Luna awoke. Not from somepony rousing her but from the impact of an energy blast. The weapon splashed across the starboard side armor plating before exploding in a brilliant flash of orange light.

The remaining bridge windows shattered from the shock wave.

Something dripped down Luna’s face. She put her hoof to her head and viewed the liquid on it. Blood; she must have been closer to the windows than she thought.

Luna surveyed the situation. The fleet was in complete disarray. Her once proud fleet of warships was now slashed in half. Cruisers and carriers engaged each other at random. Rouge fighters flew left and right, shooting at anything they could lock on to.

From the look of things, her sister wasn’t faring any better. The once proud flagship of the Solar Empire was now a shadow of its former glory. Holes big and small riddled the ship. Impact craters from out of control fighters were all over its hull. Black charcoal stains were all over the once snow white ship. Weapon emplacements ranged from damaged to not even existent.

Luna doubted her ship looked any better. The Eclipse had taken heavy damage from that last hit. The ship feared by the Solar Empire was aflame all over. Damage control unicorns rushed to extinguish the fires and patch the holes.

The invasion had failed.

“Order the fleet to turn around. Sound a retreat,” Luna ordered.

Ponies went left and right, responding to the princess’ commands. Orders were being shouted into the glowing microphones of the communication consoles. Slowly the fleet began to turn.

Luna watched as her command was carried out with exact precision.

“Get me the science and magic officer,” she commanded, a small phone like device was brought up to the princess’s head, “Get me everything we know about that strange fighter and determine where the hay it came from.”

Celestia watched her sisters’ fleet execute its retreat. Under normal circumstances she would have pursued but considering half her fleet was on fire she decided against it.

“Princess, Spitfire’s report on the mysterious vehicle. She reports it was of alien origin, agile, and fast, incredibly fast. In fact the reason she couldn’t catch it was because it left the battlefield at supersonic speeds,” a guard levitating a file reported.

“What?! The only thing known to do that is The Element of Loyalty. Rainbow Dash is the only thing in the world to ever pull off such a feat,” Celestia said, astonished.

“Well whatever it was, it is clearly not from our world; built by a species with wisdom beyond ours,” the guard replied.

Two hours earlier.

Rainbow Dash fluttered up to her favorite spot above Ponyville, a small cloud above town square.

“Ah, this is the life,” she sighed contently as she drifted off to sleep.

Ever since the war began things changed. Canterlot was no longer the residence of the Princesses. Luna massed an army outside of Equestria in preparation for invasion. Celestia massed an army inside in preparation for defense. She moved her flag out of Canterlot and into Trotterdam. Far away from Ponyville and the other cities who had sworn to be neutral in the conflict. The war was far away for Rainbow Dash. Until today.

WWWWHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHH

“AAHHH,” Rainbow Dash screamed, her cries joining those below. The cyan Pegasus was blown off her cloud and into Sugarcube Corner.

The wave of energy subsided. Ponyville looked to have just survived a wind storm. Carts and ponies and anything else that wasn’t bolted to the ground was flipped and tossed by the shock wave.

“What the hay was that?” Rainbow Dash said as she entered Sugarcube Corner. Pinkie Pie was white, covered in flour, helping the Cakes clean up a mess of fallen jars and broken glass displays.

“I don’t know but all I can say is WWWWWEEEEEEEEEE go again!” she said bouncing up and down, flour shaking off her body.

“Ok, I’m gonna go see if Twilight needs any help,” Dash said as she walked back out the door. And with that she spread her wings and took off toward the town library.

When she entered the scene reminded her of one of Twilight’s reorganization days. All the books in the library were tossed onto the floor.

“Spike! Where are you?” Twilight called.

“MMMMMHHHMMMM,” came the reply. A small green claw pushed itself out of a pile of books. Twilight’s magic grabbed it and pulled its owner out.

“One more minute in there and I was going to burn my way out,” Spike said, small bruises covered his body but other than that, he looked fine.

“Hey, Twilight. Need any help with anything?” Rainbow asked.

“No I think we’re fine here. Why don’t you go see Fluttershy? You know how easily she spooks.”

“Good idea, see ya later Twilight,” and with that Rainbow rushed out the door towards Fluttershy’s cottage.

Four hours later

John decelerated his jet. He’d traveled a Mach one for about twenty minutes before he felt far enough away from whatever was going on there to be safe. He was still having trouble comprehending what had just happened. It had defiantly been a battle but the participants were ponies! He’d dismissed that as a stress induced hallucination. The weapons used by the combatants were nothing he’d ever seen. Was he dead? No, he’d figured that out after several minutes of slapping his face and making turns at four Gs. He was clearly alive. But where was he? He’d find out later. Now it was getting dark and he needed a place to land. That clearing should do nicely.

“Thanks, Lockheed Martin, for putting VTOL in this thing,” John said relieved as he brought the jet into a hover. The engine rotated down and the door covering the lift fan opened. Slowly, he lowered the jet in to the clearing.

He flipped a switch and deployed the jet’s landing gear. It lowered with a satisfying click. The jet landed with a soft thud.

He opened the cockpit and clambered out of the pilot’s seat. He pulled off his helmet.

“Alright, let’s just see one thing,” he opened up the internal weapon bays. He looked inside. NO, that shouldn’t be possible. Instead of six missiles with two missing there was a full eight. But he had fired two, hadn’t he? This was getting weird.

He looked at his fuel gage. It stayed on 100%. How had he flown the jet at Mach one and not lost a drop of fuel? He sat in the cockpit, dumbfounded, his hands resting on the sticks. Suddenly the jet powered up, the engines began whirring. He quickly pulled his hands away from the controls.

“What the hell was that?”

His pulled off his gloves and shut the plane off completely. Wait, what’s that on his hands? When did he get tattoos? On both his hands were two bird wings with a plane in between them. They were glowing.

“Ok, this is officially off the weird scale,” John said.

He reached over and began to pull himself out of the jet. Just as his hands passed a stick the tattoos on his hands started glowing, the jet powered on.

“Hmmm,” he moved his hand away from the stick, the jet powered down and his hands stopped glowing.

He hopped out of the jet. He placed his hand on the side of the plane. It didn’t respond.

Try thinking about it

“What?” John asked, turning around looking for the source of the voice. “Wait, try thinking about it?”

He focused on the jet and snapped his fingers. His hands glowed and the jet powered on.

“Whoa, that’s awesome.”

“Hmm, I wonder,” he said. He thought of the plane’s engines, and raised his hand. The plane’s engines began whirring and it slowly started to rise with his arm. He lowered his arm and the plane followed.

“Oh, now that’s sick,” he laughed.

He raised the plane again and rotated his hand. The plane began to lean to the right. He raised his other hand and rotated it and watched as the plane began to rotate, facing him. He moved his hand to the right, and the jet followed.

“Let’s try this.” He took his index finger and flicked it downward. The missile bay doors opened. Making a finger gun he pointed into the forest.

“Bang.” On command a missile took off from the plane and into the forest.

SSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHFFFFFFFFFFEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

Rainbow Dash was sleeping soundly. The cloud bed was so comfortable. A soft boom in the distance roused her. “Eh, what? Ah forget it,” she said with a yawn and flopped back onto her bed.

A small fire ball rose into the sky.

“OK, enough of that,” John said and lowered the plane and shut it down. He couldn’t stay here. He had to find civilization of some kind. “Don’t want anyone finding you,” John said to the plane. It flashed its lights almost as a response. He grabbed his knife and began to cut branches and brush and began to cover the jet’s top and sides. In a green forest a gray jet wouldn’t be too difficult to find. Finally after four hours of cutting and placing, the whole top of the plane was covered in green.

John grabbed his sidearm and knife, pocketing both in his boots. He headed into the forest. After an hour of walking, the sun began to rise. Just in time, he’d reached the edge of the woods. A small cottage lay just beyond the edge of the wood.

“♫ La la la laa laaa ♫ ,” sung a friendly, silky voice, “Wake up sleepy heads, time for breakfast.”

John ran toward the sound of the voice, “Hey! I need help, can you tell me where I am.”

“EEEEE, Um sure I guess,” came the reply from around the cottage, “who are you exactly, oh did I sound too mean?”

“No, you sounded quite friendly,” John said as he rounded the corner, “my name is J-.” Before him stood something strait out his ‘hallucination.’ A cream yellow pony with a pink mane stood in front of him. She immediately screamed, “MONSTER!”

“wha, how, I uh, no, that’s not possib, I uh, ahhhh,” and with that, John’s eyes rolled into his head and he fell to the ground, unconscious.

Next Chapter: Chapter 3. Dream come true. Well sort of. Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 15 Minutes