It was a calm morning in the small town of ponyville. Most of the inhabitants were still asleep while those who were awake where relaxing and enjoying the beautiful morning. Well most of the inhabitants.
One of the exceptions was currently sitting in her own personal library with a mountain of books on a table in front of her. Her name was Twilight Sparkle and all she was interested in at that moment was learning how to travel through time.
Of course she traveled through time before, but only for a very short period of time. She was looking for a way to stay in the time period she chose for as long as she wanted, something that hasn't ever been done before.
"Spike, can you get me that book where I found starswirl's time spell? I think I might be onto something!", an excited alicorn yelled at her assistant.
"I'm not asleep! Err, oh, the time spell book, on it.", the purple dragon said as he abruptly awoke and tried to cover up the fact that he was asleep.
Twilight only rolled her eyes as her assistant got the book.
"Why are you all of a sudden so into time spells again, I thought that whole end of the world tuesday thing was over." asked Spike as he went back to the pile of books hiding his bed.
"Oh this isn't about that, It's just that I think a time spell could be very useful in case something really bad happens. And I don't know why I just thought of that now, I guess the battle with Tirek got me thinking." Twilight explained as she was levitating a ton of books in front of her trying to figure out how to improve the spell she had used so long ago to try telling her past self to not worry about a war happening by next tuesday.
"But if something bad happens don't we just go and blow up the bad guy with rainbow friendship lasers? Spike asked as he yawned and layed down.
"Yeah well I guess that's a very quick way to sum everything up, but there might be a time when it's not that simple. We don't have the elements anymore so if another ancient villain shows up we might have to be a little more creative.", Twilight explained a little annoyed at Spike for saying that everything they'd done to save equestria was "blowing bad guys up with rainbow friendship lasers".
"Uh huh...yeah that." Spike said sleepily.
Twilight sighed, realising she wasn't going to get any more help from the sleepy dragon.
After working on the spell a few more minutes, with no success, she decided to go get herself a snack. But as she made her way towards the kitchen she suddenly saw a bright flash of light high up in the sky. The light had the general shape of a two dimensional circle but was very hard to see. As the light dimmed she could see what looked like 3 meteors going in completely different directions from each other.
"Well that's interesting, princess Celestia told me about something like this happening over Canterlot a few days ago." Twilight thought. The light was nearly gone by this time but suddenly glowed brighter than the first time around, it was so bright that Twilight had to shield her eyes. Still shielding her eyes with her wing Twilight heard an explosion, it sounded a little like one of Dash's Sonic Rainbooms. When the light subsided she saw 7 more glowing dots zipping across the sky faster the the original 3... one of which was seconds from impacting the castle!
By the time she turned around and got halfway back to the library running in a full gallop she heard a loud explosion and the entire castle shook violently. Twilight crashed into the nearest wall, and a quiet cracking noise could be heard. Twilight's face contorted in pain as she got up. She slowly stretched her wing out so she could see it, not broken but it definitely hurt.
"Twilight, what was that?" yelled Spike, probably worried she had accidentally blown something up again.
"I don't don't, I saw something fall out of the sky and it seems to have hit the castle. Come on get up, maybe you can help me find it." Twilight yelled back.
Twilight met up with Spike at the Library's door and they split up looking for whatever crashed into the castle. Twilight decided to start on the top floor, it would be easier to find the object there because she hadn't really but anything that far up. Both of them searched the castle for a while with no success. Twilight was beginning to think that maybe whatever the object was hadn't crashed into the castle at all. Just as she had that thought she walked into a room with a giant gaping hole through the ceiling and floor. She walked up to it, careful not to get too close to the edge with her injured wing, and looked down. She was shocked and a little annoyed to see that out of all the places in the castle the mystery object could have landed it had to have plowed through her bedroom. Not only that but it somehow impacted at such an angle that it hit the cutie map meeting room as well. She couldn't see the object clearly from this far up.
"Well isn't this great, half the castle is ruined now, of course my bedroom was hit!" Twilight mentally screamed, already making estimates of how long it would take to fix everything.
"Spike, meet me in the cutie map room, the meteor landed there!" Twilight shouted at the top of her voice, trying to make sure Spike heard her.
"OK, I'll be there in a moment!" Spike shouted back.
With that she charged up her horn and teleported down to examine whatever had crashed into the castle. First thing she noticed was a giant hole in the floor.
"I guess it could have hit a worse spot, like the library." Twilight shuddered at the thought of all her books destroyed. The air around the crater was thick with debris that was still slowly falling from the broken ceiling, she couldn't see anything other than an outline of...something in the center of the crater. She slowly got closer and closer until she actually stepped inside the crater.
Just then the door swing open and in raced Spike, who almost immediately proceeded to yell "Twilight get away from it, it could be an alien!"
"Oh Spike how many comic books have you been reading, aliens aren't real and everypony knows that." Twilight said as she rolled her eyes and turned back to the crater.
Every factual book she read said that aliens aren't real, could they have all been wrong? Because whatever was in that crater looked as much alien as she looked alicorn. She went a little wide eyed at this and quickly took several steps back. Turning around she gave Spike a nervous smile.
"Well all the books I read said aliens where "highly unlikely" to exist, so I may have been a little quick to assume when I said that aliens definitely don't exist.", said a nervous Twilight.
"Let's get out of here!" Spike yelled as he sprinted out the door, thinking Twilight would do the same.
Twilight instead gulped and turned back towards the crater, trying to figure out how ANYTHING could have survived crashing through 5 floors worth of castle." Or has it survived…" rang out in her mind.
"Don't be nervous Twilight, you're an alicorn now, alicorns can handle anything, hopefully." she thought trying to encourage herself yet failing.
After a moment of just standing there her curiosity got the better of her and she took a few steps forward, yet carefully staying a safe distance away.
She could now get a better look at . She had no idea what it was, she'd never heard of anything like it, nor read of it in any books. It didn't seem to have wings so she had no idea how it fell from the sky. It looked about as tall as she was with multiple large spikes on the back of its head, all of which pointed slightly upwards. Each spike had a red center. Its eyes also had red outlines on the upper corner. It had a bit of white fur on its chest, in sharp contrast to its black body. It whore 4 gold rings, one on each ankle and wrist. It also wore white gloves and strange white shoes with red edges and black on the back. The final observation she made was that his chest rose slowly up and down, indicating that whoever this was had survived. Twilight now started worrying about whether she should help the creature or leave it, she knew that the right thing to do was most likely to help it but she also knew that she had no idea who this was and that they could be dangerous.
Spike had finally realised Twilight wasn't following him and ran back to the castle. He burst through the door and started yelling about stuff he read in comic books about aliens eating your brain.
While Twilight was turned around trying to get Spike to quiet down no one saw the creature's eyes suddenly open revealing blood red irises. He blinked a few times, confused at the scene in front of him, a purple unicorn seemed to be arguing with a tiny dragon like creature. They were saying something about aliens, funny how a horse with a horn, and now seemingly wings, and a talking lizard were talking about aliens. Maybe they were referring to themselves, the creature thought, still not moving a muscle, partially because everything hurt as much as that time he full from space. Suddenly he started remembering what had happened, the last thing he could remember was fighting that stupid blue robot who had just literally beat the chaos emeralds out of Sonic. He suddenly started feeling angry at the whole situation, what had happened, why was he...wherever this was.
"Calm down! Aliens may be real, but that doesn't mean all your comic books are suddenly sources of accurate information! Shure, there's a chance whoever this is is hostile but there's also a good chance that they are not! Just because we don't know anything about someone means we should let them die!" Twilight interrupted Spike as he was freaking out and literally quoting issues of comics aliens tried to take over the world.
"No you shouldn't let strangers die, but I've come to expect the "kill it with fire" reaction wherever I go." Twilight whirled around to find the strange figure now sitting up with it's eyes open. It's eyes...they were a creepy blood red that would most likely scare Celestia if she saw them. She just than registered what he said, was he saying they should be afraid of him? She went wide eyed as she just stared at him. Spike on the other hoof just pointed and looked as if he was going to faint before he ran out of the room screaming loud enough to wake all the ponies in a 10 mile radius who weren't awake yet. Well THAT certainly didn't help Twilight in staying calm. The absurd thought that Spike's comics might have a little more truth in them then she expected even crossed her mind.
"But now back to important matters, where am I?" the figure asked threateningly as he got up out of the crater, wincing as he did so.
Twilight backed up a few steps and charged her horn. "Well you did just fall out of the sky into my castle, so why don't you tell me" Twilight said trying her hardest not to appear as terrified as she was. Celestia always met any threats head on so she should too, right?
"Dont mess with me, horse. I don't have time for this, tell me where I am now or there won't be anything left here to call a castle. Oh and one more thing, where's my chaos emerald." He said, nearing his limits of how threatening he could be while his body screamed in pain. He even stood up now to emphasize the point. This was not going well. no stranger refused to answer his questions before, with the exception of Sonic, but that blue faker thought he was invincible. She obviously wasn't as brave as she wanted him to think but was still much braver than most.
Did he just call her a horse!? She thought in outrage. What's next, is he gonna say that a talking whatever he is is normal. Once again she was preoccupied with her own thoughts before finally processing what he was saying.
Twilight's heart skipped a beat, did he just threaten to destroy the castle after crashing through it not 10 minutes ago? She didn't think even Celestia could get up that fast, let alone throw out threats the magnitude of what he just said. And what was this "chaos emerald" he mentioned? She thought back to the incidents with discord back when he wanted to plunge the world into random chaos.
"Well you're currently inside my castle, on the outskirts of ponyville. Not far south of canterlot. But I have no idea what these "chaos emeralds" you mention are. Twilight said, by some miracle managing to look calm.
Shadow quickly thought about this, he had never heard of "canterlot" which he understood from the unicorn's response was supposed to be a valid reference point. Combining the fact that he had never seen a unicorn before, how he had no idea where canterlot was, apparently having fallen out of the sky, and Sonic's dimension travelling stories made it relatively clear that he was no longer on mobius, nor earth. But back to the important issue, where was his chaos emerald? He no longer felt its energy meaning he did not have it on him, paired with how his accelerated healing was seemingly down to a normal speedster's. He looked at the unicorn, she seemed genuinely terrified, she would most likely not lie in this position.
But I need that emerald right now, and if I don't get it… his thoughts were interrupted as suddenly he felt extremely dizzy. He soon hit the ground head first, his thoughts rolling around out of focus.
Twilight was extremely confused, seconds earlier he had been throwing threats everywhere and now he just collapsed out of nowhere. The thought that he had been bluffing all along came to mind and the more she thought about it there more it made sense. He had hardly moved aside from standing up and breathing. Perhaps he needed whatever this "chaos emerald" was for some reason.
"Uhh, are you alright?" she asked, much less terrified and more curious than before. "I wonder why he would start off by threatening me, maybe it ties into how he said everyone having some sort of "kill it with fire" reaction, whatever that is. Did he know exactly what kind of effect he had when someone first sees him? Was he trying to use his appearance to get answers and these emerald things faster?" she thought. Well I am the princess of friendship so maybe I'm supposed to help him somehow, the cutie map usually showed where the next friendship problem was located so maybe his crashing right next to it has a meaning. It seemed to be making some sort of sense, maybe she was supposed to try to be his friend. Her thoughts started piecing together more slight "hints" that this was the next friendship problem.
It didn't seem so coincidental anymore… but maybe it WAS all a coincidence and she was making a huge mistake trying to befriend an unknown alien that perhaps had not been bluffing with his threats...