//------------------------------// // Chapter 5: Prep (Rewritten) // Story: Destination // by Cyanjames2819 //------------------------------// Kelly sits in her own office; stripped of her powered armor. The room was dim but bright enough for her to see her journal on her empty desk. Its cover was hard and brown with leather, it had a little tail like black ribbon pocking out from the bottom of her personal book and was closed shut with a leather strap. She just stares at the book for a few more moments before she sighs and grabs it. She takes the strap off and opens it to the very first page and reads the slightly shaky writing. If she should ever fall Who will stand and lead us all? She is our Guardian Angel She is our sword of light She is our hardened shield And she is the Demon to the enemy She is our savior She is our leader She is our beacon of hope in the darkest hour Who will stand tall and lead us all If she should ever fall? She wasn’t too sure if the Keeper was talking about her own fall or someone elses’ fall, maybe no one at all and he just really liked the little poem, but she was sure to keep up with her own job to protect and serve her people. She reads the page again and gently runs three of her fingers on the cover of the page, sending her back to her early childhood when she lost her arm and rested in one of the Medical Wards’ recovery room. She lay on the bed, facing the ceiling, both pain and the constant beeping of a machine keeping her awake. She couldn’t stop herself from thinking about the Peace Keeper that saved her life from an explosion, even if he knew there was little to no chance of her possible survival rate. Yet, he willingly threw himself to save her, and now here she was… resting and waiting for the doctors and nurses to come back to give her the news about her condition she already knew. She ever so slowly turns her head to her left and looks at the large bandage on her shoulder, her missing arm lost in the explosion. She was sure she had a glimpse of her arm while they were evac’t, her and the Keeper to the ER; quite literally burnt to the bone, being held together with nothing more than cartilage and what remained of her muscles. She was terrified of living a life of not having a flesh and bone left arm, or the scar that will permanently be there to remind her; she was now a handicap. The door slides open quietly with a soft hiss, earning her attention as she sees a lab coated doctor, a nurse, and lastly her father. She wanted to cry on her fathers’ shoulder when he got closer, but it was too painful to simply sit up on her own, so she just lets the tears slide down her cheeks as she stares at them. Her father quickly goes around the bed and squeezes her only hand, leans in and kisses her forehead for ten long seconds. The kiss alone was almost enough to distract her from the pain. She smiles up at him, “Thanks, daddy.” She speaks just above a whisper with a dry voice. The nurse plucks out a tissue paper from the stool and gently wipes Kellys’ tears away, “There, there, sweetie. You’ll be all right.” She says in a motherly tone to try and comfort the child. Kelly looks down at her bandaged shoulder sadly, “Will I?” she replies and turns her head away from both doctor and nurse and looks out the window into the empty park. “Angel…” her father gently says, earning her attention. He takes out a leather book from within his uniform, gently lifts her hand and rests the book down, where her palm was before. “Before the Commander past he wrote on this empty journal and wanted you to have it.” He finishes. Kelly looks down at the book with the best of her effort in wonder at her new journal. She then reaches out on the edge of the bed and squeezes the fabric, causing the little touchpad to flip up from the side. She presses her finger onto the screen, taking control of the whole bed and slowly rises up the top half of the bed, gently letting her to sit up. She stops the climb halfway and returns her gaze back down onto the book. She picks it up to her lap and with a bit of a struggle, takes the strap off and opens it. With a little surprise, a dog tag slides off the page and onto her thin blanket. She gently grabs it and rubs away the ashy surface with her thumb, only to be met with a distorted surface, caused by the extreme heat. It must have swung around his back to reach me. She thinnks to herself then looks down at the journal and silently reads what her savior wrote before his pass. On that day, a spark flickered, igniting a small candle to light her way to her destiny. She has done everything and anything to reach her destination, and will continue to walk the road not taken to keep her fellow endangered species safe and sound, even if it meant sacrificing her own life to do so. She grabs onto her two dog tags, her own and the unknown. She has etched her destiny onto her own stone, now set for all of her natural life, if only a little sadly. She stands up from her seat and walks over to the right side of her office where her tools, equipment and gears sat on another table. She pulls up a stool for herself and looks down at her antique arm on the table. She then grabs a few of her tools from the tool box to her left and starts taking it apart as her little tags dangles from her neck. She smiles as she works, thankful she was given another day-off after yesterdays’ event. On the back of her mind, she always wanted to be an engineer or a mechanic, even when she was a little girl. Now, in her own little world, ribbons of her dream came true in her little hobby. It felt good to be young again, making nick-nacks and little gadgets, or even fixing up other stuff for the fun of it. With quick “Oh!” she searches around the table, and with a smile she grabs a small remote from where she left it and presses ‘Play’. Neon blue lighting lights up around the room as Alternative Rock begins playing without vocals, as well as other beat heavy music in her playlist. Her smile grows a little more before she goes back to work on her old arm. The Captain casually walks through the halls as he made his way to the Medical Ward to check on a couple of patients. He was beyond thankful that Kelly got back from her mission with only a few scratches on her armor, and that her cracked visor stayed intact throughout the whole crazy event. His wife would most likely be as, if not, more so worried for her daughters’ wellbeing as well if she was here, but he won’t get in her way to do her job. She knew her limits, but that doesn’t stop him from worrying, though, he does his best to not show it in front of her. She always seems to get jumpy and falter with things when she knows he’s on edge. As any follower would if they see their leader starting to falter and crack. Not long after, he reaches the Ward, nods at all the doctors, nurses and patients going about the sterile environment at the moderately large waiting room. He goes up to the front, ring like desk where a couple nurses were working, typing on keyboards while looking at a screen, directing patients where to go and speaking through their earpieces. He clears his throat, gaining one of their attention, “Hello, Ms. Can you point me to where I can find a Peace Keeper under quarantine?” he asks nicely. Her small smile widens and presses a key to the side. After a moment of waiting another nurse comes in through a double door and waves for him to follow her. He smiles down at the mute, office nurse with a nod, “Thank you kindly.” he says before following the other nurse through the hall. After going through corridor after corridor and to different parts of the large connective buildings they finally reach their destination after a couple minutes; in front of them was an airtight, airlock that was made to withstand a direct hit from an dozen explosive, RPG shots. Alien pathogens are taken seriously here. In fact, this part of the building will spray everything in the Q-Building with a type of flammable liquid and gasses, then spark and combust every nook and cranny into flames hot enough to turn anything flammable into ashes within thirty seconds and into nothing after a minute. Then the vents open to the vacuum of space for six hours to make sure everything is eradicated. If all else fails, the building will be ejected off the ship, rocket off in the distance and explode like a small nuke. Hopefully, it’ll never happen today. There are good people in there keeping everything in check to prevent such an event. Princess Celestia walks the halls of her castle without her armor, her little mechanical friend following along by her side. Her subjects were up and about to do their jobs on maintaining everything in and around the castle; tending to the wounded and sick, cooking, prepping for another battle, etc, etc. She nods and smiles at all her subjects that went by, some old and others young, then she comes across her old Dining Hall. It was converted into a storage room for all their food, water, medical supplies and as well as a bit of kibbles for their animal helpers. She sees her former student inventorying everything they have left, and she was sure the young mare was thinking up another schedule to conserve all of what they had left, though, with so many injured and mouths to feed, those supplies were dwindling quite fast. She walks up to her former student, “Good morning, Twilight.” she greets with her trademark motherly tone. The young mare jumps a little, engrossed in her work before being interrupted by her former teacher, causing her to drop her paperwork. She looks up at Celestia, “Oh… Pri-Ce-Celestia. Good morning.” she replies and gathers up her work from the floor hastily, not realizing that she had magic. “Do you know how long we have left before our supplies are finished?” she asks the Princess-in-training mare. Twilight checks her notes uncertainly before answering, “Less than five days, m-maybe sooner if a situation arises.” she answers solemnly. Celestia sighs and looks around the large room as ponies came and went with food, water, medicine, etc. They needed to resupply everything they had, but the city before them had dried up, picked clean from everything, not even a single barrel or bottle of alcohol could be found within the pubs. They needed to travel to another town to restock, but the changelings are too much of a threat to let her ponies go on by their own without her, and she needed to stay put to look after everything sense her sister is bedridden. She needed another well rounded, experienced lead- With a spark of realization, she looks at her little companion inspecting all of the supplies they had with strange lights coming out of its chest, inspecting all the items closely as it held them with great interest, trying to find out the greatest secrets of a jog of orange juice. Celestia just hopes they are willing to help her with the job she requires of them. A quick pit-stop in Ponyville shouldn’t be too hard, right? Besides, she needs to make sure if there are still ponies in that little town that were left behind when the invasion started. The Captain smiles at the Keeper within a thick, glass room, still wearing his torn armor and suit as he walks into one of the dozen or so rooms of the Q-Building. All the doctors and scientists were up and about like ants around the room, working overtime on their first patient. He also sees a woman and a little boy up against the glass, smiling and talking with his Keeper. When the protector sees him, he quickly stands up from kneeling and salutes at attention. “At ease, Privet.” he says as the small family turns to him, the boy holding onto a crewed drawing. The Keeper nods as the short boy stares at the Captain in awe. He smiles at the boy and ruffles his hair playfully. “I-is he going to be okay?” the woman asks a little nervously. He looks at all the people in the room and walks up to their chief scientist directing them here to there. The lab coated woman had blond hair fixed into a bun with a few streaks of silvery gray, had a pair of thin glasses and, to be honest with himself, looked quite beautiful in his eyes, even if she was almost as old as himself. When she sees him going to her, she smiles and adjusted her glasses, “Good morning, Captain West! A surprise to see you here.” she greets happily with a slight British accent and puts her hands in her coats’ pockets. He fights hard not to blush with a straight face, and he was grateful he didn’t embarrass himself this time around. He clears his voice, “Good morning to you too, Dr. Sandlers. How is our patient doing? Are there any alien deceases in his body?” he asks and checks behind him to see if the visitors were eavesdropping. “Yes,” she answers bluntly, which in turn causes him to worry a little about an outbreak and the mans’ life, but she continues, “though, it’s a little surprising his immune system is winning very quickly.” she turns and waves for him and both walk over to a monitor jutting out of a wall. It turns on by itself to show their progression. “We took small samples of the new pathogen from our host and did some tests to see how dangerous it is. So far most of our antibiotics work very well to hold back and eliminate the infection; some other medicines work as well but not all of them. With our hosts’ help, we managed to identify the symptoms as well as follows; slight dizziness, minor headaches and low fevers. Nothing serious but it’ll effect the host nonetheless with their daily activities. We activated his suits’ temperature function to heat his body a little more to help fight off the decease, so all he needs is some rest for a couple more days in the containment to keep an eye on him.” she finishes with a smile. “Oh… well that greats to hear!” he looks around a little more before he leans a little closer to her and whispers, “Have you checked with the other patient?” She nods a little and nudges her head to the door to let him follow her out. The captain tells the good news to the young woman before going out with the good doctor. When they get into another room a few halls down from the Keeps’ own containment, the room was the same size as all the others, though, this time the glass container was built like a tank, imbedded in a wall. The people going about work in here were different; zoologists, insectologists, xenologists, paleontologists, and many other scientists he guessed were important. On the other side of the thick glass wall was a moderately sized, white room containing their first ever, alien creature. It was jet black, insectoid alien that tried to infiltrate their home. Its carapace was smooth, elegant and jagged at some points, its wings were translucent with wavy lining to keep it all together and was about the same height as him, though, a just a few inches shorter. Its large, cool blue, compact eyes were pretty much staring at everything as it twitches its head from to and that, its own childlike interest showing. Its overall head shape was close between their new alien friends and their dogs; long and sleek. Its stick like body was smooth and at the end of its limbs - except its right arm - had strange holes. Thankfully, it wasn’t using its primary weapon at the moment. It seemed more confused and curious than anything else. Both himself and the doctor walks up to the cell. “This bipedal, insectoid creature is rather interesting and strange to say the least. Just like the ants or termites, this is their flier or scout.” the alien creature takes interest in them and goes up to them warily. At a closer look, the captain notices it had three staples on its lower jaw, near the base where a crack was visible that ran all the way down with dried, green liquid or its blood sticking onto its natural body shield. “Commander did some damage on the poor thing.” he says while leaning in a little, but jumps back with a surprise as it suddenly presses its left, three fingered and two thumbed hand onto the glass in lighting speed. The doctor giggles, much to his embarrassment, “They’re quite fast as well. It’s simply amazing our Keepers actually kept up with them with their fast metabolism and quick and sensitive nervous systems, but I do wonder how its main weapon of an arm works exactly as well. It might prove useful in the future.” she checks her data-pad and presses and slides her fingers onto it, “We scanned its body earlier while it was unconscious and we repaired its mandible. There was nothing abnormal in particular that was detected, but we don’t know these things quite well, but by what we know about how life works in general it was normal. Though, its potential energy output in its weaponized arm and a little bit on its own body as a whole was quite high as well as its aura of magnetic field and it had quite many nerv endings and a smaller brain-like system in the arm as well, leading us to assume it had complete control on how it forms and shoots bolts of plasma. Its cranial brain might be four-fifths the size of our own but that doesn’t mean its dumb. To actually perform such a-feet as forming and shooting plasma suggests this creature is smarter than it appears…”. With a flash of green like flame, the creatures’ appearance changes into an exact copy of the good doctor and mimics what she said with the same tone of voice. “To actually perform such a-feet as forming and shooting plasma suggests this creature is smarter than it appears…” it finishes, leaving the captain dumbfounded for a moment as he stares at the mirror image of the woman. “We’re still trying to figure out how it does that as well but we’re coming up empty. Very nice vocal cords, though.” she smiles and waves at it and it mimics her with the same gesture. “We figured out how to expose their illusional cloak though.” she taps a short video feed through her pad and gestures the device to him and it shows it was in thermal; the creature standing in front of the blue glass as straight as a human than slightly hunched over. He looks back up and sees the same woman standing within the containment. “This’ll be very useful, Doctor Sandlers. Thank you.” he gives the device back to her and she nods with a bright smile. “You’re very welcome, Captain.” she replies happily, feeling a little prideful. “So… any ideas on what’ll happen if it escapes? I mean, I know we had insects as large as household pets at one point on our planet.” he asks warily. “It’ll most like pass out after a few minutes. Our air mixture is not that different from the planet itself, it’s just a little more dense and compact than our own. The little room inside the containment is imitating the environment down on the planet to prevent it from falling unconscious.” she answers and checks her touchpad. “Captain?” a feminine voice speaks up through his earpiece. “Yes?” he replies and looks to the side. “The leader of the alien city is… tapping the lens of our Crawler. She seems to want to have a word of helping them restock their supplies.” The female operator says. “What makes you say that?” he replies, a little confused. “Well, the Crawler just found their supply room by following the leader and the supplies themselves seems very low… and because she keeps pointing at their stuff and showing us a map to a nearby town…” In honesty, it kind of amused him that their new friends figured out how the Crawlers worked to some degree just after a day, but a little bad at the same time because he needed to postpone his Commanders’ day-off to another day. He sighs and turns to the pretty doctor, “Duty calls. I’ll see you anther time, Doctor Sandlers.” he says with a smile and turns to leave. “Soon, hopefully!” he hears her yell back with a giggle before the hatch door behind him closes, making him blush as she effectively broke down his mental barrier with a couple simple words. As he starts going down the hall while trying calm his blushing cheeks, he calls up his girl, “Commander Kelly?” “Yeah, Captain?” she replies. “Our new friends need a little… assistants on moving to a small town and back to resupply. It seems they dried up their city.” “Yeah, there was pretty much nothing left edible in the buildings I and Ms. Snowlet investigated.” “So… are you up to it?” he asked a little nervously. “I don’t have much to say in the matter, dad. You are my commanding officer.” he hears tools clattering about as she puts them away. “Yes, but you’re still my daughter, Kelly. Your feedback is still important. What do you say?” After a moment of silence, she eventually replies, “I can’t trust someone else doing this job for me, dad.” she replies. “Okay, I’ll see you at Docking Bay Three, than.” he says before changing the feed, “Send a reply to the leader.” he commands. “Of course, Captain.” a feminine voice replies. Celestia watches as their little friend projects out a screen of their planet in blue and their visitors’ ship as white; a small ship going down onto the planet, following a line of dots. At the bottom of the screen were two rows of twenty long rectangles and the one at the bottom right corner blinks once before splitting into five small squares and blinks ten times before going out and moves onto the other square. “Hmm… ten second blinks… sixty seconds with each rectangle… Oh! They should be here in twenty minutes!” Twilight says in amazement and felt a little proud of herself that she deciphered what the hologram showed and tried to tell them. Celestia looks down at her former student, “Can you gather up your friends for the trip to Ponyville?” she asks. Twilight looks up at her with confusion, “Um… not to be a little rude but… why me and my friends?” she replies. “Because you six know the town better than anyone in this castle, Twilight. Yes, I know there are Ponyvillian civilians in the castle, but I’m not sending out even one of them because they’re not equipped and experienced in battle. As far as I witnessed, you and your friends are the best team to lead some of my guards out there, without question.” she puts a comforting hand on the young alicorns’ shoulder with a motherly smile, “I have complete faith in you and your friends, Twilight. I trust you to make the right calls out there with our new space-age friends.” she finishes but kept her hand in place. Twilight takes a few deep breaths with closed eyes before nodding up at her former teacher with a smile, “I won’t fail you, Celestial.” she says before wrapping her arms around the white alicorns’ waist in a close hug, her head resting right under Celestias’ large mammarys. The Princess giggles and returns the hug in kind. “I know you won’t, Twilight.” she replies as she uses her wings to hug the shorter alicorn as well. The doors open to the War Room as five mares walks in and stands around the roundtable. They all looked okay, though, Rarity was still a little peeved that she had a week of cleaning duty with an old maids’ outfit after her little stunt with a visitor and had a tongue lashing of a lifetime by Twilight herself, a little bit by the rest of her friends and the Princess. They didn’t say anything else after because the poor mare was embarrassed enough with all the whistling she gained by the local stallions. Doesn’t help that the frilly skirt only reached down to the mid of her thigh and had the tendency of sliding up in the middle of her work. At this point, she was sure she flashed at least a dozen or so ponies while on her hands and knees. “Good morning, everypony! I have orders from Princess Celestia for today.” she announces. “Do I get to take this tacky thing off?” Rarity hopes and Twilight nods. “So… what’s the news?” Rainbow Dash asks from Twilights’ left with crossed arms. “We’re going back to Ponyville.” she replies with a calm voice, “We’re going home, everypony.” Than a sudden puff of pink smoke and streamers blows up right in the middle of the table with a tune of a kazoo sounding out, “We’re Going Home!” Pinkie screams as she bounces on the spot with a party hat atop her curly and puffy pink mane while squealing like an excited filly.