• Published 28th May 2013
  • 11,209 Views, 852 Comments

The Nautilus Protocol - Knight Breeze



Twilight wakes up to find herself trapped in an alien research facility and must find some way to escape!

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Chapter X

Chapter X

Hivanti nodded to himself in satisfaction. “Now that that little trouble-maker is out of the way, I can concentrate on those escaped animals,” he said to himself.

With an air of smugness, Hivanti readjusted his circlet, then delved once again into the mindscape.

* * *

The attack came without warning.

One minute, everyone was looking at Donny's dance with bemused expressions on their faces, and the next they were all doubled over in pain.

“What the heck is this?” Donny screamed at no one in particular.

“I can feel it in my head! The Mindstealer is inside my head!” Alik yelped.

Hexomer and several others keeled over in pain instantly, thrashing about and unable to say anything beyond tortured screaming.

Captain Hale was in pain. His world seemed to explode around him as he heard a voice whisper in his mind. It told him to do things, to take his gun and slay the others. To tear them to pieces with his own hands and drink their blood...

He watched in abject horror as his arm slowly raised itself, its weapon systems coming on-line of their own accord. He could feel the invading presence's glee as Hale sighted down poor Donny, the anticipation clear in its mind...

No! I'll not become your puppet! he screamed in the silence of his mind.

Slowly, his arm powered down, thankfully obeying his command.

He looked down at his arm in disbelief, pain still shooting through his skull. No one has ever been able to resist the orders of a Psywarrior for any length of time before.

Yet somehow here he was. Resisting.

“How is this possible?” he gasped in pain.

Then, just as suddenly as it had come, the pain stopped.

Hale dropped to knee, panting heavily. Once he had caught his breath, he glanced around at the others. “Is... is everyone okay?” he asked everyone one by one in their native tongue.

That is, he asked everyone until his eyes fell upon Twilight.

* * *

The quickness and strength of the attack had taken the purple pony quite by surprise. It was a vicious, brute-force attempt at breaking into another's mind that lacked any sort of finesse. It was clear that the mind behind it usually got what they wanted, when they wanted, however they wanted it. It was petulant, forceful and needy. It was also highly intelligent, crafty and ruthless.

The mind felt strong. Extremely strong. The best analogy Twilight had for the mind assaulting her was a professional boxer who didn't care if they fought dirty.

It was arrogant too. Blueblood level of arrogance, except this mind actually had the power to back up that arrogance.

The invading mind's arrogance, however, was the only reason that it did not notice that Twilight had only briefly been incapacitated by the assault. This gave her just enough time to perform the mental equivalent of a parry: In her mind, she imagined a copy of herself doing exactly what the attacking mind wanted her to do. That done, she took a small portion of the power at her disposal and used it to trick the attacking mind into attacking her mental construct instead of her with a variant of the 'Want It, Need It' spell.

With that out of the way, she then took a mental step back to examine the power that was assaulting her and her friends. What she found was... disturbing.

The attack was designed to disengage the victim's personality from control of its body. She assumed that the next step after that was to take control of the victim's body, but she couldn't be sure unless she let the assault take its course.

Luckily for her friends, her True True Self spell was still in effect. While the original purpose of the spell was to cure her friends of Discord's influence, it had a secondary function: It protected those under its influence from further tampering.

She was extremely happy to see that, even though the spell was designed with Discord in mind, it still worked against this alien power. As long as she and her friends fought for control, the enemy wouldn't be able to control them.

The scientist in her was fascinated at the alien's power; The ability to control another was difficult, even with magic. To be able to do it without any apparent magic was a miracle!

However, the pony in her was absolutely horrified. Just like Chrysalis or Discord, these Dridune were attempting to subvert and remove the most fundamental truth of sapient life.

She had questions, but now was not the time.

Now was the time to act.

Reaching out with her will, she exercised a small portion of her power and slapped the mind controlling her imaginary self. She then broke the illusion and the attached spell, allowing the invading presence to see that it had been duped.

She felt the consciousness pull back, ceasing its attack against her friends and turning all of its attention towards her. She felt its confusion at what she had done. She also felt a small worm of doubt enter its mind.

She couldn't let it escape and plot another attack against her and her friends, though. It was crafty, and might use that craftiness to physically hurt them instead of mentally.

She needed to distract it just long enough for her to construct a trap.

Quickly, she reviewed what she knew about the invading force as it tentatively poked at her defenses. It was crafty, sure. But it was also extremely arrogant. If she could somehow appeal to that arrogance, and anger it, she might be able to distract it long enough.

She needed something that would draw its attention. Something that could be infuriating, confusing and illogical, yet could not be ignored or denied.

Unbidden, an image floated to the top of her consciousness, one that made her grin uncontrollably.

* * *

Hivanti was perplexed. Here was something entirely new; somehow, these animals were resisting his attempts to usurp their minds, albeit at great personal cost.

He could feel it, though. The strength that they had was not their own. Some force was weaved into their consciousness, making it so that the only will that could be exerted upon them was their own. He was attempting to chip away at it, but it felt like the mental equivalent of hardened steel: it would take time to gain any degree of control.

Then, without warning, the one mind in the group that he thought he had control over suddenly struck back at him.

He quickly realized that the equine had employed some sort of strange mental construct to protect herself from his intrusion. The attack hadn't actually hurt, it just surprised him. It felt weak, as if the user had only just become a Psywarrior.

He had trained plenty of Psywarriors in his days, and he knew a feint when he saw one. It was clear that the mind was trying to get his attention; but for what, he had no clue.

curious... he thought to himself as he pulled back his assault on the others. Tentatively, he poked at the mental defenses of the strange creature. It was soft, pliable, yet whenever he would touch it, it would strike him with that same weak attack.

"Clearly this needs to be investigated further..." he said to himself.

“Boy, you can say that again!” he heard a bubbly voice say in his ear in Chimeric.

Quickly, he turned his astral projection to the left to see who had dared interfere with his thought process.

Next to him was something that he never thought he would see in his entire life. It was vibrant, pink, and four-legged, and was currently busy bouncing next to him, Its darker, poofy pink mane and tail bouncing right along with it. It had comically large, extremely expressive eyes that were a brilliant shade of blue, while on its flank there appeared to be a tattoo of some sort that depicted three round objects with what appeared to be string trailing from the bottom of each. On its face it wore a broad, almost manic expression of glee that seemed to stare into his very soul.

“Who, or what, are you?” he asked it as he mentally probed the strange creature. It seemed to be a mental construct of some sort, but somehow it felt far more real than just a simple construct. There seemed to be a real personality behind the mad grin that was being directed towards him.

“My name's Pinkie Pie! What's yours? Oh wait, don't tell me. I'll guess! Is it Deep Sea? How about Cthulhu? Oh! How about Captain Meanie Pants! On account of how you seem to be such a-”

“Begone,” Hivanti said, dismissing the construct with a wave of his hand. On command, the construct dissipated into nothingness.

“Now then, where was I?” he said as he refocused his attention to the mind in front of him.

“I believe I was just about to introduce you to my pet Gummy! Say hello Gummy!” Pinkie said in Hivanti's right ear. As she said this, a pair of strong, yet toothless jaws clamped down on his projection's facial tentacles.

Hivanti almost jumped clear out of his trance at that.

“What in the name of the Emperor!?!” he shouted into the mindscape as a small reptile went flying from his face.

The PInk One deftly caught the creature, then stuck it in her hair without missing a beat. “Oh! You have an emperor? What kind of emperor is he? Is he wise? Foolish? Does he wear footsie pajamas to bed? Oh! I bet he's constantly scowling like this!” the pink pony said as she quickly put her face into the most mocking scowl that she could muster, all while the small reptile in her hair began to chew on said locks.

Quickly, Hivanti pooled his ego and hurled it at the offending pony.

“No one mocks The Emperor!” he shouted at the offending construct.

As the psychic attack struck the annoying pink specter, it broke apart at the seams, leaving behind nothing but the fog of the mindscape.

“Finally, maybe now I can-” he started to say, but was interrupted as a loud noise and streams of confetti seemed to explode all around him.

“WOOHOO! PARTY TIME!” Pinkie shouted as she fired her party cannon.

Hivanti turned and glared at the evil pink apparition, his astral projection glowing ominously, burning away the imaginary confetti that covered him.

“Awe, don't be such a grumpy grumps. I know what you need! Cake!” she said as she somehow produced a large, frosted confection from her mane.

That was the last straw for Hivanti.

“I. WILL. NOT. BE. MOCKED!” he screamed, each word punctuated by a psychic attack directed at the bubbly pink pony.

This attack was designed to not only destroy the construct, but to also erase the mind behind it. It was his most devastating ability; If used, it would leave its victim a vegetable.

However, as the hellish fire reached out to engulf the pink pony, Pinkie somehow managed to dodge the rage fueled attack. This only seemed to infuriate the Psywarrior more, as he continued to throw attack after attack at the manic construct. Each frantic attack missed though, as the pink pony bounced further and further away from Hivanti, her mouth constantly babbling insanity as she moved away from him.

On and on they went. She would continue to babble at the increasingly wrathful Psywarrior, while he continued to chase her, his attacks becoming increasingly more frenzied. Finally, after what seemed like hours, he had finally cornered her.

He held up his glowing fist, pure rage flowing through his whole being as he towered over her. He was going to erase this figment, track it back to its place of origin, and erase the mind that had created such a demonic idea.

“You have nowhere to hide you annoying little-” he started to say, but stopped as the realization suddenly hit him.

He had cornered her.

In a place that was supposed to be completely devoid of walls, floors and ceilings.

“Well, not that this hasn't been fun, but I really need to get going. The Cakes are letting me practice my piping in the morning, and I have to tell everypony that Twilight will be home soon! Bye bye!” she waved as she faded from existence.

Hivanti quickly looked around, his confusion and alarm mounting. While he had been chasing the strange being, a large maze seemed to have been quietly constructed around his psyche, imprisoning him within. He quickly discovered that the maze's construction didn't seem to follow any sort of euclidean logic.

Oh, and the walls seemed to avoid any attempt he made to destroy them. In fact, any attack he made just seemed to loop around and strike him in the rear.

“Banthis dung,” he said after several of these failed attempts.

* * *

Gotcha, Twilight thought as the door of her trap swung closed. Quickly, she reinforced the borders of the planair maze with magic and constructed the exit.

While she didn't want to make one, she still had to in order to complete the spell. That was the weakness of binding magics; you had to put in some sort of key or method of escape, otherwise the spell would fail.

Hopefully, the Psywarrior wouldn't find the exit or break out before she and her friends managed to escape.

After she finished wrapping up the prison, she sent it back along the Psywarrior's link back to his body, effectively imprisoning him within his own head. She wasn't sure how long it would take him to break out, but she wasn't going to take any chances...

* * *

“What do you reckon she's doing?” Donny asked Hale as he slowly approached the unicorn.

Hale scratched his head in wonder. “I don't know. On a guess however, I'd have to say it has something to do with the fact that we're not being mind-raped right now,” he said.

He examined her closer. The unicorn's eyes and horn were both giving off a brilliant white light, while her body seemed to be releasing quite a bit of heat. There also seemed to be an almost electric quality in the air, something that he could almost taste.

Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. Twilight groaned, then shook her head to clear it.

“What the heck was that?” Hale asked her carefully.

Twilight's head snapped up at the sound of his voice, then quickly looked around at the others who were all staring at her. She blushed at the sudden attention and looked extremely flustered.

“I... um...” she said, then took a deep, cleansing breath. “I think we were just attacked by a Psywarrior,” she said.

“No crap. That's not what I asked. What the heck was up with the glowing? And why were we able to resist the brain-stealer's control?” he asked her gruffly.

Twilight looked up at him, shocked by his hostility. “Well, to answer your second question first, The spell I cast on each of you earlier strengthened your minds against any effect that would change your mind against your will,” she told him.

Hale looked stunned. “You... you can do that?” he asked her in awe.

“To answer your first question, I was glowing because I was fighting the Psywarrior,” she told him. “I managed to trap him in a magically constructed maze, but I'm unsure about how long it will take him to break free. We need to hurry and get off this station while he's occupied,” she told him as she got back up on her hooves.

He looked down at her in awe and fear. “...seriously? You... you actually managed to out-brain a Psywarrior at his own game.”

She looked at him, unsure about the reaction she was receiving. “Um...Not sure about the terminology, but yes...” She started to say, but then shook her head. “Look, I know that you probably have about a million questions for me. You probably have some fears that need to be answered as well, and I would love to answer all of them. But now is not the time. For now, you just have to trust that I'm your friend, not your enemy,” she said as she stomped one of her hooves on the metal deck plating.

Hale's face became an unreadable mask as he scrutinized her. Nodding once, he turned to Donny and gestured his thumb towards the taken apart console. “I'll accept that for now Sparkle,” he said quietly. As he talked, he started walking after Donny, his remaining arm swinging wildly to help him keep his balance. “Based on your past actions, I'll trust that you're on our side,” he said as he received his other arm from the engineer. “But know this: Most species don't take kindly to others messing with their minds,” he said pointedly as he reattached his arm.

Twilight gasped at him in shock. “I would never even consider anything like that!” she said in horror. “It would break one of the highest laws of ponykind! To take control of another's mind...” she trailed off when she noticed that Hale wasn't paying attention anymore, and was instead addressing the other escaped prisoners.

These people must have been fighting this war for a very, very long time to be this suspicious of their own allies, she thought to herself as she sat down on her haunches.

She hoped to one day change that.

Author's Note:

Welp, here is the next chapter! I know I said that I would have it to you after finals, but I couldn't leave you guys hanging for that long. I haven't even sent this off to my proofreader yet!
...which means that it's probably crap...
oh well...

As always, comments, criticism and concerns are always welcome, as long as they are helpful. Any "u stnk dnt rite enymor." comments will be ignored with extreme prejudice.