“Okay, need to narrow down the search. Definitely want it orbiting a yellow dwarf star with carbon-based life, Earth-standard temperatures, plenty of water, an oxygen-rich atmosphere and 1g of gravitational force with a twenty percent margin of error. Otherwise I’ll be spending more time accounting for the planet’s environment than I will be worrying about the inhabitants.” He hummed to himself as he looked at the other options. “Sentient life is a definite, though I want the technology level to be pre-industrial… no, no, not pre-industrial. Otherwise I’ll have to teach some of my slaves the very concept of machinery, which would be like teaching a bullfrog to sing. Better make it pre-atomic so I’ll just have to convert the local infrastructure to fuel my armies instead of build it from the ground up. Presence of magic… won’t have to worry about that since I have my anti-magic field generator.” He manically giggled to himself. “Now come on, baby, do daddy proud.” He heard a sickeningly cute sound off to the side. “No, not you, Junior, daddy’s talking to his machines again.”

He clapped his hands together with a wide smile as he observed the results. “I think I’ve found just the place!” His fingers flew across the console, pressing various buttons and flipping switches faster than the normal eye could see. “Odd… this planet isn’t orbiting around its sun; the sun is orbiting around it.” He shrugged and giggled. “Oh well; conquerors can’t be choosers! Besides, once I establish my empire, I can take all the time I need to figure out how the fuck those celestial mechanics work!”

He snickered as he laid his hands on the final switch. “Look out, new world, here comes Doctor Insano!” He cackled with pure glee as he flipped the switch. The door-sized portal next to him sprang to life and charged up as the lights flickered in a most ominous fashion.

“Insano, what the fuck are you doing?!”

The mad scientist groaned as he shouted back up the stairs, “I’m having a villainous moment, Noah! A villainous moment that you just ruined! Are you happy now?”

“No, I’m not happy, because your fucking around with the city’s power grid just reset Final Fantasy Thirteen! You made me lose a half hour of progress, and any extra second I have to capture footage for this piece of shit is another second I might gouge my eyes out!” his roommate shouted back.

“Your pain is in the name of science, so suck it up, jackass!” Insano shot back.

“Just what in the hell are you doing down there anyway?” The rapid thumping of feet coming down the stairs made Insano roll his eyes behind his goggles. “Wait, you’re not seriously planning on using that old thing again, are you?”

The scientist rounded on Noah Antwiler, The Spoony One, and his technical landlord. “No, I just booted up my machine that can tear through the very fabric of space like tissue paper because I like looking at the pretty lights. Of course I plan on using it, you fool!”

Noah rubbed his temples and closed his eyes. “Insano, the last time you used this thing to go conquer another world, you ended up on a planet where the most advanced life form was shrimp, and there was a fuckton of shrimp.”

“Yes, and I built several automated shrimping facilities to fund my scientific endeavors. What’s your point?” Insano asked.

“My point is that this shit hasn’t worked before and it’s not gonna work now,” Noah spelled out as if he were trying to explain to a child why it was not, in fact, a good idea to eat paste.

“Ah, but you see, Spoony, that is where you’re wrong,” Insano said proudly. “I refined my scanning array to be able to not only pick up if a planet harbors sentient life, but also their level of technology!”

Noah just stared for a few seconds the same way he would to a man who just admitted he liked the taste of shoes. “How in the neon green fuck can you scan for sentient life, let alone their fucking technology?”

“With SCIENCE!”

“Of course,” Noah sighed, burying his face in his hand. “Look, Insano, you’re already wanted in all fifty states-”

“I’m the rightful president, dammit! I won that 2008 election in a landslide! They had no right to impeach their new overlord over such scruples as basic human rights!” Insano interjected.

“-Canada and Australia-”

“I just threatened to do a little terraforming and attach them to each other; it’s not like anybody gives a fuck what they think anyway,” Insano brushed off.

“-the Vatican-”

“So what if I stole a bit of the Pope’s DNA to check if he was human? Everyone else was wondering the same thing.”

“-Iceland-”

“I told those fools my volcanic eruption triggering mechanism would work; I just decided to give them a live demonstration!”

“-Russia-”

“I raided a few of their old Soviet nuclear missile silos for uranium; whoop-de-fucking-do. It’s not like they were using it.”

“-China-”

“Hey, when you set up something called the ‘Great Firewall,’ you’re just begging for someone like me to steal all your top secret files.”

“-Japan-”

“I just wanted to test out Neutro’s upgrades! I figured the Japanese military would be the best to test them out on.”

“-and Molossia.”

“Hey, you’re wanted there too, idiot,” Insano spat.

“That’s not the point,” Noah said, holding up a hand as if it were a shield against all bullshit. “The point is that I’m already harboring a known criminal in a fuckton of countries. The last thing I need is for you to get a bunch of goddamn aliens barging down my door, too. I have enough shit on my plate dealing with the Guardian and figuring out what the hell Sephiroth’s endgame is.”

“Noah, who here is the evil genius with a master’s degree in every scientific field and technology decades ahead of the curb?” Insano asked.

“You are,” Noah answered, cocking an eyebrow.

“And who here is the once-exalted Avatar who’s now stuck on this pathetic planet, pining for the glory days of when he used to tromp around Britannia fighting evil, but now has to settle for waiting for his inner demons to show up in the house he shares with his younger brother because he can’t get a real job?” Insano followed up.

Noah’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a low blow.”

“But one that got my point across, did it not?” Insano asked with a smile. “I’ll handle the aliens, you hold down the fort against whatever timeless evil or Final Fantasy protagonist pierces the veil and kicks down our door next. Meanwhile, I have a world to conquer and enslave.”

Noah opened his mouth to reply, but instead threw up his hands and shook his head. “Fuck it, there’s no reasoning with you. Good luck with that empire building.” He turned around and trudged back up the stairs, each step accented with a rough stomp. “And be sure to conquer some lobster this time; I’m sick to fucking death of shrimp!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, you cretin,” Insano mumbled under his breath as he turned his attention back to his work. “Now that I have a target in mind, it’s time to run a system’s diagnostic.” He giggled softly as he approached the wall that housed his armory.

“Cybernetic implants are all functioning,” he muttered as information scrolled through his field of vision on the inside of his goggles.

“Finger mounted electricity casters?” He grinned as lightning arced across his fingertips. “Check.”

“Hydraulic strength-boosting gauntlets?” He pulled the high-tech gloves on and flexed his fingers. “Check.”

“Rocket boots?” He clicked his heels together, causing him to hover off the ground for a few seconds before he mentally willed them to shut off. “Check.”

“Anti-magic field generator?” He pulled the small device from his armory and activated it. It bloomed like a metal flower and began hovering behind him, ready to obey his commands. “Check.”

“Gaydar?” He looked over the inert device, freshly repaired from the last time it was overloaded by that blasted French stereotype. “Check.”

“Harmonic resonance anti-fortification oscillator?” He reached in his armory and pulled out a wallet-sized device with claws to attach to the side of a building and a miniature jackhammer sticking out. “Check.”

“And last but not least, the directed energy death dispenser!” He giggled madly as he hefted the rifle up and slung it over his shoulder. He then activated his goggles and looked over all of his equipment in turn. All of his devices disassembled themselves and were reduced to wireframes before vanishing into his storage pocket dimension. “That should be everything…”

Yet again a sickeningly adorable sound came from behind him. He turned around to see a pink sphere with tendrils hop across the table over to him and look up at him with its far too cute eyes.

“Sorry, Junior, but daddy is off to subjugate and enslave an alien species,” the scientist cooed, stroking his son. “You be a good boy and stay out of trouble until daddy is back to wreak horrible vengeance against all that wrong you, okay?” Junior purred and nodded. “Good boy.” He patted his son on the head and walked over to the portal. “And also, if Noah’s infernal dog uses you as a chew toy again, remind me to have her destroyed, understood?” Junior let out a little chirrup of agreement.

The portal before him swirled and distorted with color, obscuring the exact nature of his destination. “Any sane man would turn back in the light of such little information on this new world,” the doctor mused to himself as he gazed into the vortex. A wicked grin crossed his lips as he giggled, “Unluckily for whoever’s on the other side, sanity fled me a long time ago, and the bitch didn’t even leave me her number.”

With that, he barged inside with a mad cackle, ready to take on whatever the universe threw at him.

Twilight softly hummed to herself as she set up her telescope on the balcony of her house. It was a bright, clear Saturday night in the middle of spring, just perfect for her to partake in her favorite pastime: to gaze upon the majesty of Luna’s artwork without anypony to twist that statement into something gay.

Which she wasn’t, of course. She was as straight as an arrow. So straight she could be the spine of a book, in fact. A book whose pages were filled with professions about how much she completely loved stallions and never thought about Celestia’s, Luna’s, or any other mare’s well-toned plot. Ever. Not even once.

The blush on Twilight’s face and the sweat on her brow convinced her to jump that train of thought as if the tracks went off the edge of a cliff into a gorge full of perfectly heterosexual phallic rocks at the bottom.

She took a few minutes to fiddle with her equipment and get ready for the main event. Before she could get to fully appreciating Luna’s moon – not the one attached to her hips, no, that’d just be absurd – she heard a loud crash in the distance.

Her head whipped around to see a pillar of smoke arising from the Everfree Forest and flocks of birds fleeing from the site in fear. She could see the lights from various bedrooms flick on all over town. Confused and questioning murmurs filtered into the streets as the sleepy village of Ponyville awoke, for once almost drowning out the din of Lyra and Bon Bon across the street, who were too busy giving all their bucks to each other to spare one for the enormous explosion nearby.

Twilight’s first impulse was to gallop off in the direction of the explosion to investigate by herself, but she shook her head. “All alone in the Everfree Forest at night equals monumentally stupid idea,” she muttered to herself. “Have to gather supplies and get the girls first.” The young unicorn rushed into her room to do just that, somewhere in the back of her head wondering if a normal day in Ponyville was even possible.

Doctor Insano groaned and shook his aching head as the smell of smoke filled his nostrils. He would be gagging if he weren’t so used to the odor from years of chemistry mishaps that were in no way his fault. “I really need to figure out a way to fix the arrival,” he grumbled. “A person sized rip in the fabric of space shouldn’t always result in combustion.”

He got up on his knees and surveyed his surroundings. He appeared to be in the middle of a small crater that was itself in the middle of a temperate forest in the dead of night. He mentally turned on the night vision setting of his goggles to get a better look. “Trees appear to be mostly of the Quercus genus,” he mumbled to himself. “I also spy with my little eye some Cyanocitta cristata and Sciurus carolinensis. The latter should be useful should I ever decide to recycle my suicide squirrel bomber idea, at least.” He paused and growled, “Wait, how the hell am I recognizing native species? This is supposed to be an alien planet!” He groaned as he rose to his feet. “I better not be still on Earth, or so help me I’ll–”

He was cut off when he suddenly lost balance and fell backward on his rear. “Ow, what in the hell? I didn’t think I was that dizzy!” He looked down and his cybernetically enhanced heart would have stopped if he hadn’t fixed that possibility. What met his gaze wasn’t a pair of shoes and a pair of pale Caucasian hands. In their stead was a quartet of completely blunt appendages covered in white fur that ended in what appeared to be hooves. He reflexively looked down over his shoulder to see a neon green tail flowing out of the back of his trademark lab coat. He clapped his newly handless arms over his head and felt a long, flowing head of hair as well as some sort of pointed bone jutting out of his skull. Taking in a deep breath in an attempt to steady himself, he let loose his thoughts for all to hear:

“What in the name of Schrodinger’s pussy happened to me?!” Next Chapter: A Fateful Meeting (They Will All Regret) Estimated time remaining: 4 Hours, 30 Minutes