Mustang, in all it's Equestrian glory, looked like Oblivion, minus a few hundred years of dirt and grime and an added dirt road instead of cracked cobble.

It looked like an idyllic place, peace and kindness sort of radiating out from it as if in a fine mist. The very air seemed better to breath.

And even while I was breathing this in I was coming to terms with the simple fact that I had indeed somehow eaten, or otherwise stolen, souls that were going to be digested by that thing when I blew it up.

Though... trying to figure out what happened was far more difficult a task than I had thought. Half the time I just got a picture of diamonds slowly turning to water and a foreign tongue chanting out words.

Seriously, the spider's laugh was getting to me. It was like someone hitting the same note on a piano over and over again, just out of range of being able to pinpoint it. Maybe an E flat?

At any rate, there was no such thing as a covert landing when I had the only airship in the town. Also, only two zebras in town. Apparently there was another one with a bit of a reputation in some town called Ponyville, and that name in of itself triggered a faint recollection of something I should probably be remembering. I decided to invest in some sort of memory aid. In the future, of course.

Failing to see the large fallacy in that last bit of logic, I looked out over the deck of the ship for a nice place to land, beckoning for Catastrophe to touch down. Mustang looked just seedy enough to have a few less than legals to try and recruit for some manual labor.

I had the tiniest flash of committing a few murders before I shut off the swimming thought. I pushed it away from me. Most of the people in the wastes deserved to be there.

But the memories... I understood so much about magic. There was a single unicorn in the mix and through just what the unicorn had felt I could sense magic everywhere. Like... air currents, the gentle push and pull of the magic of the sun and the moon painted almost iridescent lights on everything.

The very ground in Equestria was slightly glowing from the ambient white magic.

The ship descended slowly from my griffon companions tinkering. With my eyes closed I could hear her talons clink on gauges and the slight steam hiss from the controls. Boss shuffled around and crunched on a cheap gem. Maybe amethyst. A bit of quartz, perhaps? Canary continued his learning of Equestrian, spouting off the syllables to keep them in check.

The ship stopped descending and I opened my eyes.

"Careful. Something nasty is nearby. Like... seriously bad. Banana bads." The spider jittered, throwing me off balance and almost sending me over the edge of the ship.

Catastrophe tapped on my shoulder as I tried to frantically regain my sense of balance and calm and kicked over the simple rope ladder. It unfurled slowly to the ground and I gulped, looking down it.

"Do-" I cut myself off after a second and carefully brought a feather out of my satchel. Channeling my magic through it, and being careful not to overload the spell, I carefully brought each rung of the ladder up to each hoof and really really tried not to think about how the fuck I was holding things.

The thirty feet or so until I touched the ground were some of the worst ever. Mainly because a particularly annoying memory of being a pegasus who didn't pull up fast enough during a dive kept popping up, and the phantom feeling of falling kept wrapping around me.

Touching down on the ground made me sigh in relief, and enviously look at Catastrophe who leisurely glided down next to me. Canary didn’t take half as long as I did to descend and Boss might as well have jumped off of it for all the time she took on the ladder.

Confidence in myself... dropping...

And we were almost immediately met by the welcoming party; a few guards and a pegasus. The guards had slightly tarnished armor and I caught the faintest hint of rust on one of their spears. Not the best amount of scariness I had ever faced, but at they were giving as effort.

“HALT!” One of them called.

“Criminal scum...” I muttered, looking around. This seemed really cliche. If I named this place, I would’ve called it Clicheville.

“Who goes there!” Another shouted.

“What is your business?” The third said far more politely, his look chastising the other two.

I took my stand at the front of the group. “My name is Ivan. We are travellers seeking to replenish our fuel and find an actual bed to sleep in.” It was a fair enough lie, all things considered.

The head guard nodded in a friendly way at us. “Very well. Know you will be watched.” The other guards stopped pointing their spears at us.

I smiled lightly, though I’m pretty sure it didn’t reach my eyes. “I understand. Having trouble with criminals?” I could just barely feel their essences twitch at the mention of criminals.

I could feel their essences twitch.

An enormous hunger consumed me and I closed my eyes for a long time to try and figure it out.

I could taste what they were.

Catastrophe took over for me after an awkward pause. “Is that all?” She said in a far more polite tone than I had ever heard her speak in.

I opened my eyes and the guards slowly walked away.

And I realized something.

I was feeding off of the natural releases of energy from my group. That’s how I knew what they were doing.

Wait... when did I know what they were doing?

Back on the ship. Right...

"Yeah. That’s why I haven’t been demanding that you feed me souls. I am quite satisfied with the energy they are all giving off.”

I tried not to recoil at his hiss. I smiled. I would be able to survive...

Catastrophe tapped my shoulder again. “Come on. Let’s get a hotel room and recruit a few beings.”

I nodded slightly. “Yeah.”

Canary nudged me. “Just take it easy, ok?”

Boss smiled lightly. “Nice talking, Ivan.”

I could taste their approval.

Oh god. I’m a freaking Empath.

I shut my eyes and tried to blot out the feelings. “Thanks.” I mumbled. I scuffed the ground to make sure it was really there.

I stepped forward, and with the support of my happy group, walked into the town of Mustang.

----

And then almost immediately into the nearest pub/hotel I could find. My stomach was growling, and after yesterday’s disastrous dinner experiment, I couldn’t say I had had much to eat.

So that’s how I found myself without a sandwich and an empty plate, staring hungrily at Catastrophe’s slice of meat on her plate while Canary and Boss chatted with each other.

Oh, and of course, there were a few idiot shadowy types who were trying to convince us that we should pay them more than we had agreed to for their substandard services.

As it turns out, trying to hire thieves and other suck not so nice guys to do semi complex manual labor was a bit harder than I had thought.

“Hey Canary.” I mumbled, shooing off more idiot mercs. “How much do you want to bet that someone in this bar is trying to overhear gossip?” I tapped his shoulder after a minute.

“I don’t bet when it comes to you, Ivan.” He turned back to Boss.

We were being watched, rather intently even, by someone far more powerful than all of us combined.

I could feel his power twisting through the air like a faint hiss, could hear him listen. I felt like an ant under a magnifying glass and I could only hope that he wasn’t going to focus his power and catch me ablaze. I ignored it for a long while and looked at Catastrophe. “None of these mercs are worth a damn.” She growled.

There was the curious sound of the bar floor slipping against a long long tail and then someone pulled up a chair next to us.

I turned my gaze to the newcomer and felt my hackles raise up. Curiously, the only other thing I thought when I saw his snake man body was on why the hell did a snake need a chair. He’s a freaking snake, why did he pull up a chair to sit at our table?

And then he spoke, his cold body lending me memories of life on earth and of long hours of doing nothing but reading Dnd books. Yuan-ti. Snakemen. Magic wielders and who knows what else. And there was the faintest hint of a strange magic to him, like he was disturbing the very presence of the fabric of the spac- Wait... I read a book like that. “So I hear you’re hiring mercenaries. Care to let me in on what you need a merc for? Depending on the pay and the work, I might sign up.”

He spoke with quite a bit less of a hiss than I was expecting, but I probably shouldn't have been expecting a hiss in the first place. I looked him over for a long moment, the feeling of being observed not leaving me. I nodded. "Right. Rebuilding a town and fighting slavers. The pay is really poor and I don't feel like lying to you about it." I nodded again because it seemed like the thing to do.

Canary beside me tensed almost unnoticeably.

Catastrophe remained self assured. "He claims he owns an island. I think he's insane." But even in her words she was projecting that she really wasn't close to me.

Boss nodded. "He owns the island." She shot the barest hint of a glare at the griffon.

Canary stiffened and slipped into Zebrican. <"I hate Snakes." As it was in Zebrican, it went on for a bit longer than necessary.

And then the snake surprised me. <"Sorry am I. Looks not to looking to my like."> He replied in garbled Zebrican.

Canary and I both exchanged quick glances.

Catastrophe looked blank. "Yeah... I don't speak that." She shrugged.

"Of course you speak Zebrican. It fits perfectly." I rolled my eyes. I looked at Canary, taking my gaze off of the snake and hoping he wouldn't snap my neck. I had to make it clear that I was still in control. "Told you I would find some nut in a bar looking for information in a bar. This place crawls on cliches." I shook my head.

Canary groaned, though I caught the slightest hint of something resembling acceptance and complete confusion. "I think you are insane."

The snake man thing switched back to Equestrian. “He may very well be, but he’s crazy like a fox. This reality does exist upon the rules of theater. But that is neither here nor there.” The snake man cleared his throat and then made the air shimmer for less than a second and distorted reality from the inside of the fabric, causing everything to change at once. I tried not to react to it. “I represent a group that may or may not have goals parallel to yours. Slavers have been particularly aggressive over the last few years, and the numbers of missing has increased dramatically.” He looked directly at me and I felt that he could see my soul.

"This guy just weaved reality. THAT. IS. NOT. FAIR. Malice whined. "That's my Schtick."

I clenched my jaw to stop from crying out. "What. Did. You. Just. Do." I grunted out. I shut my eyes and thought about the offer, thinking maybe it would be better to not piss him off. "Who is in charge, and how would it benefit me?" I blinked, my eyes watering slightly. "Also, I rolled a 17 for my interrogation check. What was the Dc?" If he was somehow human...

“I made sure that we would not be overheard. Very few species can sense that, and only magically inclined ones that know what to feel for can detect anything. I am impressed that you even noticed.” And then reality folded again on itself and I felt a distinct amount of fear start to color my thinking. “The DC is a percentage roll, either a one or a one-hundred. But I will tell you this. My boss is only interested in stopping the slave trade, as am I.” There was a long pause during which I considered how likely I would be to get out of the room before he killed me. “This would benefit you in that you would get my services in wiping out the slavers. Assuming that your island isn’t populated by the equivalent of Manehatten in hostiles, I should be more than enough.”

And I believed him when he said he would be enough. And... his response to the Dnd question... He might be... "Better listen to him, he has you in a nice little web. Made of death. Death web. Stay away.”

I rolled my eyes at the spider. I already knew I was over my head. I made sure to keep my interest plain in my eyes. “So tell me... what does the word Uranium mean to you?”

Canary groaned beside me and took away some of the tension in the air. “You two are cut from the same insane cloth.

The snake opened his mouth. “Uranium, an actinide on the periodic table. Atomic number of 92, or 92 protons. Has a fairly stable isotope of Uranium 238, which means the element is radioactive. Has multifarious uses, both destructive and constructive. Which begs the question, what does it mean to you?” It might as well have been an angelic chorus. I wasn't insane.

Earth did exist.

I was in the presence of someone else from Earth.

This is a cross over with this fic. Thank you Keairan.