The room was a sea of darkness save for the single shaft of light in its center. In its center was a single table, upon it lay a lone pegasi mare, unmoving except for the steady rising and falling of her chest as she drew breath.
Surrounding her were several hooded figures, clicking and chattering amongst themselves as they focused on the subject before them. One of the figures reached down and picked up the pegasus’ wing, now severed from its body. With the help of a second, it extended the feathery appendage while a third ran a blinking device over its entirety.
The clicking and chattering intensified as they discussed what the readings told them as a pair of glowing yellow eyes observed.
Unknown to these figures that were masked by darkness, a pair of cherry red eyes, unseeing but aware, stared into the blinding light and blinked. From them a single tear flowed.
It was a perfect day. Not too warm, not too cold. Just the right amount of clouds with a soft, gentle breeze. Perfect.
“AJ, can you toss me the tape-measure?” I called out.
“Sure!” I guessed she said since she had three nails in her mouth as she continued nailing in the beams that would become my cabin’s rafters.
It had been a few days since construction began, and things were proceeding at an impressive pace. With the help of Big Mac, the foundation was completed quickly the first day and the basic framework of the structure finished the second. While AJ was working on framing out the roof, I was cutting the floorboards, and passing them off to Twilight, who looked ridiculous in a yellow hardhat and oversized safety glasses, so she could install them using her magic.
“Tall stuff, y’all got any more nails down there? I’m fresh out.” Applejack called out from above.
Putting down my hand saw and placing the pencil behind my ear, I looked over to where the pail of nails sat, and found it empty. Rainbow Dash should have been back by now. I thought, glancing down at the watch on my wrist, confirming that only two hours had passed since I had sent her off into town to get more.
“Dash hasn’t come back yet with more,” I told Applejack.
“Well, ‘am not that surprised that she hasn’t come back yet, she probably got distracted by sumth’n.”
“Well, we can’t do any more work without them, why don’t we call it a day and go get something to eat,” Twilight said, levitating her PPE off her head and placing them on the makeshift drafting table. “I’m sure we’ll find her somewhere in town.”
After I helped Applejack down, the three of us started walking towards town.
“Thank you for the lumber, Applejack,” I told the orange mare.
“It was goin’ to waste anyways, Big Mac ordered too much when we built the extension onto th’ barn.” She told me, “You can pay me back with some sweat equity come applebucking season.” She continued, a sly grin creeping onto her face.
“Now, Applejack, that’s rather opportunistic of you,” Pinkie Pie said, now walking beside me.
“What the fu… Where’d you come from?!” I exclaimed, startled by the sudden appearance of the pink mare.
“You get used to it,” Twilight and Applejack said simultaneously.
“Pinkie, I thought we were going to see them together, why’d you run off?” An out of breath Fluttershy called from the distance as she flew towards us.
“I saw them walking this way and I thought I’d go and walk with them because that's what friends do and I wanted to ask them how the work was going--TAIL TWITCH!” She said suddenly as she tackled my chest, forcing me onto the ground as a pail of nails dropped from the sky and landed precisely where I was walking.
Staring up at the sky, a single cloud drew my attention; The tortoise with a helicopter strapped to its back circling made it difficult to miss.
“I think we found Rainbow Dash,” I said, drawing the attention of my companions towards the sky. “Pinkie, ya mind?”
“Oh,” She said, getting off my chest. Those of us who couldn’t fly watched as Twilight and Fluttershy flew up to the cloud. We waited as the two winged mares looked as they were trying to wake her. After a few minutes, I saw Fluttershy fly off towards town faster than I had ever seen her move as Twilight levitated Rainbow Dash down to the ground bathed in lavender magic.
“She’s hardly breathing!” Twilight called out, her voice full of concern. “We have to get her to the hospital!” She continued with panic slipping into her voice.
Picking up the surprisingly light pegasus in a fireman carry, I started running towards town in a dead sprint.
The tone in the emergency room waiting area was quiet, but you could cut the tension and worry with a knife. In a corner, Fluttershy sat with tearful Scootaloo, trying to keep her calm as a white unicorn with a dark purple mane burst through the door.
“Where is she? Is she alright?” Rarity asked, practically crying.
“Rarity, calm down, Dr. Horse and Nurse Snowheart are with her now, they’ll let us know shortly,” Twilight told her, trying in vain to hide her own concern.
“Well, you won’t have to wait much longer,” A new male voice said as Dr. Horse walked into the waiting area. “Rainbow Dash is recovering, but it was fortunate that you brought her to us when you did.” He explained. “She was in what we call a hypoglycemic coma. Her blood sugar levels were dangerously low and she was close to death. We’ve given her a glucagon injection to raise her blood sugar, but she’s still unconscious.”
“She seemed fine when she was helping us this morning,” Applejack told the doctor. “But she was a little tired. We all thought it was because it was too early, least fer her.”
“Thank you for letting me know, but for now I must apologize, she can’t see any visitors at this time. Why don’t you all go home and get some rest.” The doctor told them, then turned to me. “Lieutenant, a word?”
Standing up from my chair, I watched as Twilight ushered her friends out the door. She gave me a worried glance, then left herself. “What do you need, Doc?”
“That thing you had, you wouldn’t happen to have it with you?”
“Yeah, I do.” I told him, pulling my tricorder out of the back pocket of my jeans.
“I’m sure I can count on your discretion, but I need your help.” He told me. “I didn’t want to cause a panic, but we have a bit of a medical mystery on our hands. Rainbow Dash isn’t the first pony to come in with her symptoms, and there are others with varying other issues that have all come in over the last three weeks. The common theme is that they all have been tired, exhausted.” He explained. “They all claim that they’d been getting enough rest, but all of them show signs of sleep deprivation.”
“Lead the way,” I told him, and he brought me first to Rainbow Dash’s bed. The rainbow maned mare had a tube down her throat to assist in her breathing and a IV with fluid inserted into her foreleg. Activating the tricorders medical scanners, I ran it over her still form, and all the data I got only confirmed what Dr. Horse had told us: hypoglycemic induced coma. “What the hell?”
“What is it?”
“Did you do anything to her wing?” I asked.
“No, her wings are fine.” He told me, confusion seeping into his voice. I translated the read out and turned the tricorder to face him. On it’s display was an image of bones near the joint on her back. “That? That’s from where she broke her wing two years ago.”
“No, not that, this.” I told him, magnifying the image. Now clearly visible was a line transecting the bone.
“That… That’s impossible, it’s like somepony…” Dr. Horse started to say as his voice trailed off. He walked over to an instrument tray and grabbed a razor in his hoof and shaved away the fur revealing pale, beige skin. Right where he suspected, there was a ring of irritation in the skin that circled the entire wing. “Somepony surgically amputated the wing and reattached it.”
“Who would do something like this?” I asked, turning off the tricorder’s medical scanners and inadvertently activating its passive scanning suite, causing the device to give off an alarm. Scanning Rainbow Dash again, the readings I got confused the hell out of me. Something about it seemed familiar, but I just couldn’t place where I’d heard of these set of circumstances before. “You said there were other patients.”
“Yes, this way,” The doctor told me, leading me into a general recovery room with eight other ponies. I walked up to the first bed, where Berryshine had identical symptoms as Rainbow Dash, then the second and third beds, where two unicorns were showing bacterial infections around their horns, all of them showing the same reading: tetryon particle exposure.
“This isn’t possible.” I said, “All these ponies have been exposed to a particle that just doesn’t exist naturally in our reality.” Acting on a hunch and remembering where I had read about something similar to this before, I tapped my newly replicated commbadge. “Scott to shuttlecraft Goddard. Computer, search Starfleet mission logs… late twenty-three sixties, for any reference to tetryon particles and medical experimentation.”
“Working.” The computer’s female voice responded. “Logs located. On stardate 46154, starship USS Enterprise, NCC-1701-D, while charting the Amargosa Diaspora globular star cluster attracted the attention of solanogen-based lifeforms residing in a tertiary subspace manifold with newly enhanced sensors. Instances of crew abductions and experimentation by these lifeforms occur in these logs. One fatality recorded.”
“Forward all logs to my tricorder.” I ordered.
“Can I see the log about the fatality?” Dr. Horse asked, his voice solemn. Handing over the translated log, the doctor read it, then gave it back. “Exactly the same.” He told me. “Yesterday, an earth-pony was brought in having been found dead in his home after not showing up for work. Autopsy showed that his blood had been replaced with some liquid we’ve never seen before, but according to these logs, the liquid has the same chemical makeup.” He explained. “What the buck its going on?”
“I can’t answer that, but what I do know, we’re in danger.”
In that dark room, beneath that unbearably bright light, lay a young unicorn filly. Her bright pink and purple mane appearing almost as dull as her grey coat under this harsh light.
“This was all you could find? A CHILD?!”The figure with glowing yellow eyes yelled. “I will help you free yourselves from whatever realm this is, but I need more than this mere youth! This one has not even realized her destiny! Her magic is weak!” All that he got in return was a intense smattering of clicks and chittering. “No matter, soon with my power returned, we will leave this place."
Opening his mouth, his white fangs glinted in the light as he inhaled a stream of pale green energy from the young filly on the table. When he was done, he stretched his arms, audible cracks emanate from his joints, power and life returning to his frail frame.
“Send this one back, I want no more death. One cannot rule over a populace of corpses.” The figure said, stepping into the light and giving a sinister smile. “Equestria will be mine.” Lord Tirek vowed.