//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2: Drop It 
// Story: My Little Alien 
// by godzilla54 
//------------------------------//

Shooter had gathered in the landing dock with the others. First there was Spark, a blue unicorn, with an orange mane and tail, with a bull's-eye as her cutie mark. Second there was Cake Baker, a heavily built blue pony, with a crate as his cutie mark, just because he was good at lifting things. Third there was Violet Sunflower. Despite her name, she was not the nicest pony you'd meet in Equestria. She was covered in burn marks because of all the battles she was in, and all the fights she got into. No one even knew what he cutie mark was, given that the area where it had been was covered in a huge scar. She had originally beena yellow pegusus with green hair, but she dyed her coat black. She said it was to keep ponies from seeing her scars, but everypony knew better. She just didn't like looking like such a pansy. Her wings were still yellow, but they were a much darker shade. Fourth there was Halfwing. He was an olive color with a plane as his cutie mark. He had been born with only one wing so he couldn't fly naturally, but he made up for it by being a great pilot. Fifth there was Flute Bottom, a ginger colored unicorn with a soccer ball as his cutie mark. He was originally just a good athlete when it came to sports, but for some reason nopony can quite understand he joined the military. Sixth there was Sargent Peppers, but everypony just called him Sarge. He wasn't that big but heavily built. He was crimson with a fist as a cutie mark, and had an eye patch, which he never told anypony how he got it, and if they asked he just threatened them with needing one. Shooter and all of them were wearing standard military uniforms, small camo shits with magic-proof vests over them. Seventh there was Checkers, a black and white checkered android pony. There were also ten other ponies, but Shooter had never met them before. One of them didn't appear to be military, company, or an android.
One of the ponies Shooter didn't recognize came forward. He was in an officer's uniform, with a yellow coat and blue mane and tail. He was pretty scrawny for somepony in the military, so he was probably a chair officer, who had never seen action.
He began to address the croud.
"Hello," He said, "I am lieutenant Frost, and I am going to be in charge on this mission. What we think we have is a possible ponymorph infes-"
"I'm sorry, a what?" Flute asked cutting him off.
"A ponymorph."
"Oh so a bug hunt."
"Sure, you can call it that if you want. Anyway, this here is Ridley, she will tell you what you're dealing with.
The pony Shooter. Didn't recognize came forward.
"Okay, so I'll tell you what I know." She said, "My crew and I came down on to LG-28. We found some sort of spacecraft, or, something. Once we were insisde we found several, hundred strange eggs. One of them opened and attached itself to my crew member, Plumflower's face. Eventually it came off on it's own, but later when we were having dinner, a small snake like creature burst from his chest. We all went looking for it, but we were never able to find it, it found us. It slowly picked us off one by one, and uhm, uhh." It was clearly emotional for Ridley to talk about this, so Frost decided to cut her off.
"Alright so if there aren't any questions, then we'll get moving."
And with several jokingly phrased questions, they made their way to the ship.

The flight was over all a routine one. The ponies stayed in their hyper-sleep chambers, while Checkers ran the ship on the way there. Checkers, despite being an android, did get very bored. He was given television, but only to learn how to interact with ponies better. He watched them quite often to have something to do, but he never truely understood somethings. For example, he could not comprehend this thing that the ponies called "friendship." He did not understand what made somepony a friend. Was it a sort of symbiotic relationship? Was it having common traits? Enjoying the happiness of others? Checkers understood so much of it, yet still had no idea what exactly it was. He was able to understand and feel some basic emotions such as happiness, disappointment, and the one most promenent now, boredom. However, because of efficiency problems, androids no longer were programmed with saddness, anger, and emotions such as these. But he felt he still had know idea. While he wondered what friendship could be, a light began flashing, which ment the others were about to wake up, which ment they had arrived.

All the ponies had arrived at the LG-28 space station. It was a thin cylinder, with tubes connecting it to a circular ring like section, that had large antennas sticking out of it with a purple glow. These were made to magically keep astroids from hitting the station itself.
Ridley was one of the last to wake from hyper-sleep. It had only been about 16 days, but they were required to use hyper-sleep so that the ship's small food supply wouldn't run to low. As Ridley looked around, she noticed that the others were already getting off the ship. She quickly ran over to the others to try and catch up. As she did she realized that they were all joking aboutthe mission.
"No way that these things are real." Flute said, "We get missions like this all the time, and it just ends up being nothing. It probably was just some pony who accidentally overloaded the magic on the com tower. Waste of time."
"And if it is real," Violet said, "just point me in the right direction and they won-"
"Will kill you." Ridley said correcting her sentence before she could finish. "They will kill you if you don't take this seriously. They will kill all of you."
All the ponies including Violet were scared, but they just shrugged it off to nothing. Ridley hated how they treatedd this as a joke. What if those things were there. What is they had infected most, if not all of the colonists there. Ridley couldn't stand the idea of one of them, but a couple hundred. That made her hair stick up. Would they even be able to make a difference? To be honest, Ridley highly doupted it.
Nopony stayed. On the station very long. They all made their way to the drop ship. It was a large prismatic ship, with foor wings on it's sides that had rockets at the ends. It also had three magic pulsers on the back, which was the main thing that kept it moving. The other was gravity. Once they were all on, the ship was sent towards the planet. Ridley had never been on a drop like this, despite having been trained. It wasn't that different. Some of the others  had actually had been in drops, but it was still wierd for them. Ridley could tell this based on most of the facial expressions on them. Most were fine but a few, including the lieut. looked like they were going to throw up.
As. Ridley looked out the window she saw they were rapidly approaching LG-28. Ridley hoped to Celestia that they were wrong, that those things weren't down there. But Ridley knew in her heart that they were, and she knew that most of them, were going to die.