Chapter I

Fire in the Sky

Night had fallen over Equestria.  The Sun Princess had put her charge to bed for the day, and Luna's Moon had already begun it's journey to the center of the sky.  Most of the ponies of Ponyville had followed the sun's lead and had gone to bed, grateful for the chance to rest from a very long day.   However there was one pony who was still up and about at this late hour, despite the party that the pink pony had thrown for the town in honor of this year's Summer Sun Celebration.

Twilight Sparkle was sitting on her haunches peering through her telescope, the night sky open to her diligent study.  It was a beautiful night, with stars as far as the eye could see.  Every so often, she spotted a shooting star pass through her field of view.  Each time this would happen, she would record the time and location of the event, as well as the intensity of the comet in question, and it's relative speed.  

She needed this data for a spell she was devising, it's eventual goal was to hopefully bring one of these comets to Equis without it burning up in the planet's atmosphere for study.  Sure she could have asked Princess Luna to do the same thing for her, but this was more along the lines of a personal challenge.

Sighing, she put the quill and paper down on the deck of the balcony of the Ponyville Public Library.  She rubbed her eyes in exhaustion, then peered back up at the night sky.  She smiled and said “it's a shame that Spike had to miss this.  The poor little guy was just so tired out from pinkies crazy party, that I'm actually surprised that he lasted as long as he did.”

Stifling back a yawn, she decided that she would call it a night.  Mid yawn, she felt a crackling sound pulse through her body.  For a split second she had thought that it was her jaw popping into place, but was quickly disabused of that notion when she saw the sky.

Directly above her, she saw that the sky appeared to be cracking like the ice on a lake in a circular pattern probably ten miles across.  “what in Cele-” she managed to say, before she saw the circle in the sky completely shatter, leaving behind what can only be described as a hole.  Beyond the hole she could see a swirling violet vortex, crackling with untold arcane power.  She could feel the disturbance in the magical field from here, and it felt as if her horn was being ripped from her body.  She even had to reach up just to be sure that it hadn't for a second.

From the hole, a large fireball streaked across the sky straight for Ponyville.  Twilight heard herself gasp in terror at the sight of the comet headed straight for the center of town.  If that thing hit the town, the whole area would be destroyed!

Quickly, she began to summon her magic to attempt to turn the meteor, hoping beyond hope that she could save the town from the fiery doom that was descending.  However, before she was even able to summon her strength to begin, the fireball shifted it's direction.  She gazed at it, puzzled as the fireball proceeded to zig-zag across the sky, dropping lower and lower, yet further and further away from Ponyville.  She continued to watch as the fireball finally decided to dive straight into the Everfree Forest, where it exploded with a force so great that she could feel her tree shake even from this distance.

Letting out the breath that she didn't know that she was holding, she felt relieved.  However, she knew that she could not rest while that thing was out there.  But what was it? And what was that hole that it came through?

Quickly, Twilight looked back up at the hole in the sky.  She was surprised to note that the hole seemed to be repairing itself.  Rather quickly too:  Before it had been about ten miles across,  now it was probably closer to five, and quickly shrinking.  Smiling and nodding to herself, confident that that problem was at least going to take care of itself,  she gathered her stargazing notes and dashed inside.

However, If she had waited a second longer, she would have noticed a second, much smaller fireball streak out of the hole in the sky right before the hole closed.  This fireball did not zigzag, but instead made a determined beeline north, traveling quite a large distance until it crashed into the Frozen North, roughly forty miles north of the Crystal Empire...

* * *

Spike groggily opened his eyes.  There seemed to be quite a lot of noise around him, and his stomach seemed to be making his bed shake.  It took him a second to realize that the sound had stopped, as had the rumbling.  He figured it must have been that burrito he had earlier and tried to go back to sleep.

His attempts were in vain, though, as Twilight came rushing into the room from the balcony.  Quickly she started to gather several objects and pack them into her saddle bags: Some quills, several rolls of paper, three jars of ink, a focusing crystal from the crystal empire, as well as what Spike recognized as a map of the Everfree forest.  She then levitated another roll of paper and a quill and quickly started to write what looked like a letter..

Finally, his curiosity getting the better of him, he pulled his blanket off and looked at Twilight with a bemused expression.  “What in Equestria are you doing Twilight? It's the middle of the night!”

Twilight did not answer at once, rather she finished writing the letter first.  “Something very strange just happened.  Some sort of meteor fell from the sky and crashed into the Everfree.  I'm going to go check it out, and I need you to send this to the Princess before I leave.” she said while sealing the letter with wax.

Still rubbing his eyes, he looked at her wearily.  “Isn't that a little dangerous? The last time you went into that place you were turned to stone by a cockatrice!”  He said a bit cautiously.

She shook her head  “The explosion from the meteor would had scared anything away, so I'll be fairly safe.”  she said as Spike took the scroll from her.

The dragon still looked skeptical.  “Can't it wait until morning? At least then we will know what the princess would want us to do, and we would also have a full nights sleep to help us as well.”

She shook her head again. “This can't wait.  The meteor had quite a lot of fire coming off of it, and it might set the whole forest ablaze if I don't hurry.”

Spike still looked worried, but he still inhaled and set fire to the scroll that had been handed to him.  Quickly green flames consumed the dry parchment, turning it into vapor.  The vapor then quickly rushed out the open window, anxious to reach it's destination.

He then sighed as Twilight dashed out the front door.  It looked like it was going to be a very long night.

* * *

It stirred. Was It an it? It wasn't sure.  Things seemed to be so confusing at the moment.  Thinking was hard.  Could It think?  It deduced that since It clearly was thinking about thinking, It must be able to think.  This deduction pleased It to no end.  It congratulated itself on Its sharp detective skills until a strange sensation washed over It.  What was this? Was it a feeling? It felt familiar, almost like an old friend.  It thought about that sentence for a bit, then decided it was incorrect.

It felt like an old enemy.  Yes, that was correct.  It and this feeling were clearly enemies.  In fact,  It could distinctly remember that It was always enemies with this feeling.  What was the feeling's name? Did it have a name? It knew that the feeling must, because it was so familiar.

Pain.  Yes that was it.  It was in pain.  A great deal of it in fact.  Upon realizing that It was in pain, It discovered that It had something to feel pain with.  What was this thing again? Oh yes, that's right, it's called a body.  If It has a body, then It must not be an It, but rather be a person.  Also if It was a person with a body, then It must have eyes to see with.  Why this was so, It wasn't sure.  Thinking seemed to be so hard at the moment.

Blearily, It opened It's eyes and glanced around.  Things seemed to be coming quicker now that It has eyes, It thought.

It thought for a second.  That didn't seem right, no...

Aha! That was what the problem was! It wasn't an It at all, but rather It was a He!  He smiled smugly, further pleased by the fact that he seemed to have a mouth to smile with.  That was good.  Mouths are useful for lots of thing, such as breathing.

Did he need to breath?  Analysis told him that he did, and his lungs quickly started to pump life giving air into his system.

All at once his mind seemed to explode as the oxygen rushed to his brain.  Answers started lining up to his consciousness, demanding to present themselves to the questions that he had yet not even begun to ask himself.  Memories flooded his mind, memories of falling out of the sky.  Memories of striking the earth hard.

He had been in crashes before, but nothing like that.  Maybe that was why he hurt so much?  Quick analysis told him no.  Somehow he had been... protected from the crash.  Why was that?

A face swam into his memory.  It had short brown hair that seemed to stick out in all directions, and striking brown eyes to match.  The face was somewhat thin, with a very small scar on it's left temple. The face's skin was a pale white, and it seemed to be wearing a monocle that had leather straps securing it to the face.  He felt... weird about the face.  It didn't look like someone he might know, but he somehow knew that this face was the reason why he had been protected.  Thank you, whoever you might be.

But why then did he hurt so much? Where was all that pain coming from?  Based on positioning, it seemed to be coming from his side.

Slowly he looked down at his ribcage.  His eyes were met with a terrible sight.  Right across his side and belly he could see three large claw marks.  He was bleeding pretty badly too, and he knew that he probably wouldn't last in these conditions.

It was odd though.  He knew that he was bleeding out, yet there didn't seem to be a whole lot of blood.  He poked his side with a hoof, which came away stained in his own blood.

He realized then why it didn't look like he had lost a lot of blood:  His fur happened to match the color of his blood with a weird degree of precision.  Well, at least that mystery was solved.

Something still didn't sit right with him.  There was something wrong, but he was unable to determine the reason.  Maybe it was the blood loss slowing his thought process, but he couldn't quite grasp what the problem was.  He rubbed his free hoof against his forehead while the other one tried to keep his fluids where they belonged.

Well, he would figure it out in time he guessed.

There was one more thing though, something that he needed to do still.  What was it?

Oh yeah that's right.

He screamed.

* * *

Twilight was cautiously cantering through the Everfree when she heard the screaming..

Looking around, she tried to pinpoint the location of the scream.  It sounded like somepony was in serious trouble.  Quickly, she broke into a trot, trying desperately to get to the source of the screaming as quickly as possible.  Luckily, whoever it was wasn't too far away, so it didn't take Twilight long to reach the source of the scream.

Twilight burst out of the foliage and looked around in amazement.  It seemed that the screaming had led her straight to the crater from the meteorite strike.  She glanced around in amazement, the destruction from the object had been pretty thorough.  Trees were toppled, rocks were cracked and broken, and to top it all off, a large hole had been punched into the ground in front of her.

Luckily, it seemed that any fire's that were set by the falling star had quickly gone out.  A quick inspection showed that everything was still wet from the storm that had raged over the Everfree just a day before.  Well that's lucky.  She thought to herself.

She continued to look around for the source of the scream.  It seemed to have come from beyond the ridge of earth that had been thrown up by the meteor's impact, but she wasn't sure because it seemed to have stopped.  However, she decided to trust her gut on this one.

Quickly, Twilight dashed up the dirt ridge and back down.  As she did so, she couldn't shake the feeling that something was off.  She wasn't sure what it was, but she was sure that it could wait until she had helped whoever it was that was in trouble-

“Sweet Celestia...” she gasped.

In the center of the large crater she saw a red unicorn stallion.  The stallion had a thin, wiry appearance, and was probably about half a foot shorter then Big Macintosh.  His mane and tail were black, with a red stripe running through each.  Currently the stallion was lying on the ground unconscious.

The stallion was wounded.  And not just any wound either, it looked like something very large with very sharp claws had raked the poor stallion's side; three long gashes, starting from his ribcage and working their way down and to the left towards his belly button could clearly be seen.  From these slashes, she could tell that the pony was loosing a lot of blood...

In a flash of purple light, Twilight teleported to the stallion's side.

“He needs medical attention now, he won't last for much longer...”  Twilight muttered to herself.   She bit her lip in worry.  Something was nagging at the edge of her mind.  Something wasn't right, but she couldn't quite place what was bothering her... something at the edge of her perception...

The stallion's groans returned her to the present.  “I'll teleport us to the hospital.  They will be able to treat you far better then I will.”  She said to the unconscious pony.

If the stallion could hear her, he didn't show it.  Shaking her head ruefully, she built up her power, and both ponies vanished in a flash of purple light. Next Chapter: Chapter II: ...Ponies? Estimated time remaining: 12 Minutes