Phantoms Of The Past

    Luna instinctively used her magic to pin the creature against the wall to keep it from harming any other pony in the room, but she was taken aback by the amount of fight the creature had left in it after sustaining the kind of injuries it did in the crash. She watched in shock as it broke the leather restraints that held it secure in the bed before grabbing the doctor by the neck and hurling him across the room, and she was starting to struggle keeping it subdued between the sheer amount of iron will it had and the fact that it was partially resistant to her magic.... It was almost like trying to grasp a ball that was covered in oil, for her magic kept sliding off the creature requiring her to concentrate harder and harder, until her sister used her Royal Voice to regain control of the situation. That made her lose focus, causing her spell to fail.

    “Enough!!!” Celestia ordered in a voice that left every ones ears ringing, before switching to a more modest tone. “Enough. We don’t need to result to any violence. We were just checking up on you, you had sustained some serious wounds when your vessel crash landed on our world.”

Celestia watched as the creature regained its posture after being forced against the wall by Luna’s magic. Even though it was about eye level with her, it was still was unsettling to her. Throughout her entire life she had seen other massive bipedal creatures like Minotaurs, but something else about this creature left her unnerved. It just stood there with a stoic expression on its face, and its sapphire blue eyes had a calculated look as it scanned the room. Celestia wondered if it could understand her, by the report her sister gave, the words on the ship were in their own language, but maybe the creature spoke another?

Celestia gave a step forward and asked. “Can you understand me?”

    Hunter’s ears were still ringing after the white alien horse thing raised its voice to an unimaginable level to call off its guards, and he turned to look at it when it seemed to directed a question at him, and by how feminine its voice sounded he could easily guess its gender.

Hunter stared at the alien noticing it too had a horn and wings and a semi transparent rainbow mane that seemed to flow. It stood about eye level with him, unlike the other creatures standing about the room with spears and swords half raised. They all either had a horn, wings or none at all, well, all but the midnight blue one. That one had the same features, but it was slightly shorter than its counterpart.

    “Hello? Can you understand anything I’m saying.” Celestia asked the creature again, but slower this time.

“Perhaps you’ve made it deaf, Sister.” Luna said with a slight grin on her face.

Hunter noticed the blue one called the white one sister, he figured it made some sense if both of them had the same features but no one else in the room did.

“Yes I can understand you and no I’m not deaf, but my ears are still ringing thanks to whatever you did.” Hunter stated, finally replying to the alien that stood before him.

“That would be the royal Canterlot voice.”  The blue one piped up.

“The what?” Hunter asked, while cocking an eyebrow. “

Never mind my sister, and I do believe we can finally start peaceful introductions as we now know we can understand each other. I am Princess Celestia and this is my sister Princess Luna, we are the co-rulers of the Kingdom of Equestria, and even though we were off to a rough start, and this isn’t the most formal of places to greet a new visitor... we do welcome you!

    “Well then, uh thank you for Hospitality, I guess, and if you would be so inclined as to have your guards sheath their weapons I would be willing you give you my name.”

Celestia motioned for the guards to put their weapons away and back off a little to give the creature some more breathing room before turning her focus back on it and asking. “And if it’s not rude for me to ask you, could you perhaps enlightened us on what your species call themselves?”

    Hunter gave a small sigh he still had a hard time believing what he was seeing let alone being the one to make first contact with a sentient alien race, but he pressed on, perhaps he could gain allies out of all this?

“Thank you, for a name, I’m called Hunter, and as for my species we call ourselves Humans.” Hunter crossed his arms before asking his question.

“And I’m going to take a wild guess that your kind is some kind of horse…pony….thing? Celestia was rather impressed that the human had taken a fairly accurate guess to what they were, perhaps the humans had some kind of encounter with her kind in some distant past before they had learned to record their own history?

“We prefer the term ponies ,and if you would be much obliged we could go somewhere a bit more pleasant to answer further questions. Perhaps we could get you something to eat, it’s been about two days since we found you.” Celestia motioned for the commander who had been in the entryway the entire time. “Commander if you would please escort our guest to the banquet hall and have a runner sent to the kitchen to prepare at least … a dozen different dishes and not to elaborate too much, well shall meet you all there shortly.”

Before either of the princesses could make it out the door he asked them a question that had been nagging at him. “I’m guessing you’re not going to let me have any of my armor or equipment back are you?” Celestia turned to address the human. “No. at least for the time being” she then headed out the door with Luna following behind.

    Commander Redoubt sighed and motioned at the human to follow him. “Well come on  I’ve been ordered to take you to the banquet hall.” Hunter looked at the commander that wanted him to follow and was surprised to see how rugged he was compared to the rest who looked so pristine, the commanders horn seemed to have snapped off half way up and sported an eye patch hiding a scar over his left eye, and by his gait showed he had seen a lot of combat, Hunter felt like he could relate to the commander.

    Several quite minutes had passed while Hunters escort led him to wherever the two princesses wanted him to wait for them so he decided to break the silence and ask the commander. “So what happened to your eye?”

Redoubt waited a few seconds before responding. “Griffon got a jump on me, but it placed a bad swing with its sword so it took out my eye instead of my head, and before you ask about my horn it was from one of their new weapons they invented, a cannon or something, and it’s not a story I want to share right now.”

Hunter sighed, first he runs into magical talking ponies now a story of griffons with cannons, next he was going to hear about dragons baking cakes he thought.

“So what lead to that ghastly one on your face?” the Commander asked, looking over at Hunter with his good eye.

“Oh, I took a big piece of shrapnel from an artillery shell that landed not too far off from me, cleaved its way right through my helmet and about took my face with it.”

The Commander and Hunter both swapped stories on their way to the banquet hall and continued on from there until both Celestia and Luna walked in with a couple of guards pushing trolleys laden with fruits and vegetables organized into different dishes.

“Commander, you and your men are excused for now.” Celestia ordered the commander as she made her way to the head of the table. “We will be outside in the hall if you need us your highness.” The commander and the guards all gave a quick bow before moving out into the hall and shutting the door behind them.

Hunter watched as the two princess moved into the banquet hall and dismiss the guards, and he noticed that now their manes were different, going from the translucent rainbow and night sky to a light pink and a light blue.

“So, how shall we proceed?” Celestia said as she started to move the foodstuff off the trolleys and onto the table with her magic.

Hunter watched as the food began to float off the carts with a golden glow that also surrounded the white princesses horn and move their way onto the table, the display left him with an uneasy feeling. “How are you doing that?, Also you both had translucent manes and tails not too long ago.”

Celestia had finished moving the dishes onto the table before replying. “Just simple telekinesis magic, and as for the change in style, we can change it at will, we prefer our natural colors when it’s a casual occasion.” Hunter had a hard time believing that this was all real and not some fantasy.

“Do you not have magic from where you are Hunter?”  Luna asked in a puzzle tone.

“No, all this talk about magic, griffons and seeing what appears to be Pegasus and unicorns and not to mention that you all talk, it’s all ancient fairy tales to my kind, I’m honestly having trouble convincing myself this is real.”

Luna was now interested on how humans evolved without magic and had stories about their kind. “Well, perhaps these stories are true, and your kind somehow found our world and their stories became diluted through time?”

Hunter turned to the blue princess called Luna that sat on the other side of the table from him while grabbing a handful of blackberries from a nearby bowl. “It’s impossible, my kind only started to travel into space about one thousand years ago and roughly five hundred years ago we mastered faster than light travel, we’ve only explored and colonized about three hundred some odd light years from our home system, and have never found anything but simple alien life, and hardly any of them were advancing to what could be the start of a civilization, also … Heh, I don’t think I’ve ever tasted food as good as this in almost twenty years.” Hunter finished his story with a smile as he tried one of the pies.

Both Celestia and Luna looked up from their food when Hunter talk about how his species had managed to travel faster than light itself and start to live on other worlds. “You evolved without magic, yet you managed to figure out how to move faster than light and start new homes on worlds with distances that are almost impossible to imagine, imagine what both of our species could teach each other if you can find a way to reach out to your kind from here.”, Celestia said with a smile.

Both Princesses were shocked to find Hunter aggressively rise from the pillow he sat on, the fire in his eyes told them their conversation took a wrong turn. “If you value the lives of your subjects then you will pray to whatever deity that you pray to that my kind will never find this world.” Hunter had venom in his voice and he turned and walked to one of the windows and looked out. Celestia had a dreaded feeling in her stomach now as to what Hunter was implying.

“My kind has known nothing but war, ever since we learned to make tools and weapons we have been killing each other with them, all of our technologies we’ve invented have mostly been to gain the upper hand over another, very few times in our recorded history have there been any kind of peaceful age.” Hunter looked out the window seeing the land beyond, imagining it as the UES burned it from orbit, removing all in its way to get at the resource rich earth underneath.

Luna looked at the human by how tense he was she could tell he was fighting inner demons. “Hunter, you're judging what could happen based on experience of what your kind did to itself, and you’ve said yourself your kind never found any true civilization, it could be possible that meeting a species that’s at least on the same level of thinking could result better?” Hunter gave menacing laugh.

“You have no idea what my kind can do, the only reason there why there have been no signs of simple civilization is because the government I served made sure that nothing would get in the way of them from getting at the riches that lay beneath the ground. Everything that stood in their way was destroyed, even if it was another species that was evolving or showing signs that it could become a civilized species. Instead of uplifting them or ignoring them to go about it on their own we instead committed genocide, wiped them from existence so the government could become rich.” Celestia was shocked at the barbarism the human was describing to her and her sister.

“Hunter? If this is the life your kind lives then how am I supposed to trust you?” Hunter was silent for a moment before finally replying in a somewhat mournful tone. “ I don’t expect you to trust me, I don’t expect anyone to trust me after the stuff me and my team has done, all of the war crimes we’ve committed… we were the dagger for our government, the elite of the elite, they gave us an order we fulfilled it no matter what the cost was… fifteen years… fifteen fucking years I watched my self and the rest of my team slaughter innocents to get at our target, never stopped to think what we were doing … just did what we were told to do.” The stone windowsill that Hunter was grasping started to crack under his grip.

“And just as we come to realize what we have done, what we’ve become, we are given the power to stop it all… stop the tyranny of our government, to lift the iron hand of oppression off the people and free them, show them what life truly meant… and the fucking bastards started to grow suspicious of us, figured we knew too much, starting to lose their control of us, decided we had to be put down, keep us silent… so they give us one last job, use a ruse to get us between and hammer and a hard place, oh but we had hints that they were planning something against us, so we took precaution made sure we were equipped to fight it out if things went south, and they did, my entire team gave their life so I could live and become a redeemer for them, to topple everything we helped the government build, cleanse some of our past sins, but now I end up stranded on an alien world...I’ve let my teams sacrifice go to waste”

Both Princess’s watched as Hunter’s shoulders shrank. Looking defeated, he turned and came back to the table crossing his legs as he sat on the pillow. “I can understand if you don’t want some fugitive hiding under your ceiling, if you want me locked up or executed, I won’t resist just make sure my body and what’s left of my ship is destroyed, hopefully they will never find this place and if they do…”

Celestia grew frustrated with the humans sulking. “Hunter, we put the effort into making sure you lived, and even though you have a very dark past you proved you were willing to do what it takes to right your wrongs showing you have a heart. Your comrades gave their lives to give you the chance to bring justice to a pure evil, if they were willing to make that kind of sacrifice then I believe you deserve another chance at life to redeem yourself and bring them honor.”

Hunter looked up and the white Princess, she gave a smile that a loving mother would give their child when they would confess their wrongs. “It almost sounds like you speak from some kind of experience Princess.”

Celestia, with tears starting to show, looked over to Luna who averted her eyes.  “No one is ever perfect, we all do something we regret in life that haunts us to our end days.”

Luna decided it was time to break the conversation off and peruse a new topic. “Well, it’s starting to get late into the day and we have duties that need to be attended to so I think we can stop here for the day.”

Celestia realizing what her sister was doing added her input. “Oh yes, it seems time has breezed by fairly quick. Sadly Hunter I’m going to have to have you stay in one of the guest rooms for the day as I figure out how to explain to the locals without inducing mast hysteria how an alien is now a royal guest.”

Luna motioned for Hunter to follower her as she gathered up the commander and guards to escort them to one of the guest rooms in the tower. Once they had reached one of the rooms, Luna instructed the commander to have his guards keep everypony out of the tower expect her and her sister. She also told them to not let the human leave the room, but they could bring him any food or books he requested.

Luna met back up with her sister in her private chamber to discuss everything they learned from the human. “Tia, I’m not one to turn down anything that seeks asylum but this… this could be over our heads, who can fathom what will happen when more of his kind arrives on ships demanding we turn him over, if what he says is true they probably will just invade anyway”.

Celestia was worrying about the same thing, what if they were getting over their heads? “Luna, I’m not sure there is much else we can do, even if we could help get his ship working again so he can leave, it could take years to get it to work and that’s saying if it can even fly off the ground, something that massive could not have been made to work on a planet, and to make matters worse the reports I’m reading coming from the griffons kingdom shows their mad king is fueling old hatreds. We could be facing a war with them again within a year or two, and now the possibility that an alien race more advance than anything thing we’ve seen could invade… We can’t fight a war on two fronts like this Luna!”

Celestia rubbed her temples the headache was coming back. “I truly believe our best bet for survival in a worst case scenario could lay with the human, if we can turn him into an ally we have a great chance of  ending a war with the griffons quickly or preventing it altogether, and if his kind does coming to look for him, he could help us prepare for it”

Luna thought about what her sister was saying. “Tia how would we even get him to fight for us, I doubt offering him protection and fixing his ship would be enough, he has no ties to this world, what’s to say he won't walk away when a war is at our doorsteps?”

Her sister sighed heavily. “I’m dreading the idea but we may have to have the elements partake in this I don’t want to risk the girls lives but they may be the only ones who can make him see that life and freedom are worth fighting for no matter who it’s for.”

Both sisters sat in quiet thinking of the day’s events. Celestia stood up and gave her sister a quick hug. “We have faced the impossible before Luna we must have faith.”

Luna looked up at her sister and smiled. “I know Tia.”

Celestia made her way to the door. “I’m going to address the locals of Hunter, hopefully they will believe that he’s just another strange creature from some faraway land that wandered here. You should go check up on him see if he’s made himself comfortable. With that, Celestia made her way down to the throne room to start addressing the nobles to get word spread that a new creature is staying as a royal diplomat, while Luna made her way back to the royal guest rooms to see if Hunter had settled in.