Deadman tapped his helmet to shut off his HRV, the blood still splattered on his hand. What in the hell was he supposed to do in a situation where he not only was cut off from support, but in an environment where he would have to deal with things definitely not supposed to be covered by an Agent. He wracked his brain in an attempt to remember if they had given him any coverage at all on what he was supposed to if he ended up on what was most likely another world, where equinoids appeared to be the dominant species.
His mind came up with nothing, in either the broad ‘possible alien world’ sense nor the narrow ‘equinoid castle’ sense. This subject was most definitely not covered in Blacklight training. Thinking on it, he tried to recall some knowledge from prior to signing up to come up anything he could work with.
The answer quickly came to him. A good idea would be to make diplomatic contact with the natives, just like they did in the movies. Granted, odds were that they either didn’t speak the same language as him, or that this was going to going to backfire colossally, as those very same movies taught him, but it was either that or immediate war, and he didn’t particularly like the possibility of fighting an alien civilization on its home turf with no support from his agency.
Turning on his HRV once more, and glanced around the castle, searching for the closest equine form, all of them coloured a neutral indicating yellow. Soon, he found it. There was an equine with a pair of wings sitting upon its back standing all of in its lonesome in a room, going over some object or another with... some sort of cleaning implement. Feather duster, that was what that object was named he recalled.
Weighing his options carefully for the approach, he came to the conclusion that if he approached it directly, he risked it running away from the shock of an alien appearing. However, if he snuck up on it, he risked even further fear on its part, possibly retaliating in fright.
After a period of careful consideration, he decided that he would approach directly, he would be able to claim self defence if it freaked out and attacked, forcing him to retaliate. He flicked his HRV back off as he walked along the hall, in the direction his HRV indicated the room was. Seeing the door, he did a quick flick on and off of the HRV in order to verify the equinoid’s position behind it, before knocking thrice with one of his heavy gauntlets.
After a few seconds, he heard a female voice say “Come in!” Well, at least he knew that he and it spoke the same language. Also, that he should stop referring to their kind as it.
With this confirmation of readiness, he entered the room, to discover the cream coloured equine would barely come up to his waist, and was facing away from him, dusting off what he guessed was a cabinet, and she was wearing a french maid outfit seemingly fitted to the quadrupedal shape, and he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about it, last time he saw a woman in a french maid outfit, he was at his bachelor party.
“Honestly, Geo,” she said, “you don’t have to knock if you happen to come by while I am cleaning your-” She stopped mid sentence the second she turned around and saw him, her rather large eyes rapidly turning into pinpricks.
Raising one of his hand to the side of his head, he flipped the switch that turned his communications from internal radio to external voice chat, and said “Do not panic, there is no need to be alarmed. Take me to your leader.” There was always a part of his mind that wanted to say that.
All he got was a scream in response, as she dropped the feather duster from her mouth, and took to the air, and fluttered up on uneasy wings into a corner of the room. “Stay away from me!” she shrieked.
“Do not panic, there is no need to be alarmed. Take me to your leader,” Deadman reiterated, hoping to calm her down and achieve his objective. Raising his arm up in order to gesture towards the ground he noticed something he had unfortunately overlooked previously. There was still blood and brain matter were still covering his arm, his hand, and likely on the hammer hanging at his side. Last time he checked, civilians did not like blood and guts on mysterious, blood soaked warriors appearing out of nowhere. It would make sense that equinoids would feel as such too.
It- she screamed again, before panickedly flying towards the doors, which he was currently standing in.
In an attempt to not further damage his diplomatic odds any more than he already had, he stepped to the side, and gave her room to pass. Blocking the door, and thus her escape, could very easily be seen as an act of aggression by an authority later on.
She passed him at a breakneck speed, still screaming incoherent gibberish with the word “monster” occasionally slipped in.
Considering how horribly he was sure this was about to go, he turned on his HRV once more. Off in the distance, and rapidly approaching, he was a group of equinoids wearing armour charging down the hall that he was just a few minutes ago within. Some of them were equipped with spears, and others with halberds, as well as a few of the ones with wings holding crossbows. Sighing, he turned the HRV back off once more.
If only he knew how they held crossbows in their hooves, but he decided on just rolling with it.
Deadman took up a position deeper within the room, away from the door, and turned to see a rather luxurious bed. It was tempting to sit on it for a second, but he realized that he probably was not going to win any bonus points with them if he managed to get a bed soaked in very hard to get out stains. As such, he decided stand in the middle of the room, to wait for new contact with what he believed was either a police force or a military force.
Soon enough, from around the corner, a wonderful sight came. The ten armed and golden armoured guards of similar height as the maid came flying, some metaphorically and some literally, around the corner, the horned equinoid in the lead shouting “Stop, in the name of The Princesses!” Judging by that, he just guessed that they were law enforcement.
They stopped the second they saw him simply standing tall in the middle of the room, not moving, not running, and most definitely not attacking.
It was then he noticed something rather odd. The ones which had horns just levitated their polearms in front of them within some sort of aura. For now, he didn’t dare question it. He was just going to assume there was some sort of technobabble explanation for this, and move on.
“I can not stop what I have not yet initiated. There is no need to be alarmed, do not panic. Take me to your leader,” he said for the third bloody time today. Although he liked saying take me to your leader he was starting to get a tiny bit sick of it.
That very same leading equinoid seemed rather shocked as Deadman spoke, quite shocked at what was likely his good behavior, given the circumstances.
“What is your purpose here, creature?” the leading equine questioned.
“I am merely following Blacklight protocol, and I have been regrettably forced to make contact, despite Blacklight’s noninterference policy. I assure you that I have no interest in harming anyone besides eliminating hostile agents of The Order,” he said, spouting something that was technically true. He still was following Blacklight protocol, and while didn’t really have any motivation to murder anyone but some Order bastards retaliating against a hostile force would
“Who are The Order?” The leader questioned once more. Deadman had a feeling he wasn’t going to particularly like him if he was going to merely repeatedly question him about business matters. Last he remembered it was standard social procedure to ask how he liked the weather here, or make similar small talk, although the more he thought about it the more he realized this could be standard convention here.
“I am not authorized to release this information to a non-secure confidant at this time,” he stated, in military legal speech which essentially meant that ‘I trust you exactly none’. “Now that I have confirmed that you are not panicking, and are remaining calm in general, I must ask you once more to take me to your leader,” he stated. It was quite needed to find and make diplomatic contact with someone, as given by the ‘Oh god, someone found you’ section of the Blacklight training manual. While he may not have been trained in alien contact protocols, at least he had the training to bullshit his way through unexpected contact with a standard group of people, which he was just going to use to its fullest.
The guard stood there stony faced for a second before saying “I will send a runner.” He then nodded towards one of the flying equines with wings and a crossbow before they took off down the hall to hopefully call their leaders and not call in an airstrike on this location.
Deadman stood there in silence for a second, staring at the guards, who returned the gesture. Thinking about what he would do while he was waiting to see if someone would try to murder him again today, a thought came to his mind; he would examine the law enforcement officers. Looking over them with the eye of a trained operative, he immediately saw that they were all of the same palette range, being either grey or white underneath their cripplingly flashy golden armour. His thoughts drifted back to the maid which he had contacted earlier, as well as her colour. The difference between her and these guards were major in both palette, and muzzle shape, as well as some more subtle differences with the build of their bodies, although they were probably less pronounced underneath the armour. Speaking of the armour...
Deadman turned his rather critical eye to the armour next, and immediately saw many, many problems with it.
It left both the underside of their body and their throats almost completely exposed, and on top of that, the armour was incredibly flashy, and on top of that the gold like material - as he refused to believe anyone would be stupid enough to wear gold armour - seemed rather thin. Then the realization came to him in a flash.
It had to be ceremonial armour. It was something like the silly uniforms of the Pontifical Swiss Guard. With that vital bit of information deduced from their armour, he set off to look at them in the sense of a semi-ceremonial guard. He could guess that, if the semi-ceremonial guard responded to his intrusion rather than a regular guard unit, that they tend to not need to call in such a unit here often, pointing to either peace or a their enemies straight up not giving a shit.
What about their weapons? The way the horned ones levitated them in front of them was certainly odd. Did the ability to move items without touching them at close range mean that they could keep peace effectively as is? If they only have melee weapons and primitive projectile technologies like he was seeing here, he could see such an ability trumping almost everything else close up with the lack of limbs to target, as well as the ability to attack without having to worry about their own limbs. Such an advantage could allow them to be... lazy when it comes to armour, if they had that advantage and not many else did.
It was that second that a regal and commanding female voice filled the room, saying “What is the meaning of this?”
Snapping out of his reverie, he saw a rather imposing, by comparison, equinoid that came up to his upper chest. Her coat was a pure white, much purer a white than the other equines. Furthermore both a large horn and a similarly large pair of wings came off of her body, a set of features not found together on any other equine he had seen so far. She also wore a tiara, necklace, and a set of what he could only describe a slippers, all golden and full of various colours of jewels. The most fascinating of her features, though, would be her mane and tail, which had a marvelous ethereal quality to it as it seemed to blow in an unseen wind. The shifting rainbow of colours within the hair seemed to be almost holographic, as such was their vividity.
Glancing into her purple eyes, he could see one thing in them: determination to protect.