//------------------------------// // The Lab // Story: Land of Equines // by Daddy Joe //------------------------------// The Lab August 5th, 2013 1:25 AM There was nothing out there. This whole search for any humans who were still alive was turning into a complete bust. All I found throughout the time that Cherry left me was a water tower from a city named Kirksville and the buildings that Twilight mentioned, vacant, and fully intact, despite losing their foundation. Luckily, I didn't find anymore dead people throughout my search. At this point, I was giving up and calling off this whole search. It just begun to feel pointless to me after all those hours out there finding nothing. And so, I sat in the Defender, parked out in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night. "Six hours of sleep isn't so bad." I said to myself. I then switched off the engine and reclined the seat back as far as I could to create a makeshift bed before resting my head. With that, I crossed my arms and shut my eyes for the rest of the night.... 3:22 AM There was a short yet sudden movement that shifted my sleeping position a little. I opened up my eyes and rose up a little to check my outside surroundings. Of course, it was still dark out. But thanks to the moonlight, I noticed the dust of the dry land blowing across the ground. "Looks like a storm's coming in. That's a miracle for this place." I stepped out the Defender to check out the sky. I cluelessly stared up into the sky, but there was nothing. Well, there wasn't at first. As the twenty-five to thirty mile an hour winds continued to gust across the land, a dark mass that was north-east from where I was began to manifest in the sky; at least a mile away. I couldn't see it very well, but this dark mass blocked out a tiny portion of the starry night and grew to the size of a fairly large cumulus cloud. "What the heck is that supposed to be?" I continued to stand in one spot and monitored the cloud. The wind ever so slowly began to die down until it was absent. That's when everything got so quiet. This prompted me to turn around as I got the feeling of déjà vu. It was suddenly like if I was in some sort of dream. But it all made sense once the flashes started. My surroundings were immediately dimly lit up with a light-blue flash that came from the direction I was previously facing. The source of the flashes was coming from within the cloud. It was at that moment when I realized that this was no cloud, but actually the other end of the portal that connected with far-side back on Earth. The other end is much, much bigger. "Oh my God," I said as I stared at the portal in shock. "Nine months and you're still going strong?" The flashes continued for a good five more minutes whilst the wind started gaining strength again. Believe it or not, I really wanted to get closer to it, but I knew that would be a dumb idea either way. And so, I just hopped back into the Defender and watched the show from my safe distance. The flashes got more erratic with each passing minute before it finished with a lingering glow. The cloud started to swirl in a hurricane-like fashion as the energy within created a vortex at the base. This I was expecting, from my past experience, but there was something new to it. Something I wasn't expecting at all. As the vortex slowly rotated clockwise, the energy looked like it was wanting to dip towards the ground. In the center emerged a chunk of the portal energy, forming into the shape of a worm and hung like one. I was speechless. This thing then circled around and stretched outwards before it abruptly stopped. I shifted my head to the left to see what the, well, thing was doing, but it was just hanging there, not moving at all. "Is it looking at me or something?" I asked myself. I started up the Defender and kept the lights off as I cut the wheel and moved to the right. The energy worm was defiantly looking at me as well as it followed my movements, but remained stationary. But, it wasn't long before the cloud that housed the portal decided to move, too. It didn't come directly towards me, more of a horizontal manner, which was fine by all means. Once I had drove half a mile away from the anomaly, I noticed that it had stopped in its tracks. The worm made a quick poke at the ground and the portal, or worm, started to emit an otherworldly droning sound, rather than the hum I heard last year. And finally, that's when a mass of a green energy flowed downwards and made contact with the ground. Through my binoculars, I could see the formation of a building or house starting to be formed. I couldn't take my eyes off the sight as I witnessed a building phasing in and out of existence as it must've been crossing between the dimensions into this world. It's truly impossible for me to fully describe alone with my limited human vocabulary. I bet all the scientists were crapping themselves. However, after the building finished oscillating, the portal anti-climatically disappeared within the blink of an eye and left the planet, darkening the land once again. I was still processing this supernatural event and debating what I should do next. Oddly enough, I noticed that the portal had placed the building dead ahead in front of me, even when I was a good distance away from it. Still, I just don't know. Whatever the hell that things was, it definitely showed signs of intelligence. "Screw it. I'll go over and holler for anyone. If no one replies, I'm out of here." I made haste with my drive to the newly placed building that only took a minute to reach. The Defender's high-beam headlights shined onto a two-story residential house with a garage, one that would typically be found in the suburbs. The left side of the roof was all cracked and disfigured, but the rest of the structure remained intact, surprisingly. I then walked up to the front door and gave the door three gentle pounds with my fist. "Hey, anybody in there? You okay?" I called out, peering through the tiny window. All I got in response was silence. I knocked a few more times and waited by the door for a couple minutes, but my attention was broken by sounds coming from overhead, the sound of flapping wings, and they sounded, well, relatively big. "So, what is something like you doing all the way out here?" a teenage-esque voice asked from above. I turned to the sound of the voice and shined my flashlight up. On the roof was a red-scaled dragon with a yellow belly and wings, a skinny looking purple dragon, and an albino, each standing on both legs. "H-hey, tall guy, that's bright-- Wha- Woah!" the skinny one gasped, slipping on the shingles and landing on the ground with a thud. "You talk at all, or are you a mute?" the red dragon asked. "I can talk," I replied before looking at the skinny purple dragon. "Is your friend okay?" "He's fine. Me and him have done crazier stuff than that." the red dragon replied. "Huh-huh, yeah! Just a scratch. It ain't nothin' at all." the skinny one laughed off. Based on the way his voice sounded, I could tell this one wasn't the sharpest tack. The red and the albino then jumped off the roof and used wings to control their landing. All three were at least a foot shorter than me, so I wasn't too intimidated by them. "Where are you from? Definitely not from around here by the looks of it." the red dragon said. "Yeah. Far, far away from this place." I replied. "Alright, alright. Being all mysterious, I see." the red dragon said. As I stared at the trio of dragons, I suddenly remembered two things I heard yesterday. "We got chased down by a group of jerky dragons." "Garble and his goons." "Hey, red." I said. "What?" the dragon replied. "Isn't your name Garble?" I asked. "Hey, how did you figure out my name? I haven't seen any of your kind around here." Garble demanded. "A friend told me. He was a dragon, actually." I explained. "A dragon who's friends with a different specie? What a freak. Well, at least you're not a pony." Garble said. "Ch'yeah. A pony." the purple one repeated. "What's wrong with the ponies?" I asked Garble. "I can't stand them at all. They're all about that friendship, kindness, flowers and sparkly rainbows. Oooooh! Ugh, it just makes me sick to even think about them." Garble said with disgust. "Or maybe your just mad that you got juked by some a couple days ago." the albino dragon teased. "Shut up." Garble said, annoyed. I really wanted to go off onto Garble when he confirmed himself, but I knew that wouldn't such a good idea. So far, Garble and his goons didn't show any hostility towards me, but he is a jerk. "Well, it sounds like you've had it rough. I'm Caleb, by the way." I introduced. "Interesting. Like I said before, the name's Garble, that's Sobek, and this lovely drakaina's name is Fizzle." Garbled said, smuging at Fizzle. "Dude, stop calling me a drakaina! I can't help that my scales have feminine colors!" Fizzle retorted, getting all embarrassed. "Hey, I'm just getting you back at your little comment about me and those ponies." Garble said. "Whatever, Garble." Fizzle mumbled. "Okay, well, thanks for the stopping by." I said, walking past the dragons and up to the front door. "Oh, were not going anywhere. You trying to get in, too?" Garble said. "Yeah. The door's locked and no ones home. And, it looks like there's a bunch of furniture and stuff inside, so I'm just gonna take what I can." I said. "No way, we had the same idea." Garble said. "Good. Here, grab that rock. The one that looks like Sobek's head." I instructed Garble. "Hey!" Sobek exclaimed. "He got you good, Sobek." Garble said, examining the rock. "Now throw it at the window. That'll give us an opening." I said. Garble then chucked the rock at the window, causing it shatter into broken, edged shards. The teenage dragons chuckled to the small amount of destruction. "Feels good, doesn't it?" I said. "Dang straight." Garbled agreed. "Alright, let's get inside. Watch out for the glass, that'll cut you right up." I said. We then crawled through the window and entered into a dining room. "Weird looking ground." Garble said, raising his right foot off of the vinyl-wood floor. "Yeah, don't slip on it." I said. "What's in here to take?" Fizzle asked me. "All kinds of stuff: Food, technology, furniture, money. I'm just primarily looking for food and some other useful things. I'll be in the kitchen." I replied. "Cool. Y'know, you're not too bad, but not as good as a dragon." Garble complimented, I guess. "Oh, why thank you." I replied. "Hey, let's go check out those seats, guys." Garble said to his friends, heading to the living room. With Garble and others occupied, unlocked the front door and left it wide open for easier in and out access before heading into the kitchen. I opened the pantry to a variety of snacks, cereal, and canned goods. I immediately went for the Oreo's before anything else, such as bread, chips, tomato soup, frosted wheat cereal, and etcetera. With the power out, the food within the refrigerator and freezer would soon go bad. The food was still relatively cold due to house just being dropped into this world. I busted the door down to the garage with a kick and found a red cooler on a high shelf. I then opened up the ice maker and scooped as many ice cubes as I could into the said cooler before filling it up with frozen food, meat primarily. I even found some fresh ground beef, so I can make some nice burgers out of that. "Should probably keep this meat away from Twilight." As I loaded up what I could from the kitchen to the Defender, I found an old cellphone lying on the counter. "Man, this is an old Tracfone. Still, it's something cool to show Twilight and Spike." I said, putting the phone in my pocket. I then walked over to the stairs that led up to the second level, only to be met with a comedic scene of Garble and his friends trying to manuever a sofa through the front door. "Garble, it's not going to fit that way. Try turning it the opposite direction." Fizzle suggested. "Argh, this is impossible! Let's just throw it out the window." Garble said. Sobek and Fizzle then lifted the sofa up and just threw it out of the dining room window. That broke all three windows. "Its out!" Sobek shouted. "I can see that, Sobek." Garble replied. When I got upstairs, the second floor was a lot smaller than I imagined. The only rooms up there was a bathroom, a storage room, and the master bedroom. I got some toilet paper, shampoo, shaving necessities, and body wash out of the bathroom and brought that to the Defender before going into the master bedroom. In the master bedroom is what anyone would expect: a bed, nightstand, wardrobe, closet, all that kind of stuff. I slid open the closet door to a bunch of clothing and a laundry basket. However, on an upper shelf was a beige colored bag with zippers. I brought the bag down and opened it up, revealing a Sony Handycam that seemed to be from the 90's due to its design and video quality. Inside the other side pockets were four extra tapes, a charger, and a spare battery. After I wrapped the bag around my shoulder, I flinched to the sudden sound of metal rapidly jangling, prompting me to shine my flashlight onto the source. Behind me, up against the wall, was a kennel that housed a light-brown Labrador Retriever. It stood upwards and gave out a short, alertive bark. "Oh no." I said. The lab continued to stare at me with it's light-reflective eyes that appeared to be green, continuing on with its soft barks. It didn't seem to be scared, but more surprised. I know I would be if there was a stranger in my house. As the lab began to quiet down a little bit, I kept thinking about whether Twilight would be willing to accept another pet in her home. I mean, you got me, Twilight, Spike, Owlysius, and that new Phoenix chick all going to be living in the library. However, I did know that I couldn't leave the dog behind, locked in its crate to starve. And so, I grabbed the kennel and hauled it down the stairs. I then gently placed it outside the dining room window and moved the crate into the back of the Defender. "Stay here for a little bit, pooch." I said, examining the Labrador's grey hairs that were scattered on its face. Back inside the house, I managed to find a half-empty thirty-two pound bag of Dog Chow, a box of Milkbones, the dogs food and water dishes, a dog brush, a dog bed, and its leash. While I loaded all of that in the back as well, I could hear Garble and the others knocking over stuff in the garage. It was a few bangs at first, but then the rusty Cobalt's car alarm started loudly blaring over and over again. Through the honks, Garble was calling for me in the garage, so I quickly went to the garage door and manually raised it up. "What did you do?" I asked, my voice raised. "We just broke the window to get inside and it went off." Fizzle replied, covering his ears much like Garble and Sobek. "This thing needs to turn off now!" Garble exclaimed. "The Dragon Lord doesn't really like loud noises around here this late at night!" "Wait, there's actually authority around here?" I asked. "Kinda! Now how do you--" "WHO IS MAKING ALL OF THAT NOISE?!" an intimidating and dominant voice bellowed in the distance, causing the building to slightly vibrate. "Jesus! How big is he?" I asked, unlocking the drivers door. "He's ginormous, dude! Hundreds of feet tall!" Sobek replied. "Aw, to Tartarus with this house. We're getting out of here!" Garble said, flying out of the garage and away from the house. "Hey, don't you leave me here like this!" I shouted after Garble. Sobek wasted no time to fly out, too, but Fizzle hesitated and looked back at me for a moment. "Sorry, Caleb." Fizzle apologized before following forth. I then started tugging onto the steering wheel and bludgeoning it with my clenched fist. I put down so much force that literally smashed it into a mangled mess, probably breaking the steering column, but it didn't stop the alarm at all. Before sprinting to the Defender to make my escape, I grabbed a black box that lied on the Cobalt's floor. Once stowed away, I did a sharp one-eight in the opposite direction of the house and floored it with all the lights off and focusing on what was in my path. I was thankfully out of harms way once the house that sat thousands of feet away from my position was engulfed by a huge beam of fire that shot down at it like a cannon. The entire open space was illuminated with an orange glow before going dark again, leaving the house now but a pile of burning wood and glowing embers. We got lucky to get out in time.