sapphire fought the urge to facehoof herself, and lost. “Is there a reason why you’re here Pinkie Pie?” She asked, wishing the pink distraction would leave.

“Oh right! Twilight thinks she may have found something out! Everyone is waiting for you at the crystal castle!”

“Then tell Twilight I’ll be there in a moment. I need a minute to breathe after this.”

“Okie Dokie! Don’t take to long!”

And with that Pinkie hopped along happily towards the crystal castle, her white cloak nowhere to be seen. In fact, when Sapphire looked behind her, the large pile of hay was gone as well. She swore she felt her eye twitch as she desperately tried to come up with an answer for why those things were gone, but she came up with nothing. Her anger was rising with her confusion, boiling to the top until she... took another deep breath and started to walk off towards the castle. ”No point trying to question it now Heart Breaker...just complete your mission and go home...” She thought as she passed through the empty streets of the Crystal Empire, not a single “Crystal Pony” in sight. Thoughts of Signal Flare popped into her head again, making her groan. ”Not again...”

She was utterly frustrated by the predicament she was in, not helped by what Pinkie said. She knew she didn’t have romantic feelings towards the pegasus, yet she strangely also felt like Pinkie could be right. She didn’t know why but Pinkies word did help explain why Signal was always on her mind for some reason. But at the same time, it made no sense to her. She knew one hundred percent that she didn’t love this pony who she just met yesterday, that only happens in storybooks for little kids, but it was the most logical explanation for why her mind was filled with thoughts of him. She kept combating these thoughts, trying to find another logical explanation as she approached the crystal castle. But as she went up to the entrance of the castle, a certain phrase rang out in her mind out of the blue. It was an old Ponish saying she learned on while at an excavation at an old archeological dig site, and just so happened to be her favorite old Ponish saying.

“Hliet Forsettean pliht.”

Butting heads

Author's Note

Sorry this seems so short but with everything that’s going on in my life right now, I can’t have 4000 word chapters anymore until my life get’s back on track. So for now chapters will be around 2000 going in this order: Earth,Equestria,Earth,Equestria,etc. This won’t last to long until I get more free time which will be in a month or two maybe.

Butting heads

A few hours later in the abandoned warehouse district.

Johnathan Tark sat on one of the many warehouses that stood outside the city, looking at his slightly damaged helmet. After confronting his former squadmate, and giving him a run for his money, he was forced to retreat when he was given a surprise arrow to the face. So here he was, holding his helmet in his hands, allowing anyone who would walk up here to see his mangled and disfigured face. He looked at his left visor, which had a hole and several cracks, cringing at how it looked. He had one of his personal Tore smokes in his mouth, breathing some of it into his mouth as he clicked a button on the back of his helmet, causing the back half of his helmet to snap up, revealing the many wires and hinges that kept his helmet together. He played around with it, eventually managing to remove the damaged visor with a pop. He threw the old visor behind him, taking the cigarette out of his mouth and breathing out a big puff of smoke.

“Even with those new moves Keen,” He mumbled, starting to twirl his finger around the smoke, “,it wasn’t enough to stop my plan from coming into fruition. Now I’ll have the perfect place to train that naive girl.” As he finished twirling his finger around, a replica of the visor he just threw out fell into his hand, this one in perfect condition. As he put it back in his helmet, he started to chuckle, realizing what he just said. “Wow...even for me that was cliche...am I losing my edge?”

As he asked himself that, his visors lit up with a bright blue glow, the helmet itself lightly humming. He snapped the two pieces back into one, quickly putting it back on. He made sure to go through all the helmet’s functions to make sure nothing was malfunctioning, and sure enough, everything was in working order. The helmet’s front lower portion slide down, allowing him to put the cigarette back in his mouth, much to his delight. “No no, don’t be ridiculous. Now let’s see if anything interesting is on right now.”

Using a basic software program he got from a trusted black market dealer, he flipped through the channels on television, his visors acting like personal screens for him. He kept surfing until a certain news broadcast caught his eye, one about that trashy school “Sunset Shimmer” went to.

“As the police department reveals more information about the confrontation between the new Canterlot High student “Diamond Breaker” and known delinquent “Lightning Dust”, we can still only scratch our heads at it.” The not very memorable news anchor explained, “As the police described outside the local Canterlot hospital, “We now know Miss Dust was on some substance as the encounter went down. We are not fully sure of the exact substance as of now, but we do know it does not match anything in our database so far.”. This along with the strange roars heard last night have got the entire community of Ponyville rilled up. Here we are at the mayor's office in Canterlot where a small protest is going on with our-”

By that point, Frostbite had grown bored of the newscast and turned it off, but he still had a small smile on his face. “I see I don’t have to even get involved for my old comrades to get into trouble. Some things never change I suppose...”. Old memories started to flood his mind of him and his squadmates before Haven ever happened, making his smile even bigger. “What I wouldn’t give to go back and change it all...”.

As he looked up at the sky, he realized that it was a full moon. Dread sank into him, killing what happy feelings he was having at the moment. He had almost forgotten that a full moon meant He would be calling soon. “Ugh...welp...might as well get it over with.”. Now able to properly prepare himself, Frostbite braced himself as he felt a course of new energy flow through his veins. Soon his body was glowing orange instead of his regular bright blue glow, one of the many things he gained through a deal, but it came with this unfortunate side effect, becoming a living interdimensional phone. He snapped his fingers, all the orange energy exiting through his hand and onto the grassy floor. It quickly took shape, morphing into an...orange unicorn of all things.

The thing was about as large as an average horse, it’s horn a little too big for Frostbite’s liking. It looked around for a moment, taking in its surroundings before looking at Frostbite. “It’s about time ape. I called you two days ago and got nothing!” Its voice was rough and metallic, just like his, disturbingly accurate to be exact.

Frostbite’s mood almost instantly went sour from just that one line, but he knew he had to keep his cool. So taking a deep breath, he came up with a calm and collected response. “Have you already forgotten the rules you yourself made? “No calls until the moon is full”, and yet here you were calling me a whole two days early! Do you know how close I was to relapsing back because of your little call!? And to top it off I was in public!”

“How am I to know when it’s safe to request a talk with you-me? Or does the “Hue-man” me think I can read minds across dimensions?” it asked, taking a step back when Frostbite grabbed his sword from the ground and unsheathed it, aiming the blade at the orange unicorn’s face.

“Allow me to make something perfectly clear AGAIN you damn dirty horse. YOU.ARE.NOT.ME!. Even though Frostbite knew his blade would do no damage, he knew his blade made the creature uneasy. “We may talk the same. Slightly look the same at least as much as an animal can look like a man. We even may have the same names, but we are not the same!”.

For a moment the creature just stood there shocked, but it wasn’t long before it came with a comeback. “A little touchy on the subject aren’t you? I wasn’t even trying and it already seems I’ve hit a soft spot.

Frostbite’s sword did not move an inch, Frostbite using all his willpower to not try to turn this interdimensional doubleganger into glue. “What.Do.You.Want?” Frostbite asked, talking through his teeth.

“I did find a soft spot! How delightful.” The unicorn sounded way to happy about finding that out about Frostbite, which unnerved him. “However, I suppose we should to the point. I have more info on the brat.”

It was only then that Frostbite lowered his sword, able to get a grip on his emotions. He may have been an expert on emotional manipulation, but moments like this reminded the ex-purifier that he could be victim to his own tactics. “Good, what do you got?”

“It’s not much but after some digging, my mole in the Canterlot royal guard found something important about the girl.”

”Just how important?”

“Important enough that it’s the reason why she came into your world.”

Frostbite was quiet for a moment before coming up with a response. ”That...might have been important enough to almost turn me into an unstoppable monster.”

“Indeed. Now after some “convincing”, my mole discovered from a retired royal guard that not long before Sunset went missing, she was found having a hectic argument with our not so bright princess.”

“Did they say what they were aruging about?”

“While he had trouble remembering everything due to the blood loss, the pony did recall Sunset bringing up a mirror or something along those lines. We'll have to see if he wakes up to get more details. How goes things on your end?”

Frostbite couldn’t help but smirk as he readied to show his bit of info. “These tricks you taught me are working like a charm. She doesn’t even suspect I’m using your “magic” or whatever bs you want to call it to do the crap I can do now. And to top it off, my old squadmates took the bait and just moved out of the warehouse district. So me and Sunny-D have a whole city district to train in now.”

”Perfect. Make sure she is ready by the allignment or else-”

“ Yeah yeah, “-Our whole plan will be for naught.”. You don’t have to remind me for the four millionth time you know.”

“I am just making sure you’re primative mind remembers that when the time comes. Now onto more pressing matters.”

The lower part of Frostbites faceplate opened up, allowing him to put a new Tore smoke in his mouth. “Like what?”

I personally know now where your “Cole Marksen” is.”

The area was quiet save for the sound of Frostbite’s tore smoke falling to the ground. His jaw had practically hit the floor from the bomb the unicorn had just dropped on him, unable to do anything but stare at the unicorn with shock. “You could have started out with that!”

“I have the belief that you save the best for last. Now what you like to know first? Where he is? How he’s doing. Possible new love intr-”

“WHERE IS HE?!” Even though it was just a projection, the unicorn could almost feel the raw anger eminating from Frostbite.

The unicorn stared at Frostbite with a blank, dissapointed look on his face. ”...you’re no fun. He is currently in the Crystal Empire. I can only assume that damned Alicorn knew something because if not for him, my second biggest problem right now would be hanging lifeless from a spike of crystals.”

“Tore damn it all! Did you at least get a couple good hits in on him?”

“From what I saw, he shouldn’t be getting up for a while. In fact, it’s more than likely he’ll be bedridden for the rest of his life.”

“Good. Kill him as soon as you get the chance. Now is that all?”

He didn’t even have to ask as the unicorn was already starting to reenter Frostbite’s body. He was caught offguard by this, causing him to fall to his knees. The energy was coursing through him with no restraint, the pain almost unbareable. If not for his training, Frostbite would have most likely passed out from the pain. He clenched his teeth as the last bit of the unicorn entered him, allowing him to breathe.

“I guess that was...Tore, I hate that thing.”. He fell down to the ground, exhausted from fighting against the pain. He grabbed another fresh Tore smoke, his hands shaking as he put it to his mouth, struggling to even summon a bit of his esper to light it. He could already feel his body start to shut down from the exhaustion, causing him to drop another one of his smokes from his mouth.“Ugh...Maybe...I...should...get...some...rest....”.

Questioning loyalties.

Princess Cadence found herself stumbling down the halls of her crystal castle, trying desperately not to fall asleep. She had been awake for Luna knows how long to keep the spell up that kept the evil King Sombra out of the empire, which as it turns out is harder than one might expect. For the longest time, she moved around as little as possible, dedicating as much energy as possible to keeping herself awake, but today was different. Earlier today, Cadence was joyfully reunited with her sister in law and some familiar faces along with some new ones. One of these familiar faces was an unconscious and bleeding Signal Flare, or “Cole Marksen”, being carried by a massive stallion.

So after explaining in detail what was happening here in the empire, she inquired about what happened to him and discovered that he took a serious injury while protecting Twilight. It was only now, when the group was setting up decorations for a festival to get the crystal pony’s memories back, that she discovered that Signal had just woken from his injuries. It was for that reason why she was walking down these halls, to thank him herself for saving Twilight, as well for another reason which she kept to herself.

“Cadence, please be careful!” Shining Armor, her husband, warned. “We can’t risk you getting hurt! Especially now!”.

Cadence failed to hold back a yawn as she approached the makeshift infirmary of the castle. “Shining, I’m fine. We’re safe in the castle. Nothing can hurt us in here and besides, I just want to say “thank you”. Is that so wrong?”.

“No, but you need to save your strength. With that in mind, don’t you think this is so strenuous?” He asked, careful to always be standing next to Cadence.

“I...I think I have the strength to say...”thank you”. Thank you for the concern though Shining. Besides, it’s just Signal Flare. What’s the worst that can hap-” But just as she said that a loud crash echoed from the other room.

”MR.FLARE!!! YOU-GAH-NEED TO-UGH-REST!!!”
*SLAM*
”I DO NOT! YOU NEED TO GET YOUR HOOVES OFF ME!!!!”
*CRASH*
”LET GO!! HEY KEEP THAT-
*prick*

“I spoke too soon....”

The couple dared not go into the room in fear of what was going on, so they waited for something to come out. A couple of minutes later the door slammed open to show a visibly injured unicorn in a medics outfit storming out of the room. “I’ve met Ursa Majors easier to put down than that pegasus!” he complained, not noticing the pair until it was too late. “What would he say if I retur-GAH! Princess Cadenza! Captian Armor!” The medic rushed to straighten his body and saluted as soon as he could with a bright blush on his face.

“Medic, what is going on in there?! It sounded like a wild animal was in there!” Shining asked, changing his normally calmer voice into a stricter sounding one.

“There might as well been sir. We were uh... just finishing tending to Mr.Flare’s injuries like you asked, but it seems somepony forgot to give him both the anesthetic and the sedatives.”

Cadence cringed at the thought of what Signal must have felt. “So he woke up feeling all that pain... oh dear the poor ma-pony...”

“But that wasn’t it. He took the pain quite well, all things considered, his screams only breaking one of my eardrums, but when we went to give him the anesthetic, he freaked out.”

“Was he scared of needles?” Cadence asked, trying not to think about her own tiny phobia of needles.

“I don’t think so. He was yelling something about, “Not again”. And despite taking such a serious injury, he was able to kick four other medics out cold before I injected him with the anesthetic.”

Shining looked “I thought you said his spine was shattered from the spike. How is he able to move at all?”

“I wish I knew sir. All we know is that that stallion is lucky to be alive at all, but not very lucky for me. There was a good chance the internal bleeding should have killed him before he could even make it to the castle, yet here is he is.”

“Can I talk to him? I wanted to thank him for saving my sister in law.”

“Well he is... sleeping right now, but I suppose a visit wouldn’t hurt.”

Cadence walked past the medic and looked inside the room to see that it was completely trashed. Medical equipment lay strewed across the floor, with even a pony or two on the floor unconscious. Out of the seven beds in the room, six were flipped over into makeshift barricades, which surrounded the seventh bed in the middle of the room. On this bed lay Signal, who was seemingly fast asleep. The only way she knew he wasn’t dead was because she saw the stallion taking tiny breaths that indicated he was alive, but it was so tiny he could have been mistaken for being dead. She slowly but surely walked over to the side of his bed, looking over his sleeping figure. Now that she could see him up close, there was nothing to hide the collection of bruises and bandages across his exposed body. It wasn’t helped by his white body, which only highlighted his injuries, but thankfully his lower half was hidden by a blanket, which surely must have hidden the more injured parts of his body.

“You would not believe what it took to get Mr.Flare to sleep. His... adrenaline must have been incredibly high because we had to use a dragon tranquilizer dart to get him like this.that makes sense right?” The medic explained, but Cadence wasn’t paying attention to him. No, her focus was on Signal’s unconscious body and the overwhelming sense of guilt she had looking at him.

“I am so sorry Marksen...this wasn’t your fight...”. She whispered in his ear, fully knowing he couldn’t hear her. As though the guilt of not being able to tell her dear sister in law how to save the Crystal Empire wasn’t enough of a burden to the alicorn, she had to hide so much from Signal Flare as well. She remembered getting the letters from Twilight shortly after the wedding, and how a good amount of them had been about how Signal’s struggles in Ponyville. His struggle to control his wings reminded her of when she first became an alicorn all that time ago, and how she struggled to control her new magic, so she was able to easily relate to the pegasus. But she remembered even more clearly the day she was contacted by the princesses and how they revealed Signal’s true identity. Celestia assured her that he would be put under her care and be perfectly safe during his time here. But here Cadence was, looking over the bloody, near-dead body of Signal Flare. This poor man was fighting for a nation not his own, in a body, not his own, and in perhaps the most dangerous place possible at the moment in Equestria.

”Is this what Celestia thinks being safe means?! I thought we were to keep him as far away from our problems as possible, not put him smack dab in the middle of it all!” Cadence screamed in her head, almost forgetting to keep the shield spell up. ”If I didn’t know better I would have thought Celestia was trying to get him killed!”. But then again, Cadence didn’t think Celestia was willing to risk an entire city of ponies just so she could test Twilight for something she was more than worthy of already.

She looked back down at Signal’s sleeping body, her guilt now joined by anger and confusion aimed at her “peers”. If she wasn’t so exhausted or had a job to do, she would have flown straight to Canterlot and find out why Celestia betrayed her trust like this. But for now, all she could do was keep the anger bottled up inside her until this was all over. But it was then that a truly terrifying thought entered her mind, one that she feared might consume her every waking moment if she let it.

”What else has Celestia lied to me about?”

just outside the Crystal Empire

”HOW MUCH LONGER DO WE WAIT?!” A unicorn loudly asked to seemingly no one. The unicorn was wearing a suit of plated metal armor with a helmet that fully covered her head. The armor’s design was similar to what the ancient equestrian military wore, focusing on intimidation and protection over aesthetics.
(Credit to J3rykCZ - DeviantArt for the design, but just imagine it being painted white instead of black)

”I THINK ONE OF MY HOOVES FELL ASLEEP!” She complained, her left hind leg feeling more unresponsive than the other three legs.

”HELL IF I KNOW! BUT I DO KNOW IF FROST CATCHES YOU WHINNING HE’LL CUT YOUR LEG OFF! SO STOP WHINNING LIKE A FILLY AND START ACTING LIKE AN ADULT!” A voice shouted, but even then the unicorn barely caught that due to the blizzard being so loud. The ironic part of it was that these two ponies were no more than a meter apart from eachother, but in the storm, they might as well have been sixty meters apart.

If the storm was not making visibility near impossible, one would see hundreds upon hundreds of unicorns dressed in the same armor as the first unicorn, all of them surrounding the shield that kept the Crystal Empire safe from this snow storm. Now to a normal pony, this would be considered suicide staying in such an inhosbitable enviroment, but not to these unicorns. To these unicorns this “no ponies land” was what they called home, it was all their familys knew for a thousand years. And as one would expect, living in such a place for over a thousand years would make these ponies adapt to the cold. They all knew the stories their elders told of how the cold sought out the weak, only leaving those who were able to adapt to the cold to survive. It was the ability to adapt (with a bit of help with magic) that allowed future generations to not only survive but thrive in the Frozen North, giving them fur thicker than yaks and legs as strong as an earth pony stallion. But one might ask how these herbivores would survive in an environment where next to zero plants could survive, and that is where perhaps the scariest adaptation these unicorns took on comes in, their teeth. For where there were little plants to find, the Frozen North had an abundance of burrowing rodents, large yet unwary predators, and the occasional yak that dared travel near the caves that these unicorns made into their homes. So like their distant cousins, the thestrals, these “Snow Ponies”, as they called themselves, adapted to have razor sharp teeth that could tear through flesh with ease.

It was with all these adaptations that the Snow Pony tribe made the Frozen North their home, but they wanted more. These ponies did not want to wonder how long they would have to wait until the hunters would return with a meal. They did not want to live in uncomfortable caves that could collapse should an avalanche hit them. They wished for a life where they didn’t have to worry about pony eating yetis which shared territory with the Snow unicorns. It was for those reasons and more that they were preparing to take back what was stolen from them a thousand years ago, all ready to fight whatever would challenge them unlike their ancestors...well not all.

“WHY CAN’T WE JUST, YOU KNOW, NEGOTIATE WITH THEM LIKE NORMAL PONIES?!” The first unicorn asked, curious why they were automatically going with the violent solution.

“Because expecting these vile invaders to talk is like expecting a Yak to not talk like an idiot. It’ll never happen.” A raspy, unnatural voice answered, causing the unicorn to jerk itself around to see a pony in noticeably different armor walking towards him.

The armor was hard for the unicorn to describe as it was so different. It was like a plated suit of armor, but instead of being composed of individual pieces that one could take on and off, this suit was like it was all one piece. Even in this harsh blizzard, the unicorn could still hear the hoof steps this new unicorn took, each step sounding something akin to thunder. His eyes were hidden behind orange pieces of glass that were shaped like lightning bolts, which glowed an eerie orange hue whenever he spoke. Nopony knew where he got such strange armor, but they all knew who owned it.

The owner of this almost alien armor was whom the entire Snow Pony tribe had to thank for giving them hope. He was the one who found their king and managed to break him from his icy prison. He was the official second in command (and unofficial first since it’s hard for somepony who can only say “crystals” to lead an army) of their little army, the strategic mind that allowed them to infiltrate the capital city of Equestria itself. This pony’s name was Frostbite, the Windigo of the Frozen North.

At this point, Frostbite was directly in front of the first unicorn, their faces just one foot apart. “No...we must wait until their backs are turned. Then...when their guards are down...WE STRIKE! ”. The unicorn found herself backing slowly from her commander, almost tripping over at his outburst, only stopping when she was inches away from passing through the shield. “But by all means, go up to those barbarians and try to be civil. I imagine they’ll be very thankful for you revealing us to them as they stab you in the back. But then again, that might be preferable to what I would do to you if I found out you were going to actually try that.”.

The unicorn suddenly felt fearful for her life, recalling the stories of how brutal he was to soldiers for the most minor of offenses. The unicorn found herself bowing to Frostbite, hopeful she could avoid any brutal punishment. “ No no no commander! I had no i-in-intentions of doing any such things! I was simply c-c-curious! That’s all!” She explained frantically, not feeling the need to shout since the blizzard always seemed to be calmest around the commander. But as soon as she finished her plea, she instantly regretted it because what she just did was a sign of weakness. And weakness was the worst thing to show around the commander.

There was a brief moment of silence between the two unicorns, the only audible thing heard being the first unicorns panicked breath. “Impressive. Never have I seen such weakness so quickly in my life... until today.” Frost said, his horn already humming with magic. “What is your name soldier?

”d-d-Diamond Breaker s-s-sir...” She stuttered, her legs already shaking from fear, which only made her situation worse.

“Take off your helmet Diamond, and don’t make me repeat myself.” He commanded, waiting impatiently as the unicorn removed her helmet.

She had light red fur with a bright yellow mane with black highlights, something which was against protocol but nopony really cared about it since it was so inoffensive. Her eyes were emerald green, though one of them was covered by a bandage due to an accident involving three stallions, two mares, and a javelin that she would rather forget about. But that was the least of her concerns as the moment she got her helmet off, she was shocked to see the tip of a sword mere inches from her skull between her eyes.

Frostbite was the one who held this blade, levitating it with his magic which gave it a red outline. His lifeless lightning shaped visor stared directly into her eyes, making her feel uneasy on top of being terrified. He may have given the Snow Ponies hope, but it was easy to forget how easily he could make you feel helpless in seconds.

“I don’t have to remind you of what I do to the weak do I?” He asked rhetorically, his blade as unmoving as a statue. Diamond nodded slowly, her eyes frantically looking around in vain for a way out of this situation. And while faint, Diamond was able to hear Frostbite give a small sinister chuckle as it suddendly felt noticably harder for her to breathe. ”hehe...good. This should be over quickly then.”. And with that, Diamond was sent face first into snow in agonizing pain as she felt her exposed knees get slashed by Frost’s blade.

She would have screamed in pain, and maybe even defend herself, but she could hardly breathe at this point, only tiny pockets of air entering her lungs. The pure white snow was stained with her blood as Diamond struggled to get up, but it was like Frostbite made surgical cuts to her leg muscles, meaning her wounds would be stuck in the cold, unforgiving snow. There was a moment of respite for her as she felt the front half of her body levitate into the air, making breathing easier if only by a bit. But as soon as she thought Frostbite was actually having mercy on her, she found herself being sent back to the ground with tremendous force, knocking what little wind she had in her out.

Our ancestors showed weakness, and look where we are now! We’re borderline savages! beasts! ANIMALS! We must crush any weakness we once had to become more!” He said as he raised her back up into the air, only to slam her again back onto the snowy ground. He did it again and again, each time more and more blood splattering out of her [the rest of this scene has been censored because showing it would warrant this fic an M rating. We humbly apologize with this picture of Derpy being derpy]

[Aww...You may now continue reading this fan fiction]

After what felt like forever to the poor unicorn, she finally felt Frostbite’s magic release their hold on her lungs, allowing her to take several gasps for air. It hurt to move anything in her body so Diamond just laid there on the cold, bloody snow as Frostbite left, satisfied with his “purification” of her weakness. It took several minutes for her to find the strength to get up, but when she finally did, she was shocked to see more blood around her than she thought she could lose and live. At this point, the blizzard was starting to kick back up, slowly covering the ground with a new layer of snow.

Her face took the brunt of the damage, so she reasonably wanted to find her helmet and protect her injuries from the elements, so she quickly looked around to see where her helmet may have been. Afer a couple of seconds, she managed to find her helmet laying in the blood-stained snow and went to pick it up with her magic, but stopped as she levitated it near her face. She had seen her helmet dozens of times before and never thought about its design before, but something was off about it to her after taking that beating.

The helmet looked...scary...intimidating...threatening...almost demonic; all things she wouldn’t associate with a righteous and just cause. This realization reminded her of when she was hunting a young yak one day, but slipped and accidentally revealed herself to the yak. She hadn’t thought it before but before it ran, the yak called her something that only now sent shivers down her back. It called her...“Demon”.

She then thought back to early in the day, just before they had surrounded the city. They were waiting for a group of ponies to come by, but for what reasons Frostbite never said. All he said was that they were “heartless, unfeeling killers who came to kill us all.”.He was also strangely obsessed with one purple unicorn when the group showed up, telling them to focus their crystal attacks on her. Diamond almost landed an attack on the unicorn, but out of nowhere some strangely familiar pegasus came out of nowhere and shoved the unicorn out of the way, taking the hits for her before being sent flying into the air and somehow parkouring his way on the spikes to the rest of the group.

”Frostbite said they were heartless and unfeeling...so why did that pegasus put himself in more danger like that?” Diamond wondered. ”And why have I only thought about this now?”

But that question gave birth to more questions, which in turn gave birth to more and more until her mind was overflowing with them. Questions like “Is it right that we treat our Earth pony and Pegasi brothers and sisters as lesser than Unicorns?” and “Why does our armor look like something that came out of Tartarus?” plagued her mind, her mind making answers that went against everything she was taught growing up. She was told they were good, that despite how bad the action seemed, their goals justified their means. But that all came crashing down when a single question echoed through her mind. A question that, in hindsight, she should have been asking when their king was a black and red smoke monster.

“Are we the bad guys?”

Author's Note

So I was thinking for a while and decided to add dark and drama to the tags on this story because my vision for Red Moon was always a dark and somewhat tragic story combined with a comedic tone so it wouldn’t feel too depressing. At first, I just wanted a straight action comedy with some hints of darkness and tragedy, but I now know that Red Moon needs a bit of a darker edge for it to be what I’ve envisioned it to be.

Things best left forgotten

Author's Note

One day I was looking through DeviantArt and found this awesome guy named peterku and his amazing weapon designs. Now I had very specific ideas for what the purifiers used as weapons and how they looked, but after writing about them all in a word doc I found that placing even one detailed description in a chapter would hurt the flow of the story. So imagine how ecstatic I was to find this guy and see that his designs were not only detailed but incredibly similar to what I envisioned the Purifier weapons looked like. So after asking for permission, he has allowed me to use his designs to replace the almost 100-word long descriptions each weapon had. Now they weren’t exactly like my ideas, so I'll add little details the designs didn’t have to ensure I’m not just stealing their design, but they’ll be brief. I’ll be doing the same for armor, though I couldn’t find a single person that made all the kinds of designs I wanted. Though I will still leave links to the original artists unless I can’t find them.

Also yay! World building!

Things best left forgotten

In the abandoned warehouse district

Sunset Shimmer couldn’t help but feel uneasy as she stood before one of the many abandoned warehouses. It felt like she was being watched by some unknown force, causing her to constantly look over her shoulder. The area was abandoned long before Sunset had ever come to this world, making her feel even more uneasy when she swore she saw something out of the corner of her eye. Snowfall Frost told her before leaving her yesterday to meet him today at 10:45 AM specifically in warehouse number twenty-five. She still didn’t, and most likely never would trust him, seeing as how he somehow knew about her equestrian past when she did well to keep it a secret here. It was this lack of trust that made her “coax” the schools local gun enthusiast, Colt Winchester jr, into “borrowing” one of his father’s firearms. She had watched plenty of movies that had guns in them in this world and didn’t seem to be too complicated. It was like a camera, she just had to aim and shoot.

“Well, Scales... you ready for this?” She asked her arm, her body glowing red seemingly in confirmation. She smiled for a moment before making her best intimidating face and grabbing her gun, which was apparently called a “Walther PPK 7.65”, a strange name for a weapon but she didn’t care. “That makes one of us at least...”. With a finger on the trigger, not realizing the gun was both out of ammo and on safety, she slowly opened the warehouse door and poked her head inside. The room was actually very well lit, allowing her to see what seemed to be some strange suit of armor in the middle of it. She took a couple of steps inside before carefully closing the door, trying to make as little noise as possible. She then walked over to the suit, trying to be as stealthy as possible, curiosity taking her over. “Where is he?” She asked aloud. Her question was answered when a, sadly, familiar voice right behind her broke the silence.

“Right behind you.”

Sunset yelped out in fright as she haphazardly fired her gun at the general direction of the voice. Now Sunset expected explosions, bright flashes of light, maybe even some unnecessary foreign propaganda, but she got none of that. Instead, she got awkward silence as the trigger refused to move despite how hard she tried. “You lied to me Michal Bay!”

Snowfall Frost, who was indeed behind her, snickered as she tried in vain to shoot him. “Having troubles with your pea shooter Sunny?” He asked, booping her on the nose. Sunset growled as she threw the gun in anger at Snowfall, who simply grabbed it before it could hit him. He examined it for a moment before crushing it with his hands. “You hurt me deeply kid if you think that thing could actually hurt me.”.

The pair was unaware that what Frostbite had destroyed was the very gun Adolf Hitler used to end his life, a priceless artifact that Colt Winchester Sr spent his entire life searching for. The man had lost his left foot from fighting sharks in the North Sea to find a treasure map in a sunken German U-boat to give to a mafia mob boss in exchange for a key to open a safe in South Africa that held a key that opened a door in Ukraine that...I think you get the point...

He dramatically held his hand over where his heart would be, assuming he had one in the first place. “Why I might reconsider offering to train you!”

Sunset took a couple of deep breaths (and steps back) to calm herself before responding. “About that...I already know how to summon and command Scales, so what exactly do you have to teach me?”. To prove her point, Sunset stretched her hand out and closed her eyes. A moment later her body glowed bright red and out of her hand shot out her spectral dragon, who flew around the warehouse for a moment before landing on her shoulder liked a trained hawk. She couldn’t help but feel proud as she opened her eyes and saw her little dragon, but she then felt confused and annoyed when “Snowfall Frost” chuckled at the sight of Scales. “What?”

Snowfall’s chuckle devolved into stifled laughter. “That’s...pfft...cute, kid. But I’m talking about a REAL summon. Let me show you what a real one looks like.. Just as he had done before, Snowfall reeled his left hand back and his body started to glow bright blue. “Oh, and you might want to duck.”. Sunset barely managed to duck as what looked like a bolt of lightning shot out of his hand and over her head, flying a good two or three meters behind her. When Sunset turned around she was shocked at what she saw before her.

The creature Snowfall summoned dwarfed Sunset, at least being three meters tall and two meters long (or 9 ft tall and 6 feet long for nonmetric users), overshadowing any of her summoning feats easily. It looked like a wolf, that is if the wolf had hind legs and back hooves like a horse, a tail with a spike at the end somewhat like a scorpion, two long exposed fangs like a snake, and a mane like a lion. Now unlike Scales, who was more akin to a spectral ghost than anything else, this creature’s entire body seemed to be composed of raw electricity, with stray bolts shooting out of its body on occasion. Its eyes were pitch black, something Sunset got to see too clearly as the creature approached her, a low growl coming through its knarled teeth.

”THIS is a true epser summon! THIS is what I intend to teach you!” Snowfall proclaimed in the most overexaggerated voice Sunset had heard in a while. “Now, shall we begin?”.

Sunset found it hard to respond to him since she was too focused on getting as far as possible from the giant wolf monster in front of her. Scales, on the other hand, had no problem jumping off her shoulder onto the ground in front of her and angrily yipping at the comparably massive creature. It only took one look at the seemingly oblivious tiny dragon and without warning, gave off a loud, deep, terrifying roar that echoed through the warehouse. Its mouth was on full display, showing the rows and rows of daggers this thing called teeth, like something out of a nightmare. Yet despite that, Scales kept on yipping at the clearly superior creature. Sunset felt a need to step back as she recalled her esper back to her, ready to run if she felt the creature would actually attack her. But thankfully moments later, the creature disappeared back into Snowfall’s body, much to her relief. “What in the name of Tartarus was that?!”

“Oh right that's what you horses call hell there. That was my esper Varis! I’d say he wouldn’t hurt a fly...buutttt that would be a lie.”

“This is going to be a long day isn’t it?. Well, where do we start?”.

He made a half-hearted chuckle before answering her question. “I'm half tempted to say we start now, but I can’t exactly train a corpse now can I? So we need to get you into the right attire.” . Snowfall pointed to the armor that was still in the middle of the room. “I cannot begin to tell you how hard it was to steal this armor. I wouldn’t think the suit of a “dead man” would be so heavily guarded, but that shows what I know.”.

Sunset did her best to ignore his comment about a “dead man” as she approached the armor. It was colored dark grey with red highlights, as though it wanted to be black and red but realized that the color scheme was done to death, so it had to choose the next best thing. Its helmet was visually similar to the helmet of the Spartan, an ancient warrior of this world she had learned about during one of her classes, albeit with a futuristic update. On the shoulder pads, it had the symbol of a dragon, the same one as one on her arm and on the knife Snowfall used to threaten her before to be exact. She rested her hand on its breastplate, shocked to find that it had the unmistakable feel of leather, something she knew all too well due to her past life. “What is this suit made of?” she coldly asked, taking her hand off the suit.

“The primary material used to make these suits is a metal like leather harvested from the Terrahacha (Tear-ah-ka), basically a giant rhino with skin tougher than some of the strongest materials on earth. It has all the strength of a metal with all the mobility of leather, but it comes with the tradeoff of a less than stellar resistance to heat.” Snowfall explained, his tone not unlike that of a teacher answering a student’s question. “Why do you ask? Oh, wait...right...you were a, you know.”.

Sunset sighed as she took another look at the armor. It was obviously a little big for her, so she didn’t know how she would put it on. But as though Snowfall really could read her mind, Sunset heard something drop from behind her. “Oh right. You got to put this on first. It will allow the suit to interface and adjust to your body.”. When she turned around, Sunset felt her cheeks heat up like a blazing fire. Laying in front of her was a skin-tight jumpsuit that almost looked as though it was made of hexagons. She looked up at Snowfall with a blush on her face, unsure of whether or not this was a joke or not.

It presumably took a moment for Snowfall to realize why Sunset looked so embarrassed. “Oh come on! We’re both adults here! What, do I have to turn around every time you want to change?”

”YES!!!” Sunset shouted back, her face not needing an esper to glow bright red. Once he finally turned around, Sunset gathered her courage and picked up the jumpsuit. Her blush only grew brighter looking at it up close, but she knew at this point there was no going back.

After changing into the jumpsuit, Sunset was pleasantly surprised to find that it was very comfortable to wear and easy to move around in. What just flat out surprised her was when she turned around, the suit of armor had shrunken down to her size, somehow not making a sound while doing so. “Ok, I really need to stop staring in awe at everything new I see or I’ll never get anything done.” She thought to herself as she took another deep breath and walked over to the armor.

As she approached it, Sunset felt her heart skip a beat as the suit gave off a loud hiss as though it was containing steam before falling apart onto the floor. The warehouse echoed the sound of the multiple armor pieces falling to the floor, making Sunset cover her ears for a moment until it passed. Listening to her own advice, Sunset just assumed this was part of the process and proceded to put each piece of armor on one by one. The pieces snapped together as she put the armor on like building blocks, although they were just a bit heavier than those little toys.

“These “training sessions” are going to hurt a lot aren’t they?” Sunset asked rhetorically.

“I would answer, but that would be spoiling the surprise now wouldn’t it?”

“Celestia kill me now...”

Once she finally finished putting all the pieces on, Sunset heard what she could only describe as the worlds most advanced supercomputer turning on as her eyes were bombarded with bright lights, forcing her to close her eyes. Once the bright lights started to dim down, Sunset opened her eyes and saw the warehouse, but it was all in a red tint. She tried to turn her head, but she found that she was unable to move even a muscle as though she was a statue. Before Sunset could even call out to Frostbite, she felt something slightly hot go up and down the back of her neck for a couple of seconds, then followed by an out of nowhere robotic female voice.

“UNABLE TO DETECT NEURAL OUTLET. INITIATING PROTOCOL TWO THREE FIVE- SUBSECTION TWELVE.” The voice announced in a language Sunset thought she shouldn’t understand, yet she somehow understood it as well if not better than Equish or English. “OR FOR THOSE WHO COULDN’T BE BOTHERED TO READ THE MANUAL, THIS UNIT WILL BE DRILLING INTO YOUR NECK TO CONNECT TO YOUR BRAIN AND SPINE.”. Sunset’s eyes widen as she stood there, helpless to stop something sharp and very hot drilled into her neck, which was as painful it sounded. Sunset’s body trembled as something grabbed her neck bone and pierced it with what felt like a needle. That was then followed by what felt like a cold liquid entering her spine, causing her entire body to go completely numb, with even her brain starting to feel unresponsive. Sunset looked around frantically as her vision was slowly being consumed by blackness, her eyes moving slower and slower with each second.

Sunset found herself standing in what seemed like a black room, how she got here she didn’t know, and in front of her was a much better looking Snowfall Frost. In fact, that was almost all she could see at the moment, as though she was tunnel visioning him, the only other thing she could see was her own body. In her hand was a spear, the insignia of a dragon was inscribed onto its shaft, the spear tip glowing bright red. Sunset didn’t know when she woke up, or how she got here, but she wanted answers, and fast.

“Where are we?!” Is what Sunset wanted to ask, but what came out of her mouth was nothing like what she imagined.

“Fifty...fifty lives all lost...and for what? Vengeance? ” A much deeper and synthesized voice asked angrily.

“Is that how we’re gonna start things?” A younger and more natural sounding Snowfall asked in return, “No jibs, no jabs? Not even a tore damn joke at your own expense?”. Behind him stood was what she assumed was Varis, but it looked so much more normal. It had no black eyes, back hooves, snake-like teeth, or a scorpion tail, and aside from the lion's mane, it seemed to just be an average looking wolf. That is...as far as giant wolves made out of lightning can be considered “average looking”.

“They were our BROTHERS AND SISTERS, FROSTBITE!!! WE WERE A FAMILY!!! AND NOW THEY’RE ALL GONE. So excuse me if I skip my usual smartass behavior so I CAN KNOW WHY YOU KILLED ALL OF THEM?!”. The raw emotion in his words would have made Sunset take several steps back if she wasn’t apparently looking through his eyes. It was so intense that Sunset didn’t even care that apparently “Snowfall” was lying about his name this whole time.

“Fine. You want to know why I did it, Tamer?” Frostbite then drew his sword from his sheath, holding it in two hands much like how a knight would hold one in the middle ages. It had the insignia of “Varis” was inscribed onto the blade, although it also didn’t look as monstrous as Varis she had just seen. “It was to avenge the lives your incompetence snuffed out at Haven, and to save the rest of Terran from anything similar.”

“Tamer’s” hands trembled ever so slightly, his eyes uncontrollably darting around the area, breaking the tunnel vision and allowing Sunset to see what was around her. They seemed to be on top of a mountain that overlooked a grassland, with what seemed like a forest looming just at the edge of their vision. In the middle of the grassland was what looked like a large set of derelict buildings, it’s poor condition easily seen even from this high up. An odd detail Sunset noticed was that the grassland was completely void of life, with not even a single bird in the sky. The mountain they were on was unlike any mountain Sunset had seen before in their life. Instead of having a dirt or rock surface, this mountain’s surface was shiny and white, almost as though it was made of marble.

“Is this “Terran”?” Sunset wondered, “Must be. Where else would this be?!

“What about the... Tamer paused for a moment, seemingly collecting his thoughts. ...Twelve or so thousand lives you ended at Beacon city?!

“I did no such thing! Is that another one of their lies? Or did one of the voices in your head tell you I did that?”

“I’ve heard enough. We’re in the middle of a civil war, the abominations have gained more ground in two years than they did in twenty years, Diamond and Deadeye are in critical condition, and it’s all YOUR fault. YOU WILL PAY!!!”. Tamer held his spear tightly as he pointed it at Frostbite, all while Sunset was seeing this through Tamer’s eyes. She could feel his heart beating practically out of his chest, going at a rate that shouldn’t have been physically possible. Sunset could even feel what seemed to be a few tears run down his face. It was as though he was scared yet heartbroken at the same time, but for what reason Sunset had no idea.

“I must be blind because I hear you say that yet I can’t see your wife nearby to save your sorry hide when I beat you!”

“I don’t need my wife to kill you. I’ll take you on all on my own!”. And with that, Tamer charged at Frostbite, leaping high in the air with incredible speed. But right as Tamer was about to fall onto Frostbite, spear aimed straight at his head, everything started to become black again.

“No! I need to know what’s going on!!!” Sunset pleaded in her mind, neither party backing down as the darkness began to consume her vision again.

“AND I DON’T NEED YOUR WIFE TO PUT DOWN YOUR BROKEN MIND!” Frostbite screamed back, his blade poised to meet Tamer’s spear. Sunset could hear the sound of blades crashing and thundering roars, as though Tarturus had opened up and all its prisoners were fighting to escape. The last thing Sunset heard before blacking out was the sound of a blade meeting flesh, followed by a blood-curdling cry of pain.

Sunset awoke gasping; her eyes darting all over the room. Her body was aching all over while her mind was rapidly trying to comprehend what had just happened. Above her stood Frostbite, who crouching and tapping her screen annoyingly. He leaned his head to the side like some curious animal as he poked her again. “Helloooo? You dead kid? Please be alive because it's kinda impossible to take off this kind of armor from the outside, and that would be such a pain.”.

Sunset took no time to answer back, her heart still racing from what she just saw. “Yep! I’m alive... I think.” She groaned, the pain just starting to subside.

“Ok good, but what the hell happened?!” he asked as he poked her again. “I know the process hurts like hell but it’s never done THAT before!”.

“What do you mean “it’s never done that before?”?! And can you stop poking me already?!”. Sunset’s patience was less than paper thin at this point as her confusion and subsequently, her anger was quickly growing.

“hmmm...na. This is actually kinda fun.”. Right as he went to tap her again, Sunset’s hand sprung up with lightning speed and grabbed Frostbite’s arm before he could touch her again. It didn’t even matter to Sunset that her arm had moved quite literally faster than her eyes could see, she was too pissed to care anymore.

“Now,... Frostbite..., I want us to be extra clear before moving on. You better be one hundred percent honest with me after this, no lies, no b.s! Think you can do that?!”. Sunset was fully fed up with all this confusion and secrecy. She had just seen what she figured was the memories of the man she “banished” to her homeworld, she was in a suit of armor straight out of a comic book, and her “mentor” was poking her like a kid pokes a dead body with a stick. She needed answers, and she needed them now.

Frostbite, or at least Sunset imagined, looked shocked at her calling him his real name. “how...wher-where did you learn that name?!”. For the first time, Sunset felt as though she held the winning card in her hands. For once she had something over her all too vague “teacher”, something to make him start asking questions.

Under that helmet of hers, Sunset held a smug look on her face. She knew his real name, and from the tone of his voice, she saw something Frostbite did not intend to see, both being things she could use against him. It may not have been much, but Sunset had gotten more with less. After all, she destroyed one of the strongest bonds of friendship she had ever seen with nothing but a couple of rumors, some phone numbers, and a few email addresses. “That would be spoiling the surprise now wouldn’t it?” She asked smugly, managing to get off of the floor on her own.

As she got up, Sunset realized that she was looking through a vision limiting helmet as she expected, in fact, it was more like looking through a see-through glass pane with a slight red tint, like some of the “video games” she had played in her free time. In fact, Sunset noticed that on the bottom left-hand corner of the screen was an image of her body with several monitors above it. It indicated she had some minor bruising and a... broken rib. Where and how she got that, Sunset had no idea.

And on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen was another body, a male body this time, yet something was very wrong about it. The screen was showing the body had fifth degree burns all over its body, the face even having sixth degree burns. It also showed the body had twelve broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and even some broken vertebrae! By all accounts, he should have been dead thirty times over yet here he was acting like he was as fit as a fiddle. More info she would have over him Sunset supposed.

“Where did you learn that name?!” For once Frostbite’s voice had a hint of fear in it. Mind you it was only a hint of fear, but Sunset had to take back some ground in this fight so she savored every inch she got.

“I would tell...but that would be ruining the surprise now wouldn’t it?”.

Frostbite didn’t say a word after that for a solid thirty seconds, a tell-tell sign he was backing up a bit. Then after sighing and responding. “Best get comfy kid. We’re going to be here for a while.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

the obvious exposition chapter

Author's Note

As the title suggests, I’m going to be adding some much-needed exposition chapters to help create some context for future events I have planned for the story and create a bit of world-building for Terran as a nation. Now, this does technically count as the Equestrian chapter because of the chapters ending, so the next chapter will take place on Earth. Just letting you all know.

Credit to 2-Dpanda for Veronica’s armor. It was almost exactly what I expected Veronica’s armor to look like minus the helmet.

also sorry it took a bit longer to submit this chapter, I needed more time to finish up the ending.

the obvious exposition chapter

Crete Greece, four years ago.

Before the little incident that landed me in Equestria, I had explored many exotic and fantastic places during my missions on Earth in the three years since Terran’s discovery. From the barren yet awe-inspiring deserts of the Sahara to the Lush and dense forests of the Amazon, I had almost seen everything Earth had to offer. But out of all the places I had been to, none beat the experiences I had on my mission to Greece. I was sent to Greece to stealthfully eliminate an abomination that somewhat resembled the mythological monster known as the Minotaur after it brutally killed a group of oddly old looking kids and their dog. It seemed like a normal mission just like all the others, but when Veronica and I were dropped off near Athens, we were both starstruck at the nation's beauty.

I guess why we both loved Greece so much was because it was so much like what the old pictures of Terran showed the land was like before the nation was engulfed in its many civil wars. By the time both of us were born, the land was practically one large no man's land, with only tiny pockets of what the land once was. That combined with the unrestricted expansions into nearby uninhabited islands for many years meant that by the time laws were placed to restrict expansion and preserve Terran’s multiple ecosystems, the land was almost on the brink of no return. Now while a few of my formative years were in one of the pockets of good land left, it didn’t last long before we were relocated to one of the crowded and polluted cities so the government could use the land to help build up crops, so I didn’t get many chances to create lasting memories of the “old Terran”.

But that’s beside the point, we were here on a mission after all. Now the “Taurian” was actually harder to find then we thought, which was ever so slightly frustrating when you find out the thing is fifteen feet tall, over twenty tons, and is as stealthy as a drunk elephant in Fort Knox. But when we did eventually find it, it was fittingly on the island of Crete, but that’s where the similarities to the mythological monster end. This abomination was officially classified out of the five general types of abominations as an Incuben, which are also known as mind terrors. Incuben got that nickname for having a surprisingly deep understanding of psychological warfare, which allowed them to use the abominations universal trait of body manipulation to turn themselves into one's deepest and darkest fears. Although this Incuben must have been a lesser Incuben as it was preying upon a more surface fear than a deep one, because who the hell wouldn’t run like hell from a giant flesh-eating bull man hybrid?! Yet despite that, this one was one of the few abominations I still have vivid memories fighting to this day, which says a lot when most abominations I fight leave my memory as soon as I kill them. But it wasn’t because the Taurian or the fight was memorable in any way, but because of what Veronica said to me beforehand that would soon be engrained into the back of my mind since then.

I can still remember sitting on the roof of one of the long-abandoned ruins that Crete held on the night we finally found the Taurian. The thing had just killed another group of civilians nearby and by using government-owned tracking technology, we managed to track the beast down to these ruins in Crete. We could have just rushed the Taurian right there and then, but Veronica convinced me that rushing into a fight with a beast like that would be asinine, so we were instead going to wait for it to leave the ruins and ambush it. I looked down the scope of my semi-automatic Terran rifle, impatiently waiting for the abomination to show it’s head. My rifle, like the rest of my weapons, had the insignia of my esper painted across its barrel, even though there was no tactical advantage in doing so. But I suppose as long as it doesn’t affect the Tore battery the gun uses to fire highly concentrated bolts of energy or the noise dampener that makes the gun virtually unhearable in battle, we can put whatever we want on them.

“Have patience Tamer. The last thing we need is you getting antsy before a fight.” Veronica pointed out, her voice filled with so much life and energy. She was crouched behind a marble pillar bellow me, her armor doing little to blend in with the marble, but since she was a Raigor, (Ray-Goar), she didn’t design her armor with the intention of blending in.

Now all Purifiers are classified into one of three “classes” when they gain their espers true power. They can become either a Tecly (Tech-Lee), who are more gadget-heavy but not optimal in full-out combat, a Burcin (Burr-Kin), who are best built for starting and ending fights, or a Terrgor (Tear-Goar), who are meant for longer engagements and heavy hitting attacks. But it should be noted that each class has two “subclasses” that each individual Purifier can choose to cater their fighting style towards. For example, I was classified as a Burcin, but I chose to lean towards its first subclass, the Blikin (Bull-Lie-Kin), which favors precise attacks and quick reflexes over all else. Now since Veronica was a Terrgor, she chose the Raigor subclass, which heavily favored close combat and an overall offensive fighting style.

To ensure each Purifier would have to choose their subclass carefully, the Terran government forced all Purifiers to design their own individual armor and weapons. This was mainly because each class and subclass had a major role in a squad that needed to be filled, so each Purifier would have to be dedicated to their role or else the squad dynamic would crumble. That didn’t bother Veronica one bit though, who designed her armor and weapons with unbelievable proficiency. This probably showed itself the most by looking at her Terran Shotgun, which was built with a first of its kind automatic interchangeable barrel that allowed the gun to switch between having two shotgun barrels or a singular gauss cannon barrel with just the press of a button near the trigger. She had further given it several personal attachments like a larger Tore battery and an attachable mini flamethrower that was meant to disperse hoards or burn down abomination nests with ease. She used that amazing imagination and creativity to help me design my armor and weapons, mainly giving my armor some much-needed changes, making my spear collapsable, and optimizing my rifles Tore battery so I wouldn’t need to let it cool down after every shot. That same brilliant mind also tended to save my behind in more than a few times. She mostly saved me from physical harm but on that one night in Greece, she saved me mentally.

I took a deep breath as I remembered to ask her a question I had been meaning to ask her for a while. “Hey HeartBreaker, before I forget I wanted to ask you something.”

“Shoot. But please not literally, we can’t afford another “Italy” incident.”

“Why are we even doing this?” I asked as I adjusted the zoom on my scope.

“Do what?”

“Well ever since the breach four years ago, our new orders as Purifiers were to stop any abomination threat across the globe right?”

I saw Veronica lean her head around the pillar, looking at the cave that was in front of her where the Taurian had entered, before answering. “Correct. “Stop the threats and protect the rest of Earths inhabitants.”. Where are you going with this?”

“And before then, our previous orders were to just keep the abomination threat down on Terran until those American idiots crashed their hunk of metal into that underwater hive, correct?”

“Right...where are you going with this?”.

“You’re not getting it! Why are we cleaning up THEIR mess? Especially when we have to fight through some of them to kill one basic abomination sometimes?!”.

“Because if we don’t, the abominations would overrun the rest of the planet. We’re the only ones who can put down an abomination for good. ”

I took my eye off the scope as I responded. “That’s a lie and you know it. We’re the only ones who can EASILY put down an abomination, but those firecrackers their military calls “firearms” can kill them too. I mean wasn’t it enough that we were risking our lives for our people, who actually knew we existed? Why must we now have to save the lives of outsiders who either will never know we exist or straight up try to kill us for doing our jobs?! I’m not saying what we’re doing is a bad thing, but why are WE doing it when by all accounts it’s not our job?”.

Veronica stayed quiet for a straight minute before she responded, thankfully with the Taurian never showing up during all of this. “How long have you been thinking about this?”

I took a moment before answering her, careful as I collected my words. “Ever since I got out of the E.R after my “chat” with Frostbite last year. It was usually hidden in the back of my mind during the day, but at night it would show up in the forefronts of my conscious.”

I heard Veronica sigh over the comm before she responded. “I wish you had told me about this sooner Cole. You know you’re supposed to come to me with these issues beforehand. But I suppose better late than never. Do you remember the very first line of the vow we took when we became Purifiers?”

“Of course. “As a Purifier, I vow to use my body as both the sword and shield to defend the innocent against the threats not meant to be.”.”

“Exactly. “Defend the innocent”. When we took that vow, we chose to be the ones to protect the innocent from the abomination menace, not just the people of Terran. The people who made it back then may have been unaware that there were others outside of Terran, but that isn’t an excuse now that WE shouldn’t protect them just because they aren’t Terran themselves.”

“Ninty percent of what gen two Purifiers are left would disagree with you on that.”. Sadly the majority of Terrans became very xenophobic towards any outsiders after their less than stellar first impressions. Most either considered the rest of humanity as inferior to them or as threats that needed to be destroyed. I’m not going to lie and say that I slightly agreed back with the latter sentiment back then since their first interaction with us involved one of them trying to shoot me in the head, but I’ve since then grown out of that mindset.

“Well we’re not them, we know that what we’re doing is right. As long as we keep doing this, these people will be safe from harm.”

“But what about all the times' innocent lives were injured during our fights with cartels and gangs? Aren’t we just putting them in danger when we do that?”.

“I think those people would rather have a couple broken bones than be dead.”.

“Tell that to the guy who was flung through that one building in New Jersey and broke almost every bone in his body.”.

“He got better! Anyways, my point is it shouldn’t matter where we are or who we’re saving, we still have an obligation to do our job.” Just then a loud roar echoed from the cave, catching both of our attention. ”How about we finish our talk once we deal with the Taurian?! Agreed?!”

“Agreed” I responded as I put my eye back in the scope, the end of my gun glowing a faint blue light. As the beast got closer, each loud footstep it made got louder and louder, which makes you wonder how it eluded us for so long. After a couple of seconds, I could see the red outline of the beast at the mouth of the cave thanks to my helmet, giving me an easy target to hit.

“I have visual. Permission to engage?” I asked, fully knowing the answer but I still had to follow protocol.

“Permission granted. Light it up.”.

And with that order, I aimed the scope directly at where its head was, wrapped my finger around the trigger, and pulled.

Sapphire Dazzle was sat next to the unconscious body of Signal Flare, his wounds thankfully hidden from view under the sheet. Ever since her talk with Pinkie Pie yesterday, Sapphire’s mind was almost completely dominated by thoughts of the white stallion, even during important moments like when Twilight found out how to stop Sombra permanently! By that point, she theorized that perhaps if she were to check on Signal Flare, the constant onslaught in her head would stop and she could actually get back to helping her sister save this crystal city that was called an empire for some reason. Her theory proved correct as when she sat down next to his body in the medical room, her mind immediately lost almost all its thoughts about him. It would have been a relief to her, but a new problem rose to replace the last problem, she couldn’t leave the seat. Now her body wasn’t stuck to the seat thankfully, but the moment she tried to get up her mind immediately went back to being ravaged by thoughts of Signal, which meant she was effectively being held hostage by her own brain to stay next to him. It didn’t help that whenever a pony passed her, they would look at her with curious expressions ranging from slightly perplexed to incredibly confused. “What is wrong with me?” She asked herself as she looked over Signal’s body, “Did somepony spike my drink with love poison when I wasn’t looking? Because that’s the only reason I can think of to explain this!”.

Signal’s snow white fur contrasted with the lime green bed sheets, which only further highlighted the dried blood and filth that covered his fur. The medics had to cut off the belt that held his wings against his body while operating, so she was able to see just how large in scale the wings were compared to his body. Even while under the sheets, at least a quarter of his wingspan was showing, leaving her to question what had to happen for his wings to grow so big. But that was a minor thought in her mind as the main question on her mind was why he was the one in the medical bed next to her. He didn’t have to jump in the way of the spikes to save Twilight, it would have been so easy for him to prioritize his own life over hers but he didn’t. Perhaps that was why Sapphire couldn’t stop thinking about him, Twilight would have been a lifeless corpse if he hadn’t taken the blow for her. Sapphire found herself unintentionally placing her hoof by his side, but she didn’t bother to move her hoof away from him.

“Who would be so willing to throw themselves into danger like that for a friend? Only a few ponies would only do something like that for family, so why did he do that for a friend?”. Sapphire knew the sad truth that for a nation that preached friendship and love, only a small percentage of the population actually took that philosophy seriously. Most ponies would throw their “friends” under the carriage if it meant saving their own flanks, so she found it odd that Signal would practically throw his own life away for his sister, who was just a friend to him. “Unless they’re more than just friends...in which case...that means their-EW! NO! Get those thoughts out of your head Sapphire! It’s NOTHING like that! He’s just a friend! a FRIEN-”. Sapphire found her sudden outburst was interrupted when her eyes fell upon a very much conscious and very much confused looking Signal Flare staring back at her. She was so lost in her own thoughts that the unicorn failed to notice Signal waking up in a confused panic, only stopping when she made her sudden outburst.

“Do you mind?! I’m trying to have my own freak out here and your freak out is getting in the way of my freak out!” He casually said, failing to notice the blush that covered Sapphire face. As he proceeded to continue to panic like a fool, Sapphire could only sit there on the chair, her normally calm and collected brain failing to process what had just happened. “I...I...I give up...” she mumbled before falling to the ground in a comical fashion, the last thing she saw being the still panicking Signal falling off of his bed like an idiot on top of her before her brain gave out to the contained chaos in the room.

Hooves and wings and horns oh my!

Author's Note

So I'm relatively new to this fandom, and while I do have an understanding of the MLP universe, I would appreciate it if people would help find possible lore errors in these chapters so I can write more lore friendly stories!

Hooves and wings and horns oh my!

To say my life was an eventful one would be a massive understatement. My job was to essentially travel around the world and slay creatures straight out of someone's nightmares after all! So when command told me that a signal they were tracking for a while was discovered to be in a quaint tiny community in the USA, I naturally jumped at the opportunity for what would basically be a vacation.

Wait! Where are my manners? The names Cole Marksen, Class 5-B purifier, codename "Tamer". My home is an island nation known as Terran that was only recently discovered by the outside world, but thanks to an accident they made while finding us, monsters we called "abominations" were unleashed onto the world and now it's up to me and a special group of others to find and eliminate any abomination that rears it's ugly head up in the world.

Now as you can understand traveling around the world and going on crazy adventures to kill creatures that look like they came straight from the depths of hell can lead to a lot of unnecessary stress, so being able to go to a town for a couple of weeks to find some odd energy signal with my partner was a dream come true.

Yes, I have a partner, and she's also my wife. Her name was Veronica Marksen, the love of my life. She had ocean blue eyes and brown hair like silk. Her voice was like that of an angel, which was great since she was a talented singer. She was a calm and collected kind of gal, my literal opposite.

Where I was quick to react and was stubborn, she was slow to judge and was understanding. I know they say "opposites attract", but we were so different that people joked that we were like lions and hyenas. But despite all that, we fell for each other and even got married in a battleship in the Pacific Ocean near Japan. Our honeymoon consisted of us slaughtering a den of killer shark like abominations.

But I'm getting off track. Right now Veronica and I were just being dropped off at a bakery called "Sugar Cube Corner". We were both wearing black leather jackets with hoodies and blue pants. Clearly to the higher ups "incognito" meant "Look at suspicious as possible!". I mean honestly, we look like we're about to mug someone! But every time we go sneaky deaky, we never get even a passing glance! At least after we find the energy we can wear more traditional clothing, but it still bugged me none the less.

"Ok Cole, you go check out...."Canterlot High School", what with all the weird names lately.... and see if any students might possibly know anything that could help us!" Veronica ordered in a stern voice.

"Yeah, because asking high schoolers if they've seen anything suspicious isn't suspicious AT ALL!" I retorted, trying to sound as sarcastic as possible.

"Yesh! what's with the lip Cole?" She asked, in both a confused and offended manner.

"Just kinda sick and tired of people being idiots and not for ONCE thinking of us as suspicious!" I explained, my voice now more obviously agitated, "Can we just find this energy and start our little vacation?"

"Isn't that a good thing?" She asked, “Don't we want to be inconspicuous? And you know we can't rush an assignment so you can go relax for a week!".

I gave her a heavy sigh. "Yes we do, but it gets SO boring when not one person even asks, "Who are you?".".

Now Terrans as a group were mostly agnostic. We didn't believe in gods, karma, luck, or even the soul. But I swear, some god was watching us when I said that, because not a second after saying that, I was sent butt first falling on the ground from a high pitched voice.

"HELLO!!!!! Are you two new here? Who are you two?" the cheery voice asked, I swore her voice was making my ears ring.

I quickly got back up from the ground, rubbing my butt from the pain. I could tell that Veronica was trying her best from laughing at my misfortune. Hey, I never said Veronica had a sense of humor, but it was rare to hear her laugh. Another way we were practically opposites I guess.

I turned around to confront the voice, only to be taken aback when I saw the voice was coming from a girl with literal pink skin and hair that looked more like cotton candy than actual hair. Her dress was all over the place, with bright vibrant colors covering every bit of the dress.

"Dear Tore....why is she so pink?. Umm.....yes indeed we are new. We just came here to...uh....sightsee!"

I felt Veronica bump me in the shoulder with her elbow, a smile on her face.

"Smooth. Indeed we are new. In fact, we're were even considering moving here. Perhaps settle down even! We've been planning on getting a kid, so my husband here was wanting to look at schools. We do want to make sure our child gets only the best education after all!" She replied, sounding more like a common housewife than the calm and collected girl she normally was.

The pink girl's eyes quite literally grew almost twice their normal size as she let out a loud gasp of joy. She quickly grabbed my hand with the tightest grip I had ever felt.

"OH MY GOSH! THIS IS AMAZING! OH, BY THE WAY, MY NAME IS PINKIE PIE! IT'S SO NICE TO MEET YOU! I KNOW YOU'LL JUST LOVE IT HERE!" She exclaimed her voice more like that of a megaphone. Before I could even attempt to free myself from her grip, she was dragging me off away from Veronica, who was just laughing at my predicament. I don't know how but she was dragging me around like I didn't weigh anything, which was jarring, to say the least. The entire time she was dragging me Pinkie Pie was just going on and on about the perks of PonyVille and all its residents, not noticing the fact that I was terrified right now that this teenage girl was dragging me around her town like I was some kind of doll.

As she dragged me around, we passed by two equally odd-looking teenagers. One was light blue and had a literal rainbow-dyed hair, and the other was orange with a cowboy hat on.

"I can't believe you! How could you say that behind my back?! " The blue girl yelled, they must have been in some kind of argument.

"Me? I can't believe y'all would say something like that behind my back! I thought you and Rarity were my pals!"

I noticed that Pinkie Pie was looking at the pair of girls with distraught, she looked liked she was about to cry.

"You know those two? What are they arguing about?" I asked, even though it was none of my business.

She looked at me with a big smile, but it was obviously forced.

"Oh, those are Rainbow Dash and Applejack! We're just going through a rough patch, but I know we'll stick together! We're BFF's after all!"

She gave a half-hearted chuckle before continuing to drag me around town. I started to notice that everyone in this town seemed to be similar to the first three people I've seen here in how they all had odd skin colors. One black haired girl was completely grey and another had blue highlights in her hair and had a literal snow white skin color.

"Perhaps some worm abomination had infected what they were drinking or eating and this was the side effects. No that couldn't be it, the abominations have only recently spread around the world, and I think these people would notice if they started turning into the colors of the rainbow." I pondered to myself, "Whatever the case, I should most likely report this to HQ asap."

After what felt like forever, she finally stopped at a large school that stood behind a white statue of a horse. The school reminded me of a medieval castle, or maybe that was just because the name sounded like a medieval one.

"And here we are!" Pinkie cheered, "Canterlot High School!"

She finally let go of my hand, allowing me to massage it. I was sure that her grip stopped the blood from running through my hand because it felt numb and unresponsive upon her releasing it.

"I really hope you plan on staying here! This is such a peaceful little town and it would be so super duper awesome if you stayed!" Pinkie explained, "Anyhow it was nice meeting you Mr...uh....wow all this time and I never got your name! Silly me!"

"It's...uh... Alex Terack and it was nice meeting you too Pinkie Pie" I lied, I honestly didn't want her knowing me on a first name basis, and "nice" wasn't a word I would use to describe meeting her, I would most likely use "chaotic" or "terrifying".

"Have a nice day!" She exclaimed, skipping away like she had no care in the world.

"Note to self, buy taser gun next time for the hyper-energetic pink girl," I thought to myself as I looked at my watch.

The watch itself appeared to be a simple silver wrist watch, but by twisting the body of the watch clockwise, it showed a tiny radar that was meant to pinpoint the source of the strange energy. Luckily enough, it showed that I was nearby where the energy popped up.

"Now what are the chances?" I thought out loud as I started walking over to where the radar indicated the source was. To my surprise, the radar said that the source was the statue of the horse. I looked down at the base of the statue to see a marble square outline. It reminded me of a mirror you would see in fantasy stories, but it also looked like the perfect spot to hide a power source. I bent down and put my hand on the wall, trying to find any possible signs that my theory was correct. The first three walls were normal, nothing off with them. But the fourth wall, the one facing the school, I felt something. The wall was hot, like way hotter than the other three, despite not facing the sun.

"Bingo" I cheered in my head.

I put both of my hands on the wall, pressing harder to see if there was a trigger plate. I was about to give up and try to find another way to find the source when yet again a new voice surprised me.

"What did YOU do?! Stand back NOW!" A more mature voiced demanded.

Now after the "Pinkie Pie" incident, my paranoia was about as big as a whale. I turned around, activating my esper and made it surround me, creating a red glowing outline for me. My back was against the wall when suddenly I felt myself start to sink into the wall. I only saw the origin of the voice for a split second, it was some bright yellow skinned girl with hair that looked more like bacon. She was wearing a leather jacket and blue pants, the image of a stereotypical bully. But I didn't get that much time to focus on her because I WAS FALLING TO THE WALL! The last thing I saw before being completely submerged with the wall was my dragon Esper, Drake, being ripped out of my body before all I saw was bright colors.

Back in ancient times, Terrans would eat an herb that would send them into an illusionary world they believed to be the kingdom of the gods. Those stories of that world had nothing on what I saw in this place. It was literally indescribable, unlike anything I had ever seen in my life as a purifier. I felt my body expand and collapse in this world, which was strange to feel. It lasted for what felt like forever until I was overtaken by white light.

Everything was blurry at first, my entire body felt numb. It took a couple of seconds for my eyesight to adjust to my surroundings. I was in a room adorned with pictures and display cases of pots, everything was either shiny or surrounded by display lights from the looks of it. The room itself was purple and dark blue, making everything stand out in the room.

"Ugh.....what happened?" I groaned, my other senses starting to come back to me.

Somehow my entire body felt...off somehow. I tried to move my right arm to my forehead to rub it, but I just felt my arms jerk away from me. I tried again only to have it land in front of my face. To my horror, my hand was gone and a stubby hoof took its place. I then tried to move my other arm, only to feel my left leg kick away from me.

"Oh crap oh crap oh crap! What happened to me!" I screamed, jerking my body forward. "Wait! Ok, Cole, you won't get anything done if you panic! You've been in worse situations than this!" I continued to think.

Realizing that I needed to prioritize figuring out my current situation was more important than freaking out. I focused on standing up, only to have all four of my limbs flail around. Now a regular person would have just given up by now, but not me! I had a plan so crazy, it JUST.MIGHT.WORK!

I took a deep breath and started to imagine my human body. I then imagined that my human body went on all fours, and started to walk, or I guess crawl, away. I then felt my body start to copy what I was imagining, and I managed to get up. It surprisingly worked....but barely. I managed to get off the ground, but my legs were wobbly, it honestly felt like my legs were about to give way. I then had to focus on walking, taking careful tiny steps forward. I imagine that if anyone was looking at this, it would look like a drunk...whatever I am... trying to walk. I swayed from side to side, trying not to fall down. At last, I managed to get to the nearby door, which honestly looked more like a classic medieval door, stopping only to realize that something was rubbing against my back. Using all my mental and physical strength, I turned my head to see A PAIR OF MASSIVE WINGS ON ME! Now as a military man who has fought countless monsters, there was only one thing I could do.

"GAHHHHHH!!!!!!! WHAT IN THE NAME OF TORE ARE THESE WINGS DOING ON ME!" I screamed, falling down against the door, forcing it to open for me. I fell face first on the floor, the panic of having giant wings caused my mind to go into panic mode. I rolled against the floor, my limbs flailing as I tried in vain to calm down. After several seconds, I finally managed to calm down, but just barely and got back on my feet, or hooves I guess.

Looking around I noticed how decorative the hallway I was in was. Bright colors decorated the entire hallway, almost to the point of hurting my eyes, and the windows were just as fancy looking. But I didn't have much time to admire the surroundings as near the end of the corridor, I saw what appeared to be two ponies clad in golden armor.

"Hey! Civilians aren't allowed in here! Come over here!" One of them bellowed.

Now the fact alone that they talked was already shocking enough to want to make me run, but add that to the fact that they want to get me, and it boils into a perfect reason for me to run.

Luckily for me, they were far away from me, which gave me a nice headstart. I ran, or wobbled I guess for this situation, away from them, heading straight down the hall.

"Hey! HALT IN THE NAME OF CELESTIA!" One of the guards bellowed, and then the sound of clopping filled the hallway, which was my cue to speed up.

I stumbled down the hallway, the sound of more clopping indicated that more guards were summoned to get me, which only made me want to go faster. When I felt my new body start to strain, I knew I had to hide or bunker down until I regained my strength, so I ran into the nearest room and slammed the doors behind me. I looked around frantically until I saw a nearby dresser, and using all of my remaining strength, I pushed the dresser in front of the door with my head. And it was just in the nick of time too, because not one second after barricading the door, slamming was heard against the door along with the guards ordering me to open up.

I was so exhausted from the run that I fell down against the dresser, heavily panting as I took in my surroundings. The room was just as brightly colored as the hallway, and the bed looked like it was meant for royalty. There was an open window across the room, showing a bright blue sky with little clouds.

I didn't notice, but I was instinctively raising my right arm, the gesture I would use to summon Drake, but I quickly lowered it as I remembered that Drake was forced out of me when I was...sucked into this world.

"Drake...wait, if he's not here...then...oh no..." I said in between breaths.

In the rare case of if an esper is forcefully removed from its original owner, the esper will shrink and become defenseless unless it bonds with its original owner or a new human comes along and bonds with it. And it just so happens that Miss Bacon for hair was the closest human to me when Drake was separated from me. If she even touches Drake for one second, the two shall bond and she'll become Drakes new owner. Like Tore could I let that happen!

I tried to get up but my body was too tired to move, so I just sat there, trying to take in my current situation. Upon further inspection of my body, I noticed that I had fur, and it was as white as snow like that one girl with weird glasses and massive headphones I saw in Ponyville. I also noticed that I had a tail like a horse, it's hair was as red as crimson, and it moved every now and then in random directions.

"What the Tore happened to me?" I asked myself, "And how will I explain this to Veronica?"

For a couple of minutes, the banging on the door stopped. That made me foolishly believe that the guards gave up on catching me. But that idea was broken when several voices came from the door.

"Now um...whoever you are, please come out. We just want to talk. This doesn't need to end in violence." The first voice requested. It was definitely female, with a light yet smooth voice.

"Speak for yourself! I've been itching for some more excitement! Besides, he's probably a changeling spy! It must have run away before we kicked Chrysalis's flank!" A second voice barked back. It sounded exactly like that blue-skinned girl with the rainbow hair in Ponyville, but I didn't have time to ponder on that.

"After hearing that, "not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin" whoever you people...pony...things are!" I retorted, pressing extra hard against the barricade.

"UGH! You see what ya did Dash?" A third voice chastised. Yet again another female, but this one had the same voice as the orange-skinned girl who was arguing with the blue-skinned girl. Rainbow Dash and AppleJack if I remember correctly. "Sorry Twi, but I'm fraid that we got to do things the hard way now" it apologized.

Before I could say anything else, the door was busted clean off, along with me and the barricade. I remember hearing the third voice make some grunting noise right as the door was busted off. I was sent flying across the room, right towards the window, but before I even had time to panic about being sent flying out from what I presumed was a tall building, my head landed cleanly against the top of the window, knocking my head first against the floor.

"THAT.WAS.AWESOME!!!" exclaimed the one who sounded like Rainbow Dash, and that was the last thing I remember hearing before passing out from all the blunt force trauma to my head.