An egg had laid dormant in the Everfree Forest for centuries, basking in magic that it had never experienced before. Then White Lightning disturbed it, and the creature - the xenomorph - inside was awoken.
An egg had laid dormant in the Everfree Forest for centuries, basking in magic that it had never experienced before. Then White Lightning disturbed it, and the creature inside was awoken.
The ovomorph - the 'egg' - in turn, held a member of the species manumala noxhydria, known colloquially as a 'facehugger'. White Lightning would find herself waking up after a mysterious gap in her memories, and with a bit of a sore throat and wild hunger.
Heading back to Ponyville, as she had only been in the Everfree on an assignment from the weather team to tackle a few rogue clouds that seemed to be heading their way, she promptly bought lunch and ate five complete hayburger meals accompanied by large fries and a soft drink. Experiencing some minor chest pains, which she assumed was because she had eaten so much (though was still strangely hungry) she headed back home to see if she had some sort of medicine for this.
She collapsed in her home above Ponyville. Something unknown burst out of her chest. Xenomorph XX121 ran away, somehow gliding down to the outskirts of Ponyville lacking any wings or gliders.
It could feel. Magic coursed through it. It felt... different.
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Thoughts rushed into its head. Everything was warm - so cozy and warm. Echoing noises emanated from outside this strange chamber it was kept inside; people talking, perhaps? It didn’t know. It couldn’t recognise them properly. As time passed slowly, thoughts that were less primal, less instinctual began to form over time. It knew this was wrong for some reason. It knew it shouldn’t be having real thoughts, thoughts of more than just Hunting, Expanding, and Protecting. It liked it though.
Why is everything black?
I’m so warm. Why is it warm?
Am I being born?
I’m inside my mother, aren’t I?
Is she talking?
Mum? Can you hear me?
Mum?
It’s okay. I’ll be out soon.
We can talk soon, mum. It felt itself grow at dramatic speeds. It felt so slow, as if it had been forming for years, but some sort of internal clock told it that this wasn’t true. It had only been a few hours. Knowledge flooding into its infant mind from an unknown source told it that it was forming much faster than anything else in the universe; this knowledge that flooded in buried active, primal parts of its mind, leaving them dormant, sealed away by sentience, unable to scream at it that it should be Hunting, Expanding, Protecting.
I’m coming, mum.
We’ll be the best family ever!
Something feels wrong.
No! This feels… better?
What are those voices?
They’re growing quieter.
Being - smothered? A feeling injected itself into his rambling train of thought, filling its mind, filling its very soul, with a feeling of balance and harmony. It felt its brain, or at least its equivalent, begin to change. The priorities that it started off with, the very same that still very faintly commanded it, and those voices in the back of his head coming from some sort of gate or leak in its brain, altered themselves. Or, tried to.
Pain. Immense pain. Nothing else existed. There was only pain. That was the only feeling there was. That was the only feeling there would ever be. It was going to die. It was going to die without having achieved its precious goals, its Hunting, Expanding, Protecting. If it could beg for mercy it would’ve, but instead its only clumsily cobbled together thoughts were intelligible screaming, filling it-
The pain stopped. The instincts had grown even quieter, only able to be heard if it really paid attention, if it silenced itself totally in order to listen. It had no wish to do that, however. To add onto this, the gate that let the multitude of voices attempt to speak to it or to each other had been all but closed, as if the only thing propping it open was a single stick, barely holding it open. Knowledge, however, continued to flood its mind in even larger quantities, multiple languages filling it in less than an hour, values piercing through it in two hours, and basic - even advanced - morals making themselves known to it in three.
As it began to know, it shut down, still forming brain unable to handle it all. The knowledge stopped, and it was dormant for another few hours as it grew constantly. It woke up only as it began to secrete an enzyme subconsciously, softening the material around it, breaking it down. Over the course of a minute or two, it began to hear moans, and then screams, horrible screams of unbearable pain. The screams made it wiggle uncomfortably, before instinct surged and propelled it forward, thinking brain shutting down as it tore at the blackness that wrapped around its vision.
The screams came into clearer focus quickly.
And then, it was all bright. It was all too bright. It hissed at the bright, bright, bright, and scrambled down, digging through the soft material below it. It was falling suddenly. It could feel the air rushing around its body. New instincts took over for another brief second and, as its senses stopped being overwhelmed entirely, it flew. The wind rushing through its hard mesoskeleton slowed down to nearly nothing, and it - it was gliding downwards.
In the distance, it could perceive an orchard. At the rate it was falling, it decided that that was the best place to land, and began to really absorb the information it had been filled with, stewing over it all. It felt dirty. It resolved to take a bath in some sort of river or lake near the orchard, or somewhere. Then it would find its mother and apologise for running away when the mother had clearly just birthed him.
The information given to it by - something? - had overridden chunks of its knowledge about its own species. It had no idea of its life cycle, or of a few of its abilities, or of its biology; it would ask its mother. Mother would know. After minutes of thinking, and thinking, and thinking, it landed softly on the dirt of the orchard on all fours, settling for a second before breaking into a brisk walk onwards to a nearby river.
Things crossed its mind, not many of those things overly important. As it made its way over to the river and doused itself in the water, submerging and swimming before breaking through the topmost layer of the water and taking a hissing breath, it felt the substance that had been quickly drying wash off quickly. As it was cleaned, it swam to the edge of the water, heading slowly - at its own pace, nothing rushing it - towards a barn. Civilisation.
‘Ponies,’ it thought, not entirely knowing why it knew what those were, ‘that’s what I’m going to encounter here. Ponies like my mother. Maybe they’ll know her. Maybe they can help me get back to mum?’
It was nearly silent as it walked, approaching the group of buildings that made up the place, which it could feel in the notches carved into a sign a few feet away was Sweet Apple Acres. It decided it wanted a gender. It settled for male, feeling that it would be easier to be a good son than a good daughter for his mother, his precious mother that he felt so bad for abandoning.
He… needed a name. That’s what he had realised in the minute it took him to walk up to the door of the main building of this group that made up what he assumed was Sweet Apple Acres. He really, really needed a name. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t live life without one, but it just felt wrong to go unnamed, to just be a creature. He could think and feel and, he was sure, talk, and any creature with that degree of sapience should have a name.
At least, those were his thoughts on the subject. For now, he would wait until his mother could name him. She was his mother, after all. It wouldn’t be right - even with his degree of intelligence he was gifted with at birth - if he simply named himself while he had a loving parent waiting for him. Those instincts he had been given to replace the Hunting, Expanding, Protecting that had penetrated his every thought in the first few hours of his existence told him that it was the parent that named the child, and not the child that named the child.
Confident in this, he raised an arm - or a foreleg, he wasn’t sure - and knocked three times before lowering his - he had decided it was an arm - arm down to the ground. “Be right with ya,” shouted a voice with a thick cowpony accent from behind the door, “jus’ bear with me for a couple’a seconds!”
He drummed the claws on his right arm against the wooden stoop, creating a hollow tk-tk-tk-tk, tk-tk-tk-tk sound. It felt strange to call the front limbs of his body arms and the back limbs legs when he was most comfortable on all fours, but something told him that they were his arms and that his legs were… he wasn’t sure; no, he knew, he just had to find the word deep in his head, in the information he was still subconsciously sorting through.
‘Digitigrade legs are what I have,’ he thought, ‘that’s what they are. Wait, I’ve never practised speaking before… I… probably should, just in case I don’t get my message across properly to Ms Cowpony-Who-I-Assume-Is-A-Farmer.’
The muscles in his jaw flexed for a second. He immediately realised this was the first time he was actually moving that particular section of his body. His tongue ran over his sharp, sharp teeth softly, and then began to flex as well, meeting some resistance when it neared the top of his mouth. Instinctually, as his tongue brushed against it, his jaw shot open and he hissed as he built up force for something that he thought he should know about but was instead a mystery to him. After a half second, an inner pharyngeal jaw blasted forward before retracting back into the top of his mouth.
‘...what.’
Then, as he finished that very confused thought, he knew. Once again buried knowledge surged forth and he knew what it was, what the purpose of it was. Killing. The structure was entirely for killing. He opted to ignore it for the time being and pretended it didn’t exist. After all, he knew, somehow, that killing was wrong; so, so, so very wrong. Instead of considering the inner jaw, he flexed his tongue. He opened his mouth again.
He hissed out something that was a word. Probably. If you had a really good imagination, it might’ve sounded like something… maybe.
If he had eyes instead of whatever the hell his senses were composed of, he would’ve blinked in surprise. He hissed again lowly, though it was meant to be more of a grunt, realising that it made perfect sense that he didn’t really know how to talk. He knew the language fluently as it was one of the many subjects that had been injected into his mind as he formed inside of his mother, but he had never actually spoken it, and would have to get used to it.
The door in front of him opened, surprising him slightly as he had not been paying any attention, submerged in his own thoughts, to reveal an orange, female earth pony wearing a brown stetson, dried sweat matting her fur. Her eyes shot open in a panic as she took a millisecond to register the creature standing in front of her with too-sharp teeth and too-sharp claws and - what even was that head!
She spun around. He watched on in curiosity, closing his open jaw; he truly had no idea that his appearance was predatory and terrifying. He registered her muscles tensing, and then he stumbled back in surprise at the pain, snarling at the prey that had dared to hurt him, the true apex predator, she would suffer, she would bow down to the hive and would harm him and his comrades in the swarm no more-
He took a sharp, hissing breath, and was calm. He would ponder that outburst later. For now, he had to calm the pony down, who had turned back around and was snarling at him in turn, head low, digging one hoof against the planks that made up the floor in a show of dominance. Reining in the instincts that told him to snarl back and to tear her to pieces for thinking she could harm him, he raised up one hand slowly and non-threateningly, spreading the four claws outwards and leaning downwards in a show of submission.
The pony froze. She had thought that it was a predator that had come for her and her family, but she knew of no predator that would submit itself straight away, especially a predator strong enough to resist one of her bucks without any obvious injury. She stopped pawing against the ground and glared at the creature, as if daring it to do something. So, he did.
He nodded slowly, and placed his arm carefully onto the dirt, rising up, though still on all fours as to not appear too large in comparison to her. He opened his mouth again - making the pony flinch at the sight of his many deadly teeth and long, thick tongue that seemed to be covered in an obvious, odd, thick saliva with hints of toxic green - and began to speak in a garbled voice, throaty but at least able to be heard properly.
“HHHHHello, Ms Cowpony,” he hissed out, sounding like he had smoked twenty a day for the past twenty years, just without the gravelly yet soothing undertone, “ssssssssorry for the s-surprise…”
She blinked, no longer able to say that she wasn’t completely and utterly confused. She knew that this was no Everfree monster now; the farm and orchard were near enough the forest that she knew the creatures that lurked inside like the frog of her hoof. The question, however, was what was it, exactly? She had never seen this kind of creature before. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, apparently to the amusement of the creature before it, and responded rather eloquently.
“‘Scuse me?”
The creature chuckled - a grating, hissing noise. “I,” it cleared its throat, “said, I was sorry for the surprise. Y-You know, the one where you k-kicked me in the face?”
The earth pony was marvelling at the fact that this creature could talk, not really recognising that its voice seemed to improve in quality with every second it was speaking, reaching heavily-accented Equestrian already. “Uh, yeah, Ah guess tha’ was me, uh… sorry?”
It grinned at her. She shivered inwardly at the sight. “T-That’s okay, Ms…”
“...Applejack.”
“Ms Applejack! I j-just came by because, well, I’m looking for my mother, and this was place was close, so…”
She gasped. Whether or not the creature looked monstrous, it was looking for its mother, and dammit any Apple worth their crop knows that family always, always, always comes first. “Tha’s fine! Alright,” she said determinedly, stepping outside the boundaries of the door and closing it behind her though not before shouting a quick ‘gotta go someone’s missing their mother’ to the inhabitants, “let’s getcha sorted. Where did ya come from and where’d ya last see ya mother?”
He was silent for a few seconds. The silence was far from comfortable. He shifted for a second, considering the question, and answered appropriately in a way that would definitely not be incredibly confusing. “Well, Ms Applejack, I came from… up above, and I’ve never seen my mother before.”
Applejack responded just as eloquently as she earlier had, though this time, her voice included an obvious layer of incredulousness. “‘Scuse me?”
“Miss, I was only born a few - minutes ago, I think.”
“...’Scuse me?!”
“Okay, so, it was really bright suddenly, and I kinda ran away, and I just haven’t met my mother and I really want to meet my mother!”
The earth pony was silent. Then she shook her head gently, still very, very confused. “Alright thar’, I think Ah’ve got an idea, jus’ follow me to mah friend, she knows a lot about a lot and should be able to help ya, because Ah jus’ am not followin’, Ah’m ‘fraid.”
Briefly, he seemed downtrodden, though was quickly nodding in agreement with her plan, since he generally had no idea what else he could do apart from follow Applejack, who seemed to know what she was doing - or, kind of know what she was doing. “Alright, Ms Applejack!
“No no no,” she admonished, trotting at a fairly quick pace towards Ponyville proper, following a path that should lead to the resident librarian and Element of Magic within only twenty, thirty at most minutes, “Ah am not old enough to be a ‘Ms Applejack’ yet! Gimme some credit, Ah’d ‘ave thought tha’ workin’ the fields day and night would keep me lookin’ young!”
He chuckled, now firmly believing that he would meet his mother by days end due to the infectious confidence that Applejack exuded, a sound that was no less grating and horrible than earlier, his voice perhaps improving but nearly noticeably, keeping an almost out-of-this-world, terrifying quality, and followed her along. “I meant no offence, Ms - I mean, Applejack. Just being cautious.”
She shook her head, and then seemed stuck in thought for a few milliseconds, inhaling sharply as she remembered her manners. “‘Course! How rude a’ me! Ah forgot to ask; what’s yer name?”
“I don’t have one yet, miss. I was only just born.”
“Well, Ah can’t jus’ call ya ‘him’ or ‘you’ or whatever, can Ah? Go for a temporary name so it’s not awkward, ya know?” She reasoned.
Hesitating for a second, he thought of his mother. Applejack seemed like an upstanding member of society. He thought it over before a name jumped straight to the forefront of his name, and he nodded to himself. Mother would forgive him, and mother would give him a better name too. “Alright, I guess,” he responded in flawless yet ugly, nearly deformed Equestrian, “though don’t tell mum, okay?”
Applejack nodded.
“...call me Strange Form.”
The word that had presented itself to him receded back into his mind.
The pair, earth pony and xenomorph, had been walking for a few minutes in total silence, and were now approaching the centre of Ponyville. Many of the ponies they had seen had hastily retreated at the sight of Strange Form, even with the presence of the most trusted pony in Ponyville walking along with him with no problem. Strange Form was starting to feel a strange cocktail of emotions; anger and sadness swirled and mixed while happiness that at least Applejack didn’t seem afraid.
Every second was a second his subconscious continued to sift through the massive amounts of dormant information in his head; and he realised that it was going to be a chore. He felt like he had only sorted through less than a single percent of all the information that he technically ‘knew’, including the three languages he knew - Griffonian, Equestrian, and Changeling. Worse yet, very few chunks of that information seemed to be about him and his species, so he wasn’t sure how long it would take him to know about himself, let alone the rest of the world.
...his mother. Every train of thought that travelled through him always ended up at the same endpoint. The desperation he held, though contained well, to see his mother. Though he was confident that Applejack’s friend would be able to help him find her, it still didn’t help his guilt that told him that he hadn’t even given his mother a chance, running away just because he was slightly bothered by the endlessly bright sun.
As he walked alongside Applejack, steps becoming more and more rigid, with more strength behind them as the other ponies running from him caused stress, guilt, anger, Applejack stepped in, looking down at the creature that was only slightly larger than Applebloom as they trotted along the widening dirt path.
“Dont’cha worry, sugarcube. Ah’ve seen this ‘fore, this is jus’ how Ponyville reacts to new thangs, alright? You and your mum stick ‘round and you’ll be makin’ friends lickety split!” She exclaimed, plastering a comforting grin across her face. In truth, she did believe this - she was the element of honest, after all, she couldn’t lie very well at all - but wasn’t sure if it would be as quick as she was saying. Even having spent this much time around him, instincts that had been dormant and defunct for nearly all of her life stubbornly told her that he was a deadly predator and that she, as his prey, should gallop away immediately.
However, those instincts were starting to die down; she was a rational, thinking pony after all. She just - wasn’t sure if other ponies would give him as much of a chance as she was.
Strange Form shot her a smile back, deciding her statement seemed completely fair, especially since this small town seemed rather backwater compared to-
'GUNNISON. COLORADO.'
-he froze up briefly at how forcefully the two words had been stuffed into his head, and opted to remember those two words for further investigation later. They helped him recognise the rural quality of this town for now. “I understand, Applejack. Still, it’s certainly not the greatest feeling for everyone to be afraid of you.” He replied, steps returning back to normal, softly pressing into the dirt road and leaving a nearly unnoticeable imprint behind with each step.
“No,” Applejack said, shaking her head slowly - almost morosely, “Ah’m sure it’s not. Anyway, Ah was gonna ask, what’s yer species even called, Ah’ve never seen you ‘fore, and Ah think Ah’d remember a critter this smart only apparently less than an hour af’er bein’ born.”
Strange Form took a second to respond. “...my species has been called many things. Xenomorphs, aliens, serpent, kiande amedha, internecivus raptus, linguafoeda acheronsis. I think… we most like to be called xenomorphs? It’s certainly what we’re called most of the time.” He answered, not entirely sure what his species was actually called. In fact, he didn’t really know where any of those names came from.
Applejack glanced at him from the side of her eyes, furrowing her brow. “Well, alright then… ‘xenomorph’ it is…” She said, biting her bottom lip subtly and instantly stewing over the fact that he had mentioned his species had been called ‘aliens’.
“So, Applejack,” he said, breaking a second-long silence which somehow lasted minutes for Applejack as she ran through why ‘aliens’ could’ve been a name for his species, “who’s this friend of yours we’re going to ask for help?”
She threw away her thoughts of the significance of the word ‘alien’. With such a throwaway mention, she was sure it couldn’t mean much, and opted to believe that some people had considered their appearance so otherworldly - which, really, was fair - that they had been called aliens. “Her name’s Twilight Sparkle. She’s real smart, lemme tell ya; used to be student of Princess Celestia, which is somethin’ in itself, but she completed a challenge and now she’s the Princess of Friendship, which is mighty nifty.”
For some reason, instincts in the back of his head laughed at the very mention of a ‘Princess of Friendship’, and kicked back into action other instincts for a few seconds. He breathed in, and out, earning a curious stare from Applejack as the mantra of HUNTING, EXPANDING, PROTECTING repeated in his head a few times before gradually receding. The process, to him, seemed like hours of effort, though was in reality only a few seconds of him fighting off the instincts that he couldn’t help but think of as more normal.
“Oh, really,” he responded as the thoughts skulked back into the back of his head, “so she might know about me? And - my mother?”
Applejack couldn’t help but chuckle at that, despite the fact that the grating, hissing voice made that much less innocent by itself. “Might? Tartarus, knowin’ her, she definitely does!”
Strange Form smiled at that. “That’s good. That’s perfect… I can’t wait to see my mother.”
She nodded and looked ahead, smiling gently at that. “We’ll find her, Form. We will.” She said softly.
A natural lull in the conversation followed; except, this time, the silence was perfectly natural and comfortable. The pony and the small xenomorph walked side-by-side down the path, which had joined with the main road some time earlier, and they were beginning to come into sight of the town market. Every pony was still going about their day, though seemed rushed and most of the vendors were shooting quick looks at Applejack and Strange Form, seeing the perfectly structured predator but not running away for the sake of business and that he didn’t - currently, at least - seem hostile.
Strange Form resolved to not be bothered by it, if only so Applejack didn’t worry about him and how he’d react. He was curious of how he looked, so he decided he’d ask this Twilight Sparkle for a mirror, or something along those lines, as soon as he could… though possibly after he had confirmed his mother was in the nearby vicinity somehow. Or just found his mother.
Yes, first he would meet mother, and then he would figure out his own appearance, and more about his own biology. Mother would know about him. The mare - or, no, he assumed xenomorph - that birthed him would know. He couldn’t wait to meet her. It was no use dwelling on it, though. The longer he thought about it the more the suspense would build up, and he didn’t want to be too excited - or, more importantly, too anxious - when he met his mother, or before he met his mother and met with Twilight Sparkle, indeed.
He shifted uncomfortably as he walked alongside Applejack. He seemed - uncomfortable in his own skin, or, in his own mesoskeleton. Minor pains erupted throughout his body in random intervals, and he could swear he had been closer to the ground earlier. He wasn’t sure what these pains were, but they didn’t seem too serious, so either he’d ask Twilight if they got worse or he’d ask his mother.
‘No,’ he thought, berating himself, ‘stop thinking of her! It’ll make you more anxious!’
The amount of ponies around him... also made him uncomfortable. They were in the middle of the town market now, ponies moving around busily - quietly, and shiftily, but busily - and so many of them, too. Or, at least, so many of them for this little town. Other parts of him that he so wished were defunct if not completely non-existent seemed louder in his head; the morally disgusting parts of him that told him that he should be Hunting, Expanding, Protecting, that he should tear the prey apart and feed on them, make sure that these weak inferior species know you are the one and only apex predator; impregnate them and, after Hunting, begin Expanding!
He didn’t like those instincts, that seemed to grow louder and quieter randomly in the middle of so many ponies. His smile remained, though half-formed and shaky in the midst of so many prey, and he tried his best not to pay attention to his instincts but they demanded attention, and when they were louder they were loud; he hoped desperately that they would be out of the crowd soon. He didn’t like these thoughts that injected themselves into him.
Sinking back into his own thoughts, comfortable as Applejack was with the silence, he thought over the memories he had of his birth. He wasn’t sure if it was normal to remember your time in the - womb, maybe? Maybe. He could remember screams. The pains of childbirth, he assumed. Yes, the pains of childbirth. Subtle - oh-so-subtle - thoughts told him otherwise, but he saw no reason to believe them. Childbirth made sense, and it was an integral part of any species. How else could he have been born?
His tongue traced carefully over the inner pharyngeal jaw hidden at the top of his mouth, making sure not to press too hard. It seemed flaccid, though he could tense it, and seemed weak as well. He wasn’t sure what purpose it held. It seemed rather spindly… though, then again, his tail seemed no less spindly and yet…
Lifting it up and laying it across his back, his lipless mouth formed into a line that said that he was thinking about something, questioning something. ‘I have these body parts - the pharyngeal jaw and the tail - but they seem too weak to do anything… I’ll have to test that out later. Something tells me they aren’t; especially the tail.’
Strange Form was endlessly curious, as was typical of someone who had just been born. However, and he wasn’t exactly sure about this, it seemed like most of the information he needed lurked in his head after the information dump that was his birth and his forming inside of his mother. He just needed to access it. There was simply so much he didn’t know how to sort through it all efficiently, let alone quickly; perhaps Twilight, or some other friend Applejack had, could help him with this.
Suddenly, he was lost in thought. Utterly on autopilot. Words blasted into his head.
‘Luna.’
‘Canterlot.’
‘RUNNERS.’
‘Elements of Harmony.’
‘BLOOD.’
‘QUEEN MOTHER.’ ‘Peace.’
‘HIVEMIND.’
‘GriffoniaYAUTJADragonsOVOMORPHSpecialSomeponyXX121MoralityYAUTJA,’ and ‘CelestiaHYDROFLUORIC ACIDDiscordARCHENONTartarusEARTH,’
Then he was - for lack of a better term - awake, the world around him feeling as if it was underwater. He felt sluggish. Applejack was speaking. He turned his head to face her and noticed that they had both stopped walking at a wooden door that seemed carved into a massive tree. He opened and closed his jaw. “Excuse me?”
His mind was quickly recovering from the dump of information, of which he had really caught only a few words, and had in reality learned much less than that. The word - no, name - ‘Luna’ itched at the back of his head, and he decided to come back to it after they had spoken to Twilight, which he assumed they were about to do. Applejack chuckled and responded, assuming he had simply drifted off. “We’re here, Strange - yeah, Ah think Ah’ll stick to callin’ ya Form. We’re here.”
Applejack turned to face the door, and knocked on it. Strange Form stared at it - or, the equivalent when you don’t really have eyes - and heard someone coming to open it. A violet unicorn opened it, different shades of purple streaking through her hair. Something about her screamed intelligence, and he couldn’t exactly place it.
“This is a public library, how many times do I have to say you don’t have to knock- oh! Applejack!” She said, trailing off when she was Applejack and smiling widely.
The earth pony cracked a wide grin. “Hey, Twi - just here to ask if ya know anythin’ about lil’ Strange Form here, he don’t know where his mother is so I told ‘em you might know some stuff.”
Twilight finally noticed the xenomorph. Her eyes widened for a second, but she was quickly calm… well, calmer, when she rationalised that Applejack was directly referring to it, so it couldn’t be a monster. Probably. “Um, oh, uh, yeah, of course, you two come right on in, I actually have never seen whatever you are Strange Form so I think I’ll have to find a book on you first. Or something.”
He nodded and Twilight trotted back into the library followed by Applejack and Strange Form, who shut the door with his tail instinctively. ‘So maybe that isn’t as flimsy as it seems….’ He thought to himself, having put very little effort into it and not even having to bend his tail to accommodate the door at all.
“Thank you, Twilight.” Strange Form said, voice still grating and otherworldly, the voice of someone with some cancerous habits who had only just learned how to speak and had been stabbed in the throat once or twice. Twilight shuddered at it, but smiled shakily - which Strange Form wasn’t happy about, but made an effort to smile comfortingly anyway as to not scare her.
“N-No problem,” she replied shakily, turning back to the comforting shelves upon shelves of books, “now… hmm… maybe Exotic Creatures of Equus by A. K. Yearling… yes, let’s check that out… hey, what’s the name of your species?” She asked, already distracted as she trotted towards the book she had mentioned, starting to submerge herself in her little bubble of focus.
Strange Form’s smile grew more truthful as she suddenly switched from ‘terrified’ to ‘focused’. “I think - we’re called xenomorphs.”
Twilight ignored the ‘I think’, too far gone in her studying mentality already to pay attention to anything but the name ‘xenomorphs’. The xenomorph was happy his instincts had died down; though he was growing ecstatic at the thought of finally meeting his mother, it was certainly a bonus that he no longer wanted to slaughter them all and give in to Hunting, Expanding, Protecting.
Hunting, Expanding, Protecting seemed like objectives of the past.
Twilight slammed her muzzle into the fourth book she had checked - G.R.R Minotaurin’s Looking Into The Ecosystem Of Greater Griffonia - and groaned in frustration as Strange Form smiled sheepishly, more to himself, really, than to Twilight. Twilight spared him a glance, eyes filled with a brightly burning fire of intelligence that hungered for the knowledge of whatever Strange Form was. She had checked A.K Yearling’s Exotic Creatures of Equus, Charles Haywin’s The Beauty of Natural Evolution - which, yes, was actually a detailed look at the more complicated and rare creatures of Equus and how they had evolved, and much less a paper on evolution itself - Iron Redhoof’s Desert Animals of Equus, and the aforementioned Looking Into The Ecosystem Of Greater Griffonia.
There were, obviously, other books to check. The library may not have been the biggest one in the world, but it could fit a sizeable portion of knowledge inside, and she could definitely check a few other books on creatures, or biology. However, she sincerely doubted that other books would have any information on Strange Form, as much as she loathed to admit it. There had not even been a passing mention of his species, or anything even resembling his species, in the four books she had checked - and she was enough of an academic to know that if a creature wasn’t mentioned in the four most detailed books of species probably Equus, there was little chance of it being found anywhere else.
Strange Form, himself, was disappointed. Though information still flooded into him, large chunks of it ended up being essentially useless to him. He couldn’t help but wish Applejack hadn’t gone back to Sweet Apple Acres so that he could have some company while Twilight silently flipped through books and occasionally shot a question at him, or shot his attempts at starting a conversation down.
He found himself drawn to two select books on the shelf; one was called The Magic of Family and the other The Life And Times Of Starswirl The Bearded. Twilight caught his gaze - or whatever counted as a gaze when you didn’t have visible eyes or ocular organs - and focused onto The Magic of Family, having read through The Life And Times Of Starswirl The Bearded many, many times over. She grasped it in her magic and levitated it towards her, opening it and scanning through the table of contents, eyes narrowing as she caught the word ‘locating’.
Eyes bright and smile wide, she flipped to the page specified and found exactly the spell that they would need. Memorising the formula within seconds, she stuffed the book back onto the shelf and got off the chair, looking at Strange Form with a wide smile. Strange Form stared back at her, having absolutely zero idea what was going on. At all.
“Strange Form,” she began, “I know how to locate your mother.”
The xenomorph stared for another second before breaking out into a terrifying, elated smile at the news. “You - found something?” He rasped, voice still terrifying, though improving. Reveling in her find, Twilight ignored his vocal improvement and the fact that he seemed slightly taller than he had been an hour and a half ago, when they began this little quest.
Twilight nodded, still bearing a wide grin. “Yes, I did! I found a spell for locating any family members; as soon as I cast it on you, we can get going and find, your, mother!”
Strange Form hopped up and down on the floor before letting out a squee that was nearly a screech but recognisably not and tackled Twilight, wrapping his body around her and nuzzling her, giggling helplessly at the news that he was going to find his mother, that he was going to see his mother. Though a small part of Twilight protested the proximity of the predator, she couldn’t help but giggle with him; the last hour and a half had been impressively stressful, what with family being on the line.
She found that Strange Form, though heavy, was not heavy enough for her to have to struggle to stand with him still wrapped around her barrel. “First, though,” she said, “I’m going to send a letter to the princess about this - they might also know a lot more about your species, and I’m curious. Spike!” She called out.
Strange Form didn’t much mind. He was going to find his mother soon! Detaching himself from Twilight, he stood on the floor and stretched for a second, reminiscent of a cat, tail curling into the air like that of a scorpion and mouth opening with a loud yawn, showing off too many sharp teeth. As he did this, a small reptile walked down the stairs, freezing for only a second as he saw Strange Form.
Mind you, Spike had been living among ponies all his life, that much was true, and had adapted to an entirely vegetarian diet plus whatever gemstones counted as. However, subconsciously and instinctually, Spike was still a predator, and fight was an option far before flight was, unlike for most ponies. So though he did freeze for a second, he did then react to the presence of what was obviously a dangerous, monstrous predator looking as if it were about to pounce while it stood right next to Twilight.
Consciously, he only put together that Twilight had called for him and there was a horrible monster standing right next to her, and did not take into account her tone. Subconsciously, he recognised something daring to attack his family, something encroaching on what he instinctually considered his territory. He inhaled, a bright green glow showing in the back of his throat, and then he exhaled.
The ‘monster’ was instantly done relaxing, more than just his instincts and his mind roaring at him; his entire body seemed to scream that the incoming projectile was-
‘FIRE.’
-fire, fire, fire. He screeched and backed up rapidly, the superheated magical fire somehow making him feel uncomfortably hot, and then as if he was burning. The jet of fire stopped - after all, a baby dragon - or, at least, a dragon Spike’s size - could only breathe so much fire. Strange Form screeched again, but he didn’t feel like it was him doing it. He almost felt detached, but only briefly, back inside himself, but drowning in so, so much instinct to kill and maim.
The reptile dares to harm you, the ultimate predator! This cannot be allowed! Tear it to pieces, and then the unicorn - it was her fault for luring you into this! It was a trap, trying to shut you down before you can do your Hunting, Expanding, Protecting! Rend it to pieces, gouge the brain out of the skull, kill, kill, kill! Hunt it! HUNT IT.
As Twilight opened her mouth to apologise to Strange Form and make sure he was okay - she was going to say something along the lines of ‘Omigod, I’m so so so sorry, are you okay?!’ - but was blindsided, the xenomorph crashing into her side and knocking her over, using her as some sort of landing platform and launching himself off, crashing into Spike, claws seconds from piercing the scales that Spike had thought he could rely on to protect him.
Strange Form jerked Spike up to his face, slightly taller than him, and made him face away from him so he couldn’t breathe fire at him again. He opened his mouth and his inner jaw tensed, lowering down and shaking, ready to fire forward. Spike was going to die, which was no less than the SCUM deserves! If it thought it could outdo you, if it thought it could protect anyone from you, it was wrong! HUNT, HUNT, HUNT!
He found himself suddenly floating in the air, inner jaw hitting nothing and retreating back into his mouth, almost sulking as it retreated without the promise of a kill it had been given. His vision was covered in purple - no. Wait. His entire body was covered in purple. He was being levitated by Twilight.
Twilight spun him around, finding him strangely hard to levitate and knowing that it definitely wasn’t because he was heavy; there was something else that made her put in more effort, more concentration than usual. She scowled at him, though flinched when he hissed at her, seemingly mindless. Spike had dropped down to the floor and landed on his bottom, eyes wide as he shivered, rubbing against the slight grooves in his scales left behind by the claws of Strange Form.
“Strange! I’m sorry about Spike, but,” she exclaimed, stomping a forehoof onto the floor to amplify her words as he hissed, “you can’t just do - whatever you did! Strange! Strange Form!”
She found herself growing frustrated at his lack of response apart from mindless hissing. Strange Form found himself growing frustrated at his magical restraints, and felt something bubble out of him - he lunged forward, the purple field dissolving, as if melting, off of him. Twilight gasped and was about to scream only to find a claw wrapped around her throat and Strange standing around as tall as Big Mac or Princess Luna on two feet, another claw raised above her and falling towards her face. Twilight struggled for all she was worth, but couldn’t get out of his grasp.
Unicorns, rather obviously, tend to resort to magic as an instinct. The first spell that Twilight could think of was one that would blast him back and hopefully send him to sleep, and put it together in her mind rapidly and sloppily, firing it. The claw stopped an inch or less from her face. Strange Form dropped her and stumbled backwards, falling onto all fours. Spike breathed in as Strange Form shook his head, confused, but Twilight had some sort of feeling and magically covered his mouth.
Spike shot her a questioning look and closed his mouth. Twilight removed the cover and stared at Strange Form intently, only shaking slightly; a fact that she was, admittedly, proud of. He looked up at her, opening and closing his mouth before choosing an appropriate sentence to speak.
Strange Form looked at her nervously. Twilight looked at him nervously, already close to regretting her choice of stopping Spike.
“I’m so, so, so sorry I don’t know what came over me and I just, I mean, I, the, t-the fire made me panic and I was just suddenly angry or something and I wanted - I mean, I wanted - I mean, something changed and then I was - I don’t - fire - fire does something - and I didn’t mean it, and I’m so sorry, so so sorry, the fire-”
Twilight interrupted his raspy babbling, internally shivering at the voice and externally shivering at the fact that she had come unbelievably close to death and leftover adrenaline was still desperately rushing through her veins. Spike was doing exactly the same thing, though not bothering to internalise his fear of that horrible, grating voice. “I-It’s… okay, Strange. I… suppose I should have warned S-Spike. You seemed… d-different, Strange, after the f-fire.”
He looked down, clawing at the ground slowly, nervously. A part of him, however, was happy. Those amoral, disgusting instincts had entirely shut up - not even the slightest whispers of Hunting, Expanding, Protecting - as if they had been dragged out of him or knocked over the head or something, the second that spell had hit him. “I’m sorry… it’s just - I don’t know, I think fire, especially that close to me, or something like that, makes me panic hard… I didn’t know until now.”
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, counted to five, and exhaled, repeating the cycle. After half-a-minute of this she opened her eyes and smiled at him - a shaky smile, but a smile nonetheless. “I-It’s… it’s alright. It was just an accident, right?” Strange nodded desperately. “Then it’s alright. As long as Spike doesn’t do that,” she shot Spike a glare to which he at least had the dignity to look ashamed at, “then it’s all okay. Just don’t suddenly panic again, okay?” She said, trying to joke around to lighten the mood and remove the suffocating atmosphere from the room.
Strange groaned. “Fiiiiine - I’ll try my best…” He said, joking. Twilight stared at him with wide eyes. Strange stared back with a fading smile.
Twilight began to giggle. A second later, so did Strange. Then, quickly, that evolved into raucous laughter as they rolled on the floor, the mood snapping to one of cheer all of a sudden. Spike could only stare at the nearly surreal experience.
“Why the hay,” he muttered to himself, too busy being confused to shiver anymore, “is everypony in this town crazy.”
After a full two, maybe even three, minutes of Spike being confused while Strange and Twilight laughed at the fact that one of them had almost killed each other, they began to slow down, though still erupted into giggles occasionally. After another few minutes of them calming down and Spike just being really bored, he spoke up. “R-Right. Why did you shout for me?”
Twilight, still grinning for what Spike saw as no reason at all, cleared her throat and stood up from the floor, Strange Form doing the same. “I want to send a letter to the princess.” She said, levitating an unused quill with still-fresh ink on it and a piece of parchment over to Spike from the desk she had been studying on. The parchment was blank because she hadn’t found anything, a fact she was still very slightly annoyed about. However, she was confident Celestia would know.
She cleared her throat and began dictating the letter to ‘the princess’. Strange Form had no idea in the slightest who that was, but rolled with it. He had only been born a few hours ago after all.
“Dear Princess Celestia,” Spike was writing straight away, claws writing down the diction at speeds that were just genuinely impressive, “Today, only around two hours ago, Applejack directed a new creature that seems of a ponies intelligence to me in order to help him find his mother. After doing rather extensive research, I find no mention of his species in any of the books I checked, and have never seen anything even slightly similar to him. He is generally friendly, excluding his propensity to overreact to-” she shot Strange Form an apologetic look. He just smiled at her. “-fire. I have found a spell that should lead us straight to his mother, but I would appreciate if you could give me your information - or a reference - for him. He says his species is called ‘xenomorph’.
“He appears to be digitigrade and is encased by some sort of exoskeleton that lends him a skeletal, almost biomechanical appearance. He is a muted shade of black. He possesses a distinctive, elongated, cylindrical skull and has no visible facial features other than a mouth filled with many sharp teeth that tell of a carnivorous diet. He possesses a long, thick tongue that ends in a sharp tip and, from the few quick glances I have gotten, is covered in some thick coating of saliva, or slime. At the top of his mouth is some sort of inner pharyngeal jaw. He is currently around my top lip in size, and is growing rapidly if I am correct.
“He also possesses a segmented, blade-tipped tail. This tail does appear to have a flimsy physical construction, though I cannot be sure of whether or not it is. The carapace of his head seems smooth vaguely translucent. From the claims of this specimen, he was born only a few hours ago, and is already of average, if not slightly below-average, intelligence. That concludes my description. Please reply as soon as possible - apologies, but I am endlessly curious of his species. Thank you, Twilight Sparkle.”
“Thank you... Twilight... Sparkle… alright!” Spike exclaimed, rolling the parchment into a scroll and taking a deep breath and… quickly turning from Strange Form before releasing his magical dragon breath. The scroll burnt up into ash which quickly flew out the window.
Strange Form looked at Twilight and was about to ask a question before she interrupted him. “That fire is magical; it can transport things like scrolls directly to Princess Celestia.”
He would’ve blinked in confusion if he could, but he decided he could ask about how in the world that worked, or in general how magic worked, or in general how the world worked, after the thing that came next. “So. The spell for my mother?” He rasped out, slightly impatiently after the in his mind too-long description of him - though, at least he vaguely knew how he looked now.
She facehoofed. “Right. Yes. Nearly forgot, sorry!” With a smile, noticeably more subdued, though not exactly strained, than earlier - though Strange Form could understand why - she cast the spell on him. Strange Form suddenly knew where she was. He turned and burst out of the door of Twilight’s library, turning to the sky, to a cloud house in the distance. Twilight trotted out and followed his gaze, ignoring the few ponies that were staring at them as they walked - though, to be fair, more at Strange Form, which though she disapproved of, she couldn’t really blame them for.
“She’s there. My mother is there.” He stated, voice raspier and more grating than usual, filled with emotion, absolutely terrifying even in comparison to earlier..
Twilight furrowed her brow. “I… alright. I’ll get my hot air balloon, I guess.”
She had a bad feeling about this. She would’ve noticed if something like Strange Form lived near Ponyville. And a cloud house? For something without wings? Something seemed overtly wrong; nearly ominous. As if something bad was coming.
Twilight was pretty sure someone she knew, at least as a friendly acquaintance, lived there. Something was wrong.
Strange Form was excited. Home was close. Mother was close.
The purple hot air balloon floated slowly, gracefully, through the sky, slowly approaching the cloud house. The view was perfect. Ponies roaming about the town down below, giving the slightest background noise - a sort of buzz - looked nearly like ants. Twilight almost couldn’t feel the slow motion of the balloon; it looked more like the clouds were slowly, slowly passing by them than it looked like the hot air balloon was passing by the clouds. She couldn’t tear herself away from the view, one foreleg hooked over the edge of the basket carrying her, Spike, and her new friend, Strange Form.
Truly, it was beautiful. Serene. Nothing could disturb her, she was at peace - “Twilight, are we close yet?” Strange asked, antsy to see his mother.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Yes, Strange, we’re only a few minutes off now.” Twilight replied. Strange Form had been asking her that question, or some variation of it, for the past entire bucking balloon flight. The spell Twilight had cast on him apparently just gave him an idea of where his family was - which was, apparently, only his mother - and then faded away, so he couldn’t know by himself how close they were.
But by Celestia she knew he was only a few hours old but he could at least be patient, it was a hot air balloon not some sort of train in the air or something. It wasn’t exactly quick, that much was clear.
Strange Form seemed to tut or something along those lines, his voice hadn’t really gotten to normal yet - far from it - and he turned back to face Spike, striking up a conversation about something or other. Twilight had, honestly, tuned out the second he turned away. She genuinely did love the view that was presented. From up here, sight seemed to stretch out for miles more than usual. If she really tried, she could even see Foal Mountain in the distance, though only just the barest hint of it.
The house Strange Form had identified was on the outer reaches of Cloudsdale, if it would even have been registered as Cloudsdale territory in the first place. It was one of the many cloud houses that was closer to Ponyville than to Cloudsdale, really, and Twilight was only not sure about if it counted as Ponyville or Cloudsale because it was - well, a cloud house, and Rainbow Dash was the only pegasus she knew who actually lived in Ponyville in a cloud house as well.
However, that wasn’t to say that cloud houses so close to Ponyville were rare. That wasn’t true. They weren’t rare at all; it was just that they tended not to be grouped together and, for all that they weren’t rare, neither were they common. Luckily for the group, it was actually quite close to the ground compared to other cloud houses as well. One thing Twilight did wonder was how whoever was Strange Forms mother could walk on clouds when Strange Form, at the least, had no obvious magic or wings. Not only that, but how this creature hadn’t been noticed by her, or at least by one of her friends, far before now. Strange Form wasn’t exactly conspicuous, or normal, as much as she felt bad thinking it.
She’d have to wait and see for when they docked with the house. It didn’t seem that large, either. Perhaps, like griffins, Strange Form and his species could walk on clouds but not manipulate them - it would certainly explain why the cloud house was not, like others, massive. The material, after all, was incredibly cheap and incredibly easy to use; at least, for pegasi.
One thing bugged Twilight. She couldn’t put a hoof on that thing though. Something just felt wrong about the situation, and she didn’t know what. It was similar to when she had first entered the Everfree Forest with her friends in order to defeat Nightmare Moon, yet somehow darker. Not more ominous, not at all. Darker. Not even more evil, simply darker, a feeling she couldn’t shake; she couldn’t describe it well and neither could she understand it well. It was strange.
As the hot air balloon flew towards the cloud house, closer and closer by the second, Strange Form chose to zone out for a few seconds as Spike ranted about how Hum Drum from the series of comics called The Power Ponies needed to receive some sort of power-up or at least a few comics dedicated to him like Fili-Second, the Masked Matter Horn, and all the rest had gotten. Something about him being as valuable as the rest, as a main character, even if he was just a sidekick.
Instinct rumbled through his body, awoken after Twilight had hit him with whatever spell that was. It seemed almost gleeful, as if it was coming close to something amazing. Something worthwhile. Our mother is nearing, and we shall feast on whatever remains - only after we tear apart the reptile-
Another tidbit of knowledge made itself known. ‘Dragon.’
-dragon that can breathe that detestable, painful fire; only after we tear apart the unicorn that dares to try and hold you still with magic, as if you could ever be held by a PREY SPECIES! Let It not interfere with your goal, the only goal you should ever strive for,
“Hunting, Expanding, Protecting,” Strange Form mumbled to himself as Spike continued to rant about probably still the Power Ponies. The instinct seemed to grow infinitely stronger as soon as he said those words, and Spike paused. He reached out with a claw and tapped Strange softly on the shoulder, once, and Strange - for lack of a better word, Strange awoke.
Spike barely saw it. There was suddenly a claw gripping his arm tightly, and then it was gone. Strange Form mumbled out an apology and something about how it had surprised him, and Spike dismissed it and did not, rather surprisingly, lose his stride, continuing to go on about the Power Ponies, much to Strange Form’s chagrin. He really was happy that Spike wasn’t incredibly terrified of him considering how close Spike had been to being torn apart by his claws, but he wasn’t overly interested in the Power Ponies.
Well. At least he was learning new things.
Like how he wasn’t interested in the Power Ponies.
Nonetheless, for some reason he didn’t want to be rude and interrupt, a fact which his instincts seemed to distinctly disagree with, though telling him to interrupt in a far more intense way than simply swaying the flow of the conversation away from Power Ponies. Yes, tearing his head off and feasting on his oesophagus was indeed much more intense than that.
He pondered something in his head for a second before turning to Twilight. Spike kept talking and seemed not to notice - he could get really into talking about the Power Ponies. “Twilight,” he began, hesitating before continuing as all of a sudden the only sound was the gentle breeze as the hot air balloon moved and Twilight lazily turned to face him, “could you, uh, maybe, you know, hit me with that spell? The one you hit me with earlier?”
Twilight stared at him like he was from a different world. “Right,” she said, rolling the R, “why would you want to be hit with a sleep spell?”
“Ah. Well. It didn’t - uh, that is to say, it felt nice and made me a bit relaxed? I think maybe I’m - well, a bit - well, still a bit antsy - that is to say, not gonna kill you, but antsy - after the fire? You know, still a bit antsy and stuff?” Strange stuttered out, really not wanting to explain to Twilight, or anyone apart from maybe his mother, that his instincts had their own voice and were very vocal sometimes.
There was a minute of silence. If Strange could sweat, he would’ve been sweating. He thought that it was good to know he couldn’t sweat. Twilight shrugged, her horn lit up, and Strange gasped as the beam of purple dissipated across the front of his head, his head suddenly not as crowded as it had been only a second earlier. Now it was just him, his thoughts, and-
Spike opened his mouth again. “So, anyway, as I was saying,”
-the Power Ponies. Perhaps Strange Form feigned interest so well that Spike thought he was invested in it by now. It was too late to turn back, really. He would have to weather the storm that was Spike being a fan of the Power Ponies. His train of thought encountered the words that his instincts had screamed - he was starting to think they were more than instincts considering they had a voice, but never mind that - those words being ‘Our mother is nearing, and we shall feast on whatever remains’.
It was almost like his instincts were encouraging him to kill and eat his mother, but… no, it was actually that his instincts were telling him she was already dead and telling him to feast on the leftover body. He refused to believe that. They were wrong. They had to be wrong. He promptly moved on from that little distraction for his thoughts; he wasn’t going to ponder it. His instincts were wrong and he was going to be able to see his mother soon, and that was that.
Minutes passed. Minutes of Spike somehow still talking. Minutes of Strange Form pretending to be interested as he wandered through the playground that was his mind. Minutes of Twilight admiring the scenery of Ponyville and ponies far below her, growing sparser, and nature in the distance, wild, beautiful, and yet mostly tamed.
Twilight looked to the side and saw that the cloud house was there. With a smile a purple aura surrounded her horn and then the balloon, letting it grind to a halt. She reached out with her magic to the fire that was keeping the balloon afloat and moving and dampened it, letting it remain at the power she had reduced it to - enough to keep the balloon up but not enough to do anything more. Since Spike had produced the fire and his fire was inherently magical, it would stay, burning at that level for a long while. Hours, perhaps, though they probably wouldn’t need that long before. The cloud house wasn’t that big, after all. How hard would it be to find her?
The hot air balloon softly touched the porch of the house. “Alright, guys, we’re here!” Twilight exclaimed, turning to them and lighting her horn up again, casting a cloudwalking spell on Spike, though not one on Strange Form. She suspected he could walk on clouds - and that suspicion was confirmed when he hopped out of the basket. He seemed taller again, reaching the base of her horn, if not slightly taller. He also seemed, for some reason, relieved as he left the basket, though she supposed that was because the journey was over and he was going to meet his mother, finally.
Little did Twilight know, he was definitely relieved for a different reason.
He had a newfound hate for the Power Ponies.
The two other occupants of the basket followed him out. Twilight reached out with a hoof as she approached the door and knocked three times rather politely. Strange Form seemed to be vibrating or something with excitement, and Spike simply seemed happy. As Twilight looked at the house, though, that feeling returned, amplified many times over. Her stomach churned. She almost felt like throwing up - something bad was happening, or had already happened, or was going to happen.
She shook that feeling off. It had to be wrong. It was too intense.
A second stretched into a minute, and clearly Strange Form had had enough. He leaped through the cloud door, the object evaporating as he crashed through it. What Twilight didn’t know was that a weaker version of that feeling filled him as well; less dark and less present, but filled with expectations of something terrible.
“Strange!” Twilight said, about to scold him, before he bounded up the stairs directly forward blindly, not paying attention to his senses - specifically his smell, that told him something was very wrong, that something smelled very, very bad.
Twilight groaned and entered the house as well. Instantly, she recoiled, muzzle scrunching up. Spike, who had taken the opportunity of the waiting to climb onto her back, gagged and turned green somehow. It was odd you could see the blood when the flesh was covered by tough scales.
She turned in the direction of the smell - the kitchen. That feeling screamed at her, and she barely felt as if she was still in control of her body, trotting forward slowly and wearing a disgusted look across her face.
Strange tore up the stairs and across the second floor, finding nothing and no one noticeable apart from a general mess. Clearly, his mother wasn’t the best at cleaning. He was okay with that; family came above all else, after all, though for some reason something told him that family was not always the most important thing. He ignored that.
He stopped on the topmost stair, perking up for a second. He smelled something in the air. It was a distinct stench - he knew what it was instinctively but couldn’t quite pin it down, sorting through the knowledge and through his instincts, old and new, to try and remember what that was.
...death. That was undeniably the disgusting, horrible stench of death. He rushed down the stairs towards the smell - dammit, something was wrong and he didn’t know what - and stopped behind Twilight, who was blocking the way to the rest of the house through the kitchen. She seemed frozen. Spike was looking over her shoulders and was just as still, face entirely green. They were both breathing quickly, and Strange Form was about to ask what was wrong before they screamed a grating, discordant, wailing scream.
He recoiled and rushed to her side.
A sharp intake of breath. That was a dead body. A messy hole had been torn through the barrel of the snow white pegasus, and it looked like it had been from the inside. Gore covered the kitchen. She was unmistakably dead - limp, life missing from her eyes. There was… something else. A hole in the floor. An orchard in the distance.
His legs collapsed from under him. Somehow, he knew.
He opened his mouth, but closed it again. Twilight had backed up a few steps and Spike was clutching tightly to her back, tears slowly leaking from his eyes.
Tunnel vision. Vertigo. His emotions seemed to crash. This was wrong.
What was happening?
He couldn’t cry, but he wished he could.
He wished he could cry. Or do anything.
A low hiss turned into a piercing screech as he clutched at his head, softly banging it against the cloud floor.
Spike cried harder. Twilight tore her eyes from the body and to Strange Form. She choked back vomit that had been threatening to eject itself.
“Is that-” She began, but he only screeched harder. She grit her teeth and walked backwards out of the kitchen and onto the porch, laying down and forced to listen to his tortured screeches. She could guess. She didn’t know how, but clearly Strange did know.
Princess Celestia had put the scroll Twilight had sent her to one side just for an hour or two as she slogged through the paperwork that came with slowly, slowly, piecing together better relations with the griffons, that came with slowly, slowly improving the state of the system of education in Equestria, that came with slowly, slowly authorising more and more aid - not to mention pegasi - to be sent to the zebra nations that had fallen into turmoil as the drought plaguing their nations ravaged food and water supplies.
However, now she finally had time for it. Taking a deep breath and exhaling, she slowly began to let go of the stress of the day insofar. A weary smile adorning her face, she lit up her horn and levitated the scroll in front of her, unfurling it and beginning to read. Most of the time, Twilight’s scrolls had a way of cheering her up - Twilight’s social naivety and struggles coupled with all of her successes gave Celestia a heartwarming feeling, like watching a daughter grow up. She was still waiting for the scroll telling her that Twilight had a special somepony, finally.
This time around, the words on the scroll were scientific, flaunting Twilight’s high-brow education under Princess Celestia. She furrowed her brow as she read it. “Xenomorph…” She mumbled to herself, having finished and rolling the scroll back up, gazing to the left at a sun near setting. Mindlessly, she levitated the scroll over to a drawer and opened it, sliding it inside with the other reports from Twilight. The word was vaguely recognisable to the Sun Princess, though why she could not tell.
A thought struck her; ‘Star Swirl. It was thousands of years ago, and I might be remembering incorrectly, but in one of his journals…’
Celestia stood from her chair, blushing slightly as it creaked. With a bright flash of her horn and a swish of her head, she teleported into the Star Swirl section of the Canterlot Library. She began searching through book upon book with a frown adorned across her face. Instinct told her that xenomorphs were bad - no, horrible news for Equestria. That Twilight seemed to be requesting help in finding out what they were rather than begging for help or just notifying her of the problem told her otherwise.
The thought popped into her head, and she found it impossible to get rid of. ‘Your instincts have only been wrong once, Celestia. Do not take the risk.’
She reigned herself in and studied book after book, mind focused completely on the task.
Twilight’s mind was entirely unfocused - she found it hard to think of anything but how to comfort her new, strange friend.
She was trying her very best not to cry as Strange Form hugged her tightly, now half way up her horn in height, making broken noises somewhere in between screaming, hissing, sobbing, and wailing. Ponies were naturally very emotional creatures, and as much as Twilight prided herself as not being as emotional as most others, there was still a limit and Twilight was still a pony. She only hoped Strange wouldn’t notice the tears rolling over his exoskeleton.
Strange, meanwhile, was lost in emotion; he was almost drowning in it. Misery filled his entire being - sadness that his mother was dead. However, a substantial amount of fear also filled him. That voice in his head was telling him to ‘FEAST. FEAST. FEAST. FEAST.’ on his mother’s body, and that frankly terrified him. Not only that, but he was fairly sure that he had been the cause of his mother’s death. Him tearing his way out of her. It made too much sense. Now, the question was whether or not he’d tell Twilight.
Twilight ran a hoof down the ridges of his exoskeleton softly, whispering sweet nothings to him; ‘It’s okay, Strange,’ and ‘We’ll catch whoever did this, and we’ll make them pay,’ and ‘I’m here for you’ and so on and so forth. A small part of Strange that wasn’t subsumed by the emotion flooding through his mind decided then that he certainly wouldn’t be telling Twilight - he had friends, and he didn’t want to lose them. He’d keep himself in check and make sure, somehow, they didn’t find out. She - they - wouldn’t understand if they knew. He didn’t mean to. He really wished he didn’t. He wished he had never come to be.
The world seemed to rumble to Strange, and he clutched Twilight closer to himself, making those same horrible noises. He felt a door in his mind get pushed forward just slightly, the same that had been nearly shut during his ‘birth’ if he could even call it that, and it gave him a blinding headache for a second before everything settled into normality. After nearly an hour of Strange clutching Twilight and doing his equivalent of crying, he began to quieten down, and after another few minutes he was just quietly whimpering as he stayed desperately attached to her.
Twilight pried him off of her slightly, pulling back and looking at his head, where she would presume his eyes if he had any. She sighed, fur matted with tears shed for Strange’s mother and Strange himself. “Strange - do you… want to go b-back to the library?”
He looked down at the clouds holding them up. He looked back at Twilight. “I… o-okay…” He whimpered out. She detached Strange from her and lit up her horn, levitating him beside her and getting into the hot air balloon, putting him down next to her. He simply buried his head into the wooden floor, whimpering. She gave him a look of pity before turning to Spike, who was lying in a corner with eyes red from crying just as, probably more than, Twilight had been. He nodded and blew a bit of fire into the burners, manipulating the flame.
It began to fly. Twilight was not looking forward to reporting this to the local guard.
Celestia restrained herself from growling in frustration, eyes narrowed. She began to trot towards the restricted section and the Star Swirl subsection there, books she had pulled out all sliding into place with barely a thought from Celestia. Currently the Canterlot Library was all but empty, since school was out and people tended not to read any of the books kept there other than in small intervals. That effectively meant that Celestia didn’t have to keep up appearances.
She unlocked the door with her magic, the only way it could be unlocked, and made her way into the restricted section. Her golden magic flared up and books shot towards her, opening and rapidly flipping through the pages to see if she could catch a glimpse of the word ‘xenomorph’. Books around her, enchanted with curses to woo ponies into reading them with promises of infinite knowledge, riches, or fame, possessed with demonic souls, or claiming to be sentient, wailed and cursed at her. She shut them out. She had locked them in here for a reason, and that reason was that they were evil and no pony but her should ever have to read them and their horrible contents.
Her eyes nervously glanced at a silent book at the far end of the bookshelves upon bookshelves, gathering dust. ‘Especially the Sannrskaethibók. None shall ever view the contents of that accursed book.’
Looking back at the books flying around her, she went back to flipping through the pages. Her instincts were screaming at her. A thought popped into her head, and she found it impossible to get rid of. ‘Your instincts have only been wrong once, Celestia. Do not take the risk.’
Twilight had gone to report a murder, the first of the year, to the Equestrian Guard stationed at Ponyville. She knew Spotless Badge, the head of the Ponyville Guard, personally, and she knew he took his job very seriously. He would be horrified by the news she was to deliver. Meanwhile, at the Golden Oaks Library, Spike had retreated upstairs, telling Strange Form he was going to sleep for a bit but if he needed to talk about anything then Spike was there and it was no trouble. Strange Form did not respond, instead curling up near the base of the stairs and whimpering quietly to himself.
Minutes passed - to Strange, hours. His entire world had been shattered. He felt perhaps it was illogical; he had never known his mother. He had only been alive for hours, and yet he felt this strongly about her death. Whether or not it was illogical, however, he still felt horrible about it. He probably could’ve been there to protect her. He was strong. Stronger than the ponies around you, an apex predator among prey - if only he had been there.
A knock at the door. A quiet voice spoke up as if it was taking all of their confidence. “Twilight…? I’m here to return the book on, um… the animals of the Everfree…” She muttered. Strange shifted his head slightly so that he was facing the door. Twilight wasn’t here, so he assumed she would just leave.
The door creaked open slowly.
Strange remembered this was actually a public library and she could just leave it on the ‘Returns’ desk.
A butter-yellow pony peeked out from behind the door. As soon as her eyes settled on him, her eyes widened, pupils shrinking to pinpricks. Strange remembered that most ponies were terrified of him. He opened his mouth and began to slowly form words, exposing his endlessly sharp teeth and thick tongue covered in some sort of slime or other liquid. “Twilight i-isn’t here…” He muttered, voice still grating and horrible to listen to.
The pony screamed and ran away, the door shutting behind her. Strange shifted his head back and whimpered; the realisation that ponies were scared and disgusted by his form and voice hit him all of a sudden, and he was sobbing - or his version of it at least - again.
Celestia scanned the same page over and over again. A frustrated nicker saw her tearing the page out of the book and shoving the books back into their places. She teleported back into her study, pacing back and forth and reading the page more carefully.
‘In my excitement after the first mirror, I created a second. A hellscape laid in wait; another Equus - or Earth as it appears to be called in most universes - but purple and rotting. Screaming was the only sound from around the landscape apart from a gentle breeze that itself seemed corrupted, poisoned. In the distance, I could see one of the few buildings that hadn’t completely collapsed and the writing on the side; ‘The xenomorphs are our new God’ it said. I spent a week in that realm before making my way back through the mirror, and I hope to Faust that nothing followed me through somehow. The ponies of Equestria should not be exposed to what I was. Therefore, I leave the entries detailing my exploration into that Equus to Princess Luna. She was always good with monsters.’
She silently put the page down on her desk. It combusted. Celestia knew she would come to regret that, but it felt kind of good in the moment. A deep sigh saw her putting on the mask she wore around her little ponies, that same motherly smile that reached her eyes, and she opened the door of her study and began to trot to her sisters room. Clearly, it would have to be Luna that helped her here.
Again, it had only been a few minutes, but those minutes were stretching into more than hours - days of torturous emotions drowning him. It felt as if there was a void in his center, gnawing at his insides. He felt hungry, but somehow he knew he wasn’t. He wanted to be sick, but he knew he wouldn’t be. Instinct felt more and more welcoming as his emotions felt like they were crippling him.
He adjusted his head to face the door again. He could hear whispers from outside of it. Strange strained his hearing to try and figure out what they were saying, uncurling and standing on all fours, flexing his tail behind him for a moment before letting it go limp on the ground.
“So we-” Spoke a high-pitched, bubbly voice.
“Yeah, just burst in there and show ‘em what’s what!” Exclaimed a tomboy-ish, raspy voice.
“Alright, on three?” A voice with a southern twang put forth.
“Indeed. One,” Said a voice that sounded as if it was from high society.
Strange Form was confused. He had no idea what was happening.
“two,”
Wait. ‘Show ‘em what’s what’?
“three!”
Strange had only just realised what was happening as ponies burst through the door, heading straight for him. His weakened mental state provided the perfect opportunity for his instincts to take over. A rainbow blur shot towards his head, but he could react faster than she could change course. Sliding to the left and grabbing the mane of the pegasus with his right foreleg, he stood on two feet and threw her to the right, screeching at the other four.
One pink earth pony, one white unicorn, that same butter-yellow pegasus, and… Applejack?
Applejack stared at him in shock.
He stared at the four in general with obvious killing intent.
The pink one, to the left!
Shooting a claw out and grabbing the pink one by the muzzle, he pulled her to his head and began preparing to murder her, opening his mouth and watching the horror in her eyes with satisfaction as his second mouth sprung from the top and prepared to shoot forth.
The white one, now!
With one swift movement he shut his mouth and threw the pink pony at the white one, watching with satisfaction as they collided with each other. The pink one stood up shakily, but the white one did not. She was out for the count. He realised that on two feet he was much taller than them all.
The rainbow one, right!
He simply took a step back and watched with mild amusement as she crashed into some bookshelves, falling onto the floor and getting covered by books that had fallen on her. He turned his attention to the three remaining ponies.
Slice them into flesh ribbons.
Jumping forward, he collided with the pink one, rolling over a few times before banging into the wall of the library. Hopping up, he smashed her body into the wall a few times before dropping it. He turned to the two left. Applejack watched him with a delicious mix of fear and rage in her eyes, and the butter-yellow pegasus watched him with… just anger?
The yellow one!
She flew up to his face, eyes opening to an incredible extent. “You! You - you bully! You should feel ashamed for what you did!” She screamed at him, tears pricking at the edges of her eyes. “You ate Twilight and now you’re doing this?! And for what! What, Mr Predator-Creature-Thing!”
The voice retreated immediately. Strange Form stared at her for a few seconds before collapsing onto the floor, whimpering.
Fluttershy and Applejack both turned to Twilight as she walked in. Strange simply curled up tighter. “Alright guys, I’m ba-” She began, before pausing. She gazed upon the chaos that had become of her library.
Twilight blinked. “I… I was gone for like half an hour. What the buck?”
Celestia trotted towards Luna’s room, shooting the occasional guard a kind smile on the occasion that they broke from their typical demeanor of complete silence and stoicism to acknowledge and, usually, salute her; a behaviour common mostly among newer guards, though of course, for some, the effect of seeing Celestia herself almost daily never wore off. She never grew tired of it herself. Being loved by those she loved in return was something that was a constant in her life, and a constant she appreciated almost as much, if not more than, any other.
Raising a hoof, she knocked politely. Luna did not take kindly to those who barged in without making themselves known, first. It was a pet peeve of hers, and Celestia was well aware of it. “Come in!” Luna shouted - and so she did.
“Sister,” Celestia began, before pausing, horn lighting up to close the door behind her as she walked in, “my student has encountered a creature that you may be familiar with.”
The eyes of the night almost immediately lit up, and she stood from her seat, bouncing slightly. Monsters - the thrill of it all - Faust, she loved it so much. “Which one? The - the Balrog? Oh, the Ancient Nightmare? I got it! The Ewok!”
She giggled to herself before taking on a more serious expression and stance. “No, sister. Starswirl claims to have passed on his notes of these creatures to you, or at least of his exploration into their domain. Have you heard of xenomorphs?”
A faint glimmer of recollection entered Luna’s eyes, and she rose a hoof to her chin. “I - believe so, though I’m not completely aware where from. Bear with me for a moment, Celly.”
Pet names. Celestia’s lips curved upwards. It was moments like this that she realised just how much she had missed Luna in her thousand-year absence.
Luna’s horn lit up in a blaze of her shade of blue and she spun on the spot, many journals and books - most written by Luna herself and never revealed to the public - levitating out of a few now-opened drawers, flipping through many of them before stopping at one, leaning forward slightly, muzzle slightly scrunched up and practically buried in the papers. She hummed to herself before levitating the others away and into their appropriate places, reaching a hoof forward and brushing against the words on the page; judging by how quickly her eyes flicked side-to-side, she was reading quickly.
The Princess of the Night, the Survivor of Solitude, Conqueror of the Cosmos, and Lunar Goddess gasped, silent for a second. Eyes wide, she looked towards Celestia. “We have to go,” she said, her tone brooking no argument.
Celestia hardened herself and nodded. “Inform me on the way.”
“So you’re telling me,” Twilight ground out from her clenched teeth, furious with her friends, “that Fluttershy saw Strange Form crying in the library. And that because of this. You decided it was a good idea. To assume he had eaten me. And. Assault. The library.”
The group of five looked away from each other nervously. Rarity held an ice pack just below her horn, nursing a bad bruise, the others sporting similar bruises, though none paying as much attention to them as Rarity was; which was fair considering she had been knocked unconscious. Rainbow was the first to pipe up. “We didn’t know what to think, Twi, we-”
“I don’t CARE,” Twilight shouted, patience shattering in an instant, “if you didn’t know what to think! You’ve made Strange Form feel even worse after his mother died - was murdered! You have no clue how angry I am at all of you, I - UGH!”
Stomping off upstairs to where Strange Form had gone to cry, she left the five behind, all reeling from the revelation that Strange’s mother had just died and they had done this. They knew how to feel.
Bad.
The wind soared beneath their wings as they flew forth, the strength of their wings and pegasus magic propelling them faster than would have otherwise been possible. Though the sound of the wind rushing past was loud, the two princesses could still communicate just fine. Celestia sported a look of incredible worry - fear, really - while Luna had her own face set firm. Only a professional actor of great skill would be able to notice the glint of terror and apprehension that shined in her eyes. She had fought creatures of basic instinct, but they were never a difficult fight. She had fought evil people before; but they were not inherently evil. Corrupted, straddling the grey line, falling off into the darkness. She had been like that once. The xenomorphs, from all she knew, were different. Not exactly of base instinct, yet not of the capability for moral good. Monsters, plain and simple.
Luna was snapped out of her pseudo-philosophical thoughts when Celestia spoke up. “How can we be sure that there aren’t others? That we aren’t going to have an infestation on our hands just like what happened to that Earth?” She asked, wavering slightly at ‘infestation’.
“Well,” Luna said, “we can’t. In fact, I must recommend we assume that we are dealing with that kind of situation. If there is an infestation, we may very well be dealing with the most dangerous situation in Equestrian history.”
Celestia nodded, thinking deep. “Twilight says that this one is capable of speech. Did Star Swirl mention anything about that?”
“Star Swirl said something about their screams, but they never - at least, according to him - spoke.”
“Then,” Celestia started, pausing for a moment before biting her lip and beginning again, “then perhaps we should attempt diplomacy. Twilight was alive while she sent the letter, wasn’t she? Perhaps we have encountered a certain breed of xenomorph that is less harmful. Not harmful at all, even.”
Luna was silent for slightly longer than was normal before she spoke up. Someone that didn’t know her would’ve said that this was just a slight social lapse. Someone that knew her, like Celestia, knew that she was thinking deeply about whether or not what Celestia had just said was a great idea or a terrible one. “...yes. My instincts tell me to simply obliterate the problem, but such is not the harmonic way. You are, as always,” Luna chuckled, “a few steps ahead of me.”
“Oh, you don’t need to tell me. I remember the chess game yesterday, Lulu.”
“Ah, yes,” Luna said, chagrined, “and utilising the Scandinavian Defence, no less.”
There was a brief moment of quiet. Celestia opened her mouth, closed it, opened it, closed it, opened it…
“What actually is a Scandinavian?”
Luna blinked. “You know, I have no idea.”
Twilight blinked back tears. Today had been stressful, and it was getting worse, but she knew that Strange was having a much worse day. She had found a murder victim, but the victim had been his mother. Her friends had made one of her friends feel worse, but that friend was Strange. Everything was wrong today. Everything was worse for Strange Form, who sat on the ground in front of her, hissing softly and laying the front of his head against the ground.
She let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding before approaching Strange, who was lying in front of her bedroom door. She noticed that he had grown somewhat in the back of her head. She knew it wasn’t normal, but she tended to think about… just about everything, all at the same time.
Laying down next to him, she placed a hoof on his back, just in between the slight ridges on his back. She simply stayed there for a bit, listening to his cries, before she decided to open her mouth. She couldn’t get a word out.
“I-I just don’t understand, Twilight! I don’t! Why? Wh-why? Why does… the world just hate me so much? First my mother! Dead! D-dead! I never even got to meet her! Talk to her!”
“You’re ri-”
“And then! And then,” Strange interrupted; Twilight understood now, he just wanted her to listen, “those ponies! They th-thought I killed you!”
There was silence for a few moments; achingly long moments that made Twilight question if she should still be listening rather than helping actively. The silence was almost deafening.
“...am I a monster, Twilight?” He asked quietly, not hissing anymore but in the same position as before.
She recoiled slightly, though kept her hoof on him. “No, Strange! No. You’re not a monster at all. I know you think that’s why my friends attacked - but they were wrong. We’ve lived hectic lives for a long time, and so we panic easily. They assumed the worst, and they shouldn’t have, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s because of them and not you. You’re not a monster, Strange. You’re a good creature. A good xenomorph.”
Strange took a very deep breath. He stood up slowly, Twilight standing at the same time and keeping her hoof on him. He turned and began to walk away and down the stairs; Twilight stopped and lifted the hoof that had been on his back to her mouth, chewing at it slightly, nervous at how her friends would react this time.
Snapping out of it, she quickly followed, reaching the bottom of the stairs in time for what would’ve been a stare-off between Strange and her friends were it not for the fact that Strange lacked eyes. They seemed guilty. He seemed… well, she wasn’t sure. It was hard to read someone you had just met, especially when that someone was a species you hadn’t even heard of before.
It was Strange who spoke first. The door in his mind jerked, as if something was trying to open it, whispers leaking through - you were going to slice them into ribbons, you’re the apex predator, a living weapon, MAKE THEM REGRET IT - but he was strong enough to ignore it. “I… understand. I forgive you.”
The mental effort it took to say that was incredible, but it felt exhilarating. The door began to push further closed against the weight of what felt like a billion voices, and he gave it one more push; “You were in the wrong, but you were not wrong.”
It felt… freeing. There were no more whispers. The door shut itself fully. Strange smiled for a brief moment before he remembered the rest of today. Before any more could even be said, however, there was a knock at Twilight’s door. She frowned and walked to her door, opening it slowly before seeing who stood in front of it. With wide eyes she quickly opened it and walked back, bowing slightly before remembering that she didn’t really need to. She, too, was a princess now; something she often forgot.
Celestia and Luna, the diarchs of Equestria and Guardian-Protectors of the Sky, walked into her home, eyes immediately landing on Strange Form. He felt intimidated, and the door in his mind opened back up somewhat, backed by those same billion voices in greater strength. Around the princesses, though, it felt like a hurricane fought back against those voices.
Immediately, Celestia noticed how he had shrunk back somewhat, fearful. The same thing many fillies and colts of a more nervous disposition had done before. She smiled gently and bent down somewhat. He was slightly larger than one of her subjects, now, but still a head shorter than her, which was no surprise. The height of an alicorn was impressive, especially for a four-legged being. “What’s your name?”
He opened his mouth before shutting it and swallowing. “Strange… Strange Form, that is, uh, Princess.”
She raised an eyebrow. He knew she was one of the princesses. Curious. She shot Luna a look in time to catch her sending the same look. So they agreed - that was a sign of something, they just didn’t know what yet. “Very well. You know who I am. Princess Luna and I would appreciate it if we could speak with you and Twilight.”
Celestia stood back up and walked outside, followed by Luna. Twilight sighed and turned, beckoning to Strange. They walked out and the door shut behind them.
“Ah… Ah can’t believe he forgave us. Just like that.” Applejack said, sitting on her rump in surprise. She was breathing slightly harder than usual until Rarity wrapped an arm around her.
“He’s a good… creature, Applejack. We made a mistake and he understood that.” She said, smiling at Applejack, who smiled back.
“Was it just a mistake, though? Or,” Fluttershy muttered, sitting in a corner with her hooves over her head, “is this something he shouldn’t have forgiven? An underlying problem? Speciesism, even?”
Pinkie smiled broadly and hopped over to her. “Fluttershy, you silly billy! I know it can seem like that, and we probably have underlying xenophobic traits considering that Equestrian education has some massive holes in towns like this that tend to prioritise the places where we shine in history and where the other species of this planet are monsters, and especially in Cloudsdale, a city of warriors, and even more especially because we live near the Everfree Forest where basically everything is a monster, but Rarity is right! It was an honest mistake! A carnivorous and unknown creature was here, Twilight wasn’t - and we know how little she goes outside, she needs to get more sun - and we’ve basically lived in chaos for the past three years! We made the wrong assumption, but the correct one!”
The entire room blinked. Pinkie realised she had broken out of character before Fluttershy quickly broke into tears and hugged Pinkie, thanking her. Pinkie rubbed her back before detaching Fluttershy from her and reaching deep into her mane, rummaging around for a moment and pulling out a cupcake. If you looked really closely, there was writing in a very small font on there.
‘Sorry about that, that was more of my Pinkie sense than anything!’
Fluttershy laughed and began to eat the pancake. The room relaxed somewhat. Rainbow began to propose things they could do to apologise, and they discussed while the four outside talked, too.
Strange spoke up first. “Is it… okay if we do this sometime else? I’m… tired.”
Luna beat Celestia to the response. “I’m sorry, no. You’re a possible security threat of hitherto unthought of proportions. We must speak now.”
Celestia and Twilight both glared at her, and Strange shrunk back further. Luna had the sense to at least look ashamed of herself, knowing she had gone a step further than she should’ve. In her head, she cursed the societal and cultural change in Equestria. In the old Equestria that she knew, that would’ve been perfectly acceptable.
Celestia turned back to Strange. “She is not necessarily wrong, Strange Form. Given the circumstances, we thought it appropriate to… get it out of the way, as it were. Your usual investigation of non-alicorn ponies would necessitate an investigation, but I believe I only have one question: would you allow us to look into your mind?”
This was something Celestia and Luna had agreed upon on their way. They needed to do this as quickly as possible; far as they were concerned, the xenomorph problem had to be handled as soon as possible, and this was ‘as soon as possible’, not to mention the mental might of Luna would allow her to catch any evil intentions almost immediately.
Strange was silent for a moment. “I can’t say no, can I?”
Celestia looked at him with pity in her eyes. Luna held her own unreadable stance, almost professional. “No, of course you can,” Twilight said, unsure of herself, “it would be wrong otherwise.”
The princesses looked to each other for a moment. Twilight looked at them with hope. Strange shook his head. “No, no. It’s okay. I suppose you may.”
Twilight looked at Strange in surprise. The mind was the most private thing; there was nothing more unheard of than giving others permission to look into your mind, though the difficulty of navigating such an environment played a part there too. Without further adieu, Luna lit up her horn, and that glimmer of blue crawled up it before spilling into the air and reaching inside of Strange’s head.
They both collapsed immediately. Twilight caught Strange, laying him on the ground, sporting a look of worry, especially for Strange’s mental health. Celestia caught Luna, laying her on the ground, sporting a look of worry for something else entirely. The safety of all Equus was at risk here; and that was not something she ever said lightly.
The world was lush, but in the distance, there was a sprawling expanse of ash and grey. Luna hardened herself. Something was achingly wrong in this mind, she could feel it, but what?
She didn’t know, but she’d find out. It’s what she did, and she had a long time. Every hour that passed in the mind was only half-a-minute in the real world.
