Narwhals. The unicorn of the ocean. One of the most elusive and mysterious creatures in all of the indigo seas. Beautiful animals, some may call them. I hate the bastards.
Alaska.
A week. A week has passed since we came here. It all started so innocently. A few ponies, sent to this wasteland to observe the migratory patterns of said creatures after an unsourceable explosion emitted from the Baltic sea, their native grounds. Sensing it was unsafe to stay, they fled to waters they could still tolerate. Cold ones.... I think you know where.
Upon arrival, they must have noticed what we’ve done to the place. Alaska, once a pulchritudinous utopia to all wildlife, was now a expansive dump-heap for the entirety of Equestria and all other civilized cultures. We already drove away the dominant species on the peninsula, the moose, and ever since that day, the species have been rapidly fleeting.
I don’t know what went wrong. Something about those narwhals was different. They were angry. Very angry... And... And..... They had legs.
The only way this could happen... Was if that explosion... was nuclear. The radiation. It must have affected them. In ways that even God condemns.
Trapped.
The facility we had been using for our research was now our last hope. If this barricade failed, then so did we. Food is very limited, and the four of us can’t ration it out for more than a couple of days...
“Watkins?”
“Yessir?”
“Why do you have the audio log out?”
“Sir, I know you’ll hate to hear this, but there is the possibility that... We won’t make it out of here. I want, if anything were to happen to us, to have this on me, with any more information we can get on these... Beasts.”
“Admirable. But we’re here to save our plots, not those schmucks who’ll go looking for us.”
Sir, it won’t get in the way. Just let me have this. It settles me. I think I’d be terrified without it. I mean, not that I’m not terrified to begin with, but-
“Fine. just go check outside for others. And stop calling me sir! Do I look like a damned ship captain to you!?”
“I’m sorry si- I mean, Rogers. Our kind or theirs?”
“At this point, search for both. Anypony we find out here will need this extra bit of salvation.”
“No! we can’t take anymore ponies in. As of now, we only only have a few oats per pony each day! They’ll just have to fend for themselves.”
“No, Hamilton. They might have valuable assets. You don’t just go around this fruitless desert without at least a week’s supply of clean water. So we must bring them in, if only for the extra supplies.”
But I knew this wasn’t his real reasoning. Ever since our airship’s pilot had been ruthlessly mauled while performing a routine check up on the vessel (effectively alerting us of the danger ahoove), he’s been displaying a softspot for any other (non narwharlian) life. It seems that this kind of intense paranoia has affected us all in different ways. Besides Roger’s sudden softness (a stark contrast from his normal personality), there’s Jones just huddling and mumbling to himself in the corner, and it seems as though Hamilton is being even more of darwhinneyist than usually. Speaking of Jones, though....
“Jay.”
“They... They want us...They have... have no...reason.”
“JONES!!”
“Why?... We didn’t do anything... Did we?”
I walked right up to him and hoofed him square in the side of the face. “What in the hell are you doing?"
"I'm sorry. I was... scared. Y'all were making valuable plans, and I... Couldn't face it. Comfort in cowardice, I s'pose." After that insightful comment though, he returned to his newly-found brand of unintelligible muttering.
"Okay, it’s obvious that we need to get out of here,” I declared, “or else we'll all be reduced to mentally unstable cannibals. So what do we do to get out of here? I think, permitting that nothing drastic has happened to ground the ship, we might to be able to use the electricity from the generator to power our portable inflator to-
"Sure, that's all fine and dandy, except for the fact that our gas was still going when we abandoned the ship.” Hamilton smugly drawled.
I released a large sigh from my lungs. “What about the backup fuel in the storage shed? I’ll just run out to retrieve it and we can use that."
"What if they're out there? It's certain death!" A slight smile graced his face. "It's hopeless." Yeah, Hamilton was one of those equines who preferred to face tragedy with the offset of humor. To me, though, he just likes to prod fun at sickening things.
"well, I volunteer to go get the gas. If they were going to attack us, they would have torn down our building by now, right?
"I guess so..."
"Exactly my point. And besides: how are we to know that there are more than one of them? The only... narwhalicorn?.... we saw was the one that attacked Sgt. Smitty.”
“I vote that we call them sea ponies!” mocked Hamilton.
“SHUT THE BUCK UP!!!!! Can’t you see that we are in a possibly fatal situation here! I get that some ponies instinctively laugh in the face of danger, but this is just RECKLESS IDIOCY! IF YOU HAVE EVEN A SINGLE BIT OF SENSE UP IN THAT CAVERNOUS BRAIN OF YOURS, I SUGGEST YOU CLOSE YOUR MUZZLE AND LET ME THINK, OR ELSE I’LL RING YOU UP BY YOUR NECK AND LEAVE YOU AT THE MUTANTS” MERCY!” I exploded, gradually looming over him as if to show dominance. After all, Rogers was supposed to be the head scientist for this project, and he wasn’t really owning up to it at this point, so I figured that I had to take the reigns.
Hamilton made no effort to talk, knowing that he was defeated.
For what felt like hours, we sat around, the threat of mortality very real to all of us. Nopony spoke a word. I’m not sure if we had all just given up, or if we just needed to cool off. I needed to say something.
“Now, who is actually willing to put in a little effort to save our flanks?” It came out more demanding than I had hoped, but time was of the essence, and we needed to take that into consideration now that we had done a good helping of nothing for a while.
Everypony but Jones (still petrified from the situation) stood up.
“I think we’re both willing to take a risk.” Jones said plainly. Hamilton nodded smally in agreement, still recouping from my outburst.
“Okay then. Hamilton, Rogers, get the generator unplugged from the building’s powering system while I retrieve the gasoline.”
“Yep. Will do. And Watkins?”
“Yes?”
“Watch your tail. I understand that you don’t have a marefriend or any living family (So he actually did read my full resume!), but I want you to know that if there are any more of them out there, and something, God forbid, were to happen to you... You would still be missed. By us.” Hamilton and Rogers both gave me a weak smile, and even Jay had looked up from his tears.
I was shocked. Sure, we had all been paired together for a couple of months to do other research work, but I didn’t actually think we had bonded that much.“Thanks, you guys. It took a lot to say that, especially after my last outburst.”
Hamilton finally spoke up. “I know you had the best of intentions at heart, and I was being a huge plothole this whole time. I don’t know what had come over me. I guess that I had-”
“Apology accepted. I was in the wrong too, and I shouldn’t have reacted like that either. We don’t have the time to argue out here, so I’d rather that we could just skip to being friends again.”
“Agreed.”
“Alright,” Rogers said, regaining his confidence as a leader,”Are we all ready to get out of here now?”
We all nodded in unison. Jones, possibly inspired by our moment of sentiment, got up, wiped his tears, and rejoined the group. “Let’s kick some sea pony... Whatever they have for rears!”
“A little cheesy for my tastes, but okay.”
With Rogers and Hamilton retrieving the generator, Jones and I made our way to the front entrance. “Are you sure you are ready to brave the outside? You seem very pale, and I don’t want you to freeze up, literally or figuratively.”
“No, I must. I have been of little help to anybody for the longest time.”
“We only got here... I don’t know if it’s been hour, or even days at this point (the incredibly short days in the winter weren’t helping), but there hasn’t even been much that you could do to help.”
“No, I feel like I... could of...” From within the patterned interior of his coat he pulled a sleek, metal object. A pistol. “I knew. Or... I thought I did. I brought this with me, anticipating the possibility of such an event.” He ran his hoof along the barrel of the firearm, laying gently on the ground, the touch coursing a shudder throughout the still weapon.
“You had this all along? Even when Smitty...”
“Yes. It happened all so suddenly. I couldn’t connect it all in time... It’s bad enough to witness a death. But a death that you could’ve prevented... is a whole other hardship in itself. And the worst part... is that you know you aren’t sorrowful for them. You are sad for yourself. For the fact that you won’t... can’t “experience” them anymore. Their loss is second to yours. And it doesn’t help that I also caused his demise.”
“Jay.” I paused. “Please. You didn’t ‘cause’ this. Nopony can saddle this on you. We all have our screw-ups. Some of them just happen at more inconvenient situations... And I hate to say it, but I think we need to move on for now. Look.”
He turned his attention away from the gun and glanced out the window. There were only about 10 of them, but these “sea ponies” were getting dangerously close to our base.
Jones gasped before letting go a few solitary tears. “Okay.”
“I hear the generator running again. They must’ve seen that herd by now. You join up with them. I need to get the gas still. Can I borrow the gun?” He gave me a broad gesture, which I figured was a go ahead. “Stay strong.”
I burst through the door with only one goal on my mind: retrieve that fuel. The sea ponies, alerted by my sudden motion, galloped after me. Luckily, the shed was only a few hundred feet away from the door. As I neared the shed, I used my access key. I quickly grabbed the gas with my mouth and sprinted back out.
Within the minute, we were all gathered on the ship. “I’ve got the gas going. Jay, I need you to shoot at the herd while I get us off the ground.”
“No.”
“What?” we collectively uttered.
“Don’t you get it? They’re only mad because of what we did to this place. We’re the only species left here, so they must’ve figured it out from that. We had caused all of this. We suited Alaska to our own personal hell. Shooting them will accomplish nothing. They’ve already achieved their goal. They drove us out. The perpetrators of the felony. Anypony else who tries to dump their sh*t here again will be chased out, just like us. They hurt me, but those sea ponies.... Those sea ponies saved Alaska.”