ExtraEquestrial

ExtraEquestrial

Twilight woke with a jolt. The sound of armored hooves hitting the tiled floor of the castle rang throughout her room. "What's going on out there?" Twilight rose groggily from her bed and, cautiously, walked towards the door that connected her room to the rest of the huge residence of the princesses. Slowly, she reached out and opened the door. Guard ponies could be seen running down the hall past, weapons being carried along with them.

Twilight walked into the hallway. She followed the guardsponies down the hallway that they were all running down. As she went further down, walking past pillars and stained glass windows, she began to see bodies. A few of them were bodies of guards, but most of them were ones that resembled the monsters that had attacked Ponyville. Twilight continued walking until she reached a balcony. She recognized it instantly. It was the balcony that she had been crowned on, but instead of a cheering crowd below, she saw the gold of the guard, mashed together with a mass of moving brown. The mass of monster-looking creatures Twilight could only guess in horror were the zerg, were in such numbers Twilight couldn't even imagine the guards winning. "But where is Princess Celestia?" Twilight could only ask herself. She ran as fast as she could to the first place she could guess the matriarch could be.

After a few minutes, she approached the throne room of the two princesses. The grand doors before her opened as she reached them, and, as Twilight walked inside, she noticed the lack of guards in this important room. The two princesses sat on their respective thrones. As she approached, Princess Celestia spoke.

"Greetings, Twilight Sparkle," she said, with a calm that Twilight couldn't believe she could posses at this moment.

"What is happening, Princess?" Twilight asked.

"We are under attack Twilight," Princess Celestia said too calmly, "by the zerg. The guards are doing everything they can."

"I guessed that, but why aren't you doing anything?!" Twilight exclaimed.

Before Princess Celestia responded, a loud bang filled the room. And again. And then the door burst open and the most horrifying things Twilight had ever seen burst out-

Twilight sprang out of bed, for real this time. "It was all a dream..?" Twilight asked herself quietly. She heard a knock on the door, and she went to open it. There was no sound of armored guards running to their imminent deaths as she pulled the door open. She expected one of the Princesses, her friends, and maybe even Torcannas. But who she saw was even more unexpected. "Shining!" she squealed. She didn't think he would have arrived so early!

"Hey, Twiliy," Shining Armor said, chuckling.

"I didn't expect you to be here so soon!"

"Yea, well, Princess Celestia told us to get here as soon as possible. I made sure to get here as fast as we could, after what I heard happened in Ponyville... those poor guys. I heard that the monsters from the Everfree were stopped by that alien that crashed there a few days ago."

"Yea, he sure did stop them. Wait, where's everyone else?" Twilight asked her brother.

"Oh, the others are waiting for us in the dining hall. You hadn't showed up yet, so I said I'd find you and give you a little surprise visit. They also told me to get someone named 'Torcannas', you know who that is?"

"Yes, he's the one who killed the monsters in Ponnyville. You haven't met him yet?"

"No, I haven't even seen him."

"Well, then, come on. I saw what room he had last night so we can go get him." After that, Twilight and her brother began to walk to the room Torcannas had been given. He had asked Princess Celestia for a room with big windows, and that room was a fair ways away from the others. After a few minutes of walking, they reached their destination. Twilight reached up and knocked on the door. A few seconds later, the door opened, and Torcannas's face appeared. His appearance was so shocking to Shining, that he jumped back a few inches, along with a quiet yelp. Twilight, strangely enough, began to laugh at Shining's reaction. She saw Shining blush, and he also began to laugh. Twilight saw Torcannas's eyes half-close and she... she felt what she guessed was Torcannas's laughter as well.

"Oh... I'm sorry that I was taken aback by you... It's just that you look so different from anything I've ever seen before," Shining said after his laughter subsided.

"I can understand that, there is no need to apologize," Torcannas replied.

"Well, Torcannas, we're having breakfast now, and I was wondering if you would like to join Twilight and I going down there to meet everyone else."

"... Very well, I shall join you at this 'breakfast', Torcannas replied after a moment, and stepped out of the room to join them in their "journey" across the castle. They certainly made a strange sight. As they passed through the halls, guards bowed to Shining and Twilight, but kept their mostly-confused eyes on Torcannas. While en route to their destination, Shining turned to Torcannas.

"I wanted to tell you thank you for killing those monsters in Ponyville. And saving my sister and other ponies."

Torcannas's eyes widened slightly at the message, but his reply was brisk enough. "I appreciate your thanks, but it is my duty as a Templar to defend the innocent. Even though this applies to my kind, I could not let your unprepared people die. As well, I still needed to kill the zerg threat. I could not let them live."

"Zerg? What are zerg?" Shining asked. Torcannas was about to reply, but they had already arrived at their destination. The sizable doors to the grand dining hall opened and Twilight saw her friends at the tables.

"Well, it took you guys long enough!" Rainbow Dash called at them.

"Good morning Twilight, Torcannas. It is good to see you awake," Princess Celestia said to the two, and the others present gave their greetings. Twilight then noticed a pink alicorn rise from her seat and start walking toward Twilight. "Candace!" Twilight called and closed the distance between them. When the finally got close to each other, they did their usual greeting. After, Candace stood back and looked at the creature that stood next to her husband.

"So you must be the alien that crashed into Ponyville a few days ago. I think it's an honor to meet you, after all, you saved many lives yesterday. Thank you," Candace said to Torcannas.

"Your thanks are appreciated Princess."

"You know I'm a princess?" Candace asked.

"Well, it is obvious enough," Torcannas said. "It appears that all of the... alicorns are called 'princesses'. And even stranger is that how there are only a few of you from what I have seen."

"There are not many of us. Now there are only four alicorn princesses," Princess Celestia explained. "We each are different. I control the sun, my sister controls the moon, Candace is princess of love, and Twilight is our most recent addition to the royal line; princess of friendship."

"You said 'control the sun' and your sister controls the moon? What you mean by this?" Torcannas seemed confused by this notion of something the others found so simple.

"Princess Celestia and Princess Luna guide the sun and moon, respectively, across the sky," Twilight told Torcannas. "Is that not how it works on other planets?" Twilight instantly regretted asking that question as she realized how stupid it must sound.

"No, not on any planet my kind have knowledge of. It is most interesting. Is there any way you could demonstrate that?"

"Yes," Celestia said, chuckling. "Yes, I believe I could sometime. But, now, we still haven't eaten! We can't go to a meeting all hungry can we? Torcannas, is there anything you will need?"

"No, my kind do not eat as we, obviously, have no mouths with which to eat with." Torcannas said.

"All right, you may still join us if you wish." Princess Celestia said, and with that, one of the most amazing breakfasts Twilight had ever had was served, and eaten.

Everfree Forest

The queen of the changelings, Queen Chrysalis, walked through the Everfree Forest, searching for something anything. Ever since the failure at Canterlot, changelings had begun to die in large numbers. With their supply of love running low, the attack would help them replenish their numbers, but when it failed, Chrysalis was unable to do anything but watch her children die from the lack of nourishment. Chrysalis would do anything to get back at the ponies, Princess Celestia, Candace, and Shining Armor, to make them pay for every life that was lost. But, unfortunately, she could do nothing, as changelings were not a predatory race, and she alone could do nothing. Nowadays she usually walked through the forest, looking for any food source, anything she could use to keep the remaining changelings alive. Some kind of creature; anything they could find. Their numbers were so low, that even she decided she would help the scouts in their search. The numbers would grow, but only if Chrysalis could find enough nutrients to be able to make more changelings.

By now, she had been searching for most of the day and nothing had been found. By her at least; maybe one of the scouts had found something of use. She blundered through the forest for what might have been hours, until she stumbled though a bush... and set eyes on the strangest, and most disturbing thing... or things she had ever seen. Brown, four-legged creatures, small but horrifying, screeched and rushed at her. A blast of magic turned them into living projectiles that slammed into... she wasn't sure what it was. A large, slightly pyramid-shaped purple mass with five giant spikes on the sides and five small ones at the top. Chrysalis had no idea what she was looking at, so she took a step closer... And stepped on some purple goo that covered the ground. When she touched it, she realized she felt something.  The feeling felt similar to her connection to her hive, and she noticed that the place where, in her place, would be a controlling presence,  but there was nothing to control these creatures. She was flooded with information, and it soon began to make her head hurt. She began to take notice that the way these creatures were controlled was not with magic, or how she kept track of her hive, but it was different. While on the strange substance, everything stopped, none of the creatures moved.

After a few moments of wonder and horror, she reached out with her mind and put her thoughts into one of the small winged, things that seemed to be the workers of this place. It took some getting used to, but she eventually made it move. She practiced on controlling the other creatures here, and then, she attempted to put her mind into the large purple... construct, she supposed. When she did, however, a thought entered her mind, "Greetings, Broodmother. the strange thing said.

Twilight, Torcannas, the princesses Celestia, Luna, and  captain Shining Armor all sat in the "war room", as it had been named. This room was where the most important figures in the military met to discuss plans during war times, but had not been used for a for some time, due to the lack of... well, wars. Armored guards stood, for no apparent reason, vigilant on both sides of the doors. Joining the group of important ponies and the protoss, were 3 ponies. One was a brown-coated, orange-maned  earth pony, large and muscular, even for an earth pony, General Stronghoof, commander of the earth pony forces in the military. Next to him sat a blue-coated, white-maned pegasus pony, General Cirrus, commander of the armed peagasus ponies. And the third pony was, obviously, a unicorn. General Iona, one of the few high-ranking mares in the military. All eyes were on Princess Celestia as she declared her opening statement. "Greetings. I know that I have called you here on such short notice, and I apologize. But I am sure that you have heard what happened in Ponyville. We currently have a problem on our hands that we have not faced before. The threat of an extremely hostile alien race that we can not reason with."

"I have reports that say two guards were killed and the creatures were in turn killed by..." Stronghoof said, gesturing to Torcannas.

"Yes, he did. This is Torcannas, and he has already found a way to defeat this enemy," Celestia said to the earth pony.

"And just what is his plan, Princess?" Iona asked to the Princess, while looking at Torcannas.

"He has managed to contact his kind and he said that they will be bringing forces to defeat this 'zerg' as it is called."

"I see. I've seen the thing he came here on, your people must be very advanced." Iona said to Torcannas, possibly guessing that he could speak.

"Yes, my people are ancient and have spent thousands of years developing advanced technologies. I have the utmost confidence that my people will be able to remove the infestation, as there is, presumably, no one controlling it."

"Wait," General Cirrus said, "you said 'controlling'. Do you mean to say that something could take control of  these creatures and use them against us?"

"That would be highly improbable, as only zerg can take control of other zerg. And as long as the zerg here are not being controlled, they will kill each other as often as anything else, as well they usually wander freely, and would be a small threat to anything here."

"When is it that your kind can even get here to deal with this... infestation?" Stronghoof asked.

"When I spoke with my commanding officer, he said reinforcements would reach here as soon as they locate this planet. It should not take much longer."

I sure hope it doesn't, Twilight thought to herself, as conversations started around her.

Space

The gleaming and massive protoss carrier floated in space, the crew preparing for a warp jump to the location of a newly discovered zerg infestation. The crew had just finished imputing the coordinates for the warp jump, and the carrier was about to preform the jump, when one of the crew members thought. "Commander, I am seeing zerg signatures closing in."

"Do we have enough time to preform the warp jump?" the commander asked, using words for the benefit of the few Nezarim protoss on board.

"At the current rate they are moving? No, I have calculated it, we will have to deal with them ourselves," the crew member thought back.

"So be it. Prepare for combat."

The zerg flyers attacked the carrier, and swarms of intercepters, and even scouts and phoenix met them. After much combat, and a few lost lives, the remaining zerg either were defeated, or fled. The carrier was not horribly damaged, the engineers on the craft could repair the damage, but it would take time and until then, the carrier would not be able to travel to the planet. It seemed it would take longer than they thought.

"There," General Iona said. "Now that we have the basics down about what you plan to do, what are these 'zerg' exactly?"

Torcannas thought for a moment. "They are genetically modified creatures that were forced into the swarm -the collection of all zerg- for a certain purpose. Usually to make it more deadly. All of them are dangerous, but individually they are weak."

"Individually?" cried Stronghoof. "Those things killed two fully armored guards."

"Because your soldiers were obviously not prepared for the zerg. If anything worse comes... I doubt your soldiers would have a chance."

"Oh yeah? These things can get worse?"

"Of course. They have multiple strains of deadly flying creatures and even a monstrosity that I hope is not unleashed -a strain called 'ultralisk'. Something so large, you would have little hope of defeating it."

The talk continued, Torcannas began explaining the weaknesses of the zerg, and what improvements would have to be made to the military to help them survive zerg attacks.

"I noticed how, when they were attacked, your guards' armor was not penetrated by the hydralisk's spines. They are fired at a very fast speed, and can kill even those who are in more advanced armor," Torcannas said to Princess Celestia.

"That would be because the armor is enchanted with magic."

"I see, Twilight Sparkle told of this ability your kind posses. It seems most interesting."

"Twilight told me that your kind also have a special power," Princess Celestia said.

"Yes, it is called 'psionics'. My kind use it from power to creating things like my blade," Torcannas raised his left arm, and a blue blade appeared. Now that Twilight looked at it, it looked like it was made out of some kind of... gas, but it also looked solid. "This blade is created by my mental energy, and it can cut through almost anything."

"Interesting. Maybe we can find some way to improve our magic in combat," Iona said after the blade disappeared.

"I doubt it would be needed. I am confident that my kind will come and remove the zerg. I also think it will be unlikely that the zerg could find this city."

Everfree Forest -Zerg infestation site

By now, Chrysalis had gotten used to commanding her new brood around. She had learned much from the "lair", as she had found out it was called. She had found that these creatures were very complex, and even so, she had been able to lightly grasp how to "spawn" more of these strange monsters. She was finding out more and more about this strange species, and now she even had a small force of ferocious beasts.

And she knew just were to send them.