//------------------------------// // Ch.2- McCarren and Richards // Story: Our Technology, Our Culture // by Scripture //------------------------------// “McCarren! What the… what the hell did you just pull out of The Gate?!” “I… it’s… it’s a purple unicorn!” “A… What?!” “Yeah, it’s a real life small unicorn… I think it could be very young but… Well, I’m not the hippologist around here! I wonder why they don’t look at hippos though… Hmmm…” “…McCarren, focus! Can you please contain the specimen before it wakes up?! We have no clue if it’s dangerous or not!” “Huh? Oh, oh yeah! Good idea!” His arms, filled with the soft purple mane of Twilight, gently picked her up and laid her atop of a metal stretcher, barely what some would call comfortable. Eagerly, McCarren rushed Twilight and himself away from the dozens of prying eyes and quiet, yet ecstatic, conversations. “Well… this is going to make my life a lot more complicated…” McCarren sighed, and pushed on through the double doors, hearing only the tail ends of now incredibly ignited conversations inside the room he was previously in. The U.S. Government had stumbled upon something glorious. =============== “Hurn… what… hmmm? Ugh… OW!” Twilight had been groggy, but after experimentally tapping her horn, she realized it was rather sore still, making her feel a bit nauseous. It was similar to being punched in the stomach, where all you wanted to do was upchuck your lunch, but luckily for Twilight, she didn’t eat too much that day. What happened that day though, was what she was mostly curious about. Finally getting her bearing straight, she experimentally opened an eyelid and was blinded by a very bright light. “Ow! Am I still… outside?” She blinked a few times, but let her eyes adjust to her new surroundings. “Wait… no… it’s just a light… But jeez, it’s a bright one!” Slowly getting up, she observed her spartan surroundings, noting how shiny and metallic everything was. “Where… am I?” she murmured to herself. Curiosity growing, she took a few steps around her white walled room. The first thing she noticed, after the light, was that there wasn’t a door in the room, making her highly curious as to how she got in there. Right afterwards, she almost slipped on her bed… which was crudely made of a pile of wood shavings. “What the heck?! What kind of pony would want to sleep on THAT?! It disgustingly gets all caught up in your coat!” Quickly she brushed herself off and searched around the room again. She was soon surprised at a water bucket hanging off the wall at an angle. Cocking an eyebrow, she tapped it, her initial irritation replaced by scientific curiosity. Right next to it, she noticed a small bucket, filled to the brim, with small brownish pellets. Experimentally, she picked one up with her magic and examined it closely. It looked like hamster feed to her… Hamster feed… Hamsters… “Does somepony think I’m some kind of stupid pet?!” She shouted out in frustration. Normally she would have kept her cool about the scenario, but her killer headache was seriously draining all the sanity from her mind. Being in an enclosed room too, which certainly did not suit her needs as a proper pony, wasn’t helping much either. Honestly, do… whoever is keeping me here, think that wood shavings would be adequate bedding for me?! My back is KILLING me right now! The mare sighed, trying to get her brain back to proper functioning, although her touchy horn wasn’t making it any easier. Alright, ALRIGHT… let's think about this for a moment… You are in a room, metal for the flooring and the walls. There is a bucket of water and pellet… things. You have some wood shavings… I wonder who or what has me trapped in here… Oh, I hope it’s not enemies of the Equestria! We are already in enough of a political pickle as it is! Sitting on her haunches, she pondered about her enclosure for a little bit, bouncing various ideas through her head while tapping a hoof on her chin. After a bit of contemplating, she decided that whoever had her here obviously wasn’t letting her out right now. There was one thing, however, they failed to incorporate when they constructed her prison… Magic, duh. With a quick zap of her magic, she immediately teleported outside the confines of her cell, materializing into a white hallways which had a similar décor to her room. It looked all nice in Twilight’s opinion, all nice, orderly, and clean, except there was a tiny problem with everything… The panicked cries of about ten of the weirdest looking creatures she had ever seen! “Well… Uhm… this is a bit awkward…” she began, but before the purple pony could do much more, the creatures started shouting at each other in some kind of language Twilight couldn’t understand. She tried to make sense of what they were talking about, but she couldn’t make heads or tails about what they were saying. All she knew was that they looked scared, which meant that this was very good, or very very bad. Maybe if I show them no harm…? She smiled a bit, grinning wide, which eased up a few of the beings in front of her, but not enough to make them stop cowering in the corner. “Uhm… hi there?” she tried, which made some of the creatures in front of her cock their eyes in curiosity and hastily scribble on top of weird looking clipboards. Still, none of them made a move towards her. The end of the hallway was behind them and the only pair of doors was beyond her. Nobody dared to inch closer to the absolutely terrifying and extremely dangerous pony. The unicorn sighed and her face fell a bit. Well this is getting us nowhere… “Hey, uh, so, can you speak Equestrian at all…? No? Well, maybe this should help us a bit…” Good thing I learned this last week… Her horn briefly lit up again and after a bit of concentration, she was able to tune her magic just enough to start hearing legible words babbling out of the being’s mouths. “I still don’t understand how the hell it got loose! That cage is supposed to withstand three rhinos worth of force and it got out without even a scratch inside!” “It’s a unicorn you idiot! We don’t know what it can do in the slightest!” “I just hope it doesn’t bite…” “Bite? I hope it’s not poisonous! Or radioactive!” “Very true… we have no clue where The Gate opened up to. For all we know, this… thing, could be even smarter than us!” “Fellow scientists…It’s eyes… they are looking at me… It’s like it understands us…” “Well of course I do! And did you say… scientists?! Oh wow! I can’t be- OW!” A sharp pain suddenly stung her rump and she turned around to see a feathery dart injected through her skin. Shock was her first response… and her only response as her world suddenly turned very swirly and blurry all around her. “Hey! You! I… whoa… Lights… And colors… … and… … …Swirllllllllll~” Ka-dumph! The unicorn of legend had fallen down once again. ============= “Good shot McCarren! I didn’t know you had it in ya!” McCarren sighed and gave the tranquilizer dart gun to the guard who had finally arrived in the third layer of the chamber, the viewing area right outside the unicorn’s containment cube. A few pats on the back from the other scientists, were given and he plainly looked at the scientist who praised him, chuckling at his comment. “Heh… Well, I used to shoot all the time with my father when we went hunting… So it was natural I suppose…” “I… see… Well, anyways, we should get the specimen in its containment area before it wakes up. Uhm…” The scientist looked at the others around him, who still were a bit shaken by the creature lain before them. “Uh…Guys? Help…?” A sigh and ten seconds later, McCarren walked over to unicorn, much to the displeasure of several shouting scientists, and plopped her on top of the metal trolley he had put her on before. Without ceremony, he opened the wall to the cube wide open and placed her back on top of the wood shavings like he had done earlier. Exiting the cube and slamming the door shut, he clapped his hands together and smiled widely. “That wasn’t so hard… was it?” The scientist who had praised him moments before, now looked at him with scorn and immediately piped his shrill voice up. “You… you… you idiot! What kinds of scientist are you?! Do you know that thing could have been toxic? Or radioactive?! It could have illnesses and diseases all over you and infecting you right-“ An open palm interrupted the scientist and McCarren sighed a bit. “Alright, first of all, I am not like one you ‘scientists’. My specialties are in the abnormal, paranormal, and things of a cryptozoologic nature. So I may be labeled as a ‘scientist’, but I am not like you. I do things because I have to. Second, if it was radioactive, we would have picked it up by now. We attempted and succeeded alternate dimensional transportation, if only for a short time. For a fact, I know we have scanners for any radiation spikes in the machinery and anything from the Gate. Nothing was picked up. Lastly, if it was toxic, then you all would also be infected at the moment. I touched her earlier today to get her in the cube after all, and you all just touched me. So yeah, nothing has happened to me…” Evilly, he grinned at the nervously shuffling scientists. “Well, nothing yet.” The guard beside him snorted out loud as most of the scientist’s faces blanched, truly thinking something would happen to them at any moments, like paralysis, multiple limbs randomly sprouting from their bodies. You know… the usual stuff! McCarren, after a good laugh, looked at one of the monitors by the scientists and strode over to it, the scientists giving him a wide berth now. They all grimaced as he touched a few keys and the screen a few times, eventually filling it up with a live feed of Twilight. He stared hard at the screen, contemplating on an thought he had since he shot the purple mare. “It was odd, though,” he stated aloud, enough for the others to hear. “That the unicorn was speaking in a bunch of neigh-like noises, then, all of a sudden, it starts speaking perfect English! It even knew what were saying… at least, for a time...” He then rewound the feed to when the unicorn escaped and pointed at her suddenly vanishing out of the cube in a small array of light. “And this! What does it think it is? Houdini or something?!” McCarren rubbed his head and put his hand to his chin. “Hm… very interesting…” “Yes, yes it is indeed Professor McCarren. Exactly the reason we need someone like you around here... The only reason we need you around here” McCarren brought his face up to see a tall man entering the third layer and passing by the guard. Immediately, the professor stood up straight and smiled slightly. “Ah… old man Professor Richards! I was wondering when you would get here!” His smiled faltered for a moment as he reached out to shake the other Professor’s hand. “Witty humor, as always…” Richards didn’t say anything and simply looked at the monitor, which replayed the five seconds of Twilight’s teleportation over and over again in an infinite loop. It also played a recording of the short bit of perfect English she had spoken to the scientists, who all were now slowly calming down and exiting the area, one by one. Eventually, even the guard left, and all that were left were McCarren and Richards. Twilight, still softly sleeping in the cube, muttered something about Starswhirl the Bearded and rolled onto her side, oblivious to the intense staredown between the two professors. Eventually McCarren broke the silence and pointed to the monitor they both were now looking at. “So… what’s your take on all of this? I don’t think we are dealing with some ‘dumb animal’ here at all…” “No, indeed not…” He jabbed at the screen, brushing his fingers in a circle around the video of Twilight. “According to this video, the unicorn was trying to communicate with us for awhile in some tongue we don’t understand. That makes sense, yet-“ “Yet somehow, this creature from another realm, galaxy, universe, or whatever just ups and starts speaking in perfect English? That doesn’t make sense…” McCarren finished. Richards, slightly irritated at being interrupted, stiffly nodded. The younger of the two sighed and rubbed his forehead. “So… what do you think we should do?” Richards smirked slightly and looked at McCarren. “Why, I think it’s time we had a chat with our newest friend…” He cocked his head slightly. “Don’t you think?” A/N- Ok, took a bit longer than expected, but here it is! Second chapter of my challenge story and bringing about the next main character in the short series (i hope) this will be! Basically, i am thinking about just switching back and forth for writing with my other stories, but at the moment, I'm just gonna pump out whatever i can with these! Catch you in the comments/ next chapter! :) AND THANKS TO ANOOBUS93 WHO IS AN AWESOME EDITOR! :D