-:|Part 5|:-
(also known as the part where he finally wakes up)
Twilight levitated a spoon across the room, landing it in Spike's claws before releasing it from her magical influence. She looked on at her bandaged assistant, nearly covered head to toe in bandage wraps as he sported an unamused look on his face. The only satisfaction he seemed to have at the time was from the tub of ice cream he was eating straight out of, courtesy of Twilight herself.
“Spike, I said I was sorry,” Twilight pleaded as she look at him with the best puppy eyes she could muster. Sadly, it did not work.
“Yeah yeah, I heard ya already. Just make sure that next time you look before you open the door.” He took a scoop of ice cream out of the tub and stuck it in his mouth, chewing it loudly before looking at Applejack who was sitting across the room. He pulled the spoon out of his mouth, pointing it at her as he continued to chew loudly. “That goes for you too.”
“Hey, ah had to warn y'all 'bout the alien okay?” She crossed her hooves defensively. “'Taint my fault you just happened to be right there.”
“Are you sure you're okay, Spike?” Fluttershy asked, inching closer to the injured lizard from only a few feet beside him.
“I said I was fine, I just need to take a break is all,” he replied grumpily, taking another scoop of ice cream and shoving it into his mouth.
All around Twilight and Spike's friends were gathered in the library, sitting in a large circle around the center of the main room. After taking the alien in and storing it in the library's basement, Twilight's friends gathered up to talk about what to do next. That is, after they (and by they I mean Fluttershy) treated Spike and gave him something to cope with being so horribly abused last chap-I mean earlier.
“Aaanyways,” Rainbow began, moving away from the somewhat uncomfortable conversation. “What are we gonna do with the big metal alien you got downstairs?”
“I suggest we send the princess a letter,” Twilight stated as she looked around all of her friends. “Once Spike gets better, we'll send her one right away and then let her take care of all of this.”
“Well of course we should send her a letter, but what do we do until her or her guards arrive to pick it up?” Rarity pondered aloud.
“Don’t worry, I set up a shield around it after we got spike out from under it. That should keep it contained until we’re able to get help from the princess. Until then, I suggest we keep watch over, and perhaps even try to learn something while we’re at it.”
Twilight paused at that, her mind processing her last spoken words a bit further. At the start of this whole ordeal she had assumed it to be some sort of prank, but just then she realized scope of what she’s gotten into. This was no ordinary finding, no everyday thing you come across, this was an alien. A living, possibly functioning alien! And even if it was some sort of metal contraption, she could still take it apart to see how it worked.
With those thoughts, a quill and parchment floated over beside the studious mare, a sudden twinkle appearing in her eyes. “We, we can take notes on its physical form!” another piece of parchment floated over. “A-and then we can try to decipher how it walks, and breaths, and sees and smells and hears,” more parchments flew over as Twilight’s regular tone turned more excited. “And then we can learn its language! And talk about its past, and where it comes from, their species’ history, and ooooooh this is going to be so great!”
Without warning the purple unicorn bolted towards the door to the basement, scrolls and quill in tow. As she raced down the steps faster than she thought possible by walking, the gears in her mind turned at exceptionally high rates of speed. Their whole world could change by her findings. Entire technological breakthroughs into fields previously unfathomable could occur, advances in medicine and travel, organizational patterns refurbished with new gadgets and appliances, and a plethora of other possibilities.
Twilight didn’t even blink as she raced up to the barrier in the basement, her eyes stuck open as wide as possible as they gazed beyond her magical barrier. Her first scroll was right beside her head, the quill just dabbing at the top left corner of the paper, ready to jot down anything at a moment’s notice. What does it do? How does it do these things? What is it? What makes it tick? So many questions sped through her brain so fast that when she finally spoke, it came out as a jumbled mess in a tone that could only be mimicked by a fangirl meeting some sort of famous singer.
“WHAT DO YOU HOW DO!?” She blurted out, a large grin plastered onto her face with the corners of her smile twitching sporadically. She expected to find the the still laying there, but when her mind pulled away from fantasy and focused more on reality just enough, she discovered something completely flipped her world upside down...
“I-it, it’s...” her grin broke, rapidly falling into a frown as the realization set it. “...It’s gone!”
“It’s what now?” Applejack asked as she and the other four friends made their way down the stairs. They gathered the still active barrier, taking notice that the presumed alien, as well as its unknown object, was missing.
“Hey, where’d it go?” Pinkie asked, looking around the room. “How’d it get outta that shieldy thing?”
“I, I don’t know,” Twilight replied softly, backing up as she continued to stare into the empty space within the shield. “It was there just a while ago! I know I set the force field up around it, I just know it!” Twilight rushed back to the front of the barrier, placing her hooves on it to see if it was still intact. Surely enough, it was still solid against her. She banged her front hooves on it a few times, yet it wouldn’t budge. Her barrier was rock solid. “...Could the alien have perhaps teleported?”
“Maybe these aliens are somewhat skilled as using magic like we are,” Rarity proposed.
“Maybe,” Twilight sighed as she let go of the quill and parchment, allowing them to simply fall to the floor.
Applejack cantered up to the side of the shield, peering inside to the floor in the middle. “Well, it don’t look like it dug anywhere. There ain’t no hole in the floor, so I’m gonna go ahead an’ say it tellahported.”
Rainbow Dash circled around the barrier a few times, looking at it from above, from the sides, at every angle she could manage. “There’s no hole in your magic barrier or anything, so I’m gonna go with teleporting too.”
Twilight gave one last sigh before she deactivated the barrier, allowing it to simply fade away as if it were never there. “Well now we have to go searching for it, and who knows what kind of trouble it could get into, or perhaps cause.”
“It couldn’t have gone far,” Rainbow Dash spoke up as she hovered next to her egghead friend. “I bet I could find it really easy, even if it made it to the forest already! I mean c’mon! It’s big, metal,and walks on two legs. Would probably stick out like a sore thumb just about anywhere.”
Twilight’s ears perked up a bit at the suggestion, and she looked over at the same spot Pinkie was inspecting with a new look of interest. “You know, that’s not a bad idea. I mean hay, it’s worth a shot.”
Twilight walked over slowly, her horn beginning to glow as she felt her magic around every space that was once contained inside of her force field. Just a few steps away Fluttershy was slowly cantering over to the far end of the room, her eyes curiously looking over everything in the area.
“Hmm...” Twilight’s magic worked to detect something, anything left over from some sort of spell or magical discharge, but after a few moments it became obvious that nothing of the sort had happened there. In fact, the only thing she could feel was the leftover magical residue from her force field. “That’s weird, I can’t detect anything.”
“Nothing at all?” Rarity asked as she came to the purple mare’s side. “Now I may not be as magically inclined as you, Twilight, but I still know that all magic leaves some sort of trace or marking.”
“I know but, there’s just nothing here.” Twilight did another scan of the area, widening her search outside of the boundaries of the barrier by a few feet. “This doesn’t make any sense, there’s nothing here at all. How could it have gotten out without using any magic?”
Fluttershy got closer to the far end of the room, but stopped as she saw the desk that sat against the wall there budge slightly, as if somepony had bumped into it. She blinked and cocked her head as she noticed the weird look the area around the desk and the wall had. It sort of looked normal, only when it almost seemed as though the shapes and outlines of everything was... bent somehow. Like when you would look down a street in a hot summer day and the rising heat would distort the way you see things at a distance.
She looked down, noticing the distortion to go to the floor, but stop suddenly just beyond the bottom of the desk. She turned her head upwards, trying to find how high up the distortion went. The little ripples could be seen traveling almost all the way to the ceiling, before again just stopping so suddenly. It was as if there was a warped glass pane in front of her, making a very clear-cut area distorted while everything else was fine.
The conversation the others were having, along with most of her fears and apprehensiveness towards the alien itself, dissipated as she lost herself in her own little investigation. The warped area of space seemed to mesmerise her almost, to catch her attention and intrigue her so much that she did not accurately process any sort of possibilities for such an anomaly. But then she saw something, a little puff of vapor escape from the upper area of the distortion. It faded away quickly, as if it were steam, and a few seconds later there was another puff, and another. And it was at that moment that she actually heard and fully processed the next thing to come from her friends behind her.
“Well, what if it never poofed away or anything?” Pinkie suggested as she looked at the purple unicorn trying desperately to find any sort of trace of magic other than her own. “What if it just went invisible and is still in here with us?”
“Invisible?” Fluttershy whispered to what she thought was nothing.
As she was about to look over the distortion again she froze, her eyes locking on to a sudden appearance of three glowing circles just above the puffs she had witnessed. They were strange, all of them different sizes. One big one on the left, a small one on the right, and a very tiny one just to the right of that and down a little.
“Hey Fluttershy,” a voice called, snapping the yellow pegasus out of her trance. She peered over her shoulder to see Rainbow Dash looking at her with a confused expression on her face. “What are ya doin over there? Checking out Twilight’s chemistry set or something?”
“Oh, no, I was just, um...” Fluttershy trailed off, her eyes shifting back up to where she saw the green circles, but they weren’t there anymore. She blinked a few times, and then turned her eyes back to her rainbow-maned friend. “I uh, I don’t know, uh,”
“C’mon Fluttershy, we got more important things to do than look through some dusty old test tubes or something.” Dash turned away, focusing back towards the others as Fluttershy let out a small huff. She knew she thought something, but didn’t quite know what to make of it.
She just started to move her hooves to turn around and make her way back to her friends when something else caught her ears, a sort of rough sound from behind her. It almost sounded like somepony clearing their throat, and without thinking she turned around...
...just in time to see some the fabric of space light up and shift color spectrums, the distorted area changing from the look of the basement wall and part of the desk into a large, scary, metal monster staring at her. It was crouched down to her level, its three green eyes staring directly into hers just inches away.
Fluttershy’s body seized up, her heart feeling like it completely shut off for a few seconds as she stared into the eyes of the alien, seeing no pupils, no retina, no soul... nothing. Just the cold, metallic face and glowing green circles that she could only assume were meant to see. After a long second a puff came from the bottom portion of the face, the same one she witnessed earlier, and felt a light wind against her fur. After an even longer few seconds later, it leaned its face closer ever so slightly, breaking the silence between the two with the utterance of one simple, universal word...
“...Boo.”
:~:
Darkness, that was all he could register at the first moment of his newfound consciousness. His eyes were able to work more properly this time, along with most of his motor functions. His limbs shifted around against some sort of hard, smooth surface. It was at that time that he remembered that he thought he was on something soft a while ago.
It was still foggy to him, an almost impossible delve back into what had transpired during only a minute of drug-induced activity, and yet he could still make out such subtle details about his surroundings. It was softer than what he was feeling, and there were colors where he was, and... noise. A lot of loud noise just before he came to again, bringing him to his current situation.
He opened his eyes, alleviating the darkness and allowing his eyes adjust to his maks’s display of his surroundings. He began to gather his sense of up and down, accumulating enough balance to sit upright and take a look around. The surface he was seated on looked to be wood, it resembled it greatly by the fine lines that traveled through it along with the brown and reddish hue that accompanied it. He gazed around his both mid-ways and up high, noticing a sudden change from wood color to everything going purple.
He grunted softly, unable to understand what exactly he was looking at. Through the weird purple glow it looked as if he was in some sort of old, wooden room with tree roots everywhere. There was a set of stairs, some desks and bookcases, and what appeared to be laboratory equipment... albeit very outdated and almost ancient equipment.
He extended an arm to the transparent purple wall in front of him, finding out with a firm push of his hand that it seemed to be solid. He got to his knees and felt around more sides of the wall, rubbing his hands against it to find any sort of weak spot, but it seemed to hold still like a wall. He contemplated it being a lot like glass, and gave the wall a firm punch to see if it would break.
The barrier didn’t respond, it only shimmered very slightly from the impact. The ghost contemplated if this was some sort of holding cell, even though it looked nothing like it. To add to his confusion, he discovered his rifle right by his side, magazine and everything still inside. He reached over and took hold of his weapon, holding it with both arms as he got into a crouching position. He could not fully stand while inside the barrier, leaving him to crouch, but he figured a few shots from his canister rifle might make a few holes in it.
But before he could get the chance to try, he heard some noises from above. Something, or some group of things were coming closer, he could hear the sound of clanks against the floor and even voices echoing from up the stairs. Consulting his ghost training and what knowledge he has of his surroundings, he decides to put his stealth abilities to his advantage rather than come face to face with whatever was able to trap him in the strange barrier. He turns on his cloak and fades away, just in time too as a figure makes its way to the bottom of the steps and right up the side of the wall.
That’s when the ghost really stops to get a good look at what exactly he’s dealing with. Never before would have imagined any sort of zerg create such a force field, so he omitted them almost immediately when he first woke up. The terran was an option, but in such a room with wood and ancient equipment, he found it very unlikely that the equipment for such a feat would be around. The protoss came up as the most plausible, for they can actually create such force fields at will and almost anywhere they want. The only issue is their barriers were almost always either clear or light blue, never purple... like the weird thing that just came before him and the wall.
‘...did someone slip something into my stimpack kit again?’ was all he could think as he stared at - what he assumed to be - a lavender horse thing with a horn on its head. It had some colors in its hair, colors he was pretty sure horses shouldn’t have, along with the ability to hold expressions on its face. Speaking of which, he noticed the thing looked like it was on some sort of drug, much like what he assumed he was affected by at the moment. And then, to his constantly growing surprise, it spoke.
“WHAT DO YOU HOW DO!?”
‘Oh yeah, something drugged me... god damnit.’ He was already starting to wonder how much longer until his mind broke into the shattered mess called insanity, but even the progression towards that state of mind took pause as he witnessed even more colorful horses trot into down the steps. Truly, this had to be some sort of horribly cruel joke. He was about ready to uncloak and start demanding names and factions when the same purple thing that had first approached began speaking again.
“I-it, it’s... It’s gone!”
‘“It?” Well that’s not very nice.’ His right hand felt around the trigger assembly for his weapon as the thumb for that same hand grazing over the safety switch. It was strange though, the voice was... feminine. ‘Is this creature female?’
“It’s what now?” came another voice. It came from the orange horse this time, the one that just happened to be wearing a stetson. And right beside it was another equine creature, only with a body made of pink fur and cotton candy.
“Hey, where’d it go?” The strangely delectable looking cotton candy thing said in an annoyingly high pitched voice. “How’d it get outta that shieldy thing?”
That was another thing the ghost noticed. The colorful creatures reminded him of... candy. There was a yellow and pink one that might taste like bananas, a rainbow one that reminded him of a certain disc-shaped one he saw in a poster, one with pictures of apples on it, which just reminded him of apples, and... to put it simply, he just got hungry from looking at all of them. He even began to question whether or not they tasted like meat.
“I, I don’t know, it was there just a while ago! I know I set the force field up around it, I just know it!”
‘A forcefield?’ the ghost thought to himself after hearing the latest babble from the equine things. ‘So these things have the power to project fields of energy that block matter and emit a soft glow of light... are they perhaps protoss?’ After a bit more thinking, he began to question just exactly how he could understand the creatures. He had never seen them before in his life, the horses he knew couldn’t talk, and he was fairly certain that candy-based organisms would not make for a very stable life structure.
“...Could the alien have perhaps teleported?”
‘What?’ The ghost paused his thinking process, his mind turning to focus fully on what the horses were saying.
“Maybe these aliens are somewhat skilled as using magic like we are,” the white one said.
‘Magic...’
“Maybe,” the purple one sighed.
“Well, it don’t look like it dug anywhere,” said the apple one. “There ain’t no hole in the floor, so I’m gonna go ahead an’ say it tellahported.”
“There’s no hole in your magic barrier or anything, so I’m gonna go with teleporting too.” The skittles thing looked unsure as it- ‘Wait, are those wings? Is it flying!?’
Then, without warning, the barrier around him faded away, allowing everything outside the wall to come into his vision with regular colors. The horse things continued to talk amongst themselves, and the ghost took this as an opportunity to perhaps escape from his ‘magic’ prison. The group of creatures moved around where the barrier once was, poked and prodded the floor and the air, and the purple one even did a little light show with her horn.
Honestly, he was never too curious about how things worked in the world. There were many things in the universe he simply did not understand, but because of his job he knew he didn’t need to understand it in order to get the mission completed. The protoss and their funky psionics, the zerg and their slimy biomechanics, and even other terran factions that created new technologies... like the Tauren Porta Potty.
But this... these, things, they acted so much like regular humans, had many things in plain view that looked human-made, and yet they were not man. And where he came from horses could not talk, they were not very colorful, and they certainly did not have horns or wings. For that matter, he was even more sure that there was no such thing as magic. After a little debate, he sort of haphazardly categorized their claim of “magic” as a different sort of psionic powers or something... he hoped he would be correct. Yet if he was, then that would mean he may have to deal with some protoss if he wanted to escape, or even survive.
He was lost in his thinking for a minute, and didn’t even notice the yellow and pink one approach him. When he did he began to back up more, shuffling slowly and quietly to the furthest part of the room. It continued to approach him, a look of curiosity displayed on its face.
That was another thing, how could it tell the expressions it was giving? Their bodies were of horses yet their faces were so... human-like. It was so alien to him, probably much like the alien they pegged him to be. Was he truly on another world?
The conversation with the group of horses on the other end of the room faded from his ears as he focus on the yellow one in front of him, still coming closer as he retreated backwards. Without noticing it his back leg bumped into something, causing an audible creek in the wooden furniture behind him. He froze his body and cursed silently, berating himself for being so stupid as to not inspect his surroundings. He is a ghost, a super soldier meant for stealth and precision. If he was ever discovered to have slipped up and made such a horribly amateur mistake, it could cost him his job.
He looked around, noticing the desk he bumped into and the wall he was almost up against. He then looked back at the horse, noticing its interest in him. When a ghost cloaks, their suits simply bend the light around their figure, allowing for them have be almost completely unseeable. Even so, the light refraction does cause some distortion, and to a keen eye it can be picked out. Those things have seen the ghost, they had to have, or else he would still be out with his ship somewhere, wherever it was. They knew what he looked like, and they knew he was armed, but perhaps they didn’t fully understand him, like he didn’t understand them.
The ghost noticed it look down at his legs, and then work her vision back up to where his head and face. He stared into its big blue eyes it had, noticing her tilt her head as it continued to stare. There were a lot of words he could use to describe it, an every growing collection of phrases that could fit the situation, but only one could come to mind. One single word, nay, one single sound was all that he could manage to process as he gazed upon the little pony in front of him.
‘D’aww...’
Truly, only the most villainous creatures of all the galaxy would use the powers of cuteness to such a high degree. But with his twisted mind and conditioned pattern of thinking, another thought came to focus, a much more cynical one than the situation called for. He had his rifle, and if any of the things decided to try to hurt him he was sure he could take them out quickly. He’s bigger than them, stronger, and well armored. The horses are not, and therefore he is superior to them.
“Invisible,” it whispered suddenly, just barely loud enough for him to hear.
That was it, she knew there was something standing where he was, and perhaps that it was indeed him, the being they thought to have teleported away. He knew he would be discovered at the rate things were going, so he decided to put his mean little idea to work. He lets his cloak fade just slightly around his face, letting the glow from his goggles become visible. That was when he noticed the yellow thing blink and focus on his eyes, telling him his trick worked. He is about to start uncloaking further when a voice spoke to her, catching her attention away from him. He fully cloaked again by instinct, his eyes hiding back behind the warped field of light.
“Hey Fluttershy, what are ya doin over there? Checking out Twilight’s chemistry set or something?”
“Oh, no, I was just, um... I uh, I don’t know, uh,”
“C’mon Fluttershy, we got more important things to do than look through some dusty old test tubes or something.”
‘Fluttershy.’ The ghost had its name, and judging by how ridiculously it was worded, he came to the conclusion that perhaps the creature was indeed shy. And if it was shy, perhaps he could have even more cruel fun with it.
He crouched down to her level while she was still looking away, looking straight at her face. He noticed it starting to turn around, and perhaps even walk away, which would spoil such a great opportunity. His cloak began to dissipate by his own will as he cleared his throat, trying to get ‘Fluttershy’s’ attention. It worked, and as he was mid-way done with the decloaking process, she looked right back into his eyes.
The ghost is a man who simply wants to get things done, to be seen as a useful tool to those he worked for. If he was usefull, and knew that his superiors could count on him to get the job done, then he was satisfied. The feeling of satisfaction is the one thing in the world he desired most, the one thing he wanted to continue above all else. As long as he was satisfied, the world was right. And right then, right when they made eye-to-goggles contact, he could feel the creeping sensation of satisfaction envelop his body.
And right then, right in the apex of the ensuing silence that held at that moment, he decided on having just a bit more fun. He is a ghost after all, and there is one thing ghosts are known for doing best, one thing they have been notorious for since their imagining thousands of years ago. The one thing he mimicked at that exact moment in time.
“...Boo.”
Indeed, what could go wrong with just having a bit of fun?