Chapter 2: Any landing you can walk away from...

Detroit, North American district M1

January 17th, 2728

Terminal slowly opened his eyes. The first thing he noticed was the grey overcast. It looked... Well gloomy. Over to his right was a large building of some sort.

Terminal stood up. He was standing in a small crater. You know like the ones from the old Buckinater Films.

The building was tall and rectangularly shaped. It had glass windows running from the bottom all the way to the leveled his eyesight to the street. Bipedal creatures all wearing different cloths and hair were walking to and fro from the many rectangular buildings that dotted the rocky road. The road itself was like no road Terminal has seen before. It wasn't gravelly like the ones in Ponyville nor brick lade like the ones in Canterlot. It was pure black stone with yellow stripes in the center of it.

Large metal pods with windows flew down the road as Terminal watched the city. They were like nothing Terminal had seen anywhere.

'Okay I'm obviously hallucinating.' Terminal thought.

Suddenly a mother walked her child passed by the alleyway that Terminal was in.

"Look mommy a pony!" The child said in perfect Equestrian.

Terminal ducked behind the nearest dumpster before the woman could see him.

"Kids and there imaginations." She muttered as she and her child walked on down the street.'Well that was close.' Terminal thought as he trotted down the alleyway.

The alley was home to a few cats that seemed to be wild and feeding off of the waste from the strange bipedal creatures. Terminal thought about the strange creatures a moment. They almost looked like the old mythological humans that the ancient Zebras and Lyra believed in.

As Terminal stepped out of the alleyway. He noticed the great expansive city of rectangular buildings. It must have extended on for miles! It was about 3 times the size of Manehattan!

"Whoa!"Terminal noticed the massive circular structure in the center of the massive settlement.

It started large at the bottom. But then thinned as it went up into the sky through the clouds! It must have touched the sky or went into space it was so tall!

'Well I'm not in Ponyville anymore.'Out to Terminals left was a lake with huge metal ships floating on it. They were carrying rectangular containers of all different colors to and fro from the city. They carried them to the other side of the lake, down a river, and onto another lake.

Suddenly one of the bipedal creatures turned into the alleyway. She was female and had short blond hair and pale white skin. Her attire was made up of grey fabric and white shoulder pads of leather.

She looked at Terminal with a curious look.

"Well maybe I should lay off the brazillian ale." She said. "Are you real or what?"

"Yeah, I'm not sure if you're real either. Or this whole place."

"Well, either someone spiked my drink or this is real. I guess I'll humor my brain. My names Morgan. What's your name?"

"Terminal Velocity." They shook and and hoof.

"Nice to meet you Terminal Velocity."They stood looking at each other for a moment"So..." Terminal started.

"I bet you have a lot of questions. I have a lot of questions too. But let's save it for my apartment. Follow me I'll take you to my car."

"Car?"

"The vehicles that take you place to place."

Terminal walked alongside of Morgan to a nearby space filled with the metal pods that Morgan described as Cars. She pulled out a small jagged piece of shiny metal attached to a ring of metal and a plastic device with many colored buttons. She pushed the blue button and out came a small blue metal vehicle that looked a little more fancier than the others.

"That's my 2725 Toyota Prius. And it's blue." Morgan said with pride. "Hop in i'll give you a ride to my place."

Terminal awkwardly climbed into the passenger seat of the car. "Don't forget to put on your seatbelt."

"What in Celestia's name is a seatbelt?"

"It's a device that allows you to not fly through the windshield if we crash."

"Oh ok."Morgan sighed and put on the seatbelt for him.

The vehicle pulled out of the parking lot and drove onto the smooth rocky road.

UNSC orbital scanner satellite

"Lafler!" Lt. Krieger yelled.

"Yes sir?"

"You listed an RSN burst as a 'minor event'! What's wrong with you! No one looks at minor events except for me to look for cadet screw ups!"

"Nothing was destroyed and no one was hurt."

"You don't know that. RSN is unpredictable. Someone could have teleported in from another universe or teleported or something!" Krieger ranted. "Don't screw up again you derf!"

"What the hell is a derf?" Lafler muttered.

Apartment complex, M-42

Detroit, District M1

Morgan threw her keys into a Keyes brand key cup. Her apartment was not exactly the fanciest of abodes. Clothes littered the apartment floor. By the computer was a leaning tower of Pizza boxes. Empty cupcake wrappers litter the floor near the trashcan. Terminal shuttered as he thought back to a short story he heard read back in his days of prisoner-of-war training.

"Sorry about the mess. I really let the place go." Morgan said as she looked at the mess.

"So what's it like where you're from."

Terminal plopped down onto the faded blue couch.

"Well where I'm from it's filled with sunshine, rainbows, and booze."

"No kidding. Here we got Military, spaceships, and probably more booze than you."

"Probably. Where I come from the best booze you can get is 'strong cider'. We also don't have giant metal and glass buildings or tethering the moon."

"Tethering the moon? Oh you must mean the Space elevator. That doesn't go all the way to the moon. Just to space."

"Well I'm not even going to ask what the point of that is." Terminal said. "So what's it like here. Give some rundown."

"Well your in the city of Detroit. Capital of District M-42 because really that's all there is in M-42. The districts used to be called counties but when Earth became ruled under a single government that was changed." Morgan took a breath. "I work for the navy. I was the first officer of the UNSC Infinity-III and I'm a candidate for the Captain of the Infinity-IV."

"Can you tell me about these ships?"

"Yeah. They're big and there in space. They got big guns and massive ranges of communications. But eh thats the basic rundown. And for 200 years or so the Infinity's are the biggest of all the ships. They've also been the strongest and fastest."

"Ships in space huh? Well that escalated quickly."The two went on for hours explaining their 2 completely different worlds. Talking on and on about Government, technology, landscapes, and a Bunch of other things. Morgan explained the History of the UNSC and the human race. After a while Morgan decided to grab a couple bottles of Brazilian ale and drink with Terminal.

"Mhmm." She said as she sat on the couch with bottle in hand."Eeyup." Terminal said as he sipped the Alcoholic beverage.