Doomed Planet. Desperate Unicorns.
His heart steeled against the sounds of rising panic in the dark outside their home, Trot-Or placed his hooves in those of his wife, his eyes meeting hers for what he feared was the last time.
“Are you sure, Trot-Or?” she asked him, clearly fighting back tears.
“We owe it to our child, Mare-E“ he said, so softly it was barely audible. “If Nightmare Moon has won, and if our child is to have any future at all, it can't be here.” He swallowed, hard, and struggled to continue. “It can't be... with us.”
His wife touched his cheek, and smiled gently. “If our last act together is to save our child, is that really such a bad thing, my love?”
Silently, they both closed their eyes and concentrated. Their horns shone with light, one blue, one yellow, and together wrapped a soft green glow around their son. The glow became swiftly more brilliant until it dazzled their eyes even beneath closed lids.
The green glow suddenly vanished, the room again falling into darkness as they collapsed against each other, exhausted and heartbroken.
A few minutes later, in Canterlot, Princess Celestia staggered, bleary-eyed, out the door onto her balcony. A handkerchief floated nearby, at the ready. “I have a head cold, people,” she softly complained to no one in particular. “So I slept in an extra hour. The sun will still come up, just a bit later.” She blew her nose, brought the sun up (rather more abruptly than usual), and then leaned over the balcony railing to gaze upon her subjects in the city below.
They'd stopped panicking, mostly, and now most stood sheepishly trying to avoid each other's gazes. She sneezed, and then shuffled off back to bed, chiding her people, though without real rancor and much too softly for them to hear in any case. “Honestly! First time I'm late in seven hundred years. It's not the end of the world, people!”
Kindly Couple.
A quiet, middle-aged, and perfectly human couple drove a beat-up pickup truck down a dark and lonely country road. They traveled mostly in silence, for as much as they enjoyed each other's company, they may have felt that everything that needed saying had already been said, years ago. That there was nothing really new under the sun, and that was fine, really.
This, of course, is like wearing a “Kick Me!” sign that only Fate can see.
Martha Kent's exclamation of “Merciful Heavens!” accompanied the screech of tires as Jonathon slammed on the brakes. It was a reaction of surprise, far short of the sudden, blinding green glow at the side of the road. Silently, he put the truck back into gear and slowly drove to where they'd seen the unexpected display.
As Jonathon reached to open the door, he felt Martha squeezing his hand. He squeezed back, but said, “I have to check,Martha. Could be a plane down.” He squeezed back. “I'll be careful.”
He walked through he tall grass of a field gone fallow to where he thought the mysterious glow had been, and despite the full moon he would have missed it if not for the sound. “It's a horse, Martha. Just a weanling too, I'd say. Must've been hit by that meteor. Or whatever it was.”
He heard the other door shut as she came out to him. “Is it badly hurt?”
“No, not at all as far as I can tell. Wait... A bit of a lump on the head, right between the eyes.” The dazed foal looked up at him, and he smiled reassuringly down at it. “It.. Er, he, rather, is awake, though.”
The foal then did something more unexpected than any display of light, however mysterious or bright, ever could have. He began to cry.
Martha and Jonathon Kent simply stared at each other, wordless again.
Several years later, on a farm, as the sun rose...
“Clark? “ Jonathan asked, just outside Clark's room.
“Already up, Pa,” came the answer from the kitchen. “Eating some of Ma's oatcakes. I'll need a lot of energy plowing today,”
Jonathon came in, and shook his head, “Naw. We'll leave the harness and plow alone today, son. It's your sixteenth birthday, more or less, and it's time we told you something.”
Clark looked at him. “I'm adopted, aren't I?” His long nose sunk to his chest. “I knew it.”
His father nodded. “You guessed?”
“I've suspected for a while. I mean, you and Ma have red hair, and I'm just a light brown.”
This gave Jonathon pause. “It wasn't the hooves? The tail? The long ears? The horn?”
“Well, Pa, everybody's different.”
Jonathon blinked and, in lieu of a response, dropped a small book in front of his son. “We found this next to you the day we found you, Clark. It might answer a lot of questions that you, um, apparently don't have after all.” He patted Clark on the shoulder and left his son to his reading.
After Clark finished with his oatcakes (he didn't want to get any syrup on the book), he opened the pamphlet, the alien language somehow readable.
“My dearest Kant-Or,
“You may have realized now that you're different from those around you. You may look like one of them – we found a world with ponies for you, to help you blend in. But you are not one of them.
“You were sent from your native world of Equestria, a magnificent civilization of indescribable wonder, magic, and baked goods.
“By concentrating through your horn, you can perform arcane feats totally alien to the world around you. Some may fear you for this. There's a helpful set of instructions in Appendix A.
“They can be a great people, Kant-Or. Well, maybe not great, honestly, but decent enough. I mean, you could do worse, and frankly that's all you can ask for from any people, really.
“For this, above all, for the ability not to be total flankheads absolutely all the time, I have given them you, my only son.”
Clark thought about this long and hard, and then, not quite as excitable as his biological father, helped himself to some more oatcakes.
A few years later, in that great metropolis, Metropolis...
The Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Planet didn't bother looking up from his desk as his door opened and someone strode in. No knock at the door first? Check. An early morning arrival? Check. The quick, heavy stride of someone with a serious mad on? Check.
“Hi, Lois. I guess you've heard, then?”
“Don't 'hi' me, Chief. Since when do I need a partner?”
Perry kept looking over the story he was reading, making an occasional pencil mark. “You don't. He does. His only experience is a paper in some farm town in Kansas. Show him the ropes.”
“He'll slow me down! I get paid to investigate and to write, not to babysit some yokel fresh off the farm.”
There was an embarrassed cough from the open door. “Speaking of which... I'm Clark Kent. You must be Lois?”
Lois turned, snorting a bit as she enjoyed his discomfiture. “You always so polite?”
“Yes,” he answered with a shrug.
“Then you have a lot to learn about being a reporter.”
“And you both have an assignment. Together. As partners,” Perry said, without heat but without an inch of room for argument. “Experimental plane, announced just an hour ago. Be at Brown Field in forty minutes.”
They were there in thirty-five minutes, with Lois trying to calm herself the entire drive. “Sorry, farm boy. I know this isn't your fault. Just don't get in my way, and I promise not to bite.” She turned to him just before getting out of the car, “Rule number one: keep your eyes open. It's amazing what people don't notice.” She looked more closely at him, and more thoughtfully. “Speaking of which – nice glasses,” she decided, and got out of the car.
The press pass got them into the herd of gathered reporters only a few minutes before, out on the runway, the little aircraft took the sky.
“What's so different about this plane,” one reporter asked. Lois started her tape recorder and started making notes.
The company rep answered, “It's powered by hydrogen. The engine exhaust is mostly water. If the hydrogen is made by renewable energy, then the whole thing is a lot more environmentally friendly than using kerosene or aviation gasoline.”
As Lois scribbled out more notes, another reporter was heard, “So water is the only exhaust?”
“No,“ allowed the rep smoothly, “There are some nitrous oxides formed as well, but in striving for a more environmentally responsible tomorrow, we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. One can't run technology on rainbows and good wishes, after all.”
Lois was distracted by a sudden gasp from the back of the crowd. She followed their gaze and saw the little airplane trailing smoke. “Clark, if you've got a camera phone on you, you've actually got a chance to be useful. Clark? Clark, so help me, if you've wandered to the little reporter's room...” She grabbed a camera from her purse, wanting at least a little exclusive footage for the Planet.
Another gasp, and when she turned around she saw a small equine figure in what looked like long underwear, glowing green, and soaring into the sky.
A few years earlier....
“You find out anything from that pamphlet, son?”
“Well, Pa, I can move things with my horn. On account of being a unicorn and all.”
“That's pretty nice, son,” Jonathon allowed, thinking of the whole world of possibilities this opened up. “You'll be able to make breakfast yourself now. Save Ma a bit of trouble.”
Clark looked a bit pensive for some reason. “Yep. Though I kind of wish I'd been a pegasus instead. The book said they can fly.” He smiled wistfully. “Must be a lot of fun.”
Jonathon, who was if nothing else a very practical man, paused in hitching him up. “So this levitashiokinesis or whatever they call it...”
“Magic,” supplied Clark with characteristic helpfulness
“Hrm. Couldn't you just magic yourself?”
Clark very nearly facepalmed, stopping himself short only because his hoof would leave a mark. “You know, Pa, I never thought of that.”
Back to the present...
Superpony looked over the plane as he grew nearer. One engine was on fire, and the wing, probably weakened by the heat, was already bent. The Pony of Power mentally reached out to the plane as he pulled alongside, willing it upwards, but knowing that even a small plane like this was far more massive than he could manage to keep aloft.
He tried to ignore the pilot's shocked expression in the window, pausing only for a quick wave, just before the wing bent radically upward and the plane snapped into a roll. Concentrating so hard he almost fell out of the sky himself, the little Equine of Enigma still couldn't keep the plane from plummeting earthward.
After a long fall, the aircraft plunged into the ground, erupting in a massive fireball. Lois kept her little camera going on the subject, submerging the horror she felt at the apparent loss of life. Despite herself, though, her heart took a tiny, unprofessional leap as both pony and pilot touched down unharmed a few seconds afterward.
“This man needs a doctor to look him over,” Superpony said to the crowd, “He got a mite banged up as I got him out of the plane, but I reckon he'll be all right.” Ignoring shouted questions, he took several running steps and threw himself into the sky, with Lois filming until he was out of sight.
“Clark!” she shouted in exasperation, looking around for her wandering partner.
“Yes, Lois?” asked the reporter behind her, checking that he had his glasses in place. This whole secret identity thing would've been a lot harder if he hadn't learned how to teleport.
“Where were you? You missed everything!”
“I was headed for the control tower, Lois. I figured you could handle everything here, and I might pick up something there.”
She sighed. “Not a terrible idea, but you should have let me know. Did you get anything?”
“Sorry, Lois. Security wouldn't let me in, press pass or not.”
“So this is why Perry stuck me with you, huh? Never mind. Let's get to the office, quick.”
Back at the office, they each went to type up their notes. Clark, as he looked from hooves to keyboard, began to realize there might be a bit of a problem. Moving his hat more tightly over his horn, he began moving his hooves over the keys, and hoped no one would notice a few glowing keys here and there.
At a desk, in a penthouse office, in a building on the other side of town, a very bald, very bad man gazed thoughtfully at a television. The insurance on the plane would still pay off, and, thanks to the unexpected survival of the pilot, the insurance rates for his test crew wouldn't go up quite so much. The effort would make him environmentalist friends and defenders, and the apparent failure would help alleviate any pressure to make actual progress.
It had all worked out for him better than he had expected, and that actually worried him. This was a man used to knowing all the details of anything that happened in his city, at least as long as there was money to be made, and all of the sudden he had a lot of unanswered questions.
And so the was introduced to its strange visitor, and in the coming days would get used to the sight of him in their skies. And the sound as well, because flying was indeed a lot of fun.
“Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
