//------------------------------// // Arrival // Story: The Lost Friend // by Solaris Night //------------------------------// "What's going on?", "Where am I?", "What's all that noise?" is what went through Twilights head as she opened her eyes. When they were fully open she took in her surroundings. In the distance she could see the lights of her homecity Canterlot and the castle that the lights illuminated. She also felt the wind on her fur and could hear the hoots of a nearby owl. This confused her a lot, but when she turned her head the other way she immediately realised what was going on. She saw a group of masked ponies who were running and one of them was carrying her. She wanted to scream and run, but soon she realised she was tied and had her mouth covered. Her activity attracted the attention of the pony who carried her. "Hey Dark she woke up!" the stallion called out to another pony. The others slowed down a bit, while the one who was in the lead came next to the carrier. "Hmmm ... It seems the knock-out spell wore off already. Wouldn't expect nothing else from the princesses prized pupil, she is quite resilient." Dark Step said. The first stallion asked: "So, what do we do with her now? Do we knock her out again or ...". "No need," Dark replied: " we will soon be in range to teleport to our hideout anyway, so why not let her enjoy the trip." He smiled and sped-up to the front again. Twilight couldn't do much, but cry and think why this happened to her. "Mom, dad, Shiny, someone please save me." then she blacked out. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When they arrived to the groups hideout, they let Twilight off from the stallions backand woke her up. Dark turned to a snow white pegasus mare with aqua blue mane and tail and sky blue eyes with a hail cloud cutie mark. "Alright Chill take her to the cell and make sure you put the ring on her. We wouldn't want her to try and get away. She could get herself really hurt." Dark said and cackeled. Chill Wind hesitated a little: "Ummm, boss are you sure she will be fine with that thing down there?" "No worries, I made sure it is well locked down, if it does happen to get her it will be entierly her fault if she dies, but it would be a shame to loose such precious subject." Dark said with a malicious grin. "Now get going," he ordered: "and little miss for your own good you better behave." Twilight couldn't say a word because she was so terrified. Chill then placed a ring on her horn and she could feel her magic draining away. Then Chill put Twilight on her back and they began to go towards a set of stairs. When they came to them they went down and Twilight could slowly begin to hear different voices. When they came to the bottom of the stairs she couldn't belive her eyes. She saw numerous cells and in them were different ponies of different ages, from kids to elderly, as well as beings of other races such as griffons, diamond dogs etc. But what shocked her the most was the state they were in. Nearly all of them looked malnourished, some were missing limbs, while others were covered in bruises and bandages. She began to thrash again, but it was still futile. The more cells they passed the more Twilight wanted to throw up. They continued untill they came to a dead end. The mare pushed a stone in the wall and a hidden passageway opened up. They went in and Twilight could see more stairs heading down. "Ugh, why did that whacko had to build his lab on a freaking mountain and why for the love of Celestia did he had to install so many stairs?" complained Chill and went down. As soon as they came to the bottom Twilight could see only a single cell. The mare then took out her keys and unlocked the door. Then she undid fillies bonds and threw her in. Twilight quickly scrambled to her hooves and removed the rag that covered her mouth. "Why are you doing this to me, who are you ponies, where ..." Twilight rambled out but cut short by the mare: "Shut up foal! I won't tell you a single thing so save your questions for the Doc, he will gladly tell you everything you want to know." She turned around and was about to leave when she stopped. "Oh and be careful you don't go near it, the last guy who went too close got his hoof bitten." with that said she left. Twilight sat there confused at what she said. "Don't go neat what?" she thought. She looked around the cell to see what the mare meant. As she looked around she realised her cell was a lot bigger then the upper cells and the only source of light was the barred window on the wall. She could that it was night and that moonlight seeped through the bars. Her eyes then fell on a weird shadow slouched in the corner of the cell. At first she couldn't make out the details, but when her eyes adjusted she screamed and jumped away. There sitting and leaning on the wall of the cell was a creature Twilight has never seen or read about in books. It looked kind of like a minotaur only smaller and skinnier. It also had no fur safe for its face and on top of its head. It had four long limbs which both ended with weird claw like digits, and its face is flat and had small beady eyes. The creature looked up at the filly when it heard her scream nad Twilight could see the predator like stare it gave her. She continued to back off until she hit the bars of her and the creatures cell. "Sweet Celestia that thing is going to devour me, please don't let it end like this." she thought. She then heard the hoofsteps coming down the stairs and soon two figures appeared. The first one was a black furred unicorn stallion with a lighter toned black mane. He had dark brown, almost black like, eyes and his cutie mark were three spiraling stars. The other was an older unicorn stallion with a light green coat and grey mane. His eyes were light blue and he also wore a labcoat and a pair of glasses. For his cutie mark he had a scalpel cutting a strand of DNA. "Ah, I see you met your roommate, or should i say cellmate." the green pony snickered. Twilight ran to the door and began to bang on them and shout: "GET ME OUT OF HERE! THAT THING IS GOING TO EAT ME!" The green pony laughed and said: "You don't have to worry about it, it has been shackeled up and restrained to that wall. But still we didn't completely bind him to that wall so he can still move around a bit, so be careful you don't get too close to him." "Now I belive you want to know where are you, why you are here and so on, right?" he asked. Twilight only nodded. He then began: "Well I belive the first we should do is introduce ourselves." "My name is doctor Gene Slice and my associate here," he pointed to the black stallion: "is Dark Step, I belive you met him already, although he was masked at the time." "Now for why you are here. You see miss Sparkle in this facility here we conduct very important experiments which will benefit for making a better world for the ponykind. We go from town to town and pick up valuable subjects like yourself, who ˝voulenteered˝ themselves for the greater good. But we only pick those who have intriguing abilities, like incredible durability, awesome speed or astounding magic capabilites, like you." he gave her a devious look. "Then when they get here we accomodate them until the time for experiments come." he continued. Twilight looked at him scared and gulped. "What kind of experiments?" she asked. Slice smiled and answered: "Oh nothing major. Just some physical and arcane test to make sure they are healthy." his smile then turned manaical: "Afterwards we cut them open to see how they work and see what makes them so unique. And if possible make them even better or we impliment their uniquness into other subjects. But alas even after four years we still haven't been able to succesfully impliment one subejcts genes into another without them dying of excrutiating pain." Twilight turned pale and she began to shake violently. She began to back off from the door: "A-are y-you going to d-do the s-same thing to m-me?" she asked. Slice shoke his head and said: "No, no, no. Well not yet at least." Twilight looked at him confused. " You see your magic still hasn't quite ripened yet, it still needs some time before it will be powerful enough for me conduct any experiments or tests on you. It will probably take another few months, maybe a year at most." Twilight fell to the floor semi-relieved. She again looked at the doctor and asked: "But why would you do this to innocent ponies? You said you did for the better of ponykind. How is this beneficial for anyone?" Doctor just smiled and looked at her amused: "Great question young one. You see what we are trying to achieve here is to create a being whose intellect would outshine any others, a being who won't fall ill to diseases, a being who would be able to conquer any challenege, a being who no one would dare oppose, not even the princesses. And when that being is created we will recreate the procedure that created it and use it on everypony else. And just like that there will be no more threat to the ponies, every other being on this planet would have to bow down to us and we would then bring utopia to this planet for all ponykind." Twilight just stared at him speechless and slackjawed. She finally uttered her words. "That is insane, you're insane. What about all the other species, what will happen to them?" she yelled. Doc just shrugged and said: "I don't give a fuck about any of them, all care about is my kind because we are greater than any griffon or even dragon. They should respect us and bow to us from the very beginning." "Celestia will stop you." Twilight spoke. At that the stallion just began to laugh. After he setteled down her gave her an aggravated look and said in a venomous tone: "If you think that bitch has any chance of finding my hideout you have another thing coming kid. That whore is the very reason why I am doing all of this. She keeps saying we should try and understand eachother be friends. Well she's wrong, what we should do is make the others submit to us and kill all others who resist." Twilight again began to shiver and the black stallion looked pleased with that. "Oh, before I leave I guess I should tell a little bit about your friend there." he said looking at the creature. "We wouldn't want you two bicker now would we." he said while Dark snickered. "I don't know exactly what it is," doctor continued: " but from what I gathered from it I can speculate that it belongs to the ape family and it's omnivours. I found him while I was searching through The Everfree Forest for any potential specimen for my experiments. When I discovered him he looked a lot better than he looks now, he was also scared and lost, at least I presume." "When we brought it here and after I did some experiments on it I found out it has high resistance to magic and it also lacks any himself. Which leads me to conclusion it may not even be of this world. It also shows slight signs of intelligence, though after we brought it here all it did was growl, ate, slept and bang on the wall behind him with a rock it found." the doctor said. "Athough any time we try to approach it, it begins to act highly violently. He already bit a hoof of one of my assistants. Unfortunatelly we had to cut it off due to the infection this thing caused him with its bite." the satllion explained. "Now I belive that covers everything you need to know about this place. Enjoy your stay while you can and try to get some sleep. You will need it." he said turning around. As both stallions left Twilight fell on the floor where she began to cry until her tears ran dry and then she fell asleep. All the while the creature looked at her with look of intrigue.