In the land of Equestria, Celestia was setting her sun. Beside her, her sister Luna stood.
"Okay, Luna. Now it's your turn..."
The smaller Alicorn nodded, her horn glowing as...
"...That thing again? That's no moon!" The blue-grey princess groaned.
Instead of the pale moon appearing, a perfectly spherical grey ball appeared, with an indent upon the top half like a large crater, but other than that the only marks seemed to be lines of lighter or darker grey along the surface.
"It is very strange. One day I think we need to figure out what that thing is..."
"Well, it's going back! And here comes the moon!" Luna grinned.
Meanwhile in the town of Ponyville, oblivious to celestial shenanigans with no apparent relevance to the rest of the plot, two ponies and a dragon were attempting to set up a strange white box attached to a strange white box with a strange glass panel on it.
"I don't get it, Twilight. Why does the keyboard have to be so big?"
"I already told you, Spike, it's so everypony can use it. Not all of us have horns for the Unicorn keyboards."
The small dragon stared at the purple pony.
Ooh, that sounds like an innuendo!
"Pinkie Pie, who are you talking to?"
"Oh, Sorry, Twilight, it's just it did sound kind of rude!" The pink one said.
The baby dragon and purple unicorn stared at her.
"...Okay. So, it says here... 'Congratulations on purchasing a Haycorn Computers Digital Workhorse. When setup of the hardware is complete, switch on the computer and it will automatically set itself up'. Oh, that sounds useful." Twilight continued, reading from a manual.
"How much longer will it take?" Spike asked.
"Gotta wait for it! But gotta switch it on first!" Pinkie Pie said.
"It should be safe to start it... It says when it's ready it'll display all the system specifications and then we can set it up for the Whinnyternet."
"Oh goodie! Then we can have a Whinnyternet party and speak to ponies!" Pinkie Pie bounced around.
Twilight smiled.
"Maybe. Princess Celestia had this sent to me for research and they're quite expensive. Not many other ponies have these computers able to use the Whinnyternet yet, you only really find them in big rich cities like Manehattan, Trottingham, and Ponychester, so there's not too many ponies to talk to online."
"Huh? But I thought you said it was sixteen bits!"
"That wasn't the price, it's the processor speed."
"The... what?" Pinke raised an eyebrow in confusion.
Twilight wondered the best way to explain this one.
"It's how fast it goes." She settled.
"Oh. Okay. Is that good?"
Twilight shrugged.
"I guess so. I remember old ones that were eight bits back in the Canterlot library but the Whinnyternet is built for these sixteen bit ones."
If Pinkie Pie understood (Unlikely - Even Twilight was coasting on what the manual had said) she didn't seem to be that interested.
"What else can these thingies do then?"
"Oh. They can run calculations, spreadsheets, games, and they can even send electronic messages. But I'll still write, since letters are more personal..."
"Did you say games?" Pinkie Pie lit up.
Twilight paused, realising her horrible mistake. This wasn't a toy, and she'd just said it could play games!
"It says it's done." Spike reported, cutting off the problem.
The screen now displayed a simple green background, various small icons, and a button marked menu.
"Oh good. Now... It says to put the disc in the drive and then click run when it tells us..."
As soon as Twilight did this, Pinkie Pie began tapping the screen.
"Uh, no, we have to click the mouse..."
"Mouse? How'd that get in here?"
She was not corrected as the Unicorn used her hoof to press the button on the oversized mouse.
"Ooh! Installing! What does that mean? Oh, that thing has a number! Now it's a different number! Now another! Wow, computers are great..." Pinkie Pie said.
It was soon done, and a little icon marked "Whinnyternet Explorer" had appeared.
"Now to open the browser and..."
At this, the screen began to glow white.
"...It doesn't say that's supposed to happen..."
"Huh? It's got different numbers now..." Pinkie Pie said.
"This doesn't look good... I think it's broken." Spike said.
"What? It can't have broken! There must be something in the manual about..."
A loud crack caused the panicking pony to look up.
"What was that?" She asked.
The sparks from the screen were her answer. It still glowed, but now little lighting bolts were popping out.
"We didn't touch it! It just started doing this! Pinkie Pie quickly explained.
"...I think we should get back from it." Spike said nervously.
"Yeah, I'm getting funny twitches I've never had before!"
"But we need to..." Twilight tried to begin, only for another loud crack to occur, combined with a bright flash that filled the room.
A girly shriek filled the air, as the three blinded occupants of the room were... blinded. The light faded, and Spike stopped screaming.
"Oh. It's stopped."
"Uh, Twilight... What is that thing on the keyboard?
It seemed to have a brown mane, but unusually wore clothing - A blue skirt, a brown jacket...
Twilight knew what it was.
"It's..."
The thing began to stand. It spoke in a strange tongue.
"It's..."
It was a creature of legends. A creature of nightmares. The kind of thing that mothers told their foals would get them if they were bad.
"It's a..."
It walked on two legs. It had opposable thumbs. It was smart, it was adaptable. It shook its head and then seemed to notice the others in the room.
"It's a human!"
And it was staring at the two ponies and one dragon. It looked hungry, brow furrowing, mouth open... Sure, it might look confused, but this was a human!
"What? I thought they were made up!" Pinkie Pie gasped.
"What's it saying? I heard that if a human speaks and looks you in the eyes, you start to understand what it says and then it eats your mind!" Spike screeched.
The human stared with those wide hungry eyes, still saying something no one could understand.
"It eats our minds?" Twilight yelled in horror.
"...Uh, are you guys ponies?" The human said.
"...I understood that!" Pinkie screamed.
"Well, good, that means it's working..."
Three girly screams filled the air. Instinctively, Twilight turned around and bucked. The human yelped, as it was hurled away from the keyboard, and to near a closet. Racing over, Twilight opened the door and shoved the groaning creature in, slamming the door shut as the human began to say something again.
She gave a contented "squee" noise.
"Okay! That closet has a handle nopony but a unicorn can open!" Twilight Sparkle giggled
"Yeah, but now the human is in your closet. And it's making a lot of noise..." Spike noted, as the human groaned.
"...Yeah. It is. Now what do we do? Do we call the royal guard? Animal control? Fluttershy?"
"I think we should get a meat cleaver and make cupcakes." Pinkie Pie said
"...What?"
"The cleaver to defend ourselves if it escapes and the cupcakes to distract us from the fact there's a clopping human in your closet! What the hay do we do? It probably knows how to eat wood and we're doomed it'll escape and eat our brains aaaaah!" The pink pony screeched, bouncing around in terror.
"Pinkie Pie! Language!" Twilight found herself scolding as the shock overpowered common sense.
"Equestrian!"
The purple mare trotted over to fetch a scroll, still in a daze.
"Spike, we need to send a message to Princess Celestia right away! Write this down."
Spike did so, then looked at his hand holding the quill. The noise had stopped from the closet, but Pinkie Pie continued bouncing around in terror.
"Uh, Twilight, I just realised something. That closet?"
"Not now, Spike, write this down! 'Dearest Princess Celest...' Wait, this is urgent. Oh, just write it, we can panic in the rest of the letter!"
"No, Twilight, this is important, that closet! I can open it!"
"Of course you can, Spike, you have fingers."
Pinkie Pie stopped her bouncing as it dawned on Twilight what he was saying.
"...So does the human! Aaaah!"
On cue the door opened.
Everypony and one dragon panicked.
"Quick! Meat cleaver!" Pinkie Pie shouted and bolted for Twilight's kitchen.
"I don't have one! Why would anypony have one! We're vegetarian!" Twilight screamed, following her.
Spike however was left to stare at the human.
"Uh... hi?" It said.
He panicked, and shot a burst of flame at the human before fleeing. It squealed and covered itself, and as Spike fled to the kitchen it swore the creature's cry of rage sounded like 'Hey! That watch was a gift!'
Meanwhile in Canterlot, with the moon now up, Celestia asleep, and everypony starting to head home, the world was, until dawn, Princess Luna's domain.
True, things had changed in a thousand years. Ponies did not all sleep at night - Mail ponies now flew in the darkness, weather ponies readied clouds, pony students worked all night to revise, town guards patrolled, and in various places in the big cities (which hadn't been as big a thousand years ago... or even there in some cases) ponies spent time in bars or clubs dancing. There were also late night games of Hoofball played, though the next one was tomorrow - Ponychester United versus Trottenham Hotspur...
Luna tried not to think too much about the other things some ponies did at night, even if new ponies had to come from somewhere. In fairness, she had to admit that quite frankly, Storks were just downright inefficient and always had been, and the ponies seemed to rather... enjoy... the alternative. But nonetheless it was still her domain, and all Equestria's worries of the night were hers.
This included all incoming letters to Celestia. Or in this case, a pink-strapped watch, which promptly landed on her horn, as a small circle of brown cloth also fell. Luna was more interested in the one that hit her.
"...Huh? Where did this come from?"
She removed it and examined it. The watch had a small smiling cat, whiskers acting as the hour, minute, and second hands.
Except the cat glowed, and there were various buttons on the side. None seemed to be a winder.
"...There's no magic in this watch. But there's no clockwork. It's like there's a little electrical cell inside..."
Luna pushed a button, and the cat suddenly had more than just a face. It held a small box displaying numbers - numbers that seemed to be the time. A few hours out, but the time.
"Curious..."
One button was marked alarm. Luna wondered what would happen if she pressed it. So she did.
She was disappointed that all it did was display a larger set of numbers and a command to "set alarm". She pressed a few more buttons, and the numbers went back to the smaller ones held by the cat.
And when that moment came, the small watch vibrated for a moment, and began to meow. The cat now held a box with odd flashing symbols, and smiled every time the watch made a meow noise.
"This is weird. Why would it do all this?" Luna pondered.
It wasn't a gift for her, that was clear. Most gifts to her had been the usual sort of unimaginative trinkets given to royalty, and never anything else. Well, except the night vision goggles but since she could see in the dark already she'd given them to Celestia instead. It also wasn't a gift to Celestia for the same reasons, and finally, there was the small facts both Princesses knew what time it was without the aid of a clock, and that there was no note with it.
As Luna concluded it had been an accident by a dragon messenger somewhere, the watch kept meowing.
"It's a pity this was sent here by mistake. I kind of want one for myself..."
Wait! She could trace the source of the dragon, figure out where to return the watch to, and maybe find out where they had come from to obtain her own!
It wasn't like there was much needing her right now. The clubs weren't open just now and no one was amusingly drunk in any bars yet. Besides, a little flying wouldn't hurt.
Back in Ponyville, things were deteriorating. Cutlery, propelled by unicorn magic, was flying.
"Use the forks!" Pinkie Pie shouted.
"I'm out of forks!" Twilight yelled back.
"Use a spoon!"
"There is no spoon!"
"What can we use?"
"I don't know!"
The human was dodging everything thrown at it, except the things it managed to bounce away with one of the wooden plates it had caught.
Spike grabbed an apple.
"Eat this!" He shouted, hurling it.
The human simply deflected it with the plate.
"...Quit throwing things at me! Please! I don't want to hurt you!"
"It's no use! Even if we hit it humans can't feel pain and they're immortal!" Twilight screeched
"It's going to tear our heads off quickly so we don't feel it!" Pinkie Pie yelled.
"What? No! I'm not going to do that!"
"Oh! Yeah, that's right, you just hypnotise us with your voice now we can understand you and eat our minds!" Pinkie said, shifting into a happy tone.
She blinked.
Even Pinkie Pie was not immune to realising what she had just said.
"AAAAAAAAAAAH!"
"I don't eat brains, I don't eat minds, and I don't mean you any harm! Just stop screaming and listen to me!" The human shouted.
Two ponies and one dragon stared at it as it held its snout in its hoof...
"...This is just like when I was babysitting for Mr Koiwai... Except she wasn't screaming."
"W-Well! If you're not here to hurt us... Why are you here? How did you get here?" Twilight challenged.
The human sighed, and put the plate down. Twilight realised it was using the other... arm... to cradle its stomach. Right where she had kicked it.
It seemed they could feel pain after all. In fact it seemed to be in quite a lot of pain.
"Can I sit down for a minute? I think I hurt myself a lot more than I had thought..." It said, wobbling a little (but on two feet of course things would be unsteady...)
Guilt washed over the unicorn. She had hurt the human, the human had not wanted to hurt her or her friends, and now the poor thing was really badly hurt and blaming itself...
"Don't! It's a trick! It sits down, we listen, it eats us and the rest of Ponyville!" Spike shouted.
"...I dunno..." Pinkie began, and trotted over.
"Pinkie! No!" Spike shouted, covering his eyes.
Twilight could only watch as the pink Earth pony helped the human to sit on the ground.
"I can't watch! It'll rip her head off..."
"I'm not an it. My name is Hikari! And I really didn't mean to scare anyone..." The human groaned.
Pinkie Pie sat beside the human, looking it over quizzically.
"She doesn't seem dangerous."
"Then why did you fly out of the computer?" Spike challenged.
"It was an accident. I can explain why I'm here... I think... Just listen to me please and stop being so afraid. I'm harmless to you."
Spike seemed confused, then puffed up with all the indignation a baby dragon could (which wasn't much).
"Prove it! Prove you're harmless!"
"Have I torn your head off?" Hikari sighed.
"Not yet..." Spike said.
"And I won't. Humans aren't able to do that. I don't know what your legends are about humans but I'm pretty sure they're not true..."
"You can kill with a glance!" Pinkie Pie said gleefully
"You can chop through trees with your bare hooves!" Twilight said, a little more loudly than she hoped.
"You can fly!" Spike weighed in.
"You eat foals for breakfast!"
"You turn ponies into glue!"
"You raise armies of animals that eat everything they see"
"You entrance ponies and ride them to kill Dragons!"
"If you die you split into two and two humans take your place!"
"You turn sugar into salt and honey into poison!"
"You breathe fire!"
Hikari stared at the idragon/i who said this.
"Uh... That's dragons. And the rest of those aren't true."
"Oh, I know, I was making mine up!" Pinkie Pie said as she bounced around.
"...Okay, so, maybe we should let her explain what's going on?" Twilight said, guilt returning at how hurt and confused the human now looked.
Spike was reluctant, but Pinkie Pie was back to being Pinkie Pie.
"Oh, story time!" She said, sitting down.
"Thanks. Okay... Uh, I said my name, right?"
Twilight nodded.
"Okay, um... The easiest way to explain it is, I'm not from this planet, or this dimension. I was told... I was chosen to go into other dimensions to chase someone causing problems in them and help people... or ponies I guess... to stop what this other person is doing."
"So... You're really far from home?" Pinkie said.
The human seemed saddened by this reminder.
"...Yeah. I can contact people back home but I'm pretty much here alone."
"I'm sorry about that but... how are you doing this?" Twilight questioned.
Hikari reached towards her flank and produced a small object. It was mostly pink.
"Basically, in the world I come from there are a lot more computers, and there's a sort of parallel world made from all the information on those computers. It's called the Digital World and the only reason I'm going anywhere but my own world is because all the Digital Worlds are connected. "
"...So because we have computers now we have a Digital World?"
Hikari nodded.
"I guess so. I must be here because the person I'm following is here now."
"Who are you following? What'll you do if you catch them? Are you playing tag?" Pinkie Pie asked, bouncing up and down.
"I don't know, and no, we're not playing tag..." Hikari sighed, then groaned.
"Wait! If she can contact another world, she should do it!" Spike said suddenly.
Hikari blinked.
"I can't show you. The way things work, time is flowing faster here. When I contact my world it puts a small bubble of time around me synchronised to my world, so unless you're really close to me you won't hear anything."
Spike growled.
"I knew it! A trick! You want us to get closer so you can eat us! Well, I don't think so!"
And with that, he shot a burst of flame at the mostly pink object. The human dodged again, but in the process seemed to hurt herself. She lay on her side groaning again.
"Spike! Stop that!" Twilight admonished.
It was then Twilight noticed the human's left wrist looked to be lightly burned.
"Spike? Did you already try and attack her like that?"
"Well, yeah, but she's dangerous!"
"Burnt my watch away... Takeru gave it to me..." Hikari said sadly as she tried to sit back up. Pinkie Pie once more helped her.
"How close do I need to be to hear it?" Pinkie asked.
"...About that close." Hikari answered.
"Ooh! Do it!"
"Pinkie, wait!" Spike shouted, as the pink pony began bouncing again
To the surprise of the dragon and the other pony, Pinkie bounced up and down so fast she became just a pink blur. Hikari's mouth also began moving quickly too.
"...That was cool! There were two voices, one was her coltfriend and another was her brother and..." Pinkie began.
"...I'm guessing coltfriend means boyfriend? If it is he's not, by the way." Hikari asked and pointed out.
"Uh, well, it's what a filly or mare calls a male pony they go out with... if that's what a boy is... Though you say he's not your coltfriend..." Twilight shrugged.
"She's lying! Or at least she wishes she wasn't denying it!" Pinkie Pie loudly whispered.
Hikari ignored it.
"I guess the translator hasn't picked up on some of the differences..."
"Translator?" Pinkie asked.
"Yeah. This Digivice I use can translate somehow so we understand each other. That's what I said was working earlier before... Uh, I just realised, I don't know your names..."
Pinkie gasped in horror, and Twilight felt another twinge of guilt at what Hikari had not said as a result of that realisation.
"You're right! I'm Pinkie Pie, that's Twilight Sparkle, and the little purple meanie pants is Spike!"
She then sneezed as her tail and eyes twitched.
"I'm not a meany pants! I'm just scared!" Spike shouted.
At this, there was a knock at the front door. Spike screeched and leapt into the air.
"Who's there?" He wailed.
Pinkie however had begun bouncing towards the door before the knock.
"Pinkie! Wait, we can't let just anypony see Hikari!"
"It's not just anypony, Twilight! It's Princess Luna! Tail twitch, eyes twitch, sneeze... "
"What? That's even worse! Why would she be here now? Hikari, you need to hide!"
"...I'd love to but I can't get up..." The human reported as she struggled to stand.
It was too late anyway. Pinkie had opened the door, and hoofsteps approached the kitchen.
Luna entered, as Twilight nervously bowed.
"P-Princess Luna, we can explain... It... She... She's not dangerous! Please don't panic or hurt her any more than we already did!"
Luna stared at Hikari.
Hikari stared at what was on Luna's horn.
"...Huh. A human. Nopony told me they were still around."
Two ponies, one dragon, and one human could not hide their surprise.