Rainbow Dash's head hurt.
Now this of itself wasn't a particularly unusual feeling for her, nor where the many aches all over her body suggesting she'd crashed into something. Much as she didn't like to admit it, she'd been through quite her fair share of crashes over the course of all her stunt practices. So feeling like she'd just woken up from one wasn't particularly unusual for her. Though this particular after crash headache seemed more debilitating than most. "What, what happened this time? Did I hit Twilight's castle or something?"
Groaning quietly, she slowly, oh so very slowly, tried to stand up, all her muscles ached, and she felt several sharp pains around her face, neck and upper body, and she fell back down tot he floor, the surprisingly cold floor. That jolt got her to open her eyes, which immediately only made her headache even worse, as her vision was immediately assaulted with lots of blurry white images in between all the light spots she was now rapidly blinking out of her eyes as she now grumbled to herself.
"This is definitely not cool, where am I now anyway?" Her vision was starting to clear up now, more white, basically everywhere, the hospital maybe? She didn't feel like she was on a bed though, what did they just dump her on the floor?
"How did I even crash anyway?" It was all still fuzzy, she remembered something about some magic thingie that got Twilight all excited, and she remembered that Twi had asked her to participate in some kind of test, but the rest? Not a clue.
By now however her thoughts where interrupted by a few other startling realizations, her head had cleared up enough to get see straight, and it was now immediately obvious to Rainbow Dash that she was not in Ponyville hospital, or any hospital that she knew of for that matter. Whatever room she was in, it was round, like the inside of a can, maybe some kind of tunnel, it was also completely empty, no beds, no tables, no lamps, just some very bright light coming from the roof of wherever she was. "What the hay?"
Instinctively she jumped up to try and hover, but as soon as she moved her wings, she felt a very sharp spike of pain from her joints, and she fell back to the ground with a short cry of pain. "My wings haven't hurt that much since I first flew the Hurricane marathon." She recognized muscle fatigue when she felt it, but for it to be that painful, she would have had to of flown at least five times the width of Equestria, she'd done the Marathon when she was just barely past being a filly.
The more immediate concern of where in all of Equestria she was soon distracted her from the wing pains, the tunnel she was in seemed to be closed off at both ends, one was the same plain white as the other walls, but the other was a mix of grey and white with what was clearly some kind of door in the middle, along with a very large and weirdly shaped handle. Snorting to herself, Rainbow trotted up to the door "Somepony is going to regret a lesson beaten into them for this." When she reached the door however, she ran into a problem, the massive handle had a gap in it just barely large enough for her whole hoof to fit in, but it was also pushed in place, she couldn't turn it one way or another. "I'm not gonna let some stupid door stop me," she growled, and then began trying to pull the handle out of the door, she felt it give for a tiny moment, then there was a loud clang from the other side of the door, and the handle remained stuck. Eyes wide, Rainbow gave it a few more forceful pulls, only to get the same result, she then tried pushing the handle, no loud clang but it still didn't budge, then the door, nothing.
"Hey, where am I, who put me here, I know somepony did, is this another one of your jokes Discord? Well its not funny. Open this door!" Ranbow was now running up and down the tiny tube, banging on the walls and door now, bucking and kicking them with increasing speed. But she only succeed in giving herself even more pain, whatever this place was made off it was tough, and the ringing echoes didn't do much for her still lingering headache either. Rainbow was panicking now, resorting to full on ramming the door, only to get another loud ringing clang for her efforts, and another headache.
Then she heard a voice, somewhat feminine but also somehow, wrong, and not speaking any language she'd ever heard of before. It also seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. The shock of it got Rainbow to sit still for a moment, before a hasty plan came up in her head and she quietly rushed to the door and pushed her ear against it. There, hoofsteps, or maybe footsteps, they sounded a lot more like the sounds Spike or Gilda made when they walked than a pony. When she heard the footsteps coming closer towards the door, she backed off a few steps and crouched down, waiting silently.
Ryley, sighed a breath of, well not fresh but slightly less stale air as he closed the hatch behind him, the base AI voice calling out its usual greeting. "Welcome aboard, captain."
"Yeah yeah, welcome me, captain of the empty base." That grumbling however suddenly reminded him that actually, this base wasn't so empty anymore. "Maybe the Pegasus is awake now? Better check on it." So after quickly stuffing the few bits of scrap metal and vines he'd been collecting into the lockers, he made his way round the first corner to the newest extension of his base. He'd added a few more straight segments to put the alien in, lacking a bed, carpet or, well anything really he'd left the creature on the floor, though not before using one of his medkits to patch up its worse cuts. Ryley had then added a bulkhead to separate the Pegasus from the rest of the base, he didn't want it wandering around the place messing everything up while he was gone, but the problem had been on how to keep the creature there.
The Bulkheads where designed to stop a breach from flooding the entire base, so they sealed tight but they weren't meant to be locked, but if the Pegasus could somehow open the door, then the point would be made moot. As for how the Pegasus would open the door he wasn't sure, but he didn't feel like taking any chances, so he'd placed a small block of titanium behind the other handle to stop it from getting out. "it probably resents getting locked up but too bad, my base, my rules and I'm not risking getting this base scrapped because some curious alien started to wander around and pushed the wrong buttons." Not that his base actually had any buttons aside from the radio switch, but still, the point remained, he hadn't survived this long by taking unnecessary risks.
Reaching the door he slowly leaned against it listening for if it had woken up yet, after a few seconds of hearing nothing he decided to knock gently against the door to make sure, still nothing. "Probably still resting, poor bugger." Shrugging, he reached down and removed the titanium block, before pushing the big metal handle forwards and then twisting it to the left, and then pushing the door open.
The next thing he saw was a blur of blue and rainbow rushing towards his head, violently knocking him down and banging his head against the floor as the blur rushed on past him.
Rainbow didn't glance back at the, whatever that thing was (some kind of Minotaur maybe?), and made a dash forwards instead, normally she'd be happy to give whatever creep decided to lock her in a big tin can a good pummeling, but she was tired, and much as it galled her, she knew she was in no position to fight, even with the surprise she had, so she ran. Unfortunately she was finding that there wasn't much to run too, just barely past the door there was a long left turn ahead in the tunnel she was in, along with, she just barely noticed, a very sharp right turn. Making a snap decision she jumped left, bounced off the wall and into the right corridor. It seemed the right decisions when she saw some kind of blue beyond a glass window at the end of this tunnel, and she bounded towards it, intending to smash her way through like one of those superheroes Spike always went on about. Then something flew past the window.
Or rather it swam, Rainbow quickly came to a stop just before she reached the glass and took a moment to properly look out at what was outside. Ocean, beyond the glass was ocean, as far as she could see, very dark ocean at that, with a few strange looking fish things swimming about, but aside from that, it was just ocean.
"What the..." A series of loud shouts from behind snapped her out of the trance, and she quickly remembered what she was doing. "Right, escape now, sight see later, this ways no good, looks like left turn it is." She bounded back to the intersection and now went the other way, not before sparing a glance to the left at the Minotaur thing. It had gotten back up, she could now see it was about as tall as Princess Celestia, if not taller! Its skin was a light brown colour, what skin wasn't covered in some kind of bodysuit. And now it was clutching some kind of spear thing in its hands, it seemed to be holding it backwards though, and it didn't look very sharp.
She didn't spare much more than that glance at it before she went bounding down the winding turn she had previously avoided. This lead to a seeming dead end with a sharp right turn again, and she could see some bits of light from there! Running just a bit faster, she once again bounced her way off the opposite wall, and then stopped.
Ryley staggered back up, seeing something that small leaping for his head, that had brought up some unpleasant memories. "Calm down, you're not in space Ryley, your on a planet, and ocean planet, the murder aliens are all in the ocean. Well, except maybe the one your brought into your own base!" Shaking his head, he looked down to realize he'd whipped out his stasis rifle when getting up, it wasn't a real gun, but the shape was somewhat comforting.
This whole thing had taken barely a few seconds, so he was somewhat surprised when he already heard some more clatter and looked back up to see the Pegasus come running back away from the main hatch, and instead going further along the base, down the unfinished section. "Bad move there little one, though I do have to thank you for running away from the only exit."
Ryley waited, aiming his stasis rifle down the corridor he was sure the alien would come running back down any second now, this wasn't a big base after all. After a few seconds however, he saw no sign, and in fact he didn't even hear anything. "You're not getting me with that trick again."
And with that, Ryley began to advance, slowly and methodically, peeking around the corner, stasis rifle ready, but still nothing. Suddenly a single panicked thought broke out in his head. "Oh shit, the glass tunnel!" And with that, most caution was thrown out the window as Ryley dashed around to the T-junction, took aim and saw...
The Pegasus, just sitting there, hooves on the glass wall, staring out at the ocean, it didn't even seem to have noticed him. Ryley waited for it to do something anything, but it just kept staring, and finally, Ryley decided to end this stalemate, he coughed quietly, and the aliens head turned straight at him, freakishly large red eyes seeming to display a, vacancy. Finally it croaked out, something, probably words, he couldn't understand the words themselves, but the meaning behind them was clear, it was a question. What is this?
Ryley just sighed, lowered his rifle slightly, and gave what he hoped was a universal gesture, he shrugged. The Pegasus just continued to sit there for a moment and then it did something he didn't expect at all.
It started to cry.