SPOILER ALERT!!!!
for, A Nightmare in Equestria.
I was staring at the glove that I had received with curiosity, wondering who would appear it it was burned.
“Prime Directive?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think it’s a good idea to burn the glove?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because there is a forty percent chance that whatever will come through will be hostile.”
“But that’s a relatively small percentage.”
“There is also a thirty percent chance that it will be friendly, and a ten percent chance that it won’t do anything.”
“What about the remaining twenty percent?”
“Ten percent for something that I cannot predict, and another ten for something that I have not predicted.”
“And where are you getting these figures, anyway?”
“I’m using the basic principles of sampling to extrapolate the overall opinion of anything that we could encounter, thus-” My mind drifted after this, I was never good at anything related to math. I reconnected in time to hear the ending. “And that is how to use the relative sample to your advantage.”
“Alright then, but I’m going to burn the glove anyway.”
“But the chance of it not trying to kill us in any shape or form-”
“Is good enough for me.” I snached up the glove and tried to think of something that I could use to set fire to it. I couldn’t. “Prime Directive, make something to burn the glove with.”
“Fine.” It took about ten seconds for it to make a strain of infestor that could make and spit something that was essentially gasoline, and then set fire to it by knocking two rock hard appendages together. It took about another minute to make one.
I backed away about twenty feet as I signaled the infestor to set fire to the glove. It seemed to want to catch fire, because it only took a single spark and the entire glove caught fire slightly before it would have naturally. Rather than slowly burn to ash the glove seemed to bubble, even the claws at the fingertips bubbled intensely.
Eventually the glove turned into a bubbling puddle on the floor that turned from a mix of grey and brown to a fleshy red. Slowly, the glove-puddle expanded out into a neat line along the ground around five feet long.
As the line stopped expanding it began to rise up from the ground on either end, going directly upwards for a few more feet before leaning towards each other at a steady angle until they met in the middle. As soon as the tips of each fleshy tendril thing touched each other the air in the odd doorway seemed to ripple before catching fire.
“Well, that was overly dramatic.” I thought. “But those tendrils indicate that, He? She? Will fit right i-.”
I was interrupted from my revery as an arm came through the portal at a rather ridiculous speed before colliding with the infestor. There was the unmistakable breaking of carapace before a crunching noise when the fist made contact, now embedded in the infestors head.
A man had stepped through the portal wearing a hawaiian shirt and khakis. He’d had an unsettling smile up until the point he realised he hadn’t hit what he’d hoped. He twisted his fist around a bit before yanking it out, looking down at it, and wiping it on his shirt.
As soon as he’d cleaned off his hand I could see the scars and burn marks covering it entirely. I didn’t realise the full extent of his injuries until he’d turned to face me and tipped up his hat, giving me a nice view of his nice green eyes, slight, cheeky grin, and his scarred face.
“Well,” I said out loud, “I didn’t imagine that you would look like this. Especially after your very dramatic entrance.”
He just deadpanned at me as he reached a hand behind him and directly into the flaming doorway. The flames quickly cut out and the doorway caved in on itself before coming into contact with his hand and wrapping around it, forming the original glove only with a slight red tint.
A look of distaste crossed his features as he saw the glove before he sighed and focused back on me. ”And what is it you want? I was in the middle of something y’know?”
“Well,” I suddenly realised that I literally had nothing to say. “I was just curious about you. After all, the only other time that I had done anything like this was with Auric. But I digress, welcome to the Central Hive!”
When I’d brought up Auric his clothes seemed to catch fire at the hems, well less seemed and more they actually caught fire. The fire quickly dissipated as I mentioned the Central Hive though.
”Hive? As in, bees?” He looked me over a bit before taking stock of his surroundings, somehow managing to pull off an expression of both boredom and impression in one look. ”Fan-fucking-tastic, I was summoned by walking, talking cockroaches.”
I was rallied by the comment, but I responded with humor. Something that I rarely do. “No, I can assure you that our roaches can’t walk, or talk.” I wave over a roach as a case in point. “See?” But seeing the expression on his face, I sighed and said, “We are the Zerg. What more can I say?”
He kept investigating the roach as I spoke, up until the point I had introduced myself. It was then that he looked back at his attire, mumbling something about a vacation as he clicked his claws together to make a spark that quickly engulfed him in flames.
I’d somehow managed to blink at the exact moment his clothes burnt off and were replaced with a raggedy green and red striped sweater along with long brown pants that had a few holes in them. ”Name’s Johnny, though most know me as the Nightmare or Freddy,” he shivered a bit as he continued, ”just call me Johnny though mister/miss?..” I replied,
“Dahaka. And I am a mister. At least, until Prime Directive has its way.” I thought for a second, then asked, “And you actually said slash?”
”Sounds kinky, and I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He had his grin from earlier back, though at much less magnitude.
“Unless you want to get into a whole discussion on how the Zerg work, I wouldn’t pursue the ‘mister for now’ thing.”
He shrugged before looking around again, apparently bored with talking as he looked over the Central Hive once more, until his eyes came across the as-of-yet unfinished embassy. ”Well, well, well, looky what we have here. I have my ways of getting the info I need but I think it’s a bit more polite to ask. What the fuck is that?”
“It’s an embassy. So what?”
”Let me guess, you killed off a few pompous pastel pricks and had to ask for another species to harbour you from the xenophobes? Unless of course…” He squinted at the embassy before glaring at me, ”Is that a sun emblazoned flag I see on the wall over there?” I didn’t like the way he said that, but I replied as best I could. This was another displaced, after all.
“Basically, when I got here about one thousand, five hundred years ago, I wasn’t in full control of myself. In this state I caused, simply put, a mass genocide that wiped out about half of the intelligent species on the planet. But once blasted by the elements of harmony, I was stuck as stone. But it also made me in control of myself once again. So, I escaped just after Discord and set the hive up. But the Sisters held a grudge and sent a large portion of their army to kill me. They all died. But soon something happened, something came and started attacking equestria, so I helped them. And that’s how this came to be.”
As I finished I’d noticed he was no longer listening and had instead picked up one of the zerglings, looking over it while it struggled in his grip. ”Feisty little fucker… sorry what?”
“You’re lucky that I’m stopping them from killing you right now. But Essentially, Equestria and I now have a common enemy.”
”Hmm,” his hands slowly pushed together at a casual pace, much to the displeasure of the zergling, ”The way I see it, you just need to go back into the state before your imprisonment, because apparently it’s better at killing things.” I started growling as I psionically pressed against his mind. Usually, minds that didn’t have either psionics, or weren’t part of a hive mind, were incompatible with my mind. But because of our humanity, I could jab him with a barb just as painful as a knife. I slowly pressed his mind, pushing memories of the bad days into his mind.
Strangely I felt no resistance as my memories easily slipped in. He wore an unnerving smile as he crushed the zergling more while it shrieked. I’d then realised he’d somehow used the connection I’d created to push his own memories back. ”Sharing is caring.” He said rather sadistically as countless scenes of torture and death, often in the most bizarre ways, were forced back through the connection.
Prime Directive took control of the body as my mentality shrieked. My eyes started glowing red as it did so, and Prime Directive gave one order to the army, “ATTACK THE INTRUDERS!” In my pain, I managed to give a counter order. “Not... the... ponies.” I mumbled this over and over as Prime Directive struggled to counter my counter. Given time it would, but for now.
My army, however, attacked Johnny with all their might. In my addled mind state I could not comprehend why he was laughing as my forces converged on him. He bent and twisted in ways that were not natural as he punched, kicked and dodged anything that came near him, not even bothering to use his claw.
”Go to sleep,” He punched a zergling that had leapt at him, crushing the one from before under his foot. ”Go to sleep,” Somehow his punch continued, his torso spinning a full two-hundred and seventy degrees with various snaps of bone before his fist managed to hit another ‘ling. ”Go to sleep little Daka!
His legs twisted in the opposite direction of his torso to kick a hydralisk that had gotten to close. He held his claw in the end, closing it and seeming to pull something from the air before going back to punching and kicking. ”Once you o-.” I felt something splash over my head but somehow managed to keep my small amount of focus on Johnny.
”-pen your eyes you won’t see me a-” He smiled dangerously wide as his body returned to its anatomically correct position and I struggled as I felt a wave of sleep overcame me. ”-gain.”
My last order as I fell asleep was “Kill me” figuring that that should keep Prime Directive from killing the ponies.
I heard a growl from Johnny in my last moments as he leapt at me. ”No you fucking don’t!” In moments we were both engulfed in green flame, and I felt myself go through all the stages of burning until it dissipated. The last thing I saw was the roof of the dungeons beneath Canterlot.