A Man and his Machine

"Ugh, my head." - Dark said painfully wondering where he was. - "You could have fired your rockets to slow our descent you know."

"Warning system integrity compromised!" ARMD informed Dark as he lay on the ground.

"Oh no! Preform emergency restart!" Dark quickly instructed starring at his friend.

ARMD starred at his readout and its array of text.

ARMD:> Warning: System Compromised

ARMD:> Commence Vocal Alert: 'Warning system integrity compromised!'

ARMD:> User Input: 'Preform emergency restart."

ARMD:> System Restarting...

With that ARMD's blue eyes dimmed until they completely turned off.

"Well great, he'll be out for the next five minutes and i still don't know where I am." Dark reminded himself as he looked around in front of him.

"Um, hello?" A voice behind him asked. He spun around to see six four legged creatures starring at him with the same fascination he had with them.

"Hello,... who or um what are you?" Dark responded studying them.

"Well,... um our species is called 'Ponies' and is divided into three sub-species called 'Earth-Ponies', 'Pegasi', and 'Unicorns'. What about you?" The purple one said also studying him.

"Well my species has no name because as far as I know I am it's only surviving member." - Dark hesitated before continuing. - "You can call me, Dark, what're your names?"

"Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Flutt- Fluttershy, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash." Each one of them announced.

"Say, are you all right you took quite the fall their?" Applejack asked starring at him and ARMD.

"Yah, I'll be fine."  Dark replied stretching his back.

"What about your metal friend their?" Applejack asked again pointing at ARMD.

"He'll probably be fine he just needs time to restart." Dark answered stretching his entire body now.

"'Re-start', um what?" Applejack wondered as to what the word meant.

"Ah I see, you must not have robots yet, Okay, a robot is a machine that can walk and talk and even think like an actual living thing." Dark explained also gesturing to ARMD.

"Oh you simply must be joking." Rarity said thinking the idea was absurd.

"Give it about 3 or so minutes, anyway we both have a lot of questions, given the fact I know nothing about this place and have a lot more than you, why don't you ask first." Dark stated folding his arms.

"Very well. Where do you come from?" Twilight asked deciding she was probably the one who should be asking.

"Another dimension." Dark responded.

"Why are you here?" She asked as she started pacing.

"I was sent here as an explorer, tasked with gathering information about this dimension." Dark answered.

"So why this dimension?" Twilight wondered aloud as she turned around to retrace her steps.

"No reason what-so-ever. We picked a dimension completely at random and jumped to it."  - Dark informed them with a defensive look on his face. - "Actually hang on a second and let me sit down, that fall took a lot out of me." Dark said as he sat down on ARMD's chest as he lay their restarting.

"Here have some water." Twilight offered as she used her magic to levitate a bottle over to him.

"Okay, my turn. First of all, how did you do that?" Dark asked as he inserted a chemical strip into the glass to make sure he was in fact drinking water.

"What levitate the glass? Oh, that was my magic." Twilight answered; not understanding he had never heard of this before.

"Magic? Excuse me?" Dark responded while examining the strip.

"Well, I'm a unicorn, unicorns can use magic to cast spells and preform other feats. Rainbow Dash is a Pegasus, which means she can fly." - Twilight continued to explain as Rainbow Dash Lifted off the ground to prove the point.  -"Pinkie Pie and Applejack are Earth-Ponies which means they're naturally stronger than everypony else."

"That's incredible!" Dark said as he drank the now confirmed water.

"How were you 'sent' here if you are the last of your species?" Rarity asked deciding it was her turn.

"Good question. Well yes I am the last of my species, but there is another species called 'humans' and they are the ones who sent me here." Dark responded.

ARMD:> BIOS Loaded.

ARMD:> Reboot Complete.

ARMD:> All Systems Restored.

Dark fell on his face a ARMD stood up. "ARMD is back!" ARMD informed the world. Twilight's friends who had previously been standing there allowing Twilight to do the talking jumped in surprise.

"Hay ARMD." Dark groaned as he stood up.

"Hi ARMD. Say, do they call you ARMD because you have two arms?" Pinkie asked.

"What? Who said that?" ARMD said as he looked around to find the source of the noise.

"Down here silly." Pinkie said smiling.

"Dark,... What is that?" ARMD queried clearly confused.

"That my dear, ARMD, is a pony." Dark answered brushing dirt off his fur.

"Um Right... Well you are smart man so okay." ARMD said not wanting to dive any deeper into the matter.

"Your writing this down correct?" Dark asked suddenly looking at ARMD.

"No, writing down is smart man's mission." ARMD returned the look.

"Wait then what's your mission?" Dark asked honestly intrigued.

"My mission is to crush anything that crushes you." ARMD replied happily causing  the six ponies all looked at each other with concern.

"And how do you plan to do that?" Rainbow Dash asked quizzically half curious half worried.

"Simple. With these." ARMD said as he mentally smiled; not having a mouth.

ARMD:> Deploy All Weapons.

ARMD:> Error: In-sufficient Permissions.

ARMD:> Track Source: Last Error.

ARMD:> Weapon Deployment Requires Clearance from URA agent: 1137 - Dark

"Dark!" ARMD yelled when his weapons failed to deploy shooting him Dark look of hate.

"What!?" Dark responded in surprise to the rather loud remark.

"Why do I need permission to use guns?" ARMD asked in an extremely annoyed tone.

"Because they don't trust you. And yes, I do know why. And no I wont give you permission." Dark informed ARMD starring him down.

"Sorry about that." Dark said to the still stunned ponies turning to face them.

"Can you give us a second?" Twilight asked.

"Sure." Dark said.

Twilight and her friends huddled together in a circle and whispered so that Dark couldn't over-hear them.

"So what do you make of them?" Twilight asked looking at each of her friends.

"Sounds like trouble to me." Applejack answered as she looked at Twilight

"We should tell the princess." Rarity voiced to everyone.

"I don't know the big one sounds so violent to me." Fluttershy added softly.

"Either way I'll send a letter to the princess." Twilight concluded and with that they broke.

When the 6 ponies started conversing Dark asked ARMD "You can hear what their saying can't you?"

"Affirmative." ARMD responded watching the ponies intently.

"Well?" Dark asked again.

"They do not trust us." ARMD responded quietly so that the ponies would not realize he was aware of what they were saying.

This isn't good, Dark thought, I can't get on their bad side. Where did we go wrong? Dark thought recalling their reaction when ARMD told them he was going to 'crush' anything that got in their way. So that's it eh? "ARMD please refrain from discussing any violent topics while in the presence of ponies without my prior approval."

"But why?" ARMD whined

"Because I am smart man. ARMD Confirm instructions." Dark said smiling.

"Confirmed." ARMD grumbled as he created a subroutine that would filter his speech.

"We've made up our minds." Applejack said with a stern look on her face.

"We're going to send a letter to our princess and see what she thinks." Rarity finished.

"Very well. That would be your government's top official. correct?" Dark asked entering 'monarchy' into his wrist computer.

"Yes." Twilight answered before she took off towards her library.

Twilight burst through the door of the library and began darting around looking for a quill which Spike grabbed off the table and handed to her.

"To the princess?" Spike asked as Twilight was frantically writing the day's events.

"Yes and send it quickly Spike." She said as she handed the paper to spike who quickly read it before he sent it.

"Inter-dimensional travelers huh. Well that's new." Spike said as they waited for a response.

"Oh, Spike I don't know what to do, I mean they haven't done anything wrong but something about them just feels wrong to me." Twilight sighed looking at Spike.

"Maybe you should give them the benefit of the doubt." Spike encouraged as he burped a letter. Twilight grabbed it with her magic and read it then bolted out the door without another word.