• Published 13th Apr 2013
  • 9,988 Views, 362 Comments

Dead Space: Friendship is Decayed - Edmar Fecler



Twilight and Issac try to survive the horrors aboard the USG Ishimura

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Chapter 5

Celestia assembled her subjects in the library, a grave expression upon her normally calm and regal face. All of the other ponies were confused and slightly anxious at the news their princess would share with them. Shining Armor was pacing around the most, downright fearful for his sister's life. He was casting a pleading look towards Celestia, who cleared her throat, unsure on how she would begin.

"My little ponies," she began hesitantly. "I'm afraid there has been a major complication surrounding Twilight's disappearance. I believe that her curiosity might have gotten the better of her and that she... That she isn't in this plane of existence anymore."

Everypony gasped. Fluttershy started tearing up. "Is she... she..."

"No, she is not dead," Celestia reassured her, "However, much of what I've seen so far indicates that Twilight attempted some form of trans-dimensional observation and failed."

There was silence in the library as everypony processed what she had said.

"But Twilight wouldn't jump dimensions without telling us!" Rainbow Dash exclaimed incredulously. "I mean, the egghead wouldn't do that without preparing at least three checklists or something like that..." The pegasus then noticed Applejack's stern look and decided to shut up.

"I don't believe she wanted to in the first place," the princess explained. "Hence ‘trans-dimensional observation’. She probably just wanted to passively take a look at another reality and overtaxed herself, resulting in her, well… falling through."

Shining Armor was downright worried for Twilight's condition. "But... She could be lost anywhere! How do we even find her?"

"Luckily, I have a pretty good idea where she could be," Celestia smirked in satisfaction, levitating the copy of The Multiverse the unicorn in question had left behind. "Star Swirl left mentions of places he'd visited during his travels, most notably one dimension belonging to Humanity. Knowing Twilight, she would probably start looking there."

Nopony noticed a mint-green head quickly perking up through the window at the mention.

Celestia frowned. "Admirable, but foolish. The humans' dimension operates on physical laws widely differing from ours. I have no idea if Twilight can adapt, or how the humans will react to her presence. Luckily, they seem to be intelligent, so we should be able to reason with them." She closed the book and sighed before turning to the assembled ponies in the library.

"I'm going to try and locate Twilight now. Stand back."

Celestia's horn glowed brightly, a large, semi-transparent mirror forming in front of everypony, who gasped in awe. Reality seemed to distort inside of it, flowing inside of it like water before gradually expanding. A vortex formed in the center of the anomaly, faintly glowing in wide spectrums of light before seemingly tearing open the fabric of space, earning many surprised gasps from the princess' subjects.

The tear expanded and revealed a glimpse into the human world. Several bipedal creatures could be seen milling around an enclosed room from the point of view of what was presumably another one; they could see through his eyes as he moved his armored fingers across some sort of glowing console, which lit up and showed some sort of ship, with parts of it glowing bright red as if to showcase some sort of damage.

Everyone's heart leapt in excitement as the unmistakable form of Twilight appeared before them as she peeked at the unnamed human's console, although clad in a suit similarly to those of the curious bipeds. Pinkie started bouncing excitedly towards the mirror and waved her hooves.

"Twilight! Twi! Twily! Hi! Over here! Hello strange things! Could you say hi to Twi from us?"

"They can't hear you, Pinkie Pie," Celestia told her. "It is but a projection of what is happening right now." The pink pony sat down and pouted.

"I, for one, am glad that she is safe," Rarity said. "They don't seem very intent on hurting her."

"Good for them," Rainbow muttered, "or I would have given them a piece of it."

A harsh alarm sounded on the other side, and the entire room Twilight and the other humans was situated in was plunged into darkness. Fluttershy squeaked and dove under a chair while the rest glanced at the spatial rift worriedly.

"What the hell was that?" asked one of the humans.

"Quarantine must have settled in once the ventilation started working," another one reassured the rest. "Everybody relax."

Something shuffled overhead their heads. The ponies, not really expecting what would happen, fidgeted nervously. They could see Twilight pacing around the human whose perspective they were following, anxiously eyeing the other ones. There was a crash, and the view shifted quickly to the silhouette of one human... and something monstrous behind it.

Everypony gasped in horror as the abomination brought its blades down on its victim. The rest was plunged in total turmoil. Bright flashes emanated from the devices the other humans held, impacting the creature but doing nothing. Another human was sliced in two pieces. There was a shout and a door opened. The human named Isaac and Twilight ran down a corridor for their lives, terrifying roars chasing them throughout; an elevator; they closed the doors; the doors being forced open; and everypony shouting in terror at the abomination standing in front of the unlucky pair, only for it to be smashed to gory chunks by the elevator.

Celestia cancelled the spell abruptly, panting heavily from the psychological toll. The other ponies were in a state of mortified shock. Rarity was trying to comfort a weeping Fluttershy to no avail. Applejack felt sick, her entire face pale as death. Rainbow Dash was lying on the floor, shaking uncontrollably. Pinkie Pie's hair was deflated, her left eye slightly twitching. Shining Armor kept pacing around, desperately praying for his sister's life.

Celestia sighed one final time before steeling herself. "Twilight's in danger," she spoke, although it was barely a whisper. "I'm going to get her home."

________________________________________

The undead infants emerged from the vents. Isaac brought his cutter to bear, slicing through one of them while trying to return Twilight to reality.

"Twi, for fuck's sake!"

One of the lurkers took advantage of Isaac's temporary distraction and jumped onto his face. The engineer let out a cry and wrestled the creature, desperately trying to keep it away from him. As soon as it raised it's tentacles though, Isaac flung it down onto the ground and punted it like a ball, sending it careening through the corridor and smashing against the window.

Isaac turned around and expected to find another baby jumping at his face, but it was smashed to pieces in midair by a magical blast from Twilight, to his surprise. The unicorn said nothing, but kept on moving past Isaac, who resumed his walk towards the labs alongside her.

"You're right Isaac," she rasped. "There's no sense crying right now."

Isaac shot her a quizzical look.

"I can't keep on breaking down in every hard situation," she continued. "Besides, the quicker we go through this, the faster I... we, can go home."

The human kept on staring at her for a while but decided to say nothing.

They returned shortly to the security checkpoint after they had retrieved the thermite. They decided to hide the thermite flask in a locker until they had gathered the shock pad, which Hammond had told them was situated in the Imaging Diagnostics wing of the ship.

The pathway leading down to their objective was silent, their RIGs and Isaac's flashlight the only illumination sources to be found. More signs of massacre painted the walls, but no bodies were found.

The pair tensed at the sound of a dull, rhythmic thud coming down the end of the bend.

Thump

"Did you hear that?" Twilight asked, to which Isaac nodded.

Thump

They rounded the corner carefully.

Thump

At the end of the hallway stood an armless man thumping his face against the wall, his face unseen to Isaac and Twilight. His features were bathed in red from the malfunctioning overhead alarm, making the other survivors fidget uncomfortably.

Thump

Isaac raised his plasma cutter and advanced slowly towards the crazed person, trying to make as little sound as his suit allowed.

Thump- Crack

He never found out what would have happened, as the madman's skull finally fractured under the stress and slid down the wall, his body sounding like nails on a chalkboard as it dragged itself down across the glass window.

The survivors passed the body quietly before entering a large operation chamber, with a dead body trapped in a faintly orange-glowing glass container adorning the middle of the room on a couple of rails. Isaac demonstrated his Kinesis tool activating the elevator up through the lifting of a battery and inserting it into the plug socket, and then moving the entire container across the rails to make them a makeshift bridge across the gap. Twilight noted the process with much interest. While Kinesis seemed like a clumsier version of the standard telekinesis unicorns could achieve, it was undeniably useful for moving large objects ponies couldn't lift otherwise.

The pair followed through a passage and opened the door when the air just rushed past them and was sucked out into a large breach in the next room. Twilight visibly panicked as her suit sealed itself against the vacuum but Isaac put a hand on her back to comfort her.

"Relax, our suits will seal automatically once they detect a hull breach," he said through the suit’s comm. system.

Twilight gasped. Half of the storage room they were situated in had been blown to pieces, exposing whatever had been inside to the unforgiving cold of space. The very space she was staring at right now in awe.

She moved to the very edge of what was left of the room to stand on, so that a single extra step into the beyond would leave her body flying away into the infinite. Before her was literally nothing. The vast empty void of the Universe was stretched before her, black as a perfect night in the wilderness. Scattered amongst this nothingness twinkled the stars, nothing but small white specks dotting the dark canvas. She knew that a single star was titanic in size compared to a planet, but here they were so distant you could barely see them. Twilight loved astronomy, and to see everything form such a point of view was like a school filly's dream come true.

And below her was the majestic Aegis VII. The planet shone a ominous crimson red in the light from the nearby star. She brought up her hoof. The celestial body seemed only roughly eight times as big as her limb from here. The perspective was a bit dizzying, so she brought down her leg again.

Sure, Twilight could already boast that she knew every constellation in the Equestrian skies by heart, or that she was the first pony to have actually travelled through space, but there was something so undeniably fascinating with being in the cold void itself. There were no sounds but the gentle, constant beeps of her suit's heart monitor, no distractions but herself, the constant emptiness of the Universe and her protective RIG to shield her from suffocation and hypothermia. For a little moment, Twilight simply forgot the Ishimura and the terrible flesh eating monsters hunting her, and simply stared in wonder at the spectacle of creation.

"USG Ishimura to Twilight Sparkle, come in Twilight."

Her reverie was aborted by a slightly amused Isaac. She frowned irritably at his interruption but he just chuckled.

"It's quite the spectacle isn't it? Come on, our air supply isn't going to hold forever."

________________________________________

"Entering Zero gravity."

They entered a massive cylindrical chamber. Several free-floating boxes and badly mutilated bodies stood as a reminder to the Zero-G chamber's peculiar physics. Twilight stared around in wonder and confusion at the spectacle. Their objective was clearly in front of them, at the opposite side of the room, but there seemed to be no clear way to cross... until Twilight realized their method of movement.

"We're going to jump, aren't we?"

Isaac nodded vigorously. "Yup! Just push yourself with your legs in the right direction and Newton's first law should take care of the rest."

"Who's first law?"

"Uh... I'll explain later."

Isaac bent his legs and pushed himself firmly in the direction above them. His grav-boots unmagnetized themselves and let the engineer sail gently towards the ‘roof’, twisting his body to align it with what now counted for him as the ‘floor’. He gripped onto the plating and set down his boots again smoothly as they attached themselves to the chamber's walls with a hiss. Isaac straightened himself and waved to Twilight, although upside down from her perspective. She couldn't help but find the situation mildly humorous.

"Alright! Just don't forget to turn around so that your feet face the ground!"

Twilight swallowed nervously and prepared her jump accordingly before pushing herself in Isaac's direction. Vertigo overtook her momentarily as her brain's motor functions were disoriented, but she tried to twist her body in mid-flight. Easier said than done. Her landing was rough as she hit her side against the wall but managed to attach herself back without too much problem. Isaac walked up to her and punched her shoulder gently.

"Not bad for a first time."

Twilight turned her head around everywhere. "Ugh, it's so confusing! We are technically upside down, but I don't feel like I'm facing the wrong way! What are we even standing on? The walls? The ground? The roof? Is there any right direction at all?"

Her confusion earned her a laugh from Isaac. "Don't overanalyze it, Twi. Just roll with it."

A little walk and another jump later, they emerged on the Zero-G storage room and retrieved the shock pads. Thankfully for them, they managed to find some clean water bottles and energy bars in the lockers too, which they devoured greedily. To them, their measly meal felt like a luxury as the chocolate covered müsli bars melted in their mouths.

And Celestia knows I've deserved it, Twilight thought as she swallowed her third bar and moaned in pleasure at the taste.