Back for Chapter 2, aw yeah. If you're still here, thanks! Every view I get makes me happy, for lack of a better way to put it. Just a note before anything else happens, I find it really REALLY hard to get Princess Luna in-character now that she's learnt how to be a bit more modern, if you know what I mean. Hopefully I don't do too badly with her but...well, we'll see. Onwards!

There were two portal stations after that, ones set up by the Gods. He had to hesitate before he went through the third one. This was the one that was going to take him to Equestria. He hoped that these ponies would be welcoming of his help, and wouldn't frown on him because he was human. Gods, it would be terrible if they did that. He was used to being a minority, but without any other humanoids he'd feel even lonelier than he had when he was without just his Angel brethren. There was no use getting scared now, and certainly no use admitting it. He took a deep breath in, and stepped through the last one.

He heard a collection of gasps as he stepped through, and flopped straight onto the floor with a clunk.

"Ow," he said, and then leapt up, embarrassed that the first glimpse those he was trying to help got of him was him falling flat on his face. He looked up into a pair of violet eyes, eagerly looking at him. He rapidly stepped back, momentarily startled by the large eyes being so close to him. Taking that step back, he could see that there were four ponies here. The one that had been up in his personal space was a purple unicorn, who looked awed. The one that really drew his gaze was the tall one, almost twice the height of him, with charcoal fur.

"You are the hero from Skyworld, correct?" the tall one asked. It (or she, rather, since she sounded female) was an alicorn – royalty.

"Er, yes! Captain Pit Icari of Palutena's Guard, reporting on behalf of the Goddess," he said, in his most official-sounding voice.

"But yer nuthin' but a colt!" a semi-outraged voice came from an orange pony.

"A what?" Pit frowned.

"Yes, I thought you'd be…older," the purple unicorn said. Pit huffed.

"Fine, I'll go back ho…" he trailed off as the portal he came out of closed up. Well. That was it then. He was officially stuck here.

He felt a kind of overwhelming loneliness and fear creep up on him, but he was snapped out of it by the alicorn.

"Captain Pit, it is an honour to have your assistance. I am Princess Luna, Guardian of the Night. These are the wielders of the Elements of Magic, Loyalty and Honesty: Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash and Applejack, respectively."

"Er, nice to meet you. I would shake hands but, you know," he said, holding out his hand to emphasize. And then he leapt three feet in the air. "AAAAAH! WHAT HAPPENED TO MY HANDS!?"

"Oh, of course, you're from a land where there are no ponies," Luna said thoughtfully. "You've temporarily become one of us. As soon as you leave Equestria you will regain your normal form."

"But…but I…hooves! How am I supposed to use a bow and arrow with hooves?!"

"Uh, what kinda dumb question is that?" the pegasus, Rainbow Dash said. Not that she looked anything like the pegasi back at Palutena's Palace. She was blue, with a mane that was all the colours of the rainbow. "This is your bow, right?" she trotted over to the Ice Bow, which was still on the floor from where he'd dropped it when he fell in.

"Um, yes."

"So long as you're flying…" she demonstrated, fluttering into the air by a couple of inches. "It should be easy." She, somehow, picked the bow up in her hoof. She pulled back the string with her other hoof, and despite himself Pit said:

"If you're right-handed – or, er, hoofed – you're holding it the wrong way."

"Hey, I'm not an archer, I'm a flier," Rainbow Dash protested, dropping the bow in front of him.

"I apologise for cutting your introductions short but we need to move to a safer location – we had to take a huge risk in even setting hoof in Canterlot," Luna said.

"I guess it's taken over by the monsters," Pit said, following the alicorn as she started to lead them out of the derelict-looking hall. Maybe it had been a Portal Room too, at some point, but now it looked like it had been munched on by the monsters.

"So how're you s'posed ta help us?" the orange pony, Applejack, said, giving him an incredulous look. "Ya ain't even full-grown."

"I don't get why it matters how old I am. It only matters that I'm the highest-ranking military official in the whole of Angel Land."

"How did you get to such a high position at such a young age?" Twilight Sparkle, the purple unicorn, asked.

"Saving the world."

"Oh. So you're that kind of hero," she said with a knowing smile. Pit wasn't sure what she meant. He would have voiced this; apart from they just strolled past a mirror. He stopped dead to look at himself in the shards of reflective glass, forcing the others to stop too.

He saw a pegasus pony with white fur looking back at him with the same bright, wide blue eyes that he'd always had. His hair-now-mane was still the same tufty mop that it always was, apart from now he had a tail to match. He swished this without even meaning to, amazed at how his brain had automatically rewired to be able to use all the extra appendages he had. A tail! And two extra legs! It was weird, to say the least. He was shorter than the other ponies, and proportionately his eyes were slightly larger and his legs a little longer – presumably this was how teenage ponies looked. He flapped his wings weakly. They didn't look anywhere near big enough to support his weight.

"Are you done gawkin' at yerself?" Applejack said.

"Sorry…it's just a bit weird. I wonder if…" He bounded forwards a couple of steps and fluttered his wings for all he was worth. He shot into the sky with a delighted gasp. "Oh my Gods!"

"What now?" Rainbow Dash asked, flying up into the sky alongside him. Pit was ecstatic.

"I can fly!"

"I thought you were a flying guy anyway."

"I'm an Angel, but I couldn't fly properly. And now I can! OhmyGodsohmyGodsohmyGods this is amazing!"

"What kind of Angel cannot fly?" this seemed to stump Luna. That stung a little, even though she clearly didn't mean it maliciously.

"The kind that had to learn to rely on other skills to get him through life," Pit told her, settling on the ground again. He fluttered his wings again, not even trying to bite down the gleeful grin that had spread across his ponified face despite the remark just made by the Princess.

"I am sorry for having to cut your fun short, but Equestria is in the middle of a monster invasion way beyond our control. We need to fill you in with the details," Luna said, started to ascend a spiral staircase.

"Where are we going?" he asked first.

"To the Astronomy Tower. It is high up, an area the monsters did not quite manage to make it to. It also offers an excellent view of the remains of Canterlot. We have been using it as our base."

"Is it just us?"

"We were hopin' other heroes would show up," said Applejack. "Yer the first we got."

"But as for Equestrians, we are one of several groups," Twilight Sparkle explained. "My other friends, the Bearers of Laughter, Kindness and Generosity are all in our home town of Ponyville trying to create a cure."

"My lady Palutena's report said that the monsters infect ponies and turned them evil. I guess you're talking about a cure to that?"

"Yes, and I have heard that progress is being made," said Luna. She pushed open the door at the top of the staircase with her hoof and stepped through. "Shut the door behind you," she instructed as the last of the group, Rainbow Dash, walked in.

The astronomy did indeed look untouched, if a little dusty. The circular dome of glass that made up the roof showed a view of nothing but grey clouds, but it wasn't this that Luna wanted to show Pit. She beckoned him over to a door that led out onto a balcony, and it was from there that he could see the damage.

It was a scene of horror. Buildings half-demolished and crumbled, dark purple stains on the landscape that bubbled and oozed, rubble scattered everywhere. Pit had seen a few battlefields in his life-time, but the fact that this particular battlefield was missing something made him shiver. There were no bodies. No skeletons, no corpses. Normally that would be considered a good thing, but not this time. This time the casualties were being mind-controlled. Not a good thing at all.

"This is what our once-great city has been reduced to, Captain," Luna said, sadness clear in her voice. "I have heard that you are an excellent tactician as well as an archer."

"Um, I guess I am pretty good at it. I don't know about excellent…"

"I believe Palutena herself said it, and she is the Goddess of Wisdom, is she not?" Pit wasn't sure how to respond to that. He was saved from having to by Twilight sticking her head out the door and saying:

"Luna, I want to send a message to Ponyville to tell them the first hero has arrived to help, is there anything you want me to say?"

"No, Twilight Sparkle, I have nothing to tell them that you could not tell them yourself," the Princess said, not taking her gaze from the wrecked landscape. Pit wasn't sure he'd ever seen anyone look so melancholy without actually crying.

"Very well, Princess…you should come inside, we have food."

"Oh, I have food, I'll share some," Pit piped up, jogging the satchel-turned-saddlebag.

"That would be wonderful, thank you, Captain," the unicorn nodded, and he went inside with her. Luna lingered for a moment longer, the wind rippling her star-cloud mane, before going inside too.

"So tell me what you know about fighting these monsters – do you even have a name for them?" Pit said, sitting down on his hindquarters next to Rainbow Dash.

"We ain't got a name fer them yet, but we know that if ya try t' buck 'em, ya get yer hooves stuck," Applejack said, breaking a loaf of bread into pieces and passing them round.

"They're weak to Ice, though from your bow I think you already knew that," said Twilight, levitating her piece of bread into the air. "What do you know, Captain?"

"About as much as I've told you and you've told me. We've not got anything like this back in Skyworld. Demons, gorgons, Monoeyes, harpies, we've got all of those but nothing squishy."

"Well, I can tell you that there are some places in Equestria the monsters haven't reached yet – Trottingham, which is an island so they're probably not gonna get there at all, and also Manehattan and Vanhoover."

"I need a map," Pit said, the tactician within starting to wake up. "Get me a map of Equestria. We need to plot the movement of the monsters, try to figure out where they first came from and how quickly they're coming."

"An excellent idea, Captain," Luna declared, perking up a little. "I will fetch the grand map of Equestria. Tell him about the events leading up to this."

"Yes, Princess," Twilight nodded. Once the alicorn had gone, there was a short silence, before Rainbow Dash said:

"The first I heard about it was from a guy I work with at the cloud factory…"

"The what?"

"Ohh, this is going to take a while," Twilight sighed.

When Luna got back, the map rolled up and levitating a short distance in front of her, the basics of weather control had been explained and where each of the ponies first heard about the ooze also mentioned.

"What I don't get," Pit was saying. "Is if you have two Goddesses in charge, how come neither of them noticed? Hey, actually, where is the other Princess? Celestia, isn't it?"

"Celestia is no longer with us," Luna said, though her throat tightened towards the end of the sentence. Pit's expression went into a deep frown, but softened.

"What…happened to her?"

"She went down fightin' fer her ponies," said Applejack. "She ain't dead but she's one of 'em."

"Oh…you mean she got infected?"

"Yup."

"She was carried away by the monsters that infected her and…that was the last I saw of her," Luna said, her voice dwindling. The map in her magical grip dropped to the floor in front of the small ring of ponies. "Here's the map," she said quietly, before walking over to the balcony door and stepping outside. The girls exchanged worried looks.

"Should one of us go and talk to her?" Twilight suggested.

"I think she'd rather be left alone," Pit said.

"What makes you think that?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"My parents died in battle, and I got so sick of everyone asking me if I was alright and did I want a hug and why was I getting so upset with everyone? I just wanted to be on my own."

"Oh…I'm sorry," she said meekly. He shook his head.

"Nah, you've not done anything wrong. Now let me see this map."

Twilight Sparkle unrolled it and laid it out on the floor in front of them. Pit got to his hooves. It was a big map, at least a couple of yards across.

"So we're here," he tapped the cliffside castle that represented Canterlot (with the name written above it, which made it more than just a little obvious). "And we know there are monsters here. Where else do we know there are monsters – augh, you know what, we need to come up with a name for them; 'monster' just doesn't cut it for me."

"Slimes?" Rainbow Dash suggested.

"Sludge?" Applejack proposed.

"Just ooze?" Twilight pulled a face.

"Ooze works for me. Right, so there are oozes in Canterlot but none in Trottingham, Manehatten or Vanhoover. Where else do we know there to be oozes?"

"Ponyville," said Twilight.

"OK, Ponyville…anyone got any counters or something? I'm used to using models to plan these things out."

"Like those things you push around with a stick that you get in movies?" said Rainbow Dash. Pit pulled a face but nodded.

"Yeah, exactly like that. I need something to represent the ooze, something like a-" and he was cut off by a blood-curdling wail.

Normally I don't do cliffhangers, and yet here we are. I literally did an evil chuckle when I made the chapter break. All that aside, I guess I forgot to mention the small possibility of character death? Or close enough to death, anyway. Not everyone is gonna make it out the way they went in. Nothing too violent, though, I'm not that kind of author .-. ANYWAY, next chapter we will be: finding out who did the screaming, and a few more foreign heroes arrive!