Chapter IV
Chapter IV
The whole station was in an uproar. Orders were telepathically shouted over the Psytransceivers, captives were all being shepherded back to their cells, and all hands quickly took up battle stations in preparation for what they knew was going to be a major attack on the facility.
There was no other logical explanation for what just happened. Nobody just winked out of existence like that, so there must have been a ship of some sort nearby that had teleported the equine away.
And if there was one ship, there was most definitely more.
Jaleth quickly made her way to the observation deck as thoughts constantly jumped back and forth inside her brain. What happened back there? Was there an fleet nearby? Had the Galactic Alliance finally decided to end this place?
It was a distinct possibility, but that didn't mean that she should blow her cover just yet. I can still make a difference here, and help as a saboteur from the inside, she thought to herself as she entered the observation deck.
But first she needed to know what was happening.
“Give me a status report Gelzok, what's out there?” she asked the male Dridune at the scanner station.
“Completing last sensor sweep... now. All scanners report that there is nothing within range Ma'am,” the technician said, confusion clearly evident in his thoughts.
“...Nothing? Not even from the psychic scanners?”
“No ma'am, nothing at all.”
This was extremely odd. Even if the ship was cloaked, there still would have been some sort of residue, either from their jump drive, or from their plasma engines. They certainly wouldn't have been able to locate the cloaked ship, but still...
“Captain Clysoth, report. What is going on out there?” Qualda demanded through the Psytranceiver.
“Nothing sir, there is literally nothing out there. No cloaking signatures, no jump signatures, no weapon fire, nothing. It's dead out there sir.”
There was a long pause from the Psytransceiver. Jaleth couldn't help but imagine the look of complete confusion on the creepy scientist's face. “Continue scanning. Also check the station scan logs and try to figure out what happened to the specimen. No one simply vanishes into thin air, there must be a logical explanation.”
“Yes sir,” she replied.
“This could not have happened at a worse time... Our yearly inspection is due in a couple of days, and a high ranking Psywarrior is going to be a part of the inspection team. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not have my psyche crushed by his displeasure at losing such a valuable specimen.”
Jaleth felt the bottom drop out of her stomach as a wave of pure terror filled her mind. A Psywarrior? Here?
In retrospect, it seemed obvious that the station that created the Psystones would play host to the Psywarriors from time to time. However, Psywarriors were rare, numbering only in the hundreds. Also, because of the war with the Galactic Alliance, all of them were deployed on the front lines, turning Jaleth's countrymen into slaves of the Dridune.
With these two things in mind, it was no wonder that she was surprised at the appearance of a Psywarrior.
She knew that she had to get off the station before that Psywarrior arrived. If she was probed, the damage that could be done to the Galactic Alliance's spy network would be catastrophic.
True, she had a cyanide 9 tablet in one of her teeth, and she was not afraid to die for her cause.
She would just rather avoid that scenario at all costs.
* * *
Twilight Sparkle was lost.
This was not just any kind of lost either, this was the special kind of lost created when you teleport without any destination in mind.
It wasn't her fault either. The moment that... thing... had psychically informed the room that they were going to vivisect her, she had been understandably freaked out.
Her first pick would have been home. But after hearing that she wasn't even on her own planet anymore, she was unsure if home was even within her safe teleportation range. Sure, she could try, and she might actually succeed. But the chances of her ending up inside out became a certainty after a few thousand miles. If she were to factor in interstellar distances, not to mention the fact that she had no clue which direction home even was, and she would be lucky if she even ended up in the right dimension.
So she had teleported on pure instinct instead. While this had the upside of her not being in danger of facing a live dissection, it had the downside of her not knowing where the heck she was.
From a cursory glance, however, she would have to say that she was in the laundry room, if the smell of soap and the clothes that surrounded her were any indication of that sort of thing.
Specifically, she was probably in one of the dirty clothes hampers.
She was roused from her musings by the mental impressions of the strange telepathy that those monsters used in the place of speech. She froze as soon as she felt those impressions, hoping that the sound of the washing machines had sufficiently masked her appearance.
If those monsters can hear thoughts, then I'm doomed. Oh please Celestia, don't let them hear my thoughts! she silently prayed.
“I can't believe we're on laundry duty again!” she heard one of them say in that peculiar mind-speak of theirs.
It was weird. She was certain that they were not thinking in equestrian, and all she was getting from the squid-like monsters were feelings and pictures, but she could still understand what was being said.
“At least down here we can actually talk to each other,” she heard the other one think. “If we were on guard duty, we would have to stand there in total silence for hours, waiting for-”
The second monster stopped talking as a loud alarm started to sound throughout the room, causing Twilight to flatten her ears against the sides of her head in annoyance.
“Attention! All hands to battle-stations! One of the test subjects has escaped and we have reason to believe that an enemy assault on the station is imminent. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. Report to your battle commanders immediately and secure all remaining test subjects in their respective wards,” she heard someone shout telepathically.
Silence followed the announcement, and Twilight froze again, not wanting to make the slightest sound that could alert the aliens to her location. Seconds past, but to Twilight they felt more like hours.
“What?” one of them thought to the other in annoyance, finally breaking the uncomfortable silence.
“weren't you just saying how boring it was around here? I took this position to be as far away from the front-lines as possible!” she heard the other one think.
There was the sound of a door sliding somewhere nearby, and she could hear them continue to argue, but she lost the conversation as soon as the door closed.
Twilight's head popped out of the laundry basket as she let out a sigh of relief. “Well, that was fascinating, it seems that they cannot hear thoughts, and that their telepathy can be blocked by certain materials,” she said out loud.
She felt pretty secure in her reasoning. If they could hear thoughts, then they would have found her quite easily (she was having a panic attack in the hamper and was sure they could here every bit of it). She also noticed that while the heavy metal door blocked their conversation, the clothes hamper did nothing to prevent her from hearing what was being thought.
She started to climb out of the clothes hamper, but was slowed down a bit by her awkward position. Eventually she lost her temper and just teleported out of the hamper instead.
“Hmmm....” she said as she looked up at the large metal door. She was in clear danger, with no friends, no information, and no fall-backs. If she wasn't careful, these strange creatures wouldn't hesitate to kill her. After all, they were about to vivisect her, and she was sure that while they would find a dead specimen less than ideal, they would still prefer that over a specimen on the loose.
Summoning her magic, she quickly transmuted some of the clothes in the hamper into a clipboard, quill, and a bottle of ink. While not strictly speaking necessary, she found that having a physical check-list helped her organize her thoughts and come up with plans.
And boy, did she need a plan.
* * *
He liked to break rocks. Breaking rocks was something he was good at. Plus, it kept him from trying to think.
Thinking was too hard.
He felt sad when the caretakers had come and taken the purple horse away. Why would that make him sad though? He frowned at this, trying to figure out the conundrum, but quickly gave up. Figuring things out was simply too hard, and it distracted him from his work.
Hopefully the horse would be back, though. He didn't want to forget it like the others.
Were there others? He wasn't sure... but it felt like there might have been others at one time.
Shrugging slightly to himself, he lifted the pickax to break up the rock in front of him when a ear-piercingly loud alarm filled the yard. He felt words and ideas enter his mind, but they were far too complex for him to even guess at their meaning.
The words and ideas made him feel strange however. He wasn't sure why, but they made him feel... happy... for some reason. But happy wasn't the right word for how he felt, though.
The caretakers apparently knew what the words meant however, and started to move towards the ward-mates at work.
“back to bed," he heard one of them say to him. Obediently, he dropped his pickax and followed the other ward-mates back to his bunk. He felt a bit melancholic that he couldn't continue working on the rocks, but he still felt inexplicably happy for some reason.
The feeling was hard to describe. It wasn't the kind of happy he felt at mealtimes, or after he had broken up a particularly large rock. It wasn't even the kind of happy he felt after a long, hard day's work. He couldn't quite shake the feeling that he had felt this kind of happy before, either.
It intrigued him, and he felt that it should have a name that was different than just plain old 'happy'.
It was also surprisingly easy to hold on to the feeling. For some reason, it continued to stay with him despite the fact that thinking about anything was hard. Why was that, though? Why was this one feeling so easy to hold on to, when everything else just seemed to slip through his fingers?
He continued to wonder about this as he climbed into bed. Eventually, he stopped wondering and just continued to enjoy the feeling.
As sleep started to take him, a word bobbed to the surface of his mind. It was a small word, but it held great meaning. It seemed to carry the weight of the world on it, and it was also inseparably connected to the happy feeling that was surging through his chest.
He lied there for probably an hour while he tried to make sense of this word. When he finally fell asleep, it was only because he had finally figured out what that word meant.
Hope.
* * *
He woke with a start. Something was... off. He wasn't sure what it was, but something did not feel right.
He looked around the dark ward for a little bit, but couldn't see what had caused him to wake up so suddenly. Shrugging slightly to himself, he rolled over and attempted to go back to sleep.
He was foiled in his attempt, however, when a bright purple flash appeared on his bed. It briefly illuminated the room and left just as quickly, spoiling his night vision and leaving him blind in the darkness of the ward.
Before he could try to comprehend what he had just seen, he became aware of a presence next to him on the bed. He squinted in the darkness in an attempt to see what the presence was, only to have that question answered when a faint purple glow pierced the darkness, allowing him to see.
Lying in bed next to him was the purple horse from earlier. He couldn't understand how it had gotten in here, but he was glad to see it nonetheless. Why was he glad to see it?
Before he could even try to think about this new conundrum, the purple pony lowered its head and gently touched his collar with the tip of its horn. He briefly felt the skin under the collar tingle slightly, but other than that, nothing seemed to happen.
The pony was apparently satisfied with whatever it had done, however, seeing as how it now wore a self-satisfied smirk on its face. It nodded once to itself, then lowered its head once more.
This time its horn lightly touched his forehead, and for a brief moment, nothing seemed to happen.
Then his world exploded.
Lights, sounds, smells, feelings, and tastes all bombarded him, demanding his attention. It was painful. More painful than he could possibly imagine. Yet it was a good kind of pain, similar to the feeling of poison being drawn from a wound.
After what seemed like eternity, but at the same time seemed like only a second, he started to see images flash quickly in front of his eyes. It was like watching a movie played at super-sonic speeds.
It was all so very confusing, but he found that he could still keep up with everything that he saw and heard. The images were alien, but at the same time he couldn't help but feel as if he had seen all of this before... It felt so familiar...
It suddenly occurred to him that he was seeing someone's life flash before his eyes. Just as that thought bubbled to the surface of his mind, he also realized that it was his life that was flashing before his eyes!
Just as quickly as it had started, it all suddenly came to a screeching halt. The pony's horn stopped glowing, and he felt the tip of it remove itself from his forehead.
Groaning slightly to himself, Lieutenant Captain Zachery Hale shook his head to clear it from the last vestiges of the drug that had robbed him of his free will, then looked up at where he thought the strange pony would be. He then said the only thing that seemed appropriate at the time. The only thing that fully conveyed everything that he was feeling right now.
“What the heck?”
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2959461 thanks for the suggestion! I changed how the telepathic conversations look, and I hope that it improves readability.
woot! the ward broke 100 views!
3083831 Yes, this time around it was easier to see who was talking/thinking. Unfortunately I'm terrible with names so I can't help you there.
As for the rest of the chapter: it ain't bad, and at this point I'd say the story proper is beginning. I don't remember if it was mentioned before, but are the ponies aware of all these aliens? If not then Twilight is taking it pretty well. Regardless I'd expect her scholarly nature to be asking all sorts of questions trying to understand the situation.
And just a reminder for the future: don't make Twilight overpowered. Yes she is smart and has strong magic, but it won't be much fun if that trumps everything. Maybe you could tie it into those psychic abilities to even the odds a bit. Or show her magic clashing with technology, which would also give our new human an actual use. An Achilles Heel usually works well to keep a character's power in check.
Hmmm, yes, the potential here is delicious. If you ever find yourself stuck or wanting a pre-reader I'd be happy to help.
3084657 I would love a pre-reader. thanks for the offer.
do I e-mail the chapter to you? or do I give you a password or something? a few hints would be nice.
not really sure how pre-reading works of fim fiction.
as for the whole overpowered thing, thats actually something I hate in animes, where one character becomes so ridiculously overpowered that it leaves all the other characters wondering "well, what the heck am I supposed to do?" so I'll be doing my best to keep that in check.
As for twilight taking things well, no, ponies are not generally aware of space aliens. She would actually much rather study everything with a microscope then do what she is doing right now. But the clear and present danger is keeping her focused on the present.
trust me though, "study everything" is on the list that she just made.
3084892 An easy way for writers and editors/proofreaders to work together is for the writer to put the chapter in Google Docs and send their helper a link to it in a private message.
For me this is very interesting story
waiting for more 
Consider the idea of different languages for prisoners I know it may be difficult but it will be worth it
2956963
There was this old game but I can't remember title
You play as alien in world that everything was control and in one point you end in prison
It was point and click adventure
...
...
...
...No can't remember
Two hours of searches but I have found it
"The feeble files"
Check it out the prison part is similar to this story
3094904 trust me, different languages are on the list of ideas to use.
Also, I really had no idea that anything like this had been done before. Literally I fell asleep, and had the first two chapters as a dream/nightmare.
thanks for the fave by the way, man. hope I don't disappoint you guys with where I take this.
3121528 thanks for the advice. Really, I intend to do a lot more "show" in later chapters. I actually re-wrote that one chapter 5-6 times before it was even halfway decent. I still don't think I did that one right, but it's the best I've got right now.
I'll probably come back to it later and fix it, but If I kept working on that one chapter, I would never get any further in the story.
3084921 nevermind about the prereader, A friend who's a writing major just offered to preread for me, but thanks for the offer though!
perhaps... Not a good idea, but I'll throw it out anyway. 'Ignorance is(nt) bliss'?
3094342
remembering's too hard, aint it?
3269471
This story is criminally under viewed. The writing isn't world shattering, but the premise is very original. I think The Ward was a better title, unless they're going to escape soon. The current title is bad; wordplay in a title evokes comedy and does a SciFi adventure no favors in attracting readers.
“I repeat, this is not a drill”
How can he repeat without saying it once before?
“well, that was fascinating
Capitalize well
“He felt briefly sad when the caretakers had come and taken the purple quadruped away
Thinking is hard, so I’ll use big words instead of pretty purple pony. Hihi, 3 P’s. Oh. I made funny.
“so far I've had no luck, but hopefully you guys can give me a hand in this area?”
Calling it “Home“, now that would be creepy.
Lots of good world building, and proper exposition.
You’re one of those guys who feel irked by common plot holes in sci-fi, no?
made it over here, so far its really good, gonna keep reading
May he be as badass as Nathan Hale.
6149383 what if its the great great great great something grandson of Saxton hale?
6442900 Team Fortress 2, this person gets it! Now time to punch some hippies.
A fleet
seconds passed
"weren't" should be capitalized
could hear
I am like, 70% sure there's no such rank as Lieutanant Captain. Perhaps you meant Captain Lieutenant?
6149383 long lost bro maybe
A fleet, not an fleet o.o