//------------------------------// // Crystal Star Ch3: Fear // Story: Crystal Star // by MaxFlames //------------------------------// {April 2st, 2015, United States of America, 7:13pm} Ney Bens carried a chessboard with him towards the infirmary, knowing that his friend was in there. “Seriously, Jerry is the only guy I know who would literally put the mission above his own life, but he ran towards an x-ray to punch it!” He entered the infirmary, and saw Lawrence talking to Jerry, who was covered in bandages, but still getting back up. “Jerry,” Lawrence said while rubbing the bridge of his nose, “you need to rest. You got thrown into a car, and you still want to head to continue your workout? I’m not even sure how you survived” “Heh, just lucky I guess. But seriously, what's the problem with a workout?” Jerry replied. “You could tear more muscles and cause even more damage to your body. Plus you're on a lot of pain killers and you don’t have good hand eye coordination currently, let alone balance!” “You kidding? I take stronger on weekends for fun!” Jerry said, which Bens tried to ignore “..., ignoring that, still, the commander won’t let you go anyway, and I don’t want to get on his bad side. I haven’t seen that man smile since I've been a part of xcom.” “What are you talking about, last week he laughed at Bradford’s joke” Jerry said, which was a surprise to Bens. “I meant a real smile, tell me that laugh wasn’t forced as all hell” Lawrence said. “... that laugh wasn’t forced as all hell” Jerry said, just before an alarm went off. “Oh shit! That x-ray must have escaped!” Lawrence said to himself as he grabbed his rifle, as Jerry did as well. Bens tossed the chessboard and grabbed his pistol and sniper as quickly as possible. As if this day wouldn’t get any worse, Bens thought to himself. --- Twilight finally managed to dull out the alarm in her head and stood up. Ok… what do I do now? She thought to herself, as she looked around. The location was mostly taken up by the terrifying chamber in the center, with a catwalk around it with guard rails along it. She seemed to have landed in a small work area near one of the two doors, and destroyed what appeared to be the only table there. Way to go Twilight, you destroyed someone else's table without thinking. She grumbled to herself as she finally realized that the alarm was gone. “Finally,” She said with a small smile, “now maybe I can figure out how to talk to these… creatures... “ Why did they attack me? She thought, before pushing that thought out of her mind. She handled worse, at least she hoped she did. She began to look around at the mess she made in her escape, and picked up the papers and one of their pens, though it’s similarities to the ones of the human world continued her confusion on what these things even are. She sat down, and sorted the papers into two piles, ones with writing, which she couldn’t understand, and blank paper. After that bit of organization, she took one of the empty pieces, and began to make a simple message, before crossing it out and rewriting it. This needs to be easily understandable she thought to herself just as a deafening alarm started! Twilight screamed in terror and pain as her heart began racing. She jolted up and forced open one of the doors. There was only one thought right now, GET OUT! --- The Commander ran to the security room, the alarms blaring loudly around him, and threw open the door. “How did an x-ray get free?” He asked as he caught his breath. Vahlen and Shen were in the room, looking as terrified as he was. “Somehow the captured specimen managed to “teleport” out of the interrogation chamber, in addition to destroying the control arms. I’ve never seen anything like it’s capabilities!” “Dr. Vahlen, what do you mean teleport?” The Commander asked with worry in his voice. “It went from inside the chamber to in the air above a desk without damaging the glass in the chamber, in a few seconds, though I wasn’t able to get an accurate time. In addition, and this is the more terrifying part in my opinio-” Vahlen said before getting interrupted by the Commander. “Wait, what can be more terrifying than teleportation?” “... it seems to be able to manipulate matter remotely, including the crushing of the control arms, at strengths beyond any human capability. There is currently no known explanation for this, and I fear that it is connected to it’s teleportation capabilities as well.” Vahlen said. The Commander thinks for a moment then clears his throat, “I see. This is becoming a big old mess. We need to get this situation under control. Send a squad with arc throwers to capture it. If that proves unfeasible, kill it.” “Yes sir… hey, the alarm is off?” Shen rolls his eyes, “I warned those people that the Intrusion alarms were all undermaintaned, and now one of the most important ones failed” he said as Vahlen informed a small squad of three about the Commanders orders. “Shen, get a different alarm going then! We can’t risk people thinking that the situation is secure when it isn’t!” The commander said, and Shen quickly nodded and got to work. A minute or two later the soldiers were at the entrance Vahlen had said it was near, and were ready to breach into the room, when an insanely loud alarm suddenly blared in the base, causing everyone to cover their ears! “SHEN! WHAT IS HAPPENING?” the Commander yelled. “THE ALARM WAS SET TOO LOUD! I’LL FIND A WAY TO SHUT IT DOWN!” Shen yelled back as the Commander saw the X-ray escape out the door. --- “Lawrence! Get the net!” Jerry said as they all went next to the door, much too the annoyance of Lawrence. “I still can’t believe they are still trying to capture this liability! It’s already been able to escape it’s containment once, what’s stopping it from getting out again! Besides, Vahlen said it wrecked the chamber anyway, so why are we capturing it alive? And Jerry, why did you grab a net from the armory before knowing about our orders to bring it in alive if possible?” He said as they all got ready to open the doors. “No idea, but we have our orders… Say, what does this thing look like Lawrence? I never got to see it.” Bens asked. “It's a purple horse alien. Just help us catch it.” Lawrence said with a straight face. “... I’m sorry what” Bens said looking very confused. “You heard me” Lawrence said as suddenly a debilitatingly loud alarm went off! They all covered their ears trying to shut it out, but to no avail. Suddenly, the doors were forced open and the purple horse alien ran out and past all of them. Lawrence pulled his pistol and attempted to fire at it but missed terribly thanks to the blaring alarm. The trio ran after it, but they struggled because of the noise, though the creature seemed mostly fine traveling the halls. The alarms finally stopped just as Lawrence took another shot, but he still missed again. The creature just kept running, seeming to only run in fear, not looking for an escape? Bens didn’t understand it, but kept up the chase. It randomly just turned around and ran at them, it’s horn glowing with an unknown energy. So this is how I die, to a purple horse because I wasn’t ready? Bens thought as it kept running at them. Just before it reached them, they were all covered in a similar energy and were unable to move! Yep, this is how I die. Bens accepted before seeing the creature only run past them and then release them from the energy? “Why didn’t it kil-” “Probably didn’t have time!” Lawrence yelled as he fired at it again, this time with his aec thrower, but it missed. “The hell is wrong with these things today?” They managed to chase it into the canteen, where Jerry picked up a bag of sliced apples, and Lawrence fired at it again with his arc thrower, missing once more. “Oh come on! That’s it, I’m killing that thing, since we can’t knock it out anymore.” “What? I thought Jerry had an arc thrower!” Bens said, as Jerry shook his head” They managed to chase all the way to the hall of offices that the higher ups had for themselves. Before it could run through the hall, multiple gunshots hit the ground and forced it into an office, where another soldier closed the door on it. “Phew, thanks… um… who are you?” Bens asked politely, getting a laugh from the soldier. “The name is Salanda, and you are welcome” She replied. --- Twilight dashed down a hallway, entirely lost at this point and her fear only growing with all the loud noises and the creatures chasing her, only to find another creature blocking her path only for the creature to unleash a rapid fire hail of small fireballs at the ground between them. She scrambled to her hooves and went the other direction, and into another room. By the time she realized there was no other way out, she had the door closed on her. She tried to calm down but her brain and heart were just going too fast. She peered out at the creatures, and began to notice differences between them and the odd creature that she… “Dreamt”, like the fact they were all shorter, and lacked any glasses. She also noticed they all had hair, but each had different colors, lengths and other differences to them, and none of them seemed to have any as long as the girls back in the human world. They all had some form of shared clothing, though one was covered in bandages and had pieces of it missing, made up of a rare thick material that Rarity had mentioned once, called “Leather”. They had shoes like the ones she wore to the fall formal in the human world, though smaller and in black. Other than their heads, and the one in bandages, their skin was entirely covered. She also noticed that there was a symbol on the outfits, though she couldn’t make out what it ment. One was the color of burned wood, and seemed to have been the one that had gotten her in this room. Another looked lighter, like most of the creatures in that first room, but they seemed to have a sword on their form, which she had only ever seen in her books. The one covered in bandages seemed to be holding a small bag, Twilight couldn’t really tell the contents of it. The last looked the most angry of them all, and she seemed sure it was the one that nearly shocked her.  She couldn’t worry about that at the moment, she just needed to figure out how to get them to stop fighting, find out where she was, and how to get back home. It was a tall order, but she was sure she could handle it.