//------------------------------//
// Chapter 50: All Inside... 
// Story: From Humans, to Cryptids, to... Ponies? 
// by TLP 
//------------------------------//

Dempsey's P.O.V



"Ugh... Jesus Christ..." Dempsey groaned. "What the hell happened to me?..."

Dempsey's view had now faded into pure black, yet he could still feel himself and still had the ability to talk. He looked around with confusment. 

He then blinked, fully confirming that his sight was still fine, and that he was just stuck in an unknown place. He then felt his hands touch a surface. Breathing in heavily, he looked down below him, only to still see his hand touch a black surface.

"What the fuck?..." He said breathlessly.

Dempsey then stood up slowly and cautiously. Looking around his surroundings. He then walked forward, taking caution on where he was stepping, even though the entire area was dark.

He then looked around once more until he bumped into something with a grunt. Dempsey lifted his hand and touched the surface of what seemed to be a wall. He then tried to push it in, only for it to seemingly stay still and unchanged.

"This isn't cool..." Dempsey said, slowly backing away, only to bump into another wall a couple of steps later. He quickly looked behind him, only to see nothing still.

Before he could speak up once more, he felt a medium-light cool breeze go over his back, making the small hairs on his neck stand up in alertness and sending unpleasent chills down his spine. Quickly, he looked behind him, seeing a light, hazy trail of blue travel swiftly before stopping and slowly fading into the air.

His breath then became slightly ragged as he felt another breeze behind him. When he turned, he saw the same thing as before, except it wasn't fading away. It just stayed there.

Looking at it confusingly, he moved his head closer to it, noticing that it was now emitting a very small amount of light in the middle.

"What the..." Dempsey said quietly before hesitantly raising a hand to grasp it upon his palm. Inching closer, the light seemingly started to fade as he put his palm underneath it.

His head tilted slightly as he was now able to caress the fog-like circle, the light fading and unfading at a faster rate until it started to somewhat pulsate rapidly in his hand at an extreme rate.

"Woah..." He whispered in astonishment. The light then began to increase in brightness to the point where Dempsey had to squint his eyes to even look at it. Before he could speak up, the light then grew bigger in size along with luminosity.

Dempsey yelled as he closed and averted his eyes to the side and away from the light, letting go of the ball of light to use both of his arms to shield his face as the ball of light created a wave-like noise, muting his yelling until the light then seemingly wrapped around Dempsey until it expanded, and imploded.

Dempsey could feel the immense amount of pressure on every square inch of his body, putting his yelling to a sudden halt as the pressure then suddenly vanished, along with the light, as if it was never even there to begin with.

Breathing heavily and rapidly to the brink of hyperventilating, he slowly opened his eyes and looked beside him. Without a thought, he looked back in front of him, which confused his mind more than it has before as he looked into what seemed to be a wavy-like portal of sorts, showing nothing but a blueish background with wavy, almost electric lines through it, along with blueish smoke lines emitting from the sides and the middle, and a black outline in the outer circle.

With a shaking, gloved hand, he reached out to the portal without even thinking about it, since he was so mesmerized and terrified at the same time. When his hand came in contact with the portal, it created a small shockwave, expanding as the white lines dissipated, showing a clear light blue background.

Dempsey then retracted his hand from the portal and watched it almost mindlessly, like a zombie dazing off into the distance. After a couple of moments, he sighed as he began to look around him, but as soon as he did, the light blue background changed.

Catching his attention, he looked back at the portal, which was now showing an image, or location of sorts. All he could make out through the darkness was a metal railing on the side of a concrete pathway connected to a slightly slanted wall on one side, while what looked to be a man-made river on the other side of the railing.

"Is... Is that a sewer?..." Dempsey whispered out loud to himself as he kept watching with increasing curiosity. He then felt another cold breeze behind him, making him shiver slightly, but he still kept his trance on the portal regardless.

As he watched, he heard a slight metal grinding sound, which emitted a light glow from above the pathway. He guessed that it was a manhole of sorts. Then as quickly as it appeared, the metallic grinding sound came back as the manhole was covered once more, bringing the entire scene back into almost complete darkness.

After a couple more moments, he heard the sound of clopping hooves in the distance. He squinted his eyes to get a better view. When he did, he saw a faint, darkish-blue glow in the distance, along with what sounded like clicking noises with a mixture of other odd sounds. The clopping of hooves stopped as a sickening sound of what he could guess was moving flesh or meat was heard in the distance, along with a couple of light, squeaky screeches.

Dempsey watched in confusion for a minute or so, before the sound of clopping hooves began and stopped once more. He could then make out what looked to be two extended wings, and one fourth of a size of a horn.

He then put two and two together. "L-Luna?..." He said out loud.

As soon as those words left his mouth, he saw that 'Luna' had now turned to him, making Dempsey freeze in pure fear. Luna's eyes were not the same color that they used to be. Instead of being the color that they normally were, the eyes were now pure white, yet it showed as if Luna had no soul inside her. 

Dempsey only watched in horror as he saw Luna give him a huge, demonic grin, showing sharp, predator-like teeth as Luna slowly, oh so slowly, trotted over towards Dempsey. His pupils were the size of pinpricks, and were only decreasing in size as Luna got closer and closer.

As it seemed that Luna was now only a couple of feet away and was seemingly ready to jump and pounce onto him, Luna then quickly vanished into thin air, leaving nothing behind but a blueish, light cloud of smoke in her previous location.

Dempsey's breath was quick and ragged once more as he kept looking at where Luna was, trying to regain and recover himself as he watched the smoke disappear into nothing. 

After a couple of minutes, he finally controlled his breathing and let out a long, deep sigh as he looked down at the black ground below him, trying to make sense of what he just witnessed.

Before his mind could come up with any reasonable explination, he heard a loud clicking noise behind him, mixed with what sounded like a cat hiss and something else. When he turned around swiftly, he came face to face with a Cricket Cryptid. Dempsey yelled in horror as he used his hands to block his face for whatever it would count for as the Cricket pounced onto Dempsey, launching him back into the portal and seemingly 'breaking' it as they both fell through.

Dempsey kept yelling as he frantically patted his side to pull out his SIG Sauer P226 and take out the Cricket. As he finally felt the grip on the P226, the Cricket then dissipated into thin air as soon as he unholstered his P226 and prepared to fire at it. 

He then looked around him, noticing that he was now outdoors, except the sky had now taken a reddish-orange tinge to it, and there were no clouds in sight, aside from dark gray streaks in the sky that seemed like smoke or something along those lines. When he lifted himself up so that he was now leaning up with both his hands on the ground, he saw that he was now right smack in the middle of Ponyville, or what was left of it.

"Oh my God..." Dempsey whispered in shock and horror as he took full view of his surroundings. Ponyville, or what once was, was now a smoldering wreck. Most, if not all of the buildings were completely obliterated. Either they collapsed onto themselves, were scorched and broken from several sides, or there was nothing left but the foundation itself. Some buildings also contained the remains of Hives, while most of the half-destroyed buildings were ablaze in an almost hellish-like, never-ending flame.

Dempsey then turned to the town hall, which was the only building with two stories, aside from the top dome-like structure and balcony, which looked like it was almost bitten off and burnt. He then saw that inside the town hall were several silhouettes of ponies inside, who were seemingly cowering and panicking inside, while he saw the outlines of two humans inside holding what seemed to look like an M4A1 and an odd sniper rifle.

As he tried to stand up, he saw that there were several hundred bodies of Cryptids strewn around the entire town, including several corpses of ponies and disembowled corpses thrown in with the Cryptid corpses. He also saw several stems of Hives stemming out from below the ground.

When he turned to his right, he saw something that completely jarred him to the very core. The wreckage of a Stryker vehicle. Or what once was a Stryker, was now nothing but a chunk of scrap metal. A huge, bent, burning, scorched, scratched, torn scrap of useless metal. The slightly sloped front of the armored vehicle was embedded into the ground, and looked as if the front was nearly cut in half from the rest of the Stryker.

The main body of the Stryker itself looked like a burning metal box of inferno. Most of its wheels were either missing, or were deflated, along with the .50 Cal turret nowhere to be seen. 

Dempsey then fell back onto the ground with a shocked expression on his face as he grasped his head with one hand, all of this being almost too much for the soldier to handle.

As he did so, he heard the sudden sound of rapidly beating helicopter rotors fly above him, shaking him out of his shocked trance and making him look towards the direction of the sound. When he did, he saw the AH-6J Little Bird zoom its way towards the town hall, almost instantly making a 180-degree turn as the Little Bird faced Dempsey, hovering in position only a couple of feet off the ground.

Hesitantly, Dempsey looked behind him, noticing a huge swarm of a mixture of Cryptids making their way towards them in a stampede-like manner as he saw that there was a single Ancestor commanding the entire swarm. Dempsey then slowly looked above him, also noticing the immense amount of Gargoyles in the sky.

Dempsey then turned back around to the Little Bird, which was now positioned over a huge slab of torn and scorched concrete, and on the other side of the concrete were four humans, all of them aiming their weapons at the oncoming swarm, waiting as the swarm of Cryptids got closer and closer.

Dempsey then heard an inaudible yell, followed by a spinning sound as the Little Bird opened fire with its miniguns, the 7.62mm rounds streaking and tearing their way into the swarm, easily taking out the weak Scouts and a good amount of Hunters.

As soon as the miniguns started firing, his vision became slightly blurred and the outside noise was then muted. Dempsey was about to question on what had happened out loud until he heard a light chuckle behind him.

Dempsey then swiftly turned around, noticing the woman standing right where he was looking at. He quickly recognized the woman as the one Marcus kept talking about. The one who had a major roll in the Nightfall Program, who was used as a beacon to find the ark, who summoned the Kraken, who was saved by the four CIF members who later then sacrificed their own lives for her and for the sake of humanity. 

"S-Samantha Cross?..." Dempsey sputtered in shock as Samantha herself slowly walked towards the soldier with an evilish smirk plastered on her face.

"I guess you could refer to me as that... I thought you knew me better than that, Sergeant Grant..." She said in a quiet, yet malicious voice.

"G-get the fuck away from me!" Dempsey yelled as he scooted himself back, trying to keep as much distance away from the woman as possible, only for him to run into an invisible barrier, keeping him from escaping. He quickly turned around and tried to beat the barrier with his fist, only for his attempts to be in vain as Samantha chuckled at his futile actions.

"Sergeant..." Samantha said quietly as she got even closer with each step. "Why don't we have a... Little chat?" She asked, the smirk still on her face.

Dempsey then remembered suddenly that he was still holding his P226 in his right hand. Swiftly, he slung it out, aiming it with his right hand directly at Samantha's head, making her suddenly stop dead in her tracks.

"I said get the fuck away from m-me!" Dempsey ordered with a stutter due to fear. Samantha stayed where she was, but the smirk was still on her face as she crouched on both her legs and rested her arms on her knees, looking down at the ground below her as she internally chuckled.

"You must not know what I'm really capable of then..." Samanthat said quietly. Suddenly, Dempsey could feel an odd sensation around his hand, as if it were slowly being crushe. Right as he realized what was going on, the pressure then forced his hand to ungrip his P226,  making it fly out of his hand and leaving it floating in mid air, all while Samanthat was still looking at the ground.

"Now..." She said, slowly looking back up at Dempsey with her magenta eyes. "Allow me... To give you a choice. A little 'mercy' if you will..."

Dempsey just looked at Samantha with a shocked expression, seemingly paralyzed.

She then decided to bring Dempsey back into the realm of reality by adding pressure to the P226, before snapping it in half by the barrel, sending bits of metal and plastic flying, while creating a metal ting-like sound.

Dempsey then quickly snapped back, jumping slightly as he looked at Samantha once more. "W-what?..."

Samantha kept her demonic grin on her face as she crouched right in front of the soldier. "Allow me to explain, Grant." She then changed her gaze to over Dempsey's shoulder, motioning her head. "Take a good look, Sergeant..."

Dempsey then hesitantly complied, slowly turning his head back towards the ruins of the main center of Ponyville, more specifically the battle that was going on with the humans and the Cryptids, disregarding the blurriness that shadowed the entire battle. He then looked up at the sky, where he saw a couple Pegasi fighting for air superiority against the Gargoyles, and it seemed liked the Pegasi were armed with M4 Carbines.

"Take a good long look. Because this is what you'll be seeing in the near future." Samantha said as she looked along with Dempsey.

"W-what do you mean?..." Dempsey asked quiet!y as he turned back to Samantha.

Samantha sighed. "Look, Sergeant. I'm not going to lie to you. This world... This world is damned. All you're seeing here, this is just a small look on things to come." She then stood up and walked to the side of Dempsey, placing a hand on the force field before continuing.

"I'm trying to do what I can to help you and the others to fight the Cryptids, or at the very least contain them until a sort of solution come along, but while you and the others were getting cozy with the equine locals here, I've been trying to find out where that Cricket came from." Samantha said. She then looked down at Dempsey.

"Well, I did. But that wasn't all I found. It turns out.... This place just might have more Arks and nests than you all realize. The amount... It's... Inconceivable, to say the least." 

She then knelt down besides him. "I'm not going to sugar coat it, Grant. This world will fall into the same fate as Earth has. All of this fighting going on right now..." Samantha then leaned in closer until they were mere centimetres away from each other. "Is nothing compared to what is going on everywhere else."

Samantha then engulfed Dempsey in a bright, white and yellow-ish light, making him cover his eyes with his arms until he brought them back down once the light seceded. When he did, he saw a sight that reminded him of the Invasion of Detroit. 

The entire area was basically a city, one that reminded him of Chicago, or Atlanta. Several skyscrapers were covered in flames, ruined by an unknown force, while some were even vined with the huge extended limbs of Hives that were on the streets below, not visible due to the fog and clouds of dust and debris.

The light then engulfed him once more as he was teleported to another location. When he looked, he saw that the location he was now in was in a similar style to Las Vegas or Los Angeles, which seemed to contain similar features as the previous location, but there were much fewer buildings standing, and a huge swarm of what looked to be Gargoyles were flying above the center of the city hundreds of feet above, spinning in a vortex-like fashion.

He was then blinded by the light once more as he missed in annoyance and pain before fluttering his eyes open. When he did, the location he was now in had a striking similarity to San Francisco, including what looked like a resemblance of the Golden Gate Bridge, except that it was sliced in half, as if it was torn with no caution or caring whatsoever, and city's mainland was looked like an unstoppable inferno.

Dempsey was then teleported back to the same location he was before, as if he never left. Samantha then looked at Dempsey sincerely.

"All that you saw... And that was just from one Ark." Samantha said quietly as she sighed and continued. "I want to offer you something, Sergeant. A gift I doubt you'll refuse."

"And that would be..." Dempsey muttered his question, averting his eyes from Samantha's, before she got right next to his ear.

"You died a couple minutes ago... And the others, are trying their hardest to bring you back to the land of the living. The land of the lost and damned." She whispered.

"They know... They know just as well as I do that they can't save this planet from the same creatures that took over ours. They will try. They will try with bravery, vigor, loyalty, and brutality of which the likes these equines have never seen before, and never will..."

"But they won't win. They didn't win before, so what makes you think they will win here and now? Face the truth, Dempsey... They only want to bring you back alive..."

"... So they won't have to suffer alone." Samantha whispered. She then pulled back from Dempsey, looking at his shocked face.

"I can make sure that doesn't happen. I can bring you back to your true loved ones who passed before you. I know you do not want to die in vain. You shouldn't suffer. You don't deserve it." Samantha said. She then stood up and walked backwards. "So tell me, Dempsey..."

"Do you want to be brought back to life? Or do you want me to relieve you of the pain and suffering your hopeless future will hold?..." She asked calmly.

"What?... But I thought... Marcus told ue that that you were supposed to help us!!!" Dempsey shouted.

Samantha shook her head in disappointment. "It doesn't matter if I help you all or not. Either way, you're all damned."

Dempsey shook his head as he clutched his head with both of his hands. "No.. No, this isn't... You're not... Nah, this is all just a game. It's all inside my head..." Dempsey whispered desperately. "All inside..."

Samantha chuckled darkly. "Are you sure about that, Sergeant? What if it's all in mine?..." She taunted.

"No..." Dempsey said before looking back up at Samantha with an angered expression. "No! Fuck you! I won't go! You're just a fucking taunting piece in my mind!! I won't fall for your shit, you whore!"

Samantha looked at Dempsey with a neutral expression as she stood up. "No? Is that your final decision? It's going to kill me to see me kill you all.."

"Fuck you!!!" Dempsey shouted at her, visibly shaking in both fear and rage as he pulled his knees up to his chest. "Fuck... You..."

Dempsey kept looking down at his knees, until he felt the presence of someone moving. He then felt Samantha's cold hand caress his cheek and making him look back up at her. When he did, he saw that her eyes were now black, as if he was looking into a void.

She then leaned in and whispered into his ear. "Wrong... Choice..."

Samantha then dissipated into a blueish-gray cloud of smoke, as them the muting effect disappeared, and the sounds of shrieking and gunshots came to live, making Dempsey jump at the sudden noises.

Dempsey then heard an explosion, followed by an engine whining and loud electric spark sounds. When he turned, he saw that the Little Bird was now losing control, its tail rotor completely shredded as it sparked and whined, spewing out smoke as it tilted towards his location.

He watched in horror as the Little Bird made its way towards him, but before it could crash into Dempsey and crush him into the ground, he was then brought back to sudden blackness.

Followed by a dark, feminine chuckle...