//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 // Story: Cadance's Lovely Misadventure // by LordBrony2040 //------------------------------// Being a medical practitioner that worked for the FBI and got stuck in the X-Files, Dana Scully had run across a plethora of odd phenomena that most of the world at large would have classified as ‘weird shit’ with the briefest of glances. However, as she had been originally partnered with ‘Spooky’ Mulder for the purpose of debunking his crazy theories and discrediting him, it had been her job for several years to find a rational explanation for the weird. So, while Mulder busied himself with checking over their rental car and cracked windshield to make sure it wouldn’t shatter before they reached some semblance of civilization, Scully took out her flashlight and an analog voice recorder after taking a few pictures of the creature to get a closer examination. “This is Dr Dana Scully speaking, conducting a roadside examination of an animal I struck with my vehicle while heading South West on Interstate Highway Ninety-Five. The time is currently eleven fifteen, on the first of February, nineteen-ninety-” “Hey Scully,” Mulder called out. “About how fast would you say that you were going when you hit the horned pegasus?” After taking a moment to press the stop button on the recorder, Scully looked back to her partner. “I don’t know, maybe a mile or two over the speed limit. Why?” Mulder looked back to the car that had the large dent in its front end. “Just curious.” Scully let out a sigh and turned her attention back towards the pink equine-like creature, putting the question out of her mind as best she could. Although Mulder never asked such questions without a reason, she had her own job to do at the moment. “Subject is equine in appearance for most of its body, with the exception of its head. Body is approximately fifty two inches in height from the top of its head to the bottom of its hooves, with an eight inch long horn protruding from its forehead, and approximately six feet long from muzzle to tail. Note, although I am aware horses are measured in hands, I cannot make a proper estimation of the correct form of measurement, lacking enough expertise with it,” she recorded before moving on to examine the area beneath the tail after taking a second to inspect the odd coloration of hair on her rear that looked like a heart made of crystal. “Subject is female and-” Scully stopped when she noticed a slight rise in the mare’s chest and minute flutter of her wings. The movement made Scully step away from the creature with wide eyes. “Mulder!” “What is it Scully?” the male half of her partnership asked as he looked under the car’s hood. “I think she’s still alive!” she called out. Fox Mulder had seen many things in his life, starting with the abduction of his sister by aliens. Since getting involved with the X-Files, he had run into monsters about every two weeks on average. These encounters ranged from creatures that hid under the bed and stole children to vampires that lived in a trailer park. However, the creature that his partner had struck was a whole different kind of weird from what he usually dealt with. Which was the explanation he used to justify the fact that the usually composed and skeptic Dania Scully was looking at the back seat of their rental with a face that most people would have before throwing up. “I can’t believe I just ran over a unicorn.” Seeing that he would need to nip all of this in the bud, and feeling a bit odd that it was him doing it instead of her, Mulder cleared his throat to get Scully’s attention away from the unconscious equine that was currently laying in the back seat of their rented car due to the fact Scully had crashed into it not an hour beforehand. “It’s not a unicorn. And you didn’t run over it, you ran into it and flipped it over the car.” “Mulder, first off, it’s a she. And she has a horn and the general shape of a horse. I checked the appendages while moving her as well as her horn, it’s not glued on and protrudes from the head,” Scully replied as she looked away from the creature. “Therefore, until we can ascertain its actual species, I think it would be prudent to at least say she’s a unicorn due to her obvious similarity to the mythological creature. If just to make it easier to classify.” “Scully,” Mulder told her, a little disturbed by the fact that his partner, the supreme skeptic that the FBI had assigned so many years ago to debunk all of his investigations into the paranormal was so quick to jump on the supernatural train. “It’s not a unicorn. It has wings.” After twisting around so that she was facing forward again, Scully looked at the man with a frown. “While I do admit that isn’t in keeping with the unicorn mythos, a horse with a horn is generally classified as a unicorn. Unless of course, you have some sort of precident to discount that fact in your wide array of knowledge pertaining to all things weird.” A sigh came from the man’s lips. “It’s a pink horse with wings and a horn, Scully. I didn’t bother researching stuff like that. Unicorns are for girls,” he said before frowning a bit. “Wait a minute. Why are you so quick to label it as a unicorn?” “What?” Scully asked. “I told you, it’s just for convenience.” Mulder glanced over to the other agent while doing his best to keep his eyes on the road as well as the occasional building near it as they drew closer to civilization. There was a small town up ahead, and small towns meant motels. While the plan had been to drive through the night, switching off as needed so they could investigate the latest case because the FBI wouldn’t spring for air fare on Mulder’s latest investigation thanks to all the trouble he had stirred up recently, it didn’t look like they’d be going to that high school to check out rumors of demonic possession during a homecoming dance. “Usually, you’d start going on about mutations or a highschool prank where a bunch of kids spray painted a shaggy dog pink and glued a horn to its head to make you think it was a unicorn,” Mulder said. “For that matter, why do you insist on calling it a magical unicorn? How do you know it’s not a winged pegasus?” Then, before Scully could give him a reply, it dawned on him. “Do you want it to be a unicorn, Scully?” he asked. “Is this one of those things that you said I have all the time? With the wanting to believe something so badly that you jump to that conclusion despite all of the evidence to the contrary and numerous other possible explanations that are much simpler than it being a magical unicorn?” “Alright Mulder, for starters, I never actually said magical, just unicorn. It might very well be a mutation. Calling it a unicorn doesn’t make it magical. And Pegasus was the name of the flying horse in the Greek Myths, not its actual species. Just because I am using a common moniker for a horned equine doesn’t actually mean I think there is anything supernatural about it,” Scully told him. Mulder frowned as they approached edge of the small town of Hollow Shades, Virginia. “So, now you’re saying that despite seeing a creature that you’re calling a unicorn with impossible hair pigmentation that matches its hooves to the point you can barely see where one stops and the other starts, and an even more impossible pattern on some parts of its body, you’re refusing to add the classification of magical?” he asked. “Yes,” she replied simply before stubbornly crossing her arms. “Scully, how many supernatural phenomena have we witnessed over the years?” Mulder asked. The question made Scully frown a bit. “Well, we’ve seen a few things that were a bit outlandish, but I’d hesitate to label anything supernatural, Mulder.” “The vampires in Texas,” Mulder said, bringing up one of their more recent cases. Scully took in a deep breath, as if mentally preparing herself for an argument they’d had a doen times before. “Mulder, I saw a man with glowing eyes after being drugged by something he slipped in my drink, and a body went missing from the corner’s. That doesn’t make anyone in that trailer park a vampire.” Knowing where this was all going, Mulder decided to switch tactics. “Aliens, then. We’ve seen plenty of proof that the government is covering up the existence of aliens, we can at least agree on that, right?” “It’s the government, Mulder,” she replied stubbornly as they fell into their age-old argument. “They cover up a lot of things. That fact doesn’t mean that there is some conspiracy to hide the fact of aliens from the general public. And what does this have to do with anything?” Mulder pressed his lips together in agitation. “Well, since we literally just smacked into a creature you’re calling a unicorn-” “Only because it fits the moniker of a horned equine.” “-without saying it’s magical. I was just wondering what it would take for you to believe in aliens,” he finished. “Would I have to be abducted for you to believe, Scully?” After actually thinking it over for a second, Scully frowned. “Wait, why would your abduction prove to me that aliens exist?” “Because you’ve already been abducted, and still refuse to believe,” Mulder pointed out. “That wasn’t aliens, it was a rogue arm of the government,” she argued. “But, I’ll concede that if you should ever be abducted by aliens, then I might actually start to believe in them. If just in thanks for giving me some peace and quiet.” Mulder decided to take the win. He was silent for several seconds before an oddity in their conversation cropped up that he couldn’t explain. “And how does someone like you know something like the specifics of the name, Pegasus?” “High school history class. My professor was very through when it came to the Greeks,” Scully explained before Mulder heard her shift around in her seat. “Also, I examined her when we found her on the road. The horn and wings aren’t some taped on plastic, and the color of the creature’s coat and mane go all the way to the roots. Even the little, uh...design...on...her…” Mulder frowned as Scully slowly stopped talking but kept his eyes on the big Motel 6 sign that promised respite was near. “What is it, Scully?” “Cutie mark. It’s called a cutie mark. Oh, and pegasus is the name of a species.” Mulder looked away from the road for a second to see why Scully was so distracted. “A wha-” he tried to ask before realizing two things that were rather odd. The first of which was that Scully had gone back to looking at the strange creature with her mouth hanging open, and the second was that the last thing spoken in the car had come from behind Mulder, not beside him. Using the utmost caution not to look back too quickly and find the horned pegasus had changed into something horrifying, Mulder turned his head towards the back seat to see the creature Scully had hit on the road sitting up and apparently none the worse for wear, staring at them with extremely large eyes that actually seemed to twinkle just a bit. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. But now that I have, I guess I should tell you that I’m closer to a horned pegasus than a winged unicorn. Although, that’s not what you would actually classify me as. Oops! I really shouldn’t be taking sides in an argument. Please, continue. Don’t mind me,” the creature said in perfect English before making a shooing gesture with a hoof. “Go back to what you were talking about before.” “It...talks…” Mulder said in a daze of confusion as the...whatever it was continued to try and shoo them back into their conversation. He took his foot off the gas at let the car roll to a stop. Scully looked back to Mulder. “It’s a she,” the doctor told him before crossing her arms and looked forward as if she was pouting over the existence of a magical talking horned pegasus. “And the ability to talk doesn’t make her magical.”