//------------------------------// // Ch.2: The Princesses // Story: New Life // by Apollo and Artemis //------------------------------// Alex had just finished explaining what happened to him and Aria, when Rainbow Dash asked a question. "You've been talking all about powers a few minutes ago, can we see a demonstration?" Alex and Aria looked at each other and let huge smiles creep onto their faces. "Sure, but we have to get out of sight." Alex said with an enthusiastic smile. Alex and Aria bolted out the back door and to the edge of the Everfree forest, with the rest of the ponies following. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Princess Celestia had just awoken from her sleep to raise the sun. When she finished, she noticed a letter waiting beside her bed. "What's this? It must have been sent to me when I was asleep." Celestia said as she read the letter and her blood ran cold. "What!? Humans!? Here!? I have to go to Twilight immediately!" Celestia said as she called for Luna and a chariot to Ponyville. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "So Alex, what kind of powers do you have?" Dash asked with the curiosity just dripping off of her words. "Well, we have a virtual invulnerability to almost any weapon, Instant regeneration, unlimited stamina, almost instantaneous adaptability and we can change our body parts into weapons." Alex said with pride. Rainbow's eyes widened at the mention of weapons. Alex picked up on this immediately. "Yes, we'll show you." Alex said as he switched his hands to Claws with Aria following suit. "This is our Claws power." Alex said as he moved to hack a tree out of the ground. The ponies jumped back in fear as Alex's claws ripped through a tree like it was made of paper while Aria jumped up and ripped the rest of the tree to shreds. Alex receded his claws and formed the Tendril power and fired tendrils from his arms into a tree and yanked them free, uprooting the tree and leaving Aria to barrage the tree with tendrils until it was nothing but splinters. "That was our Tendril power." Alex pulled out his next power, his old Blade. The ponies were staring in awe as a blade that was as tall as Alex sprouted from his arm. Alex kicked up a boulder and sliced it in half with the blade and left Aria to dispose of the rest. "That was Blade." Alex said as he pulled out the last power he could show without structural damage (He held back Musclemass because he thought it would be unimpressive): Whipfist. He pulled it out and judging by reactions, Dash was unimpressed by the size of the blade (compared to the others). Alex smirked and threw a rock in the air and split it in half with Whipfist and grabbed one half, while Aria grabbed the other. They both threw it into the forest and bowed to the ponies with their eyes wide and jaws on the floor while they dismissed their powers. "And that was Whipfist." Alex said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Princesses had been flying to Ponyville, when she saw a rock get split in midair by something. Oh no... Celestia commanded the guards to land outside the forest near the ponies and the humans. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "That.Was.AWESOME!!!" Rainbow couldn't help it. She knows when she sees something awesome. "Thanks." Alex felt pride. No one had ever said that his or his daughter's powers were awesome before. They usually only screamed before they died. The next thing Alex knew was that he was flying through the air and into a tree, which snapped from his body weight and momentum. Aria ran to her father. "Dad! Are you okay?" "Aria, you know I've been through worse." Alex said as he got up. "That's true." Aria said with a giggle. "That doesn't mean I'm letting whoever did that get away with it." "Don't hurt her too bad." Alex agreed and ran for the Princess, fists prepared to strike. He wanted to gauge the ability of his opponents before going all out. Celestia fired another knockback spell, which Alex simply ran through. "Same trick won't work on me twice." Alex charged forward and delivered a ground shaking punch to the Princess' shield, shattering it. What kind of human is this? He's shrugging off my attacks and he broke my shield! Before she could think further, Alex reared his hands back and pushed forward with his Palm Slam attack that sent her flying. Before she could steady herself, she felt something grab her leg and pull her to her attacker, then get thrown into a tree. One of the guards rushed forward to meet Alex, only for him to be flicked into the air and the other fired a fire spell that charged into a firestorm and Alex merely basked in it's flame. "Napalm hurts more than this. That said, I don't get hurt." Alex said as he slammed his fists together and the shockwave dispersed the flame and the unicorn fainted from exhaustion. The Princess got up and charged a spell that was the Equestrian equivalent of a nuke. "Oh, finally deciding to get serious, are we? Go ahead, try it." Alex challenged her. Celestia fired the spell in a concentrated beam and Alex merely stood there, grinning. The beam hit Alex and the explosion rocked the earth and dust flew into the air, making it hard to see. Celestia was about to laugh, when she heard a thud coming from the dust cloud. The sound steadily became louder and more frequent, until a strange creature walked out of it. The armor receded into it's flesh and revealed Alex with a devilish smile on his face. "Impressive. Any other human would have been vaporized. But I'm not a normal human." Alex brought out his claws and charged at the Princess, only to be stopped by Fluttershy's stare. Somehow, this simple animal stopped him by looking at him. Alex merely turned on his thermal vision to scare her off and continued. Alex dug his claws into the Princess, eliciting a pained scream that could shatter his eardrums if he had any, which Alex found annoying, so he ripped out her throat, killing her........ ....... ....... ....... .......Is what Twilight thought would happen (She has quite the imagination, does she not?). Instead, Alex brought the claws nearly an inch from her face and began to laugh. He actually dismissed his powers and started rolling on the ground, Laughing! "You should have seen the looks on your faces! It was priceless!" Alex said through laughs. If he could die of being deprived of oxygen, he would have. Luna was about to attack, Rarity fainted, Fluttershy was cowering in fear, Twilight had looked away and then turned to rage, Applejack had her jaw on the ground and Rainbow Dash and Pinkie had massive smiles on their faces. Alex couldn't help but try to lighten the mood. "I don't believe we've met. My name is Alex Mercer and my daughter over there," Alex pointed over to the tree he crashed into, where Aria was standing and waving. "Is Aria. Who is the one who attacked me?" Luna shrank back a bit, but held her ground. "She is Celestia. My sister. And you almost killed her!" Alex laughed. "I only did because she attacked first. You must be the Princesses." Luna became even angrier when he knew that they were royalty and didn't even try to talk. No one is that stupid. "You knew? If you knew, why did you fight back?" Luna was just curious now. "I really hate the conceited type who think they can win, when they know they can't. Also, I don't have much faith in high authority." Alex simply walked over to his daughter. "Why?" Luna asked. "As you have seen, I'm different." Alex said, pulling down his hood. "So not every human has those powers?" Alex was shocked and amused. He didn't think these ponies were that dense. "Are you joking? Humans don't have powers or magic. But they're smart and can create advanced tools to help in their daily endeavors." Alex said with a sigh. "You speak like you're not one of them." Luna said. "I'm not. At least not entirely." The ponies backed him up telling the Princesses his story. All the way from the company to the black hole generator. "So you're a living virus?" Celestia said, getting in front of the ponies. Alex just laughed. "I am. But you don't have to worry. I can only infect something if I want to, and that's the last thing I want to do here." The Princesses relaxed, knowing he was telling the truth. "Dad, I think we should tell them the whole story." Aria said. "Alright, but let's do that when we're not outside." Alex said, looking up to the sky. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- They returned to the tree home, with Alex and Aria sneaking in through the back. Alex sat down next to his daughter in front of the ponies. "Okay, I'll start after the part where I told you about Gentek. I woke up in a morgue and I heard a couple of scientists talking about me." Twilight asked a question before Alex could continue. "What's a morgue?" Alex smirked and answered. "It's a place where they store dead bodies to find out the cause of someone's death." Alex snickered as the ponies reacted with disgust. "Why would they do that?" Twilight asked with a look of disgust on her face. "Like I said, to find out the cause of death. Moving on, I ran out of the morgue, only to be chased by a chopper." Twilight asked another question. "What's a chopper?" Alex didn't find it surprising they'd ask questions like this. "It's short for helicopter. It's an aerial transport vehicle for the military, armed to the teeth. Rockets. .50 caliber guns and enough room to carry 6 soldiers. Moving on, I got chased about 3 blocks and it shot a rocket at me. I got hit, and I grabbed a car and threw it at it." "What's a car?" "It's like a chariot, except you don't need anyone pulling it. Oh yeah, the fastest car on earth can go 300 mph. At least, that's what I think." Rainbow's eyes widened at this, but she kept herself from asking about it. "Anyway, soon after that, I found my sister, Dana. She helped me clean up the city, little by little. Then came Greene. She was like me, except she controlled the infected and infected everything she touched." The ponies were shocked at this. Something that could infect something else just by touching them. "I had to consume her, but there wasn't really a celebration. She kidnapped Dana and she pulled through a coma after I brought her to a doctor named Ragland. If she hadn't, well......... I would have a very different objective from saving the city." The ponies began to feel even more sorry for the two. They lost everything, even their memories! And they still wanted to save humanity. "I met a man named Captain Cross. He helped me by telling me about the D-code supersoldiers and BLOODTOX. BLOODTOX was a poison against Blacklight, but I built up immunity and destroyed the stuff before it could spread. D-codes were supersoldiers enhanced by another strain of Blacklight. The strain was a lot weaker, but safer. They were really annoying in the fact that they could track me wherever I went." Alex paused to let the ponies catch their breath. He couldn't blame them. Not many can sit through his story without feeling even a little bad about it. "He helped me again by helping me get aboard the USS Ronald Reagan and fight the Supreme Hunter. After I consumed it, I had to fly a nuke out of range from the city. It blew before I could get out of range of the blast, and I was reduced to nothing more than a puddle of biomass. I managed to consume a crow and regenerate." The ponies were confused and shocked. "What's a nuke?" Twilight asked. "It's a bomb that can destroy anything in a 2 mile radius." Alex shuddered at the memory. Sure, he was more resistant to explosive damage now, but he didn't want to test it out. "2 miles!?" Everypony had their jaws on the floor. "Yes, I found out that humanity was as evil as Blackwatch. Each individual, no matter how nice they were, only cared for themselves. I decided to end that stupidity by releasing the virus and giving them a Hive mind and ending all the wars. I needed a lieutenant in my plan, so I infected a soldier named James Heller. He kept on screwing up my plans, so I had to consume him. After I saw what I did to his daughter and my sister had died.... I just.... I didn't know what to do. I wandered the city feeling dead. I didn't speak, I didn't fight as well as I used to. Then I found Aria." Alex gestured to Aria, who had tears beginning to form in her eyes. "She was running from infected and I rescued her. She had a bad life. She had abusive parents and they soon died along with her friends during the infection. She agreed that I would infect her and teach her how to survive and gain powers, under the condition that I treat her like the father that everyone but her could have." Aria couldn't hold back the tears. She just cried softly into Alex's chest while he stroked her back. "Shhh.... It's okay. I'm here for you." Alex soothed Aria and wiped away her tears. "There. You feel better?" Alex said with a smile. Aria simply gave a nod and rested her head on Alex's chest. "I think we should continue this tomorrow." Alex said, holding Aria. The ponies understood and all slept in Twilight's library. While the ponies were asleep, Alex was watching over Aria, who was also asleep. You deserve a good life.... Alex thought as he curled up next to his daughter and fell into the blissful state of sleep that was never necessary for infected.