//------------------------------//
// Chapter Six - Survival 
// Story: Quantum Castaways 
// by DustTraveller 
//------------------------------//

A/N: I hate prefacing a story with author notes, it's a bad habit that I'm entirely too fond of, but something minor has changed from the previous version of chapter 5.  The amount of C4 packed for the trip has been changed from one ounce to one and one quarter pounds, as a result of better research into the amount of C4 necessary for specific jobs and convenience. 

That's pretty much it.  Thank you all for reading.





-Won't Back Down, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers





Marshall carefully stuck the small capped leads of primary explosive into the pound and a quarter of putty-like substance at the base of the invisible force field.  After inserting the caps, he wiped sweat from his forehead and began backing up, unwinding the leads as he did so.

"This manual is amazing, Marshall. I never realized there was so much science that went into blowing things up.  Did you know that there's a mathematical formula for determining exactly, to the ounce, how many pounds of C4 is necessary to demolish a steel..."

Marshall jumped during this diatribe, dropping the leads, then scowled in Twilight's direction.  Her ears drooped and she trailed off.

"Er... sorry."

"No, Sparks... really... that's fucking fascinating.  Is there an equation for how many pounds it takes to blow my ass halfway back to Earth?!"

She frowned.  "I said I was sorry... but..." She bit her lip.

He sighed, crossed his arms, then cocking his head slightly and gave her a wry look.

"Um... I think you're doing it wrong.  Have you read this thing completely?"

His look became slightly defensive.  "I read all the safety stuff, and the appropriate sections for setting a C4 charge without blowing yourself to flinders."

She rolled her eyes.  "Figures.  Well then you probably missed this section.  It isn't in the same spot."  

The purple aura'ed manual hovered close to his face and he frowned, reading the appropriate section.

"Sure the charge will blow up, but most of the force of the explosion isn't going to be directed at the barrier.  The way you have those blasting caps stuck into that thing, the shockwave is going to move parallel to the target, so most of the force will be wasted."

He grabbed the book out of the purple field and stared at the page.  Meanwhile, Twilight telekinetically removed the leads from the side of the C4 block and reinserted them directly into the side directly opposite the barrier.  Marshall almost dropped the book.

"Hey!  Careful with that stuff, Sparks!  It ain't silly putty!"

Twilight sighed.  "Between the two of us, who has read more of that manual?"

Marshall glared, but wisely kept his mouth shut.

She smirked.  "Ok, since that's settled... if the purpose of this operation is to try to breach this barrier, then we need to direct as much of the shockwave INTO the thing as we possibly can.  Ideally, that means a shaped charge, which-"

Marshall sighed and shook his head.  "Which we can simulate somewhat by burying it under a few feet of dirt and rocks directly in contact with the force field."

She grinned delighted that he'd caught on to her plan so quickly.  "Exactly!"

Marshall frowned.  "Problem.  If that barrier doesn't breach, what prevents the blast from venting in the path of least resistance?  I don't want a bunch of shrapnel headed in our direction."

She cocked her head slightly.  "OK, so we move ourselves slightly to the side of intended breach location, say, down the promontory side a bit closer to the water, so we have the slope of the promontory as cover, and I put a shield between us and the explosion to catch any debris.  Also technically Marshall, the term you're looking for is fragments, or frags, not shrapnel.  Shrapnel is the ball bearings in any kind of shell that produces a cone shaped pattern spray.  It was invented by Major General Henry Shr-"

"Oh great horny toads I've created a monster.  How could you have possibly gone through that thing so fast?!"  Marshall groaned, dramatically putting his hand to his forehead and rolling his eyes skyward.  

She merely rolled her eyes at his antics and proceeded to lift fist and head sized rocks from the promontory near the block to get to the sand beneath.  After seeing the extent (or lack of) her reaction, Marshall shrugged and removed a small entrenching tool from his pack and began moving sand.  

The purple unicorn watched this with some curiousity, as he was very carefully digging against the barriers edge.  The pit he created showed movement of soil beyond the edge of the barrier, so that he appeared, to the observer unaware of the barriers presence, to be digging a small pit.  

Twilight shook her head, still awestruck at this quiet display of the sheer power that must have gone into the construction of the thing.

"Marshall, did you notice the sand is shifting beyond the barrier too?"  She asked.

He stopped, looked at the hole, then looked to her with a frown.  "Yeah, I had noticed that.  I also noticed that you stopped helping."

Twilight laid her ears back.  "Sorry."  

She began levitating clumps of sand and rocks out as he dug them loose.  Between the two of them, the hole widened quickly.  

After a bit of this he frowned and turned to her.

"Hey Twi, I just thought of something."  He said musingly.

Concentrating on the task at hand, she grunted in askance.

"Say that we actually DO manage to breach this thing.  Didn't you say that it would cascade and take out the whole island?  I don't think I want an earth shattering kaboom."

She stopped, blinking, then looked at him.  "What?  No... I didn't say that."

He frowned.  "I'm pretty sure I remember something about catastrophic cascade failure equals crater where island used to be.  I don't particularly like this place, but I don't want to get rid of it while I'm standing on it."

She nodded.  "Yes, I did say something to that effect, but what I didn't say was breaching the barrier would cause such a result.  What I SAID was, if I were to disrupt the barrier, it would cause an energy backlash from the spell matrix cascade failure.  Then you'd get your earth shattering kaboom.  The difference here is a matter of method."

She sat down on her haunches and entered into lecture mode, and he went back to digging, but his attention was obviously directed towards her.

"Bear in mind that I'm oversimplifying things here, but I get the impression that you don't particularly want to sit through a counterspelling one oh one class.  Basically any spell is a manipulation of extant magical fields through a spell matrix, which is a framework that directs the energy into a given effect.  Dispelling a spell requires that you analyze the matrix, then manipulate it and essentially pick it apart until it becomes unstable."  

She concentrated on one of the rocks she had levitated loose, lifted it up into the air, and transformed it into a jungle colored booney hat sized for a pony.  Marshall stopped digging and stared at it in shock.

"You didn't tell me you could do that."

She grinned.  "Hey Marshall, I can use magic to transform objects back and forth."

He mock angrily shook a fist at her.  "Why I oughta..."

She chuckled.  "Seriously, I only mastered a few items.  Mostly hats and suits, oddly enough.  Each other object requires a completely new spell matrix, and it's energy intensive.  Also, it isn't permanent, so it's not exactly something we can rely on."

He nodded.  "Still, good to know for emergencies and such."

She nodded in agreement, then concentrated again, frowning.

"Moving on, when a magical field has been realized in a spell matrix, it goes from being potential thaumic energy to being actual thaumic energy.  When a spell matrix is destabilized, the energy can't go back to being a potential energy field anymore, it has to go somewhere.  A spell that you know inside and out, you can destabilize in a way that erm... "grounds" this energy safely."

The hat popped back into a rock.  Twilight concentrated again and it popped back into hat form.

Marshall watched fascinated.  It was obvious to him that she was an expert giving a demonstration in her field of study.  With a start he realized that she'd probably been through as much schooling as he had, if not more.  He frowned thoughtfully at this.

She frowned at the levitating hat and dispelled the spell with simple brute force.  The result was quite dramatic.  The rock crackled back into being with a shower of sparks and a hissing pop of displaced air.  A few motes danced in the air for a split second before fading away.  She dropped the rock.

"With a really simple spell, even that isn't necessary, because all you'd get are a few sparks and maybe a little pop.  An extremely complex working with a massive amount of energy tied into it will cause a variety of effects, depending on how the spell matrix unravels, but the most common is a detonation.  Also, on a side note, this sort of active dispelling is really only effective on static spells, or spells that don't have an active practicioner tied into the spell matrix.  Most shields are active, because the practicioner is protecting him or herself, and is using their personal energy as a supplement to the energy reserve."  

She gestured with a forehoof.  "If they sense someone fiddling with the spell matrix, they can repair the damage.  Then it becomes a tug of war between the dispeler and the spell caster.  Still, the basic principle is this; the more energy in the collapse, the bigger the kaboom.  Energy doesn't like to be jerked around."

Marshall quirked a smile.  "Yeah, physics is a touchy bitch, ain't she?"

She sighed, rolling her eyes.  "Sure, Marshall, sure.  Anyway, blowing a hole through a shield isn't the same thing as dispeling it.  Again, this is an oversimplification, because there are a lot of different types of shields, but when an opposing force, say, an object or a spell, strikes a barrier, the energy that makes up the shield is utilized as a counterforce that directs the energy of the projectile or spell that struck it away.  More complex shields are more efficient and may do special things with that energy, but the principle remains the same."

Marshall scratched his beard thoughtfully.  "So basically what you're saying is, in order to shatter a shield spell, you have to exhaust the energy reserve that was built into it."

She grinned delightedly.  "That's exactly right, Marshall!"

"Do I get a cookie?"

Her eyes took on a faraway look.  "Marshall, if I had a cookie I'd have eaten it already.  I'd MURDER somepony for baked goods right now.  I say that knowing full well the moral and ethical ramifications of such a statement, but I reiterate.  Kill.  For.  A.  Pie."

He chuckled at this, especially the apparently utterly sincere look on her face.  She was getting better at this.

She gave a small smile, then sighed, turning her thoughts firmly away from baked goods.  "In the case of a breached shield, the effect is reversed.  Without enough thaumic energy to hold it together, the spell matrix collapses on its own.  No explosion, just "pffft"."  She blew a raspberry for effect.

He snorted.  "Is that a technical term, "pffft"?"  He repeated her raspberry.

She pawed the ground with her forehoof.  "Well, not really, but it actually does kinda sound like that.  Princess Celestia used to use a collapsing barrier under the table to make it sound like really obnoxious nobleponies had gas at functions when things were so boring you couldn't believe it.  It took me years to figure it out, and then... what was I gonna say?"

Marshall actually laughed out loud at this.  "The Sun Princess likes practical jokes, huh?  Sounds like my kinda mare.  I'd like to meet her-"

Twilight shuddered.  "I certainly hope not.  The two of you should absolutely never meet."

He pouted, somewhat hurt.  "What?  Are you afraid-"

She stared hard at him.  "Yes."

He returned it.  "But-"

She continued the stare.  "Never."

"Never?"

"Ever."

He let out an explosive sigh, stepped up out of the now four foot deep hole and tossed the entrenching tool down so that it stuck up in the sand.

"Spoilsport."

He cracked his back and she shuddered slightly at the sound, then frowned, hesitating.  Had she just made a joke at her mentor's expense?  With a start, she realized that she had.  A momentary pang of anxiety passed through her, but she snorted at herself in a rare moment of panic aversion.  Princess Celestia had a sense of humor, particularly where her own image was concerned.  

The epiphany hit her with thunderous force and she gazed at Marshall with a shocked expression.  He had finished stretching, gotten back down in the pit, and was back to work.  He was carefully leveling the bottom of the small pit and patting the sides with the entrenching tool to pack the sand into a harder surface, and didn't notice her scrutiny.  

She performed a mental exercise.  An experiment of sorts.  She stripped away the effortless dignity and years of wearing a regal mask; of being the constant, calm influence in pony politics.  She reflected on those rare moments when the Princess had been caught off guard or surprised.  Those moments when the Princess had been alone with only a few close associates around.  

Unconsciously, without realizing that that was indeed what she was doing, she removed her immortal, ageless mentor from the high pedestal she'd placed her on and looked, really looked, at the pony that was left. 

Marshall stood and considered his handiwork, Scratching under his beard absently as he did so.  Lifting his eyes from the ground, he considered the clouds and partially hidden, alien sun.  This reminded him of the Sun Princess and he smiled to himself, closing his eyes as he did so.  It was hard to believe that the OCD... ok, being charitable; the detail oriented, Twilight Sparkle had a mentor who was apparently fond of fart jokes.  That was almost too funny to believe.  

In fact, considering the way that Twilight spoke of the Princess, Marshall thought it was entirely possible the Princess had been subtly messing with Twilight's head for years.  That was some motherfucking grandmaster trolling right there.  Despite what Twilight seemed to think, Marshall thought that, all things considered, if he ever ran into this Princess Celestia, she might turn out to be a pretty awesome drinking buddy.  

He wondered what Twilight would think of that.

This struck him as funny enough he chuckled to himself.  In that moment, Twilight's eyes widened.  Marshall, unaware that she was watching, was chuckling quietly to himself as he enjoyed the heat of the sun and the cool ocean breeze.  It was a moment of rare honesty for the human, who often hid what he was really feeling behind self-ridicule and an overblown, overexaggerated enthusiasm.  She shook her head.

They were the same.  At their hearts, where it mattered... it was almost scary.  It was the outward attitude that threw off the scent, she realized.  Outwardly they were so ridiculously dissimilar that you couldn't compare the two.  Celestia was the picture of subtlety, while Marshall HAD none.  

At all.  

He seldom exercised a sense of tact, he seemed to enjoy discomforting her, but there was no maliciousness in it.  Still, under the surface, at the core, they both had an iron resolve, a monsterous willpower, but tempered it with the ability to not take themselves and the situations around them seriously unless it was necessary.  The dignity, in one case, and lack thereof, in the other, was a mask.  A defense mechanism.

It was an interesting revelation, this realization that wisdom did not necessarily mean not appearing foalish, but rather not CARING if one appears foalish.  That wisdom was internal, not external... Twilight herself was wise enough to recognize it, and be respectful of the results.  

In their own ways, Celestia and Marshall had been alone for long periods of time.  It was almost a form of enlightenment.

"How did I never notice before?"  She wondered aloud.

Marshall opened one eye, saw her staring at him and grinned.  "I forgive you, Sparks.  This much awesome is pretty hard to take in all at once.  Like standing too close to a mountain, or staring at the sun.  You kinda have to stare at it from an angle, you know, catch the edge of the radiance or be blin- HEY!"

She levitated him out of the pit and hung him upside down, staring into his eyes. "Sorry, I had to cut you off there, Marshall.  Your ego was threatening to eat itself."  She cocked her head slightly, considering him, then giggled.  

"You look pretty funny upside down like this... sort of like a big shaggy brown mop.  Ever consider shaving once in a while, monkey?"

He crossed his arms at this pony-handling and refused to be nettled.  "With what?  A knife?  You're really giving me more credit with sharp things than I deserve.  Whittling wood is one thing, my face is entirely another.  I already have one massive facial scar.  I don't need any more."

She set him down right side up and considered him, all trace of amusement gone.  "You know, Equestrian medical science could have prevented scarring like that, Marshall.  Considering what you've told me, I'm a bit surprised that human medicine couldn't-"

He cut her off.  "I got it in the crash, Twi."  He sighed, rubbing the scar in question.  His face became distant again, as it always did when he considered how he got here.

"Piece of jagged metal split my cheek open, cut me down to the jawbone.  I'm amazed I didn't lose some mobility on that side, I mean, I could stick my finger through and touch teeth."

She winced.  "Why would you do that?"

He gave her a look that said basically, Why WOULDN'T I?

"Anyway, I had to sew myself up, and I am a talented man, but small, tight stitching on my own face with no anesthetic is not one of my many talents."  He winced, remembering.

She considered him quietly for a moment, then softly mentioned.  "You don't talk much about how you got here, Marshall.  I get that it's painful for you, but..."

He shook himself and turned back to the barrier, his face starkly neutral.  "Not right now, Sparks.  Maybe later, yeah?"

She said nothing, but nodded quietly in assent.

His face broke into a grin again, and he playfully ruffled her mane.  Despite her annoyance at the action, she grinned back at him.  Seeing him depressed, even momentarily was just... unnatural.

"Come on, Sparks.  We got work to do.  You go ahead and set the charge... you seem to have a knack for this stuff that I lack.  Just be careful, yeah?  I doubt your Princess wants you back by the pound."





It was rage.  It was hate.  It was fear.  It was what it had been created to be, just as its ancestors were, so many eons ago, so far far away.  A weapon forged of the negative parts of the soul of the universe, the great black hole that fed and fed, and never stopped.  The insatiable, inevitable heat death at the end of time and space.  Bred and twisted to one purpose.

Kill those touched by the light.  By the physical projection of the warmth of the soul.  

It was not truly intelligent.  It was cunning, certainly; no stupid beast could hunt the prey that it had to, but its many millennia dead masters were too paranoid, too jealous of their power, too steeped in their own darkness to consider creating anything other than a slave, and such a beast had they created.  One that could never rebel, or know remorse.  

Or pity. 

Only hunger. 

Even if it were capable of mercy, of understanding such a concept, it could not stop.  It needed the vital energies that coursed in the blood and flesh of its prey, needed it as fire needs fuel, for its own corrupt and dark energies burned so fiercely, so quickly.

It had been greatly confused, of late.  One evening it had awoken to a ripple in the great, vast web that was the energy of the universe to find itself transported from its swamp home to... this place.  It had raged then, stalking the land like an inferno, and the creatures of its territory knew fear.  Then, like an inferno, with no fuel to feed the fire of its life it grew weak, weaker, more frantic with hunger, but while the flesh and blood and bone of the denizens of this strange island fed its physical needs they could not feed the deeper hunger, the need for that energy, that warmth.

That light.

It had known fear, then.  Its masters had not bred fear out of it.  Fear was rage, was hate, was power.  Fear was a goad and a whip, and it feared nothing more than it feared its masters.  Still, with weakness came vulnerability.  Its creators had known that there would come times when the true prey of the beast would become scarce; indeed, this was the hoped for result.  So they had built into it a safety mechanism; the ability to hibernate, to lie, still as death, dormant, waiting... waiting.

It had found a cave, one that spent a great deal of time partially submerged, and it had curled into a ball and slept, resembling nothing so much as a collection of strange rocks.

It slept, and dreamt of slaughter.

Then... faint glimmers of power... a speck here and there, but not nearly enough, too far away, and strange.  Alien, but perhaps... close enough.  It stirred in its sleep, but did not wake.

Then more... more...

Closer... close.

One beady yellow eye that shone in the darkness fluttered, opened, and then focused.





Twilight shuddered again, and her ears pricked alertly.  She pawed nervously, caught herself doing it and frowned.

"What's up, Sparks?"  Marshall asked.  "You're makin' me kinda nervous with those explosives, dear."

She shook off her reaction and continued rolling back the leads, further and further down the side of the promontory, almost to the waters edge.  Marshall hoisted up his pack, shrugged it on, then grabbed his rifle and Twilight's own saddlebags.  He trotted over to her, snugging the saddlebags on her carefully.  She looked up at him in askance.

"I'm not all that convinced this is gonna do anything more than when I attempted it, but if I'm wrong, we might need to be ready to move in a hurry."

She flicked an ear in acknowledgement and frowned.  "Should we postpone this for when we have more supplies, then?"

"Naw."  He grinned.  "I couldn't take the suspense, could you?"

She smiled slightly and shook her head, then frowned and glanced back confusedly at the cliffs.

He turned to her, eyeing her carefully.  "Twilight, that's twice.  What's up?"

She started, looked back him and shook her head.  "Nothing... just... nerves.  Something about those caves.  Paranoid, I guess."

He raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms, studying the dark holes himself.  "It's only paranoia if they AREN'T out to get you, and I think we've established that this whole island is trying to eat our collective face.  You prefer to move to the other side of the promontory?"

She shook her head.  "No, we're ready... but... let's not stay here any longer than we have to, ok?"

He shrugged and patted her shoulder.  "Sure, Sparks.  Sure."

He took the leads from her, then removed the megometer from his own pack and unwrapped its probes.  Twisting one lead wire around the end of the positive probe, he crouched down and began fiercely cranking the megometer, building up a charge.  He took the other explosive lead in his right, the negative probe in his left, then hesitated, looking at Twilight.

"You should probably get that shield thing ready, Twi.  Make it nice and strong, too... we're closer than I'd really like."

She nodded assent, her horn blazed to life, and a corruscating purple half-dome field of energy sprang up between the two castaways and their explosive charge, now only visible as a pair of wires sticking up out of the ground.

He nodded to himself, then paused again.  "Hell Sparks, you set the damn thing.  You want to do the honors?"

She shook her head regretfully after a moment.  "No... I'm staying connected to this shield spell so that I can pump energy into it if it feels like it's going to fail.  No point in taking any chances.  Do it, Marshall."

He grinned.  "I love it when you talk dirty, Twi."

She rolled her eyes.

He frowned, snapped his fingers as though he'd remembered something, then carefully set the leads down and rummaged through his pack.  Twilight stared at him curiously.  He pulled out a pair of over-sized earmuffs, the kind that aircrew commonly wore as hearing protection around loud aircraft engines.

"Tuck your ears in close, Sparks.  This is going to be hella loud, and I don't want you developing tinnitus or something."

She complied and he carefully adjusted the hearing protection over her ears.  The world took on a muffled tone, and she could hear the blood rushing through her head.  It was fortunate she didn't have to wear these things for long.  They were the wrong shape, and she could tell that extended usage would give her one heck of a headache.  

"What about you, Marshall?"  She shouted unintentionally.

He raised his voice to a shout.  "I've only got the one pair, it'll have to do."  He mimed putting his fingers in his ears.  "I've got fingers, you don't, so..."

She rolled her eyes and picked up a rock, concentrating on it intensely.  This wasn't quite the same thing as the spell that converted a rock to a top hat, but the principle was the same, and she'd come a long way since then.  In any case, Twilight proved once again that improvisation was the hallmark of true genius, not even noticing the amazing amount of multitasking she was undertaking.  Marshall whistled appreciatively as she worked.  The shield spell never wavered, but the rock suddenly popped into a crude but serviceable pair of ear muffs.  Marshall took them and inspected them carefully, then finally nodded, impressed.

"These aren't going to turn back into a rock while I'm wearing them, yeah?  That could be awkward.  Not to mention messy."

She shook her head.  "It's good for hours, at least.  I doubt you'll be wearing them longer then a few minutes."

He nodded, put the earmuffs on, then picked up the negative probe and lead again.  

"Ok, before we get this party started, one more thing.  The air pressure change is going to be drastic, so make sure you open your mouth to let the pressure in your head equalize.  You do NOT want burst eardrums."

She nodded, and complied.

"Also, I want you to watch the barrier, and how it reacts to the explosion.  THAT'S what I really wanted to show you with this.  If this does breach it, we'll figure it out after the fact."

He turned to the barrier and brought the probe and lead close.

"On three."

She nodded and braced herself, concentrating on the shield as she watched the air above the buried wires.  

"One.  Two.  Three!"

He brought the lead into contact with the negative probe.

The explosion was not what Twilight expected.  For one thing, she was expecting it to be... well, slower and more majestic, with a huge ball of fire.  This did not happen, the actual explosion was over so quickly it might as well have been instantaneous, but the effect was almost more impressive.  One instant the ground was flattened and quiet, the next it erupted and there was a peacock's tail plume of escaping concussive fury that raced along their side of the invisible barrier.  

The ground slammed brutally against her hooves, and the pressure wave raced past her, nearly staggering her in its intensity, for all that she had braced for it.  Even with hearing protection, it was still ridiculously loud.  Several fast moving objects of varying size and velocity struck the barrier as rocks and debris rained down, and she winced as she felt the instantaneous and drastic drain on her magical reserves.  

At the same time, for the first time since coming to this place, she saw it; the barrier that kept them prisoner.  A ripple, for lack of a better word, had raced outward from the explosion's point of contact with the barrier, racing along the barriers edge in a concentric ring that spread out and bounced back before disappearing completely.  It was only a split second, but in that instant the entire construct was revealed, and she sat back on her haunches, mouth dropping open wider, completely awestruck.

It was a dome.  Actually, probably more accurately, a globe, since it obviously extended underground.  An inconceivably massive, completely enclosed dome that surrounded the entire island within itself, with the exception of a few small bits and pieces which extended outside.

The point of the explosion was now covered in a fog-like cloud of choking dust and sand, and Marshall stood up, slowly took off his hearing protection and dropped it to the ground, eyes straining into that cloud.

Twilight removed her own hearing protection and quietly tucked it into her pack, then looked over at Marshall, her ears slowly drooping.

Marshall continued straining to see, then sighed and looked down at her and shook his head.  He reached over gently and scratched the base of one of her ears, and she gave him a sad smile and closed her eyes slightly.  That felt really good after the itchy, stuffy hearing protection.

"Well, Sparks... there was never really much hope.  Still, I..."

She leaned towards him a bit, unconsciously pursuing those wonderful, magical fingers.  They really should patent those things. 

When she spoke, it had a contemplative, almost meditative tone.  "That plume... it was the force of the explosion taking the path of least resistance and spreading out once it got free conforming along the barrier.  If we had pulled it off, there should have been a superheated jet of gas through to the other side." 

He nodded and dropped his hand.  "You saw the-"

"Ripple?  Yes.  It's... encouraging, Marshall.  We did SOMETHING to it."  She looked down, quietly thinking.  "Just... not enough.  Still, even if we didn't succeed in breaching it, we've determined that it must conform to SOME rules, since we affect it, but... I have no IDEA what it is, still.  I'm thinking less and less that it IS a magical barrier.  Even in that instant, I didn't feel anything change, magically speaking.  If it was a magical barrier I should have felt SOMETHING."

He sighed and looked back the way they had come.  "You ok?"

She took a deep breath, let it out, and nodded.  "Yeah.  This just means... well, we need more analysis. There are already a couple of experiments I would like to try.  We just have to-"

Whatever they would have to do got a rapid reprioritization, because right at that moment, hell itself blasted forth from one of the nearby sea caves with a roar of fury so loud that for a moment Twilight thought that a second explosion had gone off.





The impression that Marshall got of the thing as it came barreling towards them was of a semi on legs.  It was wading in what was, to it, about thigh deep water, but this didn't seem to hinder its movements in the slightest.  Instead it simply threw up a great chaotic mass of surging white water before it.  This had the added effect of obscuring it somewhat, but what he DID see he didn't like.

It resembled both a hairless gorilla and a beetle, all horny protrusions and a great horned crest reminiscent of a xenomorph queen.  It was about ten or eleven feet tall, bulging with muscle under thick bony plates or shining carapace, or some freakish mix of the two, with three foot long claws and fangs that jutted impossibly long and glistening from a mouth too small for them.  It gave the odd false impression that the creature was pursing its lips at them.

At least when it wasn't roaring.  

"Oh shit."  Marshall muttered faintly.  "We've angered bugzilla with our experiments."  

He snapped out of his daze about when the creature was some sixty feet away and brought the rifle up to his shoulder.

"Twilight, snap out of it girl!"

He began methodically popping off shots at it, and he might as well have been taking pictures at it for all the good it was doing.  A streak of silver smeared from a bullet which had deformed as it sped away appeared on first it's bony brow, then a forearm, then a spark flew off of its chest, and Marshall cursed.  The 5.56 mm bullets just didn't seem to penetrate that thick bony hide.

A hit to one leg spanged off with a wild whining noise, and Twilight gasped in pain as it clipped her left ear.  Marshall looked down at his rifle in disbelief, then began frantically back pedaling up the slope.

"Twilight, are you ok?!"

"No, but I'll live!"  She gasped back.

She gritted her teeth against the stinging pain in her sensitive ear and focused her magic around the creature.  She could feel something warm oozing down the side of her muzzle, but she didn't have time to focus on that, the only thing she could focus on was the monster coming towards them.

Her telekinetic field appeared... and just seemed to wash off of it, barely slowing its charge.

"It's no good, something's wrong, Marshall... it-"

"Get back, Twi... I'll try and draw it off!"

He gritted his teeth, raised the rifle back up to his shoulder and flipped the selector to three round bursts, basically under the impression that if the single shots were having no effect, maybe a whole LOT of nothing would get lucky.  Taking a sight picture of those beady eyes, he squeezed the trigger.

Bullets spanged and sparked off it, again, to no effect.  It advanced up the slope towards them.

Marshall began to pace backwards steadily, firing until the rifle clicked on empty, then tried to throw himself out of the way of the thing as it barreled into him.

"FUUU-"

Whatever else he was going to say was cut off as the creature barreled past him, intent on its true target, but slamming one massive, bony plated forearm into him in passing and driving the wind out of his lungs.  He had couched his rifle across his chest diagonally in a last ditch attempt to cushion the impact, and this probably saved his life.  

The machined steel and polymer rifle cracked and shattered as it slammed into his chest and dented two of the four magazines stored on his tac-vest, but absorbed some of the tremendous impact that lifted the Navy pilot off of his feet and threw him fifteen feet down the promontory to land heavily on his back with a grunt and a scattering of loose rocks and gravel.  Still wearing the pack, he lay there not moving on his back, like some large ungainly upended turtle, the wreckage of his rifle scattered about him.

Twilight's eyes rolled in panic.  "MARSHALL!"  

He didn't respond, then the creature was upon her.  

She hastily threw up a shield, but the creature just waded through it, and it seemed to... flow around its skin without touching or hindering it in the slightest.  This impossibility nearly led to the stricken unicorn's death, as it raised one spiky fist and brought it down with the intent of smashing her to purple jelly.  

An instinctive emergency teleport some fifteen feet distant saved her hide, but the thing immediately oriented back on track and crashed towards her, forcing a second teleport, then a third.  She blasted magic at it so forcefully her eyes blazed white and her horn crackled and sparked with released magical energy, but these telekinetic punches washed over it with little to no effect that she could see.

It was at this point that she realized an unfortunate fact.  It could sense her magic.  It always seemed to know exactly where she was going to pop up, so she only ever had a few seconds of respite before the thing was on her again, and she didn't dare teleport further away with Marshall lying helplessly on his back.  

Which was damn inconsiderate of the human, if you thought about it.  He and she would have words, when this was over with.

If she was still alive, that was.  As it was, there was only her, and the beast, and the deadly struggle they were locked into.

It was then that Twilight learned a truth about herself that Marshall had learned a very long time ago.

She was a survivor, too.

She gritted her teeth, teleported out of the way of another sledgehammer blow, then telekinetically picked up a boulder a little bigger than she was and flung it at the thing bodily.  She couldn't get the heavy rock going all that fast, she was just too drained for that, but that much weight slamming into the thing's shoulder staggered it a bit, and she continued the only tactic that seemed to work, a hailstorm of rocks of various sizes slammed into it from any direction she could muster.

For an eternity, it seemed, she danced toe to hoof with death, always just a step ahead of the reaper, but it couldn't last.  

One mistake, one slip up from an already exhausted pony, and she'd be finished. 

This duel, this dance of fates, was the scene Marshall woozily woke up to, groaning and fluttering his eyelids.  He sat up, spit blood from the wound on his tongue where he'd apparently bitten it in falling, and felt the back of his head wincing.

Then he remembered what was going on and glanced frantically at the unicorn.

His eyes widened.

She stood there defiantly, eyes blazing white and a snarl on her face, mane streaming in an unseen wind, horn blazing with a corona of purple fire.  Blood streamed freely from the notch taken out of her left ear, and her sides heaved with the strain.  

The creature, on the other hand, advanced towards her ponderously, methodically, as though sensing that time was on its side, and various boulders, rocks and bits of gravel popping, pinging and shattering off it, further slowing its advance.  

Marshall doubted an APC could withstand the punishment Twilight was throwing at it.  For the first time he internalized just how powerful that cute little pony was.

Her eyes flicked towards his, he caught a momentary flash of shocked joy, then she teleported again, stopping the rock assault.  The thing immediately oriented towards her, almost like it had her on radar, and growled, eyeing her with alien hunger.  She stood with her back to the spot where they'd set the charge earlier.

"THAT'S RIGHT UGLY!  YOU WANT THIS FLANK?!  COME AND GET IT!"

She spun and waved said body part at the thing tauntingly, and Marshall shook his head, groaning, then came to a painful crouch and staggered to his feet, scanning for his rifle.  It was, of course, obliterated.  Which of course, figured.

Par for the motherfucking course.

"Damn it, she's lost her friggin'... TWILIGHT, STOP TAUNTING IT AND RUN, YOU DUMB FUCK!!"

She never took her eyes off of it, zinging the occasional rock at it to goad it on.  It charged with a roar.

"TWILIGHT WATCH-"

She muttered something he didn't catch, then teleported next to him a split second before the creature barreled into her.

Instead, it barreled face first into the barrier that it couldn't see.

Concentric rings of light shivered up the barrier as the creature slammed face first into it, a victim of its own momentum and an inability to see the wall in front of it.  Its own force proved to be its undoing, as a fang and one of the great spines on its crest snapped off and arced away from it.  Green ichor splattered the ground around it, and it roared in pain and rage and clutched its face, slamming one massive fist again and again into the ground and the barrier respectively.

Marshall blinked, then looked at her.  "Did you-"

She gasped and staggered, then glared furiously at him, sides heaving.  "Of course I planned it, you stupid, reckless, miserable ape!  What were you doing standing your ground in front of that thing?!  Is that a human thing, did you think your EGO was going to stop it?!  You could have been KILLED!  I'm Marshall Bailey, avalanches go around me, hurrr.."

She whacked him in the shin with her hoof and snarled at him.  Marshall blinked at this, but in her defense, Twilight was looking decidedly... frazzled. "Shooting at it over and over again like that was working!  One of those bullets clipped my ear you.... ARRGH!"

"Um, Twilight, I'm sorry, but this really isn't-"  

"I swear all you think of is, maybe if I throw more little bits of metal at it it'll lay down and leave me alone. ARGHH!  That's the definition of insanity Marshall!  When you try something that didn't work once again and again expecting a different result... of all th-"

He put a finger to her lips, and she heroically resisted the urge to bite him.  

Barely.  

"Bitch at me later, Sparks, we have to get away from this thing, 'cause I doubt it's just trying to give us a singin' telegram!"

She kicked him in the shin again and he winced.  That was really starting to sting.  "It's no good, dang it!  It can sense my magic, and me, I think!  That thing was following me no matter where I- pony-feathers!"  She concentrated and teleported the two of them about two hundred feet down the promontory towards the jungle.  

A distant roar announced that it had shaken off the stun of its impact and was beginning the charge again.

Marshall saw it resume its relentless pursuit and paled, then looked at Twilight.

"Run!" (or if you prefer an alternative)

She laid her ears back, winced as this tore open her wound again and snarled.  "Duh!"

Together, man and pony crashed through the underbrush in headlong flight.  Stumbling occasionally, branches whipping into her face, Twilight struggled to keep up.  After the barrier experiment, several item transformations, several dozen teleports, more telekinesis than she'd done in several years combined, not to mention the all day trek to reach this point in the first place, Twilight found that she just didn't have the reserves to keep this up.

She was at her limit, and that THING just kept coming.  She could hear it behind them, closer and closer.  It didn't seem to need to go around trees as it came at them, it just crashed through them, splintering the hapless vegitation into scattered wreckage.

"Damn it!"  Marshall huffed.  "That thing is like a goddamn tank!  We-"

It exploded into view and Twilight staggered into Marshall and teleported them again, narrowly avoiding embedding them both in the middle of a rotten palm tree.  They both collapsed in a tangle of limbs.  Extricating themselves quickly, Marshall gave her a desperate look, his own sides heaving with the strain of their mad dash.

Twilight flicked her eyes over to the tree she'd almost merged them with and paused.  Palm tree, and damaged by something.  

After several hours of sitting there it actually kind of stunk, that punky, rotten wood smell.  Celestia what a stink-  

Her eyes widened.  "Marshall!  Stinky kids!  Stinky kids, Marshall!  Stinky kids!"

He spun, eyes wild.  "What?!"

She growled and shook her head, frustrated with her own exhaustion driven obtuseness.  "NO!  The rootscrapers!  They outmass that thing by like three times, not to mention outnumber it like thirty to one!  If we could get to-"

He smacked his forehead.  "Twilight, you're a fucking genius!  I could kiss you!"

She winced, tried to stand, and collapsed.  She tried again.

She failed.

She looked up at Marshall.  "Marshall, I can't get up.  The battle, running...  It... it's too much."

Marshall gave her a stricken look.  "Don't you do this to me.  Don't you fucking-"

She tried again, and collapsed again.  Moving, thinking... it was just... so hard.  She couldn't remember a time when she'd overexerted herself magically as badly as this.  She looked at him, squinted, vision doubling, as he looking at her with growing horror, and she couldn't, she just couldn't let him put himself in danger.  Not after everything he'd suffered on this Celestia bedamned island.  "That last teleport... it... Marshall, you have to run.  It's coming for me, if you go now, you should-"

Marshall groaned, stripped off her saddlebags, then his own pack, and tossed them up onto a nearby branch.  "No, no you're not doing this to me.  I am not leaving you here, you hear me?!"

He grabbed her by barrel and hindquarters and shrugged her up onto his shoulders with a grunt of effort.  Her side rested against the back of his neck, her legs dangled on either side of his torso, resting against his pectorals.  

"Marshall, don't be stupid, you can't-"

"Shut up you stubborn purple bitch!"  

"You-"

He jammed her rootscraper distress whistle into her mouth and she blinked.  He began his jog again, this time carrying her on his shoulders, racing through the jungle with grunting, heaving effort.

"I am not... going through... that again... NEVER again... YOU ARE NOT... GIVING UP ON ME... so just shut the fuck up... and get... ready to blow as hard... as you can!"

Her brain half dazed at this sudden turn of events, did a one eighty then vapor locked.  She let out a wheezing chuckle.  

"That's... what he said."  She gasped weakly.

Marshall chuckled in spite of himself, then stumbled, but didn't go down.  He resumed his run, gasping in effort.  "Don't make... me laugh right now, damn it."

Her mind dazedly tried to keep up with what was going on and failed.  She was just so tired, so mentally and physically exhausted.  She went over what she'd just heard.  Going through that again?  What did that mean?

It probably wasn't the time to ask.  

It was a testament to how out of it she was that she actually had to think about the validity of that statement.

They heard a tree explode a few dozen feet behind them and a frustrated bellow of rage and hunger, and this spurred Marshall into a full on sprint, his teeth gritted with effort.  She could feel the pulse in his neck against her side, and the shuddering, straining effort he was throwing into this, every fiber, every shred of being, every bit of effort he could muster.

Despite everything, the terror, the danger, the absolute ridiculousness of it all, she could not recall a time when she had ever felt safer.  It was an illusion, she knew.  A complete lie actually, but she could feel his heartbeat against her skin, and she knew in that instant, and for the rest of her life, that it would STOP before he would allow himself to fail her.

Despite herself, a strange, fierce joy built within her.  Here they were, fighting for their lives, fighting against nature, both internal and external, with one purpose, one goal.  Survive.  It was a form of harmony, a NEW form of it.  In this time, at this place, they were absolutely uncompromisingly ALIVE.

"Faster Marshall!" She called exuberantly.  "You can do this!"

"I don't... know why... I always end up carrying your ass... Sparks.  I'm starting to get... a little tired... of the irony."  Marshall grumbled, but damned if he didn't put on a little bit more speed.

They burst from tree cover a scant fifteen feet ahead of the rampaging... whatever it was.  A forest of long necks suddenly shot up, alarmed.  They were fifty feet from the scattered gathering of the herd.

Twilight took a deep breath and blew so hard she thought she might burst a blood vessel.  Marshall put every last bit of his reserve into his legs and lungs, pushing it for the home stretch.

Forty feet... the thing was twelve feet away, a force of unnatural power.  This close she could FEEL the evil coming off of it, a palpable, relentless maw, a empty hole that needed filling and never could be.

Thirty feet, the herd was starting to react now, gathering in their defensive circle.  Marshall was wheezing, his pulse was hammering hard in his neck, and she would have worried about him if she wasn't terrified, exhilerated, and exhausted out of her mind, right now.  Then she felt the evil behind her hesitate for the first time.  Just a split second, but that was when she knew this would work.  

The hesitation felt sort of like a realization that at this point, whether it caught up to Twilight and the human or not, it was heading straight for an asskicking so legendary that future abominations would speak of it in hushed whispers.

Target fixation.  Gets you every time.

Marshall got to about ten feet, began to stumble, then amazingly turned it into an epic powerslide right between the legs of one of the aggressively posturing rootscraper cows.

"SAFE!"  He shouted, spreading his arms out wide.  

Then he ran out of momentum and faceplanted into the muck.  Twilight was involuntarily rolled over his head by her residual inertia onto her side, laughing uproarously despite herself.

The sounds of the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny roared not twenty feet from them, and the thunderous slamming of several ton feet crashed into the earth around them, but neither of them could have moved in that moment, not if their lives depended on it.

Marshall sighed.  "Twilight?"

Twilight, who had closed her eyes slightly, opened them.  "Yes, Marshall?"

"Could you get my head out of this crap?  I'm too tired to move."

She groaned, wiggled, adjusted, and then dug her muzzle under his cheek and pushed his head sideways, up out of the clinging goo.  In his defense, the churned up, nasty muck was kind of like glue at the moment.

"If I have a heart attack right now... just... jump on my chest a bit and we'll call it even."

She let out a deep breath against his cheek and chuckled weakly.  "Marshall, if you have a heart attack right now, the best I could do is bite your nose."

He wheezed.  "Fair enough."

They were silent for several seconds, the sounds of furious national geographic levels of survival realism raging on, and Marshall sighed.

"Are Moms and Dads winning, Twi?"

Twilight flicked her eyes towards the sounds and winced.  "I... actually kinda feel sorry for that thing."

Marshall grinned fiercely.  "I don't.  I hope they beat it until it cries."

Twilight shook her head.  "I don't think it CAN cry."

He smirked.  "I stand by my position."

She glared at him.  "Violence isn't always the answer, Marshall."

He winked.  "If violence isn't the answer, you weren't using enough, Twi."

She sighed and shook her head, exasperated.  "Humans.  Ugh."