Chapter 2: Contact

When did Equestria’s tax code get so long? Princess Celestia thought to herself as she perused the drawer that took up most of the wall, whose sole purpose was to contain what was likely the single largest document in the entire world. That, of course, was a silly question, for Celestia remembered the long procession of years in which the tax code had grown from a thin stack of papers into the monstrosity it was today. Civilization in those early days had been simple and elegant as everypony adjusted to a life not ruled by chaos, but one where they could be the arbiters of their own fates.

A long sigh escaped Celestia’s mouth as she found the relevant section. The discussion about altering the tax policy on traveling merchants that had taken place in the morning had left her feeling embarrassed as references and citations flew over her head, even if nopony else had noticed her lack of knowledge about the topic at hand. Well, if there was one thing Celestia had perfected over the years, it was making everypony else think that she knew more than she did.

“Celestia, dear sister!”

The commanding voice that boomed out from the end of the row made Celestia look up from a fascinating definition on what exactly constituted a “purchase”. “Yes, Luna?”

“I hath returned from my meeting with the nobility.”

Uh oh. Celestia did not like Luna’s tone of voice.

“It was thither that I had the... pleasure of meeting the one who calls himself ‘Prince Blueblood’.”

Celestia winced and quickly stuffed the bit of tax code she had been levitating in the air back into the drawer. She had been dreading this conversation ever since Luna got back.

“Beyond the fact that this pony dares to presume himself a Prince, he also claims to be thy niece.”

Slowly Celestia turned her gaze upwards to meet Luna’s glaring eyes. The dark blue alicorn was a head shorter than Celestia, but at the moment Celestia felt the opposite was true. Luna’s stance was confrontational, her hooves planted firmly on the ground, legs straight, wings spread, nose tilted slightly in the air.

“Being that I am the only sister thee hath ever had, and that I hath certainly borne no foal within this past millennium, I beseech thou to explain to me how that it is thee hath a... ‘niece’.”

Celestia smiled weakly. “Luna! I think your grammar is starting to adjust! You’re not saying ‘we’ anymore!” When Luna’s expression did not falter, she sighed. “It’s a long story. You see, about eight hundred years ago, I decided that Equestria needed a-”

A powerful shockwave of magic resonated through the fibers of Celestia’s being, sending her train of thought flying right into the sky. In the distance, there was a hole in reality, as though an aperture had been punched through the canvas on which Equestria was painted. Ripples raced out from the epicenter across the land, disrupting the senses of every magically-inclined pony. For a fraction of a second, Celestia saw beyond the hole; a vast, empty darkness, immensely old--so old that, for the first time in thousands of years, Celestia felt... young.

Then it was over. Slowly Celestia became aware of her surroundings again. Where was she? Ah yes, in the library, looking at tax code, before Luna came in to ask about Blueblood-

She stared at Luna. Luna stared back. Both compressed their lips, minds deep in thought. The two sets of eyes perceived the machinations behind each other, as the sisters came to the same conclusion-

“The balcony,” two voices rang out at once, and Celestia turned around and bolted down the row, weaving between shelves until she had bounded out of the library with only a cursory glance to the receptionist, racing down the hall until she reached the closet balcony from which she could view the outside of the castle.

Luna was already there, having simply teleported instead of running the entire way, staring into the distance. A tremendous rumbling filled the air, and Celestia’s gaze followed the Princess of the Night’s as her eyes fell upon the incredible sight.

Celestia thought she had seen nearly everything Equestria had to offer in all her long years of life. Yet here was something so utterly alien, so inexplicable, that it defied all explanation her intellect attempted to invent. Her mind first turned to Discord, the draconequus being the only creature she knew of that could conjure something so... massive. But the spirit of disharmony couldn’t possibly break out of the prison created by the Elements of Harmony alone. Unless...

“Luna,” Celestia spoke to the dark alicorn.

Luna tore her gaze from the metal mountain, now plowing through the fields beyond Canterlot, and turned to her sister. “Yes?”

“Assemble the Guard. Take a detachment and secure that... thing.” The Princess of the Sun spun around.

“And where shalt thee go?” Luna asked.

Celestia’s tone was dark. “I’m going to check on Discord.”

The crash was the most terrifying thing Sunny Days had ever been through. The tremendous vibrations that shook the ship seemed like they would never end. The ghostly echoes of screeching metal protesting the gigantic forces they were forced to endure rebounded throughout the ship, making it sound like the entire vessel was screaming in torment. Sunny Days slid along the floor, smashing into the window, desperately trying to dodge flying consoles and machinery and the two other ponies as they too were swept off their hooves by the impact. After what felt like an eternity, the ship finally came to a stop.

Silence. Cautiously Sunny Days climbed back onto her hooves and looked around. Storm Drive and Hieroglyph were dusting themselves off as well.

The bodiless voice sounded again. “Warning. Governing Intelligence Containment Fields breached. Essence dissipating. System failure imminent. Beginning system failure protocols. Shutting down central power core. Engaging failsafes in Walluvianacht Engines. Ejecting hazardous byproducts into waste disposal chamber. Sealing waste disposal chamber. Releasing C3A-151 from secondary power core. Disengaging stasis field. Protocols complete.”

Then the voice shifted, its emotionless tone falling away, turning into the heartbroken sound of a scared, little filly. “Captain...?” the voice cried softly, “I don’t know if you’re still there, but... I’m sorry. For everything.”

The voice vanished, never to speak again. The reams of arcane symbols that fluttered across the screens of all the monitors in the room, so lively before, were now replaced by two big, bold words, flashing bright red against a black background. SYSTEM FAILURE. SYSTEM FAILURE. SYSTEM FAILURE. Soon, they too faded into nothingness.

By the time Twilight and her friends had gotten to the mysterious ship an enormous crowd had formed in what had just this morning been an empty field near it. Black smoke was still billowing out from the gargantuan fissures in the vessel’s sides, though several pegasus ponies had gathered some rain clouds to try and put out the fires.

“Hey, you guys!” Twilight heard a familiar voice call out from above. Turning her head skyward, she saw Rainbow Dash coast in for a landing. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

“We were looking for you,” Twilight replied, eyebrows knitted as she inspected the blue pegasus.

“Eh,” Rainbow replied, then glanced over at the ship. “So where did this thing come from?”

“It fell out of the sky, silly!” Pinkie said, bouncing.

Rainbow Dash examined Pinkie with a quizzical expression. “And did you see it fall out of the sky?”

Pinkie’s eyes and mouth turned upwards as she thought about the question. “Well, no. But I felt my tail started twitching, and you know what happens when my tail starts twitching, and I was like, ‘I’ve never felt my tail twitch so much before,’ and then I knew that something REALLY BIG was about to fall, and then the ground started shaking and my voice was all silly and then Rarity told me I was being silly and then when we walked out of Sugarcube Corner everyone was looking at this thing way over here!”

“Uh-huh,” Dash nodded, clearly not convinced by Pinkie’s story.

“She’s telling the truth, Rainbow,” Twilight said, hoping to convince the blue pegasus. “I saw it with my own eyes. And where have you been all this time? The earthquake should have told you that something was up!”

“Uh, I live in a cloud home,” Rainbow Dash reminded Twilight, making vague poofy motions with her hooves that were supposed to represent her house. “Of course I can’t feel an earthquake.”

Twilight tilted her head. “Well, you should have at least noticed all the noise outside.”

“I, uh...” Rainbow Dash meekly scratched the back of her head. “I was sleeping.”

“Well that just about explains everything, doesn’t it darling?” Rarity cut in, her voice carrying her usual refined tone.

“Except, ya know, this thing here,” Applejack pointed out, hoof gesturing at the massive metal wall in front of them.

The blaring of trumpets drew everypony’s attention to the largest army of royal guards Twilight had ever seen. They descended from the sky and swarmed the mysterious ship, setting down on the ground between it and the crowds, forming a cordon that separated the two. This was followed by an enormous booming voice that blew Twilight’s mane in her face and made her cheeks flap as the wind blasted them. “CITIZENS OF EQUESTRIA,” Princess Luna thundered from a flying chariot, “FOR THY OWN SAFETY, PLEASE STAY AWAY FROM THE OBJECT BEFORE THEE. THE ROYAL GUARDS OF EQUESTRIA SHALL HANDLE THIS AFFAIR.”

Well, at least she didn’t summon the lightning and thunder this time, Twilight thought. As Luna’s chariot landed, Twilight pushed her way through the crowd, a feat made easier by the tremendous amounts of bowing going on. “Princess Luna!”

“AH, TWILIGHT SPA-” Realizing that she was still using the Royal Canterlot Voice, Luna raised a hoof to her mouth and coughed. “Twilight Sparkle, wielder of the Element of Magic. Hath thee something to say?”

Twilight came to a stop next to the chariot. “Princess, I-” She looked around. There was something missing from this scene. “Where’s Princess Celestia?”

“My sister hath gone to inspect the chamber of the statue of Discord, the Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony,” Luna replied. “She should be here any moment now.”

Right on cue, there was a blinding flash of light, as though a miniature sun had manifested a few meters above Twilight’s head. When the light faded, there stood Princess Celestia, lord of the sun.

All the ponies quickly sank to their front knees again, Twilight included this time. “Princess!” she greeted, smiling, once she was finished bowing.

Celestia’s stern expression broke out into a smile. “Twilight Sparkle, my most faithful student. It is a pleasure to see you again.” Her stern expression returned and she regarded the titanic vessel that dominated the skyline. The side of the ship stretched up into the sky like a massive wall, covered in thousands of purple and gold geometric shapes, giving an impression of a city-scape turned perpendicular to the ground. “Guards!” she called out, and a group of white pegasus guards flew in to stand at attention. “Fly around the vessel,” she ordered, her voice ringing with authority, “See if you can find any way in.”

-----

“Guys, I think we’re on a Forerunner world.”

Sunny Days glanced over to Hieroglyph, who was staring out the window. Far below the three ponies, past the spires and turrets and blocks that covered the top of the Forerunner vessel, a small crowd had gathered. Well, it was probably a fairly large crowd that merely looked like it was small due to being so far away; Sunny Days couldn’t make out any more than colored splotches of the beings who made up the crowd.

“What makes you say that?” Storm Driver asked, trotting up next to the brown archaeologist.

“Look at that city over there,” Hieroglyph responded, pointing a hoof at a city of spires and turrets mounted on the side of a tall bluish-gray mountain. “The architecture of that city resembles this ship far too much to be a mere coincidence.” His eyes suddenly widened, realizing the significance of what he had just said. “Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh.”

“What?” Storm Driver’s eyebrows were furrowed in annoyance.

“Think about it!” Hieroglyph exclaimed, grabbing Storm Driver by the shoulders. “We’re on a Forerunner planet! In a Forerunner ship! What would you think if you saw a bunch of strange aliens in a badly damaged pony ship crash on our planet?”

“Umm-”

“That they hijacked it, of course!” Hieroglyph released Storm Driver’s shoulders and shuddered. “They’re gonna kill us. No, wait. They might want to torture us first. Oh gosh, who knows what the Forerunners think is justified punishment? What are they going to do?” He curled up into a ball, cowering at the thought of the vast arcane tortures that an advanced space-faring civilization might have developed.

“Calm down, Hiero,” Storm said, shaking his head. “We don’t know for sure that this is a Forerunner-” His sentence broke off at seeing a white pony with a blue mane and tail outside the window, wearing golden armor that glittered in the sunshine. A normal pony shouldn’t possibly have been able to be out there, standing on nothing hundreds of meters above any solid platform, but this pony had wings. “Holy.”

Sunny Days peered past the winged pony. There were other flying ponies as well, that were somehow grabbing clouds with their bare hooves and squeezing water out of them onto the fires that blazed from holes in the ship. “Well, I think that confirms Hieroglyph’s theory.” They looked like ponies, but no pony could possibly have wings, fly, and squeeze water out of clouds... Just imagining the mechanisms required to be able to physically grab hold of condensed water droplets suspended in the air and move them about was making Sunny’s head hurt.

The flying pony outside their window was moving his mouth, but the three ponies inside couldn’t hear a thing. Hieroglyph had taken to making wild gestures with his hooves that Sunny Days presumed meant something, but for the love of all that was good she had no idea what.

The winged white pony dove downwards to the crowd, disappearing out of sight. It wasn’t long before he returned, holding up a sign with the words, “WHO ARE YOU?”

“Hieroglyph, where’s your pencil and clipboard?” Sunny asked. The brown pony looked around in alarm before spotting his saddlebag on the far side of the room. Dashing over, he retrieved a thick notepad, grabbed a pencil in his mouth, and scribbled something onto it before tearing the paper off and pasting it against the window in front of the flying white pony.

“How can we have the same language?” Storm Driver asked.

Hieroglyph pursed his lips, hoof still holding the piece of paper against the window. “They may have seeded life or civilization on our world. That would explain why we look so similar too.”

The white pony dived back towards the ground again. Sunny Days couldn’t help but smile. Here they were, making first contact with an alien civilization! If they ever got back home, they’d be going down in history for sure!

“We... are... ponies,” Celestia repeated.

The guard saluted. “Yes, your majesty.”

“And you’re sure that’s what they wrote?”

“Yes, your majesty.”

“Pray tell, was that not completely obvious?” Luna asked.

“I’m sure there’s a good reason they felt they needed to make that clear,” Twilight said, leaning with her front hooves against the floor of Luna’s chariot.

Celestia turned back to the guard. “Ask them where they are from.” The guard saluted once more, then flew off to have another sign made.

“Is it just me, or do these ponies sound a little... stupid?” Rainbow Dash muttered from behind Twilight.

“Come now, RD,” Applejack replied softly, “We’ve only asked these folk one question. Give ‘em a chance, now.” Rainbow Dash sighed exasperatedly.

While the rest of Twilight’s friends conjectured about the nature of these ponies, Twilight and the Princesses simply stood in stolid silence, staring upwards at the tiny white dot that was the guard upon whom fate had chosen to be their messenger. Soon enough, the dot descended back down towards them.

“Typhanis,” the guard said.

“Typhanis?” Celestia echoed. She shook her head. “Where in the world is- We need a better way to talk to them. Ask them to come out.”

When the guard returned several minutes later, the response this time was “We can’t. The door’s broken.”

It had been a long time since Celestia had wanted to facehoof so badly, but that would have been unprincess-like. “Well then, we need a way in, don’t we?”

“We could teleport,” Twilight suggested, smiling eagerly for her teacher’s approval.

Celestia replied with a similar expression. “Very well, Twilight Sparkle. I hereby request that you teleport inside that tower and make contact with these ponies.”

Twilight’s irises shrank into points. “What? Me?”

“What? Her?” her friends echoed in chorus.

Celestia nodded. “Twilight Sparkle, as my best student,I have complete faith in your ability to carry out this mission. Good lucky, my little pony.” As she motioned with her hoof, with nary another word a pair of guard ponies swept Twilight up onto a chariot and took her up into the sky.

“Twilight!” Rainbow Dash called. “Wait!” She blasted off the ground, leaving a rainbow trail in her wake.

There was a flash of purple light in the middle of the room, and what had just a second ago been empty space now stood a purple pony with a dark, pink-streaked mane and a strange horn on her head.

It was a few seconds before Sunny Days could pick her jaw off the ground and close her mouth. “H- wha- how did you do that?”

The purple pony smiled awkwardly. “It’s just a teleportation spell,” she explained. She looked around the room at the three strange ponies. “Well hello. My name is Twilight Sparkle. Who are you?” She glanced eagerly from pony to pony, nervousness rising in her blood. Here she was, an ordinary pony from Canterlot, and she was making first contact with ponies from Celestia-knew-where! Regardless of how her life turned out, she was going down in history! Wait no, there was already those nice windows in Canterlot of her... ok, going down in history for a third thing.

“Umm...” Sunny Days still trying to comprehend the fact that this horned purple pony had just brushed off teleportation as something ordinary. She felt a shiver of awe run down her spine. Any doubt in her mind that these were the Forerunners vanished. Just what were these creatures?

“I’m Storm Driver,” the white colt said, first to recover from this latest shock of the day. “This is Sunny Days, and this is Hieroglyph,” he added, gesturing to each pony in turn with a hoof. “We’re explorers from Typhanis.”

“Typhanis,” Twilight repeated, her awkwardly polite smile still pasted onto her face. “I’ve never heard of that place before. Is it far away?”

There was a pause before Storm Driver’s reply. “Yes,” he finally responded. “Well actually, we don’t know where ‘here’ is, so it might not be very far away. But it probably is.”

Twilight lifted her eyebrows. “Wait, so, how did you guys get here if you don’t know where here is?”

“Um, we found this ship here,” Storm Driver replied slowly, then realized something and hastily added, “abandoned, of course. We were exploring the inside when we came up into this room. Then the ship started falling, and then there was this voice talking and then, suddenly, we were here.”

“Uh-huh,” Twilight nodded, then blinked twice and shook her head. “Wait, what?” She then decided that perhaps she didn’t want to shoulder the responsibility of interrogating these three ponies alone. “You know what, just forget it. Let’s get out of here first, then we can talk all about where you three came from. Now where’s that door?”

“Here,” Sunny Days said, pointing at a circular aperture on the near wall. As Twilight approached it, she added, “But it doesn’t work...”

Twilight closely inspected the door. It was made of two pieces of white metal split down the middle, nestled within the structure of the wall itself, featureless except for a gray button on the wall next to it. She pressed the button with a hoof. Nothing happened. Closing her eyes, Twilight channeled magical power into her horn and reached out with a sensory spell. There were gasps behind her as the other ponies saw her glowing horn, but she paid them no attention.

The mechanisms within the door were more complex than anything Twilight had ever seen. Trying to follow the minute details of the tiny wheels and slides was making her dizzy. But strangely, the door seemed aware of her magic; or at least, she felt a small, inquisitive response from the mechanisms, a magic of its own that seemed to be grasping for hers. Curious, Twilight let her magic make contact with the door’s magic, and felt it accept a small portion of her power. There was a quiet humming, then the two metal plates that closed off the aperture slid apart.

Shocked gasps followed this development. Twilight felt slightly embarrassed at all the attention, but she opened her eyes and saw that the door lead to... a tiny room. Confused, she walked through the door and did a 360 before tilting her head to a side and looking back at the other ponies. “How did you come in through this door?”

“Well, the elevator’s broken, I guess...” Sunny Days was looking at Twilight expectantly as the other three ponies joined Twilight in the lift. Realizing what she had to do, the purple unicorn reached out with the sensory spell again and fed a bit of power into the mechanisms that governed the lift. There was a buzz, then a sensation of falling in her gut as the lift hummed merrily downwards. Well, this is interesting.

But the lift wasn’t the only thing Twilight sensed. Stretching out with the sensory spell, she could feel thousands- no, millions- no, billions- no, uncountable devices that were thirsting for magical energy. So great was the array of machines that Twilight felt light-headed just trying to see them all. To focus her attention, she found the magical presences of the ponies outside; the energies of the two Princesses were plainly visible, Celestia’s glowing like the blazing sun, Luna’s like a black orb that emanated dark power.

Then Twilight noticed a third presence, inside the ship; indeed, almost at its very heart. It too, glowed with a sensation not unlike that of Celestia’s, though far weaker, and with a different... Twilight struggled for a while to describe the feeling, then decided texture was the right word.

It was below them at the moment, but they were swiftly approaching its level. Curious, Twilight stopped the lift once they had reached the same floor. She then powered on the elevator door, and emerged into a pitch black hallway.

“Is this the way out?” Sunny Days asked.

“I don’t know,” Twilight responded honestly. “But there’s something here, and I want to find out what it is.” She channeled more magic into her horn, causing a bright light to erupt from the end, brightening the hallway enough that she could see. “Come on.” She cantered down the hallway.

No... no... no... Twilight could get a vague impression of what was behind each of the doors they passed, but all of them only contained strange objects. She turned her attention ahead, towards the presence. It was in a vast room at the center of the hall. The group of ponies soon came across a much larger door, one that Twilight’s library could have passed through without even brushing the edges.

She channeled her power into the doorway; as one might expect, this larger door took a lot more energy, but it was still not much of a strain for Twilight’s prodigious magical potential. With a deep rumbling the metal plates slid open, revealing a gigantic, spherical room with a central pillar rising from bottommost point reaching towards the center, where it flattened out into a tall platform of smaller circular platforms stacked on top of ever larger circular platforms, connected to a series of thick, heavy cables that stretched from the central platform to all points on the inner surface of the spherical chamber.

Twilight’s ears stretched straight. Her eyes widened, her pupils shrank, her jaw hit the floor. For standing in atop the central platform was none other than...

“Princess Celestia?!”

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