"Ruins (from Latin ruina 'a collapse') are the remains of a civilization's architecture. The term refers to formerly intact structures that have fallen into a state of partial or total disrepair over time..."
-Wikipedia, "Ruins"

Shoji Mezo was unhappy.

This was to be expected, given his situation. He had been wrenched from his homeworld by pure happenstance, several of his classmates were injured, and this castle was almost entirely bereft of useful material. Bakugo and Ida, at least, had returned earlier with the location of a river, so they had a source of water. It would still take a while for them to build up a proper store of water, however. At the moment, Tokoyami and Dark Shadow were fashioning buckets out of stone, passing them to Todoroki for sterilization, and finally Bakugo and Ida would bring water to the castle one bucketful at a time.

Mezo, in the meantime, was continuing where he and Tokoyami had left off in exploring the castle they’d found themselves in. As far as he could tell, the building was old and hadn’t been maintained in a long time. Everything was made of stone or metal, aside from the tapestries, which were in surprisingly good condition. Clearly not in great condition, of course, given how easier they were to tear apart for material, but they hadn’t succumbed to the passage of time like whatever furniture the castle once held had.

Regardless of how unideal the situation was, though, Mezo did find the mystery of the castle—and of whoever once inhabited it—intriguing. Most of the tapestries depicted stylized horses (including quite a few mythical ones, particularly unicorns and pegasi), and he’d recently stumbled upon a hallway full of horse-like suits of armor. Beyond indicating that the intelligent beings that inhabited this planet were likely equine, it was also a boon for materials. They’d have to fashion molds out of stone, but depending on what metal the armor was made of, Mezo reasoned that Todoroki might be able to melt it down into proper buckets.

Eventually, Mezo stumbled upon a wide, open room with a large statue of a winged unicorn in the center. The walls were lined with shelves upon shelves of books, reaching from the floor all the way to the room’s high ceiling. There were platforms accessible only by flight or ladder, and in the center of it was a large table with surrounding chairs, strangely made of wood. It and the books must have been treated with whatever miracle substance kept the tapestries from decaying.

Curiously, Mezo reached over to one of the shelves and plucked a book off of it. Whatever language the aliens wrote in would, obviously, be unreadable to him, but he was still curious as to what their written language looked like. Upon glancing at the book’s title, however, he nearly dropped it in surprise.

Why was this written in Japanese?

Shoji’s discovery of the castle’s library, while fascinating, did get pushed to the side for a few hours in favor of the armor that he had found. As interested as everyone was in legible Japanese text existing on a foreign planet, an easier way to collect and boil water took priority. Thankfully, even though Todoroki Shoto couldn’t get his flames hot enough to actually melt the armor (as far as anyone could tell, they were made of either iron or steel, which had melting points too high for him) he could still get the armor pieces hot enough that Dark Shadow could reshape them. Tokoyami just had to retreat to a dark corner for a few minutes beforehand to let her get strong enough for it.

Of course, they couldn’t do that in the infirmary, so Shoto left Midoriya under Uraraka’s supervision while he heated armor pieces in what was probably once a throne room. Shoto didn’t exactly expect his friend to try and leave the infirmary, but given his track record he felt that it was better safe than sorry. Besides, he and Asu—Tsu, he reminded himself—both felt that he wouldn’t try anything with Uraraka watching him regardless, so she had also pitched in, helping Shoji with moving armor pieces to the throne room for them to reshape, since her arm had recovered enough for it.

That was all they did for a few hours, during which Shoto and Tokoyami held a long and winding conversation, albeit one with multiple-minute long breaks as they focused on work and the occasional interjection by Dark Shadow. Neither of the pair were particularly sociable, however, so other than one particular comment from Tokoyami that the layout of this castle was rather odd and shockingly indefensible, said conversation never really led anywhere.

Eventually, Bakugo and Ida returned with the first, more inefficient water-gathering method, and Shoto got to work boiling it as the two took the two new buckets and set out to gather more water (there was quite a bit of swearing on Bakugo’s part during the process, but Shoto had learned to tune him out sometime after the Sports Festival). They lost quite a bit of water during the boiling process since the stone lids they had fashioned earlier weren’t the best, but within a few hours they finally had proper drinking water.

Well, enough for everyone to have a few cups, at least. Upon their second return, Ida and Bakugo wound up drinking the most, which surprised no one given the physical exertion they had been through. With their water situation mostly sorted, the group finally acknowledged their grumbling stomachs. By that point, the Sun was beginning to set, though, so they agreed to hold off on figuring out what around them might be edible until the following day.

By now, most of the octet were asleep. Uraraka had opted to keep her vigil over Midoriya, who had been drifting in and out of consciousness for most of the day. At some point A-Tsu and Shoji had ventured outside to grab enough kindling and larger logs for a contained fire to keep warm through the night. Well, warmer than they had the night before—it seemed to be a similar temperature to early summer on Earth, so temperatures at night still dipped rather low.

Those two and Ida were asleep in a room adjacent to the infirmary, with Tokoyami choosing to slumber in the hall while using a collection of tapestries as a mattress. Bakugo was taking the first watch, and Shoto could hear an explosion pop every few minutes from a few halls over. He wasn’t quite sure if it was Bakugo actually seeing something or if it was just a way to keep himself focused, but he never called for backup or tried to wake anyone, so Shoto let it be.

Shoto himself, finding himself unable to sleep, had decided to sate some of his curiosity and ventured to the library that Shoji had reportedly found. Whatever had preserved the books and table had done more than that, it seemed; on the table was a set of wax candles, perfectly preserved for however long this castle had been abandoned for. Picking a random book off of a shelf, Shoto lit the candles, sat down, and cracked it open.

Shoji had mentioned that the books had Japanese text on them, so Shoto was prepared for that, at least. What really surprised him, however, was the content of the book. It seemed absurd, even compared to the more outlandish conspiracy theories he liked to think up from time to time (though he had nearly managed to actually convince himself that Best Jeanist and Edgeshot were secretly dating despite approaching the topic in jest, so perhaps that had some merit regardless).

Despite seeming impossible, the book held his attention all the way to its final passages.

And so, our Princesses vanquished the tyrant King Sombra, banishing his spirit beneath the ice of the Frozen Wastes for eternity. His final ploy, however, was to place a curse upon the Crystal Empire, vanishing it and all of the Crystal Ponies living there. Four hundred thousand souls were lost to time, leaving nothing behind but the freezing winds of the north.

The tome purported itself to be a historical retelling of something called “The War of the North,” but some of the claims made in it appeared straight out of a fantasy novel. A once peaceful kingdom overthrown by a tyrant wielding dark magic? Two new-to-the-throne rulers venturing north to stop his invasion? An entire city wiped from the map as if it had never existed in the first place? For a moment, Shoto suspected this to actually be a work of fiction written in the style of a history book.

Before he could ponder it much, however, a flash of blue caught his attention. Crawling across the table and illuminated by the candlelight was something like a large spider—the largest that Shoto had ever seen, actually—but the creature was clearly not of Earth. It only had six blue eyes that seemed to almost glow, with one large one in the center of its head and five others forming half of a ring around it. On its abdomen was a perfect five-pointed star, which was the sort of geometric perfection that nature simply did not achieve on Earth. Though, Shoto considered, there were some cases of perfect symmetry on Earth. His quirk was an example, after all.

Watching the creature scuttle along, Shoto’s thought process turned to quirks in general when he came to a somewhat startling realization. His own quirk violated the law of conservation of energy, as did Yaoyorozu’s. He was fairly certain that Kaminari’s violated conservation of charge. Ida had metal growing out of his legs—nature just didn’t do that. Uraraka, in her own words, “made gravity [her] bitch,” and however [Zero Gravity] brought them to another planet, it certainly violated multiple physical laws in the process.

No one really knew how quirks worked, and sitting there in a library well after sunset while staring at an unnaturally perfect star on a spider, Shoto came to the conclusion that maybe magic really wasn’t so far fetched.

Princess Twilight Sparkle yawned as she trudged into the room that she had stayed in the previous night. Visiting Canterlot was always nice, especially since she had gotten to catch up with her parents the day prior, but after spending a year living in Ponyville, the sheer grandeur of Canterlot Palace felt like a bit much. Quietly, as to not wake Spike up, she chuckled to herself at how quickly times had changed. She had lived in Canterlot for two decades and spent many of her formative years learning in this very palace, but spending a year in a small town had changed her perspective enough for the halls to feel somewhat foreign.

Smiling, Twilight glanced at the sleeping form of her little brother as she started packing up. Spike always tried to stay up until dawn the morning of the Summer Sun Celebration, but so far the ten-year-old dragon had yet to succeed. This year he had stubbornly stayed up until three in the morning, but tiredness had eventually managed to take him. She herself had gone to bed quite early in anticipation for her role in the ceremony, but she’d still only gotten five hours of sleep. Twilight was planning on napping on the train back to Ponyville to make up for it.

Levitating her sleeping brother onto her back, she smiled as she wrapped the rest of their luggage in her telekinesis and trotted out of the door. Yes, even with the chaos that came with living in Ponyville, this year had been great, and Twilight was looking forward to the next. And she’d be starting it off tomorrow with a trek into the Everfree to look for old books at Princess Luna’s behest.

Dreams were something that Bakugo Katsuki rarely remembered. He had maintained a strict sleep schedule for years now, going to bed at eight in the evening and waking at four in the morning, and that sleep had been, as far as his waking mind was concerned, mostly dreamless. The last time he really remembered a dream was the night after he had been attacked by the sludge villain, the nightmarish feeling of suffocation plaguing him even into his sleep.

The fact that the incident had given him nightmares was a secret he would take to his grave.

So when he awoke for his second morning on another planet, the fact that he had more than fleeting memories of a dream set his mind on a low level of alert. It was possible that it was because of how crappy the situation was, especially with him having not eaten since before their training camp got attacked, but he still felt like something was wrong.

Pushing himself into a sitting position, he glared at his surroundings. It was still the same gray stone room that he’d fallen asleep in after Icy-hot had relieved him from guard duty. It was grating on the eyes and did nothing but increase his annoyance at the entire situation, but he stood and pushed open the door anyway, eager to find something edible in this forest.

He silently nodded at Birdbrain, who had the last lookout shift of the night, in greeting on his way to the door. Before Katsuki could reach the exterior door, though, a loud shout of surprise rang out. His and Birdbrain’s attentions snapped to where it came from instantly, and Katsuki thought he recognized Four Eyes’ voice.

Immediately, the two of them took off in the direction of the room Four Eyes had decided to sleep in, despite Katsuki’s glare at Birdbrain following him. As they moved, the sounds of the others waking up resonated through the halls. There was the clatter of something hitting the ground from the direction of the infirmary, accompanied by Round Face’s voice trailing down the hall. “Deku, stay in the bed!”

Katsuki scoffed. The nerd must’ve tried to force himself to get up after hearing Four Eyes. Even like this, Deku was still looking down on him, thinking that Katsuki couldn’t handle this himself. He didn’t need any of these extras’ help, least of all the nerd’s.

Katsuki and Birdbrain reached Four Eyes’ room at the same time as Arms and Frog Legs opened the door, some amount of panic in their eyes. Pushing past them, Katsuki glared into the room to see what the predicament was, his hands sparking in anticipation, but his eyes widened in surprise. He expected that some sort of alien monster had snuck in, or that Four Eyes had managed to somehow injure himself. Instead of anything sensical, though, Four Eyes was sitting there, staring at his legs in horror. His exhaust pipes weren’t sticking out of his calves anymore.

They were sticking out of his shins.

Katsuki said the first thing that came to mind.

“Four Eyes, what the heck?”

What followed was silence for multiple seconds, as it sank in for everyone, including Katsuki, that he had said something significantly…softer than expected. And all at once, it finally hit him why he had felt that something was wrong, why he had instinctually known that this darn day was going to be crappy.

“WHY THE HECK CAN’T I FREAKING SWEAR?”

“Ah, Twilight Sparkle, may I have a moment of your time? I have made a discovery, and not speaking to you about it may as well be a crime.”

Twilight Sparkle, who had just reached the doorstep of her home in the Golden Oaks LIbrary, painted a smile on her face and turned around to face Zecora. She wasn’t unhappy to see the zebra, of course—Zecora was a friend, after all—but at the moment Twilight wanted nothing more than to take a nap. She refused to let that show, however, and simply replied, “Ah, Zecora! It’s wonderful to see you.” After that token response, what Zecora had actually said finally processed, and Twilight refocused. “What discovery?”

“Yesterday, I came across two creatures in the depths of the Everfree,” Zecora said. “I am not aware of their origins, though I dared not venture close enough to properly see.”

Well, if Twilight was lucky, perhaps Zecora had stumbled upon the humans she would be looking for. “Could you describe them?”

“They stood on two legs,” Zecora began, and Twilight’s focus sharpened, “and appeared almost like hairless apes, aside from some hair atop their heads that stopped short of their napes.”

Twilight took a deep breath before coming to a decision. Gesturing for Zecora to follow her, she telekinetically opened the door and began moving, Spike still soundly asleep on her back. “I’ll need a nap after this, but I think we can sort out a trip into the Everfree for tomorrow before I go to bed.”

Deku was getting worse.

Her best friend was getting sicker and sicker and there was nothing Uraraka Ochako could do about it.

The day had already started off terribly enough, what with Deku aggravating his injuries further trying to help when they’d heard Ida scream. She’d managed to get him to calm down only by running over to see what was wrong and then assuring him that Ida was alright (which wasn’t exactly the term she’d want to use for his and Bakugo’s states, but they claimed that they were physically fine aside from the…modifications to Ida’s quirk). But with whatever had happened to the two of them, Ida had decided to quarantine himself, which left the eight of them unsure of how to proceed.

Tsu, Tokoyami, and Bakugo had left the castle in search of food, the latter having ignored Ida’s advice that he isolate himself as well, claiming that food took precedence. Todoroki had said something about a theory before spiriting himself away to the library, and Shoji was staying by the water they had collected yesterday just to make sure nothing messed with it.

Ochako herself fought against her growling stomach to keep focused on Deku, who seemed to be getting worse by the hour. At the moment, he was asleep, but it was a fitful thing. He was tossing and turning as he slept, his face a bit flushed from his fever and a sheen of sweat visible on his forehead. He’d agreed earlier for her to tie his arms down (securing the fabric with some heavy rocks that she’d moved into place with her quirk) to stop him from moving his arms too much in his sleep. Still, she had to hope that he wouldn’t unconsciously use his quirk; it seemed that nothing would be capable of really stopping [Superpower], up to and including Deku’s own bones.

Her stomach rumbled again, and Ochako sighed. She was extremely grateful for the water that Ida and Bakugo had collected, but she was really starting to feel the lack of food. How long had it been since she’d last eaten? Thirty, forty hours, maybe? She honestly wasn’t even sure how long she’d sat there, watching Deku’s state continue to deteriorate.

And no matter how much Deku had assured her that no one could have predicted it, there was still a voice whispering in her head that this was all her fault. That her mistake is what landed them here, that her mistake got Deku sick, that her mistake might eventually get him ki-

Ochako shook her head, trying to dispel the thought. Deku would get through this. He had to.

She wasn’t sure what she’d do if he didn’t.

Thankfully, something external did break her out of her thoughts. “Good afternoon, kero.”

Ochako jumped a bit as she turned, but smiled nonetheless. “Hi, Tsu,” she said, her voice betraying just how tired she was with the whole situation.

She perked up a bit upon the scent of fresh fruit hitting her nose, and Ochako could feel herself salivating as Tsu presented a plate (really a slab of stone but hey that was all the material they really had) of what looked like wild raspberries. “It took a bit for us to figure out if they were edible, kero, but Dark Shadow said they tasted identical to raspberries from Earth.”

Ochako tilted her head. “You had Dark Shadow check if they were poisonous?”

Tsu nodded. “According to Tokoyami, she can get sick from things that are poisonous to humans but it doesn’t actually hurt her, kero.”

With that said and her stomach growling loudly again, Ochako was quick to swipe the fruit and gobble it down. It didn’t do much to quell the gnawing hunger that had set in over the past day, but it helped a bit in the short term.

As Ochako swallowed, Tsu looked over towards Deku. “How’s he doing, kero?”

Ochako frowned. “Not good. His fever’s just gotten higher and the last time he was awake he said it felt like his right hand was starting to go numb.”

Quietly, Tsu walked over to Deku’s bedside. Carefully, she took a look at his right hand, which was still disfigured from his actions, both at the camp and when he mangled his hand earlier in the year. After a moment, while she still seemed concerned, she relaxed a bit. “I hope the numbness is just because of the break, kero.”

That statement ratcheted up Ochako’s concern in turn. “Tsu…?”

“Ochako,” Tsu said, looking up to her friend with a rather grim face, “I couldn’t find any dead tissue, but if the numbness doesn’t go away then we might really need to amputate his hand—it could be gangrenous.”

A twitch of her right hind hoof, a pinch in her left front ankle, a swivel of her right ear, and a swish of her tail. There was somepony new in town.

Then the sequence happened again.

And again.

And again.

For there to be a total of eight new ponies for her to greet, why this called for one heck of a party. Assuming the new ponies wanted it, of course. She didn’t want another Cranky situation on her hooves.

Still, it was getting rather late, and she hadn’t heard about any group of new ponies walking into town earlier today. She’d just have to set aside her plans for tomorrow—Dashie and Applejack would understand and find somepony else to referee their little bravery contest, hopefully—and track them down then. And then ask if they’d like a welcome party, of course.

But oh, she’d track them down.
Nopony escaped the notice of Pinkamena Diane Pie.

Author's Note

Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of how this chapter turned out, which probably contributed to the massive amount of writer's block I had while writing it. Eventually I realized that I just kinda had to get the chapter out if I ever wanted to actually move on and write the chapters that I actually was looking forward to writing when I started the fic, but since this is the last chapter before stuff actually starts to happen hopefully I find more inspiration to write going forward.

After all, up next, we finally have a first contact situation. It took longer to get there than I initially though it would, but we're almost there.