I sat on a wooden chair gazing towards the purple 'pony' that sat across me, she led me to her house that was located inconveniently in the middle of the settlement, countless pairs of eyes turned to see me as I walked by,  she checked her pencil and cleared her throat before speaking.  

"So what is your name?"

"Benjamin, Benjamin Cross, and you are?"

"Twilight Sparkle, can I ask you a few more questions Benjamin?"

"Please, call me Ben, and yes – only if you let me ask a few questions of my own."

"Fair enough – My first question is quite obvious; what are you?"

"I'm a Homo sapiens or – in much simpler meaning – a human."

"Interesting… you don't mind me writing as we speak, are you Ben?"

"Not at all, I record this entire conversation myself on my RIG"

"That's my second question actually, what is this… RIG, do you mean the suit?"

"Well… it is a suit but it's actually a resource integration gear."

"Care to elaborate?"

"Of course, just a second…" I pushed a small button located in the back of my neck, a few noises later and my helmet folded itself into a compartment positioned inside the chest plate I wore.

Seeing her overly vivid eyes go wide was almost funny… almost, I let a snicker escape my lips as I saw the mare scribbling something in her notebook, from the wide brushes against the paper I guessed she tried to sketch my face, considering it's the first body part I revealed to her… don't even think about it you perverts!

"Ahh, much better, this RIG is nice an' all, but the helmet is like a furnace" ,Suddenly her scribbling stopped just as I stopped speaking, she looked at me and opened her mouth to say something but all I could hear were incomprehensible mumbles, like she suddenly switched language.

"Uhh Twilight? Is everything okay?" I asked the lavender mare, turns out my question only made things worse, her mumbles got even more frantic and she used her 'magic' to levitate a few books and started flipping through the pages intently.

My eyes went wide as realization hit me, I quickly pressed the button on the back of my neck and my helmet reconstructed itself around my face swiftly.

"…Anything, I don’t understand what happened."

"Twilight?"

"Ben! What a relief, when you started speaking in that weird language I thought something happened."  

"Wait, I started mumbling in different language? It was you who talked nonsense."

Twilight blinked a few times before opening her mouth, but just as she did it she stopped, mouth agape, her open mouth turned into a smile and I could've swore I saw light bulb lighting above her.

"That's it! Your helmet."

Realizing where she's going with her theory I went through the archive in my suit, "Well ahead of you Twilight…" I started zipping through files when something caught my attention, there was an unidentified folder in the language translation section, I scrolled down between the different languages, "Let's see here; Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi, Arabic, UNNAMED… wait what?"

I took a second glance at the folder before opening it, inside there were infinite amounts of scribbles I simply did not understand.

"What is it ben?"

"Take a look for yourself." I said as I projected a small section from the folder's contents on the floor between us, she examined the weird symbols with growing interest until she finally spoke.

"I don't know how or why but that's Equestrian writing."

"H-How – never mind, what it says?"

Twilight shrugged, "Nothing really, it's just a bunch of random words."

"Are those words happen to appear from a simple structure to an advanced one? With a definition of each word near it?" I asked, now with a sudden sense of revelation.

Twilight silently gasped, "How did you know?"

"That's how every other language is codded into my suit, it's built in a way so when someone speaks to me, the suit automatically translates it, how your native language found itself in my suit is beyond me." I crossed my arms in deep thinking; this whole first encounter was not as I expected to be.

"Maybe it was from the time…"

"That you blasted my head?" I interrupted her; she lowered her head as her ears flattened.

"I said I'm sorry." She drew circles with her left hoof, MUST. FIGHT. CUTENESS. CAN'T. HOLD, ANYMORE.

Twilight gasped when I lifted her up from the floor and embraced her in a hug, "You're so fluffy and cute, I can't control myself, it's like holding a marshmallow!"

"Can't… breathe…"

My eyes shot open when my mind caught up with my actions, I quickly let go of Twilight, who immediately gasped for air, "Sorry, heh, heh, I got a little carried away."

"A little?!" she shot her head at me.

"Okay I'm sorry, can we please resume the questioning?"

"Yes, of course – my third question is about the thing you used to get here, what is it?" Twilight asked the question with such fascination, I thought deeply for a few moments before answering.

"It's called the UNA new hope, a spacecraft designed to travel in – well, space."

"Why would you need such a vessel, isn't your home world big enough?" she interrupted.

"Well, no…" the question was innocent at heart but still rather painful "…The human race expanded far beyond control, the estimated number of humans living on my home world grows beyond eleven billion, not to mention all the colonies."

I heard the faint sound of a pencil heating the floor and I lifted my gaze to meet Twilight's, her eyes were wide open and her mouth agape,

"What"

"E-Eleven billion, that's insane!" she exclaimed.

I raised my eyebrow before continuing "Why? How many of your kind there are on this planet?"

"Barely above the ten million and that's including the other races." She answered.

I thought back to one of my grandpa's stories, he usually told me about the past and how people in ancient times lived, he himself wasn't alive back in the days but his great grandpa was.

"Twilight… the reason why I'm here is because the over population. Our planet can barely support the amount of humans in terms of food and resource, and while we did succeed in converting entire planets into huge farm fields, we found next to nothing in terms of resources."

Twilight was quite, very quiet, she no longer wrote everything I said and instead listened carefully, I took it as a sigh to continue my story.

"In recent years we discovered how to create one-way rifts between dimensions, I was one of the few who ventured trough them and here I am." I said while spreading my arms to the sides, "This world, this… Perfect world, almost too good to be true."

"Ben… what is exactly the reason for your arrival?" Twilight asked, I could hear the worry in her tone and couldn't help but sigh.

"Find, locate, populate." Three words, was all that could've left my mouth, three words, words that were told countless times by my superiors, words that carved themselves into my mind, words that held the future of my species.

"You- You mean here, in Equestria, b-but the amount of humans, and what about us?" Twilight stuttered, visibly frightened by the idea of humans coming to Equestria in much larger numbers.

"The military told us exactly what to do in a case of first contact." I began to say as my words felt bitterer by the second, "Only two options, enslavement, or elimination…"

Twilight shot upright from her sitting position and slowly backed away while a small glow came from her horn, I tried to say something only to be interrupted buy Twilight.

"WHY, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT, WHY WOULD ANYPONY DO THAT?" she yelled, I tried to find the words and when I did, I felt even more ashamed.

"I have no choice, right as we speak, countless families are starving, do you know what it's like to see your loved ones dies in your hands, to know that their bodies will become ashes because there's no place to bury them, do you!"

Twilight stopped backing away from me but her gaze was still a cold one "You're right, I don't know what it's like, but I won't stand and do nothing if I can help it!"

Her words left me speechless, it was true… enslaving or killing another species just so we can ruin yet another planet, nobody deserved that kind of fate.

But still… I lost my family because of starvation, my mother, my father and my sister, I was born into a withering world with no future and now… I found a new planet, a new hope, and yet, I couldn’t do it, I clutched my hands as tears began to pour from my eyes.    

I felt a soothing sensation envelope my armor and when I looked up, I realized I was crying into twilight's shoulder "I'm afraid I never experienced the pain of losing somepony, but know that you're not alone anymore, I can't help you find a home for your species here but I can help you." she said softly and gently, it reminded me of my mother and I smiled and the thought.

Funny… a twenty three year old man sobbing into a shoulder of an alien race almost half my size, my helmet concealed my face but I did not care, I simply sat there with Twilight.

After the small confrontation things went much smoothly, I told Twilight all I know about space travel in general and spaceships in particular and she in return, she told me about her home world or 'Equestria' as she calls it.

The ruling body was some sort of Semi-democratic diarchy, two sisters, two princesses that rule together over the land, it was all rather similar to earth… until Twilight told me about their reach of control, according to her, Celestia, the elder sister, can raise and lower the sun and Luna, the younger sister, does the same with the moon.

It was a rather… 'Original' theory about the orbit of the star around the planet but I wasn't convinced, this whole 'Magic' Twilight explained seemed a bit made up but who am I to judge.

The recent yawns and setting sun confirmed the need for sleep to the both of us and after bidding farewell to Twilight, I made my way back towards the UNA new hope, as I reached the top of the hill that separated the town from the huge field that now housed my huge ship, I couldn't help but feel even more confused.

I stepped into the ship and strait to the decontamination chamber, after deemed 'clean' I walked all the way to the cockpit and set my eyes on the screen monitor; I pressed a few codes and was presented by an activation code.

It was the beacon signal, if I press this it will notify back to earth along with my findings, I was about to press enter when something stopped me, something in the back of my mind prevented me from doing that, I cursed myself in silent and closed the window.

I retreated to my chambers and let the armor fall off me, as I lay on the soft bed, I couldn't help but grunt at the uncomfortable feeling, being a soldier, it took me time to get used for the soft bed and warm meals.

I lay on my back and try to assess my position, my conflicted mind took me to the begging of this day, just when I was about to make my first contact…