Dseran Legacy - "Uncontrolled Emergency Landing"

by Icy Creation

Chapter Three - The Group

Well, anyway, as he walked out the door, he dissipated the pyrokinetics, seeing that he wasn't in any danger yet, and not really being willing to cremate her where she stood anyway. He walked through the halls, taking note once again of this last remaining example of just how amazing Dseran architecture and design really was. Looking at the golden flowing lines in the white silver walls, the light orange glass floor, the floating lights in the shape of a flat diamond, with borders of hardlight and outputting a pure white light, the lights embedded in the floor producing a more natural light that, combined with the light of the ceiling lights, made the colors stand out more.

Dseran engineers, designers, architects, they all had a sense of... Form? Style? Perhaps a better term would be aesthetics, actually, yes, aesthetics. They had a sense of aesthetics that most of the civilizations in the galaxy today lacked. Although that never made the creations less efficient, or less functional, but rather flowed with the function. The gold in the walls concealed the wires, and was not in fact pure gold. More of a gold carbide, or something similiar. The walls reflectivity made them immune to laser fire, with a bit of assistance from the material they were made of. The floor was not normal glass, but psionically infused glass to allow Teren's energy when he channels through the ship to more easily pass to the amplification psi circuitry. It was also reinforced, so as to not be liable to break in case of boarders. The lights were floating purely because they could be, but it was more efficient to use hardlight projectors for entire halls of lights, then to make them individually out of more materials. The floor lights were put there so they could run off an entirely different power source and circuitry system than the ceiling lights. Nothing the engis and desis did was done out of pure function or out of pure aesthetic value. Even the maintance shafts were a blend of function and form.

However, if I started off talking about how other still living civilizations tended to lack this quality, I would get so sidetracked we would never get back to Teren, so I won't. Anyway, back to Teren. As he walked down the halls, on the way to the nearest inter-deck wormlink, he stopped for a second, remembering something. Something very important. Something that there is no good excuse for having forgotten.

Half the ship was buried and flooding, and the rest was on fire. Not counting a few upper decks, like the bridge deck he was on.

He realized this meant he would probably have to go get the flight assistance device (A jetpack, pretty much. Something that most Heights hated, almost on instinct, because of its function being to fly for you. Flying on your own, without tech to help, was something that most Heights, from an early age, were taught to be only good way to fly, unless you are flying the void. In which case they were taught not to be idiots, in other words, not to try using their wings in a vaccuum, where there is no air to breath in or fly in.). He sighed, going back to the flight con of the bridge deck (He often fell asleep here, and by often, I mean he had not once used the beds himself.) and bending down under the captains chair, pressing a blue and green button, before telekinetically levitating a small ring out of a compartment and levitating it between his shoulder blades, just under his neck on the back. The outer edge of the ring flashed blue for a moment, before glowing bright green and extending tendrils into his back, attaching to his spinal cord, then extending two hardlight "wings" to either side, ten feet in length on each side, glowing, aside from with the cyan light of the hardlight, with a faint purple light of psionics at work.

Many of the technologies of the Dsera were psionically boosted or assisted or just functioned based on psionics entirely. This didn't pose a problem for non psions, for reasons that are irrelevant here, because Teren is a psion. A powerful one, actually.

He winced as the tendrils attached to the spinal cord, but the pain quickly faded. He did a quick flight check, hovering in the air with faint pulses of purple energy coming from the bottom of the "wings" and the ring glowing with a bright orange glow. The non glowing parts of the ring are made of the same material and have the same look as the walls of the interior of the ship. He flew around the room once, doing a flip, testing the manuevering, the height adjustment, the forward, sideways (One of the very few advantages over winged flight), backwards, and diagonal propulsion, then landed back on the ground, de-genning the hardlight for now. He looked at his wing, noticing it had healed a bit, but was in no way in any condition to actually fly with yet.

He siged, dissapointed at having to use tech flight instead of manual flight, but left the room anyway, walking back down the hall to the hangar, opening the door and stepping through.

He looked at the... colorful... pony sitting in the room, still with a bit of a confused look on her face, though less of one now. She reacted immediately to his entrance, looking over at him and then looking back at the hangar exit, the one that led outside, not the one leading into the ship. "Come on! Follw me, I don't have much time to hang around here, and I'm not leaving you here to do... whatever you are planning on doing. You might be planning on... I don't know, blowing up the town! So you're coming with me!" She had already flared her wings in preparation for takeoff, ready to jump.

He looked at her, tilting his head, a bit... Confused? I don't think that's right, but that's the best I can think of to explain it. He untilts his head after a moment, noticing her looking a bit impatient, walking over and just deciding to go with it for now. "Um. Okay, sure, why not. And I will give you the gift of me ignoring the fact that you just assumed I might be evil, without any evidence to back it up. Don't go too fast right now, I'm flying on assisted prop, my wing is too injured for manual flight. On three? Or just go?" He lights the hardlight wings, pre-firing the forward propulsion, keeping himself on the floor by counterfiring the back propulsion and downwards propulsion.

She looked at him, her eyes showcasing her surprise with size as she obseves the assisted flight device, looking back out to her destination. "Go." And as she takes off with a rainbow trail, Teren stops counterfiring and shoots off just behind her, though the AFD is nowhere near as fast as she could go, so she has to slow down a bit from her usual pace. "You know, that thing on your back, whatever it is, is really slow compared to me. Can't you make it go any faster?" She asks this as she slows to be flying beside him, looking to the side, seeming a bit impatient and annoyed at having to go so slow.

"Well, unfortunately, no. I wish it could go faster as well, but this thing is nowhere near as fast as any natural wings are. I apologize for a shard of metal lodging itself in my wing while I was hurtling through the atmosphere at supersonic speeds, just barely keeping concioussness due to the Gs I was taking." He had said that last part sarcastically, though not in a way that would seem rude, rather seeming more like a joke than a retort. Although truly, it was the prouct of him being a tad annoyed at the winged pony.

This was not unusual over the past seven months, as "a tad annoyed" in this context is roughly equivalent to how annoyed you get at a fly buzzing past you. Most things in the galaxy were things he got annoyed like this at, and it was really no different than his normal emotions at this point, it having become so common.

She tilted her head at him, before deciding to not ask any questions just yet, and looking back ahead and speeding back up so she was leading them again. And pretty much the rest of the flight passed in silence.

---

Thirteen kilometers- approximately- later they finally reached the others. The colorful one, the one who decided it would be a good idea to take him to the others now instead of just waiting for later, called to the other five as she got closer, saying something in a language that sounded somehow familiar to him yet was completely incomprehensible at the same time. He had no way of knowing that this language that they were speaking was a nearly exact copy of pre-interstellar Earth's english. The language spoken by the Dsera was not english, and the language spoken throughout most of the galaxy was mostly known, at least it would be known as this in our language, as human basic. He looked around, not having landed yet, but just hovering off to the side.

He saw a large creature in the distance walking around in the forest, with a tail with a large stinger on it and bat like wings. Its fur was a pale golden color, and it had a orange fluff of fur encircling its neck, along with upwards pointing exposed... Fangs? Tusks? Really big teeth that stick out for some reason? Not sure. Anyway, yeah, I think that anyone who has even seen the first episode or read a story following the events of the show from the beggining know what I'm describing. And this should let you know how far along their journey to the old castle they are. He however, knew nothing of any journey of any sort being undertaken by these six, and just really wanted to know what they planned on doing with him.

He had been feeling a strange... Sensation... since he entered this worlds atmosphere. He knew what sense was sensing it, but had absolutely no clue what it was. Normally when his Senser genetics sensed a psion nearby, it was like a locational... Buzzing... In the back of his head. This wasn't what it actually was, but it was how his brain interpreted it. From the "loudness," and the "pitch," and the "direction," and the "closeness," of the "buzzing," he understood the exact location of any psion within a half a million kilometers, and the rough location of any within a lightyear. This sensation was coming in through that same sense, but it was... Different... Instead of a "buzzing" it was more like... I don't know... Like a slowly pulsing sound of an ocean on a calm day. Much stronger in the "direction" of the purple one with the horn and the dark purple hair, and the white one with the horn and the purple hair...

And in the "direction" of the pink one that was... Bouncing on her tail? Sure, why not. In that "direction" was something else entirely... And then he jumped... Or whatever the equivalent when you are flying is, as the "sound" he felt in the pink ones "direction" was very, very clear, very obvious laughter, and a energetic sounding female voice saying "Oh, hey there, who are you? Do I know you? Do you like cupcakes? Everybody like cupcakes, what am I talking about, of course you like cupcakes! Where are you anyway? Are you that flying man over there? Oops, was I not supposed to know that word? Sorry, can't take it back now, want a cupcake? I think I ha-" And then he cut her off by forcibly cutting out that sense, because she was talking so fast it was giving him a headache. He tried to block out the memory of... Whatever just happened (I may have accidentally let her know about the word "man" when we were talking earlier.), and tried to focus on other things.

Like the fact that the light purple one was seemingly gesturing for him to come down there for some reason. He decided that if anything happened he could deal with it, so he descended slowly, before touching down on the ground and immediately degenning the hardlight wings. Having them active made him a bit uncomfortable, a typical thing when it comes to Height Variants. He looked at each of their faces, before looking at the light purple one's face. Of course, with his eyes, he saw much deeper than simple appearences. He also took the chance to study the cyan one's face, since he never really looked in depth at it, and so didn't really notice anything that could tell him anything about what she was thinking.

Of course, he also noticed the fact that literally everyone there aside from him, at least he assumed, was female. This didn't really mean much to him, as he didn't really care what gender someone was. Typically. Unless caring could save someones life, or save his own life, or other such circumstances, but that was relatively rare.

He saw that the pink one was... Very happy even considering the surroundings appearance, and the rest of the groups expressions. He was confused, but chose to ignore it for now, deciding to figure it out at a later date. As for the white one, he couldn't exactly read her expression, though it seemed to be something like... Confusion? Maybe. Or disgust, or perhaps... I'm not entirely sure what her expression is displaying, myself. As for the one with the hat, well, first he was very confused about an equine wearing a cowboy hat, but decided to let it go for now, noticing her expression was, not blank, more like, studying. Studying him, his expressions, probably trying to figure out what he wanted and what he intended. He turned to the other one with wings, though it appeared that she was a tad, or much more than a tad, timid as she was at that moment hiding, although ineffectively, behind a thin tree, attempting to blend in with said tree. Somehow, surprisingly, she actually was doing a pretty good job of it, even his eyes almost passed over her, thinking her a part of the tree for a brief moment. She was terrified, and it was visible in her expression.

He looked back and up at the one who he first encountered, her expression seemingly unconcerned, even confident, but he could also see flaws in the partial falsity, as with all of them, with the notable and utterly confusing exception of the pink one, there was an underlying fear behind all of their emotions. And he had the feeling it wasn't all towards him, either.

He finally looked at the light purple one, who was standing in front of him, looking at him with seemingly barely restrained curiosity, alongside the same underlying fear, and something else as well. A faded coldness in her expression. Only faded, not gone, because if it was gone he wouldn't have seen it. You can't see something that isn't there, no matter how hard and deep you look.

He can tell that she wants to ask him a thousand questions, and that is a lower estimate, but he also notices that she realizes they don't speak the same language. The light purple one turns to the first one, saying something. The one in flight says a single short word in response, the light purple one looking a tad dissapointed. He decides to simply do what he had done with the first, but doing the opposite transfer. Linking her mind, he took (Without taking) her knowlege of their language and copied it into his own mind. There was something that seemed very, very familiar about it, but he didn't know exactly what still. He unlinked, the whole process having taken less than a half a half a half a half a half a half a second. He decides to listen for a moment before letting them know what exactly he had done.

Light purple, "Hmmm... Rainbow Dash, didn't you say that he could speak? I haven't heard him say a single thing since he got here, in any language."

The first, now known to Teren as Rainbow Dash, "Yeah, he's being really quiet for some reason..." She looks at him suspiciouslly, "I wonder why..."'

The one with the hat spoke up, "He dosen't seem the kind of pony to do anythin' of that sort, Rainbow."

Rainbow replied, "Of course he dosen't seem like that kind of pony, Applejack, he isn't a pony!"

The one who Rainbow called Applejack thought for a moment, before conceding that Rainbow had a point. "Ya know, you're right, he ain't exactly a pony, now, so we can't exactly judge him by our standards can we?"

Dash, glad she had gotten Apples to see her point, replied, "You see! What if he is planning on... I don't know... Blowing us up? We should just leave him deeper in the forest, it should take care of him itself."

The light purple one looked both shocked and a bit angry when she put her thoughts out, "Look, Rainbow, we can't just go and leave him out to die in the forest without actually knowing anything about him first! What if I decided that you might be dangerous and just took you out here, erased all your knowledge of the forest, and left you!?"

Rainbow looked a bit shocked, before thinking for a few minutes, looking a bit less confident than usual as she replied to the question, "Well, I mean, yeah, you put it that way..."

As soon as the pink one began talking, Teren immediately stopped listening, not wanting to deal with the absolute pure confusion of that memory yet. He looked around, before realising that the large creature from before was much closer now. In fact, it was standing just twenty, maybe thirty feet away, staring right at them. And he was the only one who had noticed it so far, the others all still listening to the pink one.

And then it started preparing to charge.