Lyra & The /k/ommandos

Chapter 4: Discovery

9:32AM - 30th of May - 2019

These woods, weren’t like the Everfree at all. The Everfree had a sense of foreboding surrounding it, as if around every corner you could be mauled to death by a manticore, frozen in place by a Cockatrice, or… something equally horrible. But here, in this strange section of the forest, everything that made the Everfree the way it was, seemed to just go away. It was surprisingly quite nice to Lyra in her opinion, the swampiness of the Everfree woods was very unenjoyable to anypony that stepped inside of it, minus the ponies that lived here already. Even though this made no logical sense to her, it was a nice change. It was worrying, and rather unsettling to say the least, but overall it was warm, windy, and pleasant, three things Lyra couldn’t say about the Everfree.

Speaking of which, was this really the Everfree anymore? Lyra slowly moved down the now much larger path through the foreign section of the forest. She looked at the types of trees, the plant life, the animals that scattered about around her, which ranged from squirrels to birds she had never seen before. Before long she came to the conclusion that, this wasn’t the Everfree. This was a completely different forest, truly uncharted territory. Uncharted to her, and hopefully everypony else. This made Lyra very excited, she may not have found humans, but she found some kind of gateway from the Everfree to, wherever this is.

Though, all of this discovery scared her quite a bit. She had lingering thoughts that maybe if she went further through this new forest, the way back home would close up. But despite these worrisome thoughts, she carried on further, placing her fate in this worlds hooves. Speaking of this world, Lyra was coming up to a clearing of some sort, as a break in the trees was ahead of her. The trees on her right side stopped for a moment, and as she approached it, the break in the woods gave her a perfect picture of where she really was.

As Lyra stood in this clearing, she looked off into the distance. The trees continued to break all the way off into the horizon. The horizon was a sweeping mountain scape, with mountain peaks that almost reached high enough to pierce the clouds, as the tippy top of those peaks had snow atop them. She would soon come to see that she wasn’t on the forest floor, but up high in a mountain range, as the trees sloped down the side of this immense incline and created a valley below her, all of which was untouched forestry. She saw rivers that stretched on for miles, and lakes the size of pony town.

Mysteriously though, large breaks in the trees could be seen as well, they snaked along in unnatural patterns that looked as if they sectioned off parts of the forest from others. They were broken up by these paths deliberately, and as she turned around, she could see that this clearing was part of one of these long breaks in the forest. Lyra thought about this for a moment, before the realization on what these were set in.

“These are fire lines. They’re made to purposefully break up a forest so that fires can’t spread during hot seasons, limiting how much the fire can destroy. Which means this forest, has had ponies through it before. Yet, I’ve never seen anything quite like this before. None of this geography makes any sense, this isn't Equestria. This is, t-this is…” Lyra began to stammer.

“This is confusing, am I in Equestria or not? Buck me...” She looked around and tried to think. Pondering she carried on down the path.

Lyra was thinking a mile a minute, she just couldn’t put two and two together. It just didn’t make sense. This place looked so much like Equestria in so many ways yet, the scale and size of it, was just too big. The wildlife was similar enough, it could pass as Equestrian, yet there are species here that she had never seen before. Idea after idea went through her mind, and all were just getting stuck. She had the sound of the woods keeping her company as she murmured and talked to herself, trying to piece together this truly perplexing reality she had stumbled into. That was of course, until she ran into a gate.

Lyra stopped for a moment and looked ahead, her eyes squinting, as if she had never seen a gate before. She trotted up to it and examined it all over, as it was the first sign of civilization thus far besides the fire breaks. It was in fact a simple metal gate blocking the path, surrounded by thick trees on either side that made moving past impossible, if you had a cart. The gate was locked shut by chains and a padlock, and on the other side of the gate, there was a diamond shaped sign. It was bright yellow with a black border and black lettering.

“No vehicles beyond this point. By order of the National Park Service,” Lyra read outloud. “What the buck is the National Park Service? I’ve never heard of that organization before,” She turned around and looked beyond the front of the gate, and the path seemed to round a sharp corner which opened into another clearing. She turned back and looked at this sign and shook her head, now thinking even more.

“Alright, now I know I’m not in equestria anymore, and what the hay is a vehicle?” While trying not to think too much about the sign and the gate, she pushed forward again.

She rounded the corner, and this time the clearing started on the left side of her. But it wasn’t another fire break, it was an open field. She kept walking until she was half way down the path that was connected with this field. This open area seemed to stretch back at least 500 yards, and was as wide as… well, it was wide, very wide. Lyra had nothing to compare it to. But, what really caught her eye was, somepony had gone out into this field and set up what looked like targets, that were made of steel, suspended by chains, and hung from metal rectangular arches that looked to have been driven into the ground. They were placed at various ranges too, some at 50 yards, some at 100 yards, and so on and so on. The only way she could range these targets was because, yet again somepony had placed wooden boards by these different ranged targets and spray painted the distances on them.

“I-is this a range? Like a bow range? If so why are the targets made of steel?” She moved up to the closest one of these circular targets and touched one. They really we’re made of steel, “The only thing this is gonna do is ruin the arrow tip. What would be the point of that?” She said to herself.

She moved back to the path, and was going to push further, until she heard something. Something that was approaching her, rather quickly. It sounded like the rolling of thunder... and music. It sounded like drums, and the strumming of an acoustic instrument, and it was getting louder, and it was coming up the path she was standing on. Her ears perked towards it and as she did, she heard voices, voices that sang along with the music…

“Here's the story of Rhodesia, a land both fair and great! On the Eleventh of November an Independent State!” And it wasn’t just a single voice, it was a whole chorus of masculine voices that all sung out together. These sounds of approaching song and thunder immediately forced lyra into panic mode. Quickly thinking, she turned tail and ran back up the path and hid in a bush, right before the road turned up to the gate. She peaked her eyes up over the shrubbery to see a magnificent sight.

Massive green and black machines on wheels came rolling down the road, they were loud and blaring that music into the woods around them. They were truly staggering in size, bigger than a cart by a long shot, and to top it all off, they seemed to be moving under their own power. Were these the vehicles that sign had mentioned? She just didn't know at the moment, but that didn't matter to her right now, because these machines were only the base of the cake she was eyeing up for, what did she see piloting and riding in these metal beasts, the icing on the cake?

“H-Humans…”

The voices she heard we’re in fact coming from these steel chariots, and riding on top and inside them we’re humans. They all looked different in shape, size, and complexity, and most of them, if not all of them wore different clothing. But all of them we're 100% real life, honest to Celestia, clear as day, humans. She had found them, she really truly had found humans, they weren’t a myth anymore, they were real, and they are right here in front of her for the whole world to see.

Only, she was the only one here to see them, but not for long.

Inside her bag, her day pack she had taken with her for this exploration, she brought along a camera, for exactly this reason, to capture and record the existence of these very beings. And as she watched those metal machines slow to a stop, she listened and watched the humans with glistening eyes.

This was her chance to prove everypony wrong...