Locus

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Epilogue
Intro

Chapter 1

Gerald Briggs slapped his alarm clock. It wasn’t the most pleasant way to wake up in the morning, but he was a heavy sleeper. Slowly, he began his morning routine. It was the same every morning, and had been for so long that appliances in his house had developed small finger-shaped indents. It might even be possible to tell that he owned them by taking his fingerprints off the buttons.

He was a 35 year old theoretical physicist with some truly remarkable ideas. Other than that he was an unremarkable person. No, “unremarkable” was not quite the right word; he was more unremarked-on. So unremarked-on, in fact, that once he had almost gotten a parking ticket simply because the cop hadn’t seen him inside the car. People he worked with on anything less than a weekly basis practically had to be reintroduced every time they met. It was as if people just let him slide into the backs of their heads, taking up silent residence like that mysterious item nobody seems to have bought, lurking in the depths of the attic.

Gerald wasn’t anything close to a household name inside of his lifetime; he was barely known inside of the apartment complex he lived in. In fact, two times his landlord had forgotten to charge him rent, but he had paid anyway. Eventually, Gerald would go on to be credited for the invention of practical antimatter and graphene neural networks that could replace dead brain cells, but he only got recognition for these things after his death.

While he eventually did become a household name, there was only ever one picture ever taken of him. He had somehow missed being referenced anywhere but in type for his entire life.

Right now, he was going through his daily mail. Or someone’s daily mail anyway. One envelope was a bill with his name misspelled. There were three credit card offers to “Customer Name Here” and one advertisement addressed to “Current Resident” that had the wrong address on it. It was all the kind of mail that has the pungent smell of unwelcome bureaucracy on it.

He was sorting through what to throw away when he heard something almost entirely out of place from his normal every day routine.

He heard a knock at the door, which wasn’t completely alien—possibly the only person who knew him by sight was an old lady that regularly got her son’s address wrong. But this knock was more businesslike than hers.

Cautiously, Gerald peered through the peephole and saw several men in business attire. Upon opening the door slowly, a menacing badge was immediately placed in the general area of his face.

“We are the C.I.A. And you are coming with us.” The voice was authoritative and didn’t intend to take any lip. The badge vanished back into the equally menacing sports jacket.

Gerald must have been in a state of shock because he spoke up, from somewhere that couldn’t have been his rigorously sensible nature.

“Can I get dressed first?” This seemed to throw the agent, who lost a good bit of his authoritative bluster.

“Uhh yes, yes. Definitely do that first.”

Gerald closed the door as politely as possible in the somewhat embarrassed agent’s face and went to start getting dressed. This was all an incredibly unusual chain of events for him, and it took a bit for the shock to set in of somebody knowing his name and intentionally coming to his door. It took so long, in fact, that by the time he finally managed to fully register his bewilderment, he was already getting into a black SUV.

The inside of the SUV was black and cramped; he found himself sitting in between two “agents” —as Gerald had decided to call them, not knowing who they really were, or what their intentions were for him. They were both darkly dressed and, judging by the annoying metallic lump that kept poking him, at least one of them was armed. The agent in the front seat turned around as if to say something to Gerald, but instead he faced the driver and asked.

“Couldn’t you have gotten a car with more room in it?” He went on before the driver could possibly answer. “I mean, come on. This is our first job in the field here. It looks unprofessional.”

“I’m sorry, but you said we needed to get this done ASAP.” The driver pronounced it as a singular word. “So I just grabbed the first car I could find.” The agent in the front seat sighed and turned back to Gerald.

“OK. Mr. Briggs. I know we aren’t quite being professional here, but yes we’re the C.I.A. We apologize for any inconvenience. However, currently we are experiencing a…” He paused a moment, as if searching for a word.

“National emergency?” Gerald asked.

“Nah, it’s probably worse than that. It’s more of a ‘Global Crisis.’” He paused, as if tasting the words to see if they fit. “Yeah. That’s about right. I can’t tell you much here, but if we can’t stop it, it could be even farther reaching than a ‘Global Crisis.’”

The words dropped into a pit of silence. The rest of the trip was uncomfortable, but uneventful. They arrived at the airport and had some trouble with security until the menacing badges were shown, checked. Despite the agents’ apparent newness to working in the field, they seemed to intimidate the average person nonetheless; Gerald could feel people’s eyes on him and his armed escorts. They boarded a private jet, where he was informed politely but firmly, and also at gunpoint, that he was not to talk to anybody on the plane.

The food on the plane wasn’t bad, certainly better than most airline food, and he wasn’t charged for anything. When he and the other five civilians on the plane finally landed, they were picked up by a bus and taken to a scattering of temporary structures surrounding an otherwise uninteresting-looking suburban house. As they were led in through the flap of a tent, Gerald saw a mishmash of scientific equipment and several folding chairs in a half-circle around a projector screen.

There were two other non-military personnel there. Both of them looked about as much in the dark as Gerald was. Just then, the agent who had been in the front seat of the car walked into the tent and strode purposefully up to the screen, as if to present a lecture to them.

“I suppose you’re wondering why we brought you all here,” he began. “Well, here to explain that is noted theoretical physicist Dr. Gordon Free-“ He paused mid-sentence, looking at the door. Somebody in uniform came up to him and the two had a short conversation, the only part of which that Gerald could hear was “What do you mean, he lost his voice?!”

Turning back to the audience, the agent looked more than slightly put upon and continued hesitantly.

“OK. Due to unforeseen circumstances, I will be the one telling you why we are here.”

The uniformed messenger sat down at the computer and began pulling up things on the projector. As he was doing that, a mildly dressed man with a goatee—and the most stereotypical nerd glasses Gerald thought he would ever see—came in and sat down next to him. His name-tag read “Dr. Freeman.”

Just then the agent up front finished being ad hoc technical support and began to speak.

“My name is Rodger Walton, and we brought you here because of THIS!” He turned and gestured dramatically at the projector screen behind him. After seeing what was on the screen, though, his shoulders slumped a little. “Jenkins, we don’t have to start at the beginning every time, do we? Can you just skip to the part?”

Before the uniformed man (presumably named Jenkins) started skipping through the video, Gerald caught “Once upon a time in the magical la-“ before the screen started skipping through scenes with… pastel animated ponies in them? Gerald was beginning to wonder when the camera crew would jump out and yell “GOTCHA!” or “APRIL FOOL!”

Finally Jenkins seemed to get to the right part, and the screen froze about ¾ of the way through the video. Gerald noticed one of the “ponies” in the background had a slightly wall-eyed look, as if it had walked directly into a wall in the recent past.

“OK, there, now zoom in on the upper left corner,” Rodger said, before somewhat dramatically turning to the audience—“and THAT is why we brought you gentlemen here today.”

On the screen, on the left hand side, was a blurry and pixelated, but still recognizable, human hand.

Chapter 2

“WHAT? You brought us here to see an animation Easter egg?!” One of the other civilians seemed especially angry about this. “In a goddamn kids’ TV show?”

“Well, it wasn’t there yesterday.”

“...What?” The angry man seemed to deflate somewhat.

“That hand wasn’t there yesterday, on any recording of the show, anywhere. Now, even the screencaps have it there.” Rodger had a deadpan expression that most poker players would probably sell their soul for. There was a pause where people tried to understand the ramifications of this statement, and generally failed.

The outspoken man who, by an unspoken consensus, was now the voice for the very confused civilians asked “So what does that mean? How did it get everywhere?”

“We really aren’t sure what it means. That’s why we brought you scientists here. As to how it got everywhere, if you will come with me—yes, into this house over here—we’ll show you how we think it got there.” Most of the so-called scientists (Gerald thought some of them looked more like people who would wear tinfoil hats than scientists) were still trying to figure out what he meant, and seemed apprehensive, but curiosity overtook that as they were led out of the tent and to a small house.

Inside, the house was sparsely furnished and dusty enough for the dust to be visible to the naked eye. It didn’t seem to have been lived in at all. As they walked up the stairs, Gerald noticed that most of the walls were blank, as if somebody had simply put a primer over the wall and left it at that. There was only one picture—a painting on the wall in the hallway at the top of the stairs. The name “Elinus” was the only thing written below the picture, which was of an attractive and somewhat regal looking woman.

Inside what was probably presented to the potential buyer as a “spacious master bedroom with attached full bathroom” was a truly frightening mess of electronics linked by cords, about half of which looked homemade. But what really stood out was a… thing in the center of the room. Gerald’s eyes watered from trying to look at it. It looked somewhat like a tear, as if somebody had worn a hole into the air. As he moved around it to get a different angle, it didn’t seem to change. It was a pity Gerald had never played any first person shooters from the early nineties, the ones that used sprites instead of actual 3D models, because then he would have something he could say it was almost, but not quite, completely unlike. To him, with his expertise, it looked a bit like a Mandelbrot set somehow brought into three dimensions.

“We call THAT the Locus; it seems to be a tear in the universe, a portal between worlds. If you will.” Rodger’s face glowed evilly in the light given off by the intrusion into the world.

“So how does this explain how somebody got into a TV show? I mean... you’re not saying that a TV show is actually real, are you?” Gerald caught the nametag of the outspoken scientist— ”Richard”—and privately pegged him to have at least tried on a tinfoil hat at some point in his life.

“Well I think that’s a question you should ask Gerald here.” Rodger made a gesture at him, as if he had all the answers all along.

“What?” a bit confused as suddenly being labeled as a fountain of information.

“Wasn’t your master’s thesis pretty much all about the existence of multiple universes?”

“Well, yes. It was. But I never said they were connected, at least, not like this.” Gerald gestured at the nexus, being careful not to bring his hand too close. “And I certainly never applied my work to fictional ones.” Gerald was looking at the Locus in apprehension, his hand felt slightly warmer just from being near it. Both very curious, and suspicious at the same time.

Rodger shrugged. “I’m sure in your research you came across the possibility, Mr. Briggs, that every fictional universe is real somewhere.”

“Well, yes, of course, in theory. Always in theory. I certainly never said it was possible for one to affect the other.”

“Well, Mr. Briggs. Possible or not, we are going through there in less than an hour, so you’d better get suited up.” And with that, Rodger left.

Following Rodger out of the house, it became apparent to Gerald that while Rodger was indeed in charge, the people he was in charge of perhaps didn’t quite see eye to eye with him. As they were passing, he stopped for a while to chastise a man who, for some reason, was unpacking an extremely heavy gun with a large caliber barrel.

“A 40 mm automatic grenade launcher?! I mean, I can see bringing some small arms, but—correct me if I’m wrong—aren’t we are going into a TV show made for kids here? I really doubt we are going to need to massacre everybody in a kids show at hundreds of explosive rounds per minute. The show’s rated TV G!”

“Sorry, boss. Higher-ups said we gotta bring some heavy weaponry.” His face was stony, like a road block midway through rush hour. Rodger sighed, and turned to Jenkins.

“Jenkins, could you get them suited up? I have to deal with THIS.” There was venom in his voice.

“Yes, SIR.” Jenkins issued a snappy salute and motioned for the “scientists” to follow him. Gerald was becoming pretty sure, looking at them closely, that they could not all be scientists. It was the way they reacted to the Locus. Too many of them looked almost as if somebody was playing the world’s biggest prank on them, as Gerald had. That may have been mostly justified at first, he mused, but the Locus didn’t look like anything you could get with a 50 million dollar effects budget. It looked undeniably, almost offensively, real.

About fifteen minutes later, Gerald was inside the room filled with terrifying electronics. He was poking at the Lovecraftian gadgetry. A few of the guards looked like they would have given him trouble, but he looked official enough, and he was going through the thing later anyway. He was working at one of the computers when Rodger edged in, eyeing the Locus nervously.

“Are you sure you should be messing with that computer, Gerald? That is... uh, that is a computer, right?”

“Yes. It uses a very strange programming language. I don’t know if you know what ‘eldritch’ means, but I expect that’s how you would describe whoever made it.”

“What?” Rodger seemed more than a little too edgy for a professional government agent.

“This computer, it uses a programming language I’ve never set eyes on before.”

“Well, maybe this could help. It’s the only book we found in the entire house.” He held out a book titled Language Gativin. Other than those two words, the leather-bound cover was devoid of markings. “We couldn’t make heads or tails of it really; it all looks like unintelligible gibberish.”

“I’ll see what I can do with it.” He hardly glanced away from the monochrome CRT screen.

Rodger closed the door as quietly as he could as if not to disturb Gerald, but the truth was, that room sent chills down his spine. He had taken a look at some of the more… improvised-looking electronics, and they shouldn’t have worked at all. If not looked at too closely, they were fine, but once the eye actually examined the exposed traces on the boards closely, they were completely wrong. Things didn’t connect. Small components looked like they were completely missing, or only half soldered in, with the other half just sticking up into the open air. Wires were connected with equal probability, to end without warning or to join another connection. Overall Rodger got the feeling that he was looking at half a device. He suspected he knew where the other half was.

He shook his head and tried not to think about how it worked. If anybody could decipher that mess it was Gerald.

Rodger had gone to get him personally because he could find next to nothing on Gerald. Sure, the man had a number of truly remarkable academic achievements in every discipline, from theoretical physics to electronic engineering. But, despite deriving three completely original mathematical theorems before leaving high school, he didn’t have any notoriety for them. It was hard enough even finding a D.O.B. and there didn’t even appear to be a picture of him anywhere. Even his I.D. was blank. How anybody could miss getting their picture on their own ID was beyond Rodger.

Although he was quite new in the field, Rodger had done his research, and the three most wanted men in the world might as well have been playing hide and seek in kindergarten, compared to Mr. Briggs. Who was this guy? Rodger intended to ask him some very serious questions later on, but he couldn’t think about that now, because some idiots were trying to pack more heavy artillery. Now, why the hell would we need anti-tank rifles? He was going to find the person who was making them take all this crap and have Words with them.

Gerald really wasn’t sure about this programming language. It was like nothing he had ever seen before; either it was very simple and done extremely well, or it was extremely complex. It was very hard to tell which. After only five minutes with Language Gativin, though, he was making progress. Twenty minutes later, when the other “scientists” arrived, he had figured out most of the controls for the nexus and had changed it from an unsettling mess floating in midair to more of a tear in space framed by an unsettling mess floating in midair.

Through the tear, depending on where you looked, you could see the remains of a stone temple. Designed more like an open amphitheater, there was a podium, glass topped, with a single button. Behind it was a recently used bonfire. Set into the walls, in 10-foot-high slabs of lead, were strange two word phrases, most of which didn’t make any sense.

After looking at the grim stonework for a while one of the watching scientists quipped.

“Well it doesn’t look like it’s from anything I’d want to show my kids.”

Gerald could not shake the feeling that the Locus looked like an open eye, watching him.

It was very quiet for a while. Some time later, Rodger came in, took one look at the Locus and immediately exclaimed, “What the-“ before he tripped over his own feet and fell flat on his face.

Getting up, probing his nose for blood, he was trailed by the previously nerdy-looking Dr. Freeman, who didn’t look quite so nerdy in some sort of… radiation suit? Gerald didn’t quite know what to make of Dr. Freeman’s outfit.

“Gerald, what have you been up to with the Locus? It looks... different. Did you fix it? It looks like it might work now.” Rodger looked down and noticed some small and mangled shapes on the other side. “Is that the probes? So THAT’S what happened to the probes! I was worried about them.” He paused a moment to whisper something to Dr. Freeman and then said, “Well, gentlemen, once we have confirmed that the Locus is safe to go through, we’ll be the second people to venture into another universe. I hope you all packed well.”

About twenty minutes, several unfortunate-looking sticks and some serious tweaking by Gerald later, the Locus was deemed “safe.” Gerald was also the first and only volunteer to be the first through it. Something about the eldritch programming language had intrigued him, and he was feeling adventurous and very out of character. He thought about what he normally would be doing, right about now. Checking his watch, it was about 5:00, so: he would probably be error-checking theories as a favor, or helping compile astronomical data from one of the networked telescopes… None of that had ever been particularly exciting before, but it had seemed like an interesting enough thing to do at the time. Now, it sounded boring and kind of stale, like 6 month old crackers that had been left out in the open air. He wanted to do this: he wanted to break on through to the other side.

Shaking his head to dislodge such detritus, he set his gaze straight ahead. The tension in the air couldn’t have been thicker if the entire amphitheater on the other side was filled with a pitchfork- wielding, torch-bearing angry mob. He took a deep breath.

As Gerald Briggs stepped out of this world, he could feel the anxiety falling away, the tension faded as the portal filled his vision.

It felt...

It felt like he was beyond his troubles. It felt like the start of a new life.

Chapter 3

It was different on the other side.

It was almost like walking in the early morning before everybody started heading to work, although it wasn’t exactly like that. He felt more… alive. He felt refreshed, and generally better, simply breathing the air. However, the effect was somewhat muffled, but not completely suffocated, by the sheer amount of hatred in the air. It seemed to seep out of the bleak stones like an open wound. Gerald felt better than he had before, just standing here, but he knew he would feel better still the more miles he put between him and this god forsaken temple.

Slowly, his fellow “scientists” edged through the portal after him, apprehension weighing down their steps more effectively than concrete overshoes. Gerald knew they weren’t all scientists now—Richard, in fact, was a science fiction writer. He ran small runs of his books off of his own press, and offered to give Gerald a free sample if he ever dropped by.

However, that wasn’t his main concern right now. His main concern was that outside of this abandoned temple was a forest on all sides, so thick as to be almost malevolent in its rampant growth. Gerald was beginning to wonder if they really were where they thought they were.

As Gerald came back into the stone temple, he was greeted with a scene of organized chaos, and one of the supposed “scientists” trying to get a GPS to work. He sighed and walked over to her.

“That won’t work here, Ms-“ He paused a moment, trying to remember her nametag.

“Hess, Carlyn Hess, I’m a botanist.” She was moderately attractive, and her tan suggested that she got out a lot more than Gerald did.

“Ah. Thank you. No, Carlyn, that won’t work here because there aren’t any satellites for it to get its position from.” He wasn’t trying to be condescending, but he was worried that had slipped into his tone of voice of its own accord.

“So how are we going to find our way back here? I mean if GPS doesn’t work, what good would a compass do if we-“ She was cut off mid-sentence by Rodger, who was carrying some sort of folding pole arrangement that looked like it was for the avid television-watcher on the go.

“With THIS!” He said and began to unfold the antenna. It looked moderately complicated, and finally unfolded out to about 10-12 feet tall and looked more like something you would place people on as a terrible warning. “It looks a bit odd... but it’s the most efficient antenna we have ever devised.”

“So how is this supposed to help us find our way back here?” The device looked even odder fully assembled, but Gerald was prepared to accept Rodger’s word. Anything that looked that strange had to be the best at something, even if that something was frightening children.

“That’s going to help us with these.” Rodger tossed both of them a device that only had one button and a circle of LEDs. Several minutes later, after the devices were confirmed to be working and shouldering a pack filled with somewhat strange contents, Gerald and the other civilians set out into the forbidding forest.

It was fairly uneventful in the forest; Carlyn was finding a mix of common and completely new plants. The plants were not at all interesting to Gerald, but he was polite enough to listen patiently as she talked about them. It was better than the alternative, which was to think about the empty forest around him. Gerald felt like this place should be teeming or at least creeping with life. The kind of life you might see scuttling away from the light as you open the door into a cellar.

They were heading to the only landmark visible through the thick undergrowth of the forest a column of smoke in the distance. They were being led through the forest by a man named Sanat a state park ranger who dressed like an Indiana Jones cosplayer and didn't seem to fit his name too well. If Gerald would have put a name to him he would have picked Harry.

Apparently this was the first time he had used his machete. It didn’t look to well-made, Gerald suspected he bought it out of the knife store equivalent of the Wal-Mart bargain bin. He seemed a little preoccupied with using his knife, so Gerald tried making conversation with one of his comrades.

After a few non-committal grunts he finally caught the name [atuhor name]. He was the kind of man Gerald wouldn’t exactly call short, but would instead describe as a dark haired man who always carried around an expression of mild, narrow eyed disapproval coupled with a suspicion of nearly everything. He also had a beard like he was starring as the evil twin of himself.

“So why are you here?” Gerald asked.

“Lore expert.”

“What kind of lore?”

“This world we are on here.” He gestured at the area around him and moved back into the stare straight ahead and frown of disapproval that seemed to be the ground state of his existence.

“SO.” Gerald said after a few seconds “what do you do for a living?”

There was no reply only an unfriendly glance and a noncommittal grunt.

“Do you live around here?”

The look he shot Gerald would have cut glass, and his tone of voice was so icy it almost crystallized out of the air.

“I don’t plan to tell you that.”

Gerald decided to see if anybody else was more talkative and awkwardly looked at the other people in the group. Rodger seemed busy, Carlyn was preoccupied with the plant life around them. The only ones in the group that didn’t seem preoccupied was Richard, the rather forward “scientist” from earlier and a man who looked like the most stereotypical accountant Gerald thought he would ever see.

As much as he was curious as to why the accountant was here. Gerald decided that he wouldn’t make good conversation and opted to talk to Richard instead.

“So why did they bring you along?”

He seemed to think about that for a moment.

“I don’t quite know why they brought me. I’m a science fiction writer, I run my own press in Black Diamond.” He shot a questioning look at Gerald who returned it with a blank one.

“Never heard of it.”

“Well if you ever pass by make sure to drop in I’ll give you a free book or two.”

So, in the group were a botanist, a science fiction writer, somebody who presumably worked in a state park, a mysterious accountant, the unfriendly man dressed in black, and Gerald. Gerald wasn’t sure where he fit into the group, and for that matter, where anybody else fit into the group.

About an hour and a half’s worth of mildly interesting walking later, they came up on an ominous-looking tree that somebody had decided to build a house into. Gerald couldn’t see why anybody would pick this tree to build a house into; it didn’t look friendly at all. In fact it looked downright evil.

The tree itself was squat and seemed to be entrenched into the soil around it, as if it thought there was something out to steal it. Placed around it and hanging from a number of branches were various masks and bottles which didn’t do much to make it look less like somewhere you would find a grade-A Disney villainous crone.

After a minute or two knocking at the door and eventually looking in at the similarly villainous interior, it was apparent the owner was out and about offering poisoned apples to passersby or some other small evil. This was a problem because so far this cottage was their only landmark, and there weren’t any obvious paths leading away from it in any direction.

Gerald had gone off with Carlyn for some basic botany. It was remarkable how many plants were immediately recognizable from earth, but it wasn’t very interesting. Gerald was beginning to space out when he heard wing beats. And overhead above the treetops flew a Pegasus; there wasn’t any other word for it. Against the sun, all Gerald could make out was that it was flying with a large box of some sort.

When it moved out of the sun and landed at the house it was apparent from the saddlebags that it was a member of the local post. It had a grey coat, and for some reason—Gerald couldn’t think why —it had seven bubbles on its flank. It looked exactly like the wall-eyed one he had seen in the background in that video Rodger had shown them when they arrived.

Nobody in the group spoke. The only movement among them was people craning their necks to watch as the little Pegasus delivered a package to the villainous hut.

Carlyn was the first to speak some silent seconds later.

“Is that...?” Gerald didn’t like the way she looked when she was perplexed; nobody with an advanced education like Carlyn’s should be able to make an expression like that. “Is that one of those ‘My Little Ponies?’”

Chapter 4

A lot of things had happened in the last fifteen minutes or so. Rodger had been monopolizing most of the bemused Pegasus’s time and Gerald was doing something he had never tried before. He was watching other people.

This was an activity he had never taken much part in before. When nobody is interested in you, it’s very hard to show any interest in anybody else.

He was starting to notice things about people as well, mostly he was noticing the way people reacted to the “pony” (He was still having trouble thinking of her as Derpy).

The general soldiery looked at her as if she was a lion that had accidentally been let into a petting zoo. Their wary glances didn’t change from face to face.

Carlyn looked at Derpy with an unfocused, bemused smile on her face, probably remembering tender years playing with “my little pony dolls.”(Gerald thought about the idea of “My Little Pony dolls” like somebody picking up a dead mouse)

Sanat, the oddly dressed park ranger who was leading them through the forest, seemed to want to do several things at once. Part of him wanted to pet the pony, part of him was sizing the Pegasus up as a mount, and part of him was telling the other parts that Derpy wasn’t an animal—and was in fact about as intelligent as he was.

Dr. Freeman seemed to take all of this quite well. He didn’t seem surprised, but just watched Derpy with an undirected, thoughtful expression. He kept his thoughts to himself, whatever they were.

The out-of-place accountant didn’t seem to notice Derpy at all. He was still prattling on to the unfortunate soul who had been his... victim for the past eternity of boring stories.

The strangest reaction though was that of [atuhor name]. He seemed genuinely shocked by the revelation, and was now sitting on a tree stump, thinking. Occasionally Gerald thought he heard him mutter something about a “Twilight Sparkle.”

Gerald was brought back to the present by the sound of the entire camp getting ready to set off into the forest once more, so they could get as much walking done as possible before sunset.

Walking through the forest was about as eventful as it was before. The distinct lack of any wildlife was as unsettling as ever. Gerald had tried making conversation with the out-of-place accountant, who turned out to be named Marco. Talking with Marco proved to be a big mistake: Gerald was talked at for the next twenty-eight minutes and thirty seconds. Marco spewed a tale of a man who could put bricks to sleep via hypnosis. It was interesting to nobody, possibly not even to Marco himself.

Tearing himself away, Gerald decided to talk to, or at least walk next to, [atuhor name]. Because he was walking the farthest away from Marco (and from everybody else, for that matter).

“So...” Gerald began, already wondering if icy silence would be better or worse than endless stories, “what do you know about all this?”

He was already not listening, having mentally prepared himself for silence even through [atuhor name]’s fully vocal reply.

“Quite a bit.”

Gerald had to mentally back up and turn around in stunned amazement. [atuhor name] was actually acknowledging his existence, his habitual social habits brushed aside by...

Gerald glanced over at Ditzy Doo, and things began to click into place in his mind. He smiled and decided to strike out with his assumption.

"How much do you know about Ditzy and...?" He trailed off, not sure how to continue, but Gerald could already see he was knee deep in another lecture. He was genuinely curious if this would be better than brick hypnosis.

It was. It turned out that [atuhor name] knew a lot about a show called "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic," along with an accumulated grab bag of "interesting facts."

[atuhor name] wasn't completely socially oblivious, and unlike, say, Marco, talking to him wasn't an exercise in not falling asleep. It was generally... interesting, but it was more one-sided than most conversations he'd been through. Even a social pariah like Gerald could see that important parts of the art of conversation just sailed over [atuhor name]'s head, like an airplane flying over a mole.

Derpy Hooves wasn't quite sure what to think of these beclothed hairy ape things. They seemed friendly enough, but the way they pointed those “gun” things about suggested that they were dangerous, maybe even lethal. She had been talking to this “Rodger” creature for longer than she cared to, and had finally convinced him that because Twilight had a more or less direct line to Princess Celestia, Ponyville was the place to go.

They certainly didn’t look like “Huje green things with teeth.” and anyway if they were here to skulk about the edge of the forest they wouldn't have brought the one she was walking next to at the moment.

He was the only the only one who hadn't said anything in the entire time Derpy had been with the group. He was wearing something very different from the rest of the group—it looked like it had a suit of armor in its ancestry somewhere, and somebody had seen fit to stamp a deformed H or upside down Y on the front of it; probably for the same reason they painted it orange.

The occupant of the suit had very thick rimmed glasses and was carrying one of the guns around in a remarkably casual manner. It was as if he had gotten used to being around them, as opposed to the rest of the differently dressed people, who flinched every time one of the soldiers brandished a gun at some small forest creature.

Derpy decided to try and strike up a conversation. “So where do you come from?”

There wasn't an answer immediately forthcoming. She looked over at the man, who had a somewhat pained expression on his face.

He sighed and mutely went through the motions of telling, or at least signing to, Derpy that he couldn't talk.

Well, that was disappointing. There were how many of these ape things? Judging by the endless rambling behind her, she had chosen to talk to the only “human” that couldn't speak. She would just have to make do.

“Can you explain why you are here?” Another pained expression. “I was only asking.”

There was a period of uncomfortable silence before Derpy continued. “Is there anything you can tell me?”

Before he could answer, a great light raced across the sky. It took only a fraction of a second to pass, and what seemed like several seconds later, in an endless explosion of noise, they were all knocked to the ground.

Then it was over.

The meteor landing site was completely ordinary in most of its particulars. Derpy had never seen one personally but she had learned about them. There was the crater, the expected fires, and ruined vegetation. None of which were worrying, beyond what was normal for a meteorite landing.

What had the entire group transfixed, though, was the trail of blood leading out of the crater.

The empty crater.

There was an indistinct period of silence before the one Derpy was having a hard time remembering the name of, piped up.

“I think it’s time for some answers, Rodger!” he growled. Derpy was actually having a hard time remembering his face, even while looking directly at it. “You know more about this than you’re telling us.”

The authoritative man that Derpy had convinced to come to Ponyville looked almost forcibly calm, like a poker player who has lost all his money on what he thought was a particularly good hand. He was silent for almost a full thirty seconds before he spoke.

“You want answers? All right.”

Gerald Briggs was unsure of about half of what he had been told. A day ago he wouldn't have believed any of it. He could now believe Rodger was leading the first and only “paranormal investigation team,” and he could believe that Dr. Freeman could have predicted the instability of two universes linked together like this. Gerald had read some of Dr. Freeman’s earlier work from his postdoctoral period at MIT; Gordon Freeman certainly knew what he was talking about.

What Gerald wasn't sure about was the being that had set this all in motion. Apparently, it had started out with some fruits on the Internet making a joke. But recently, a being referred to as “the dark lord” had begun acting independently, and had manifested this whole deal with the Locus through somebody named Adahn.

“So what you are telling me is that Inglip is real?” Gerald glanced over at [atuhor name], who—once again—was knowledgeable in something that wouldn't be useful anywhere else. Clearly, Rodger could pick the right people for a job.

“OK, OK.” Richard interrupted, obviously having serious trouble believing any of this. “Assuming I believe you that this 'dark lord' thing has really been messing around with our universe. Do we know anything, ANYTHING at all about why it’s doing this?”

“It doesn't need a reason.” Once again, [atuhor name] knew annoyingly more than he should about something. “If it’s anything like its supposed to be... it’s never had any reasons at all.” [atuhor name] trailed off, looking confused, and a little hurt. He really didn’t understand why everybody was looking at him like that; his remark didn’t make him feel like someone had casually strolled over his grave.

They knew now that they didn't have as much time as they thought they had, as probably malignant forces were invading Equestria, and possibly Earth, as they spoke.

This looked exactly like Gerald’s field of expertise—now, if only he could find a pen and paper. Even as theories began their dance through Gerald’s head, the sun was already beginning to dip below the horizon, turning the sky as crimson as the blood in the mysteriously vacant crater.

Chapter 5

They were camped out on the edge of a bog. Derpy had recognized it as the “Froggy Bottom Bog;” however, Gerald wasn't so sure. Judging by her directions so far, there may have been in fact only one bog around Ponyville, but it was entirely possible that she could find another, nonetheless.

He was sitting next to a swampy tree. There was a gun beside him. He had taken first watch, because he wanted to watch the stars. He was an amateur astronomer—that is to say, it was one of his hobbies, like the folder on his computer filled with enough inventions and thought experiments to simultaneously take over, feed, power and destroy the entire world three or four times over (he was still working on the calculations for how many times the world could be destroyed by his “hobbies” alone).

He had never thought of himself as more intelligent than the average person, he just thought other people lacked the drive to reach for the stars. He had in fact designed three interstellar drives, and had just started on what he referred to in his notes as “a machine for handling of stars.” He was examining the night sky and contemplating the fairly rough figures Dr. Freeman had worked out on the Locus, when he heard the little Pegasus—he really needed to start thinking of her as Derpy—came to sit beside him.

Gerald wasn't sure where to start. Of all the people in the entire group she hadn't yet talked to him yet, and he wasn’t sure how to talk to a sentient horse. She solved the problem for him, by starting the conversation herself.

“I've always been curious about the night sky,” she began, hesitantly. Gerald could see the stars reflected in her look of childlike wonder. “I thought about how many of them may have life like ours.”

“Back home I'm an astronomer,” Gerald grinned, “...well, at least it probably looks like I'm making an effort to replace the astronomers where I work.”

“That's the Hydra constellation, by the way.” Derpy pointed to a small collection of stars.

“So do you have an astronomy job or...?” He couldn't find a tactful way to mention her apparent job as a mail-pony.

“Well it sounds like a good job, but this whole,” Derpy made a gesture at her eyes, “eye thing, makes it hard to get jobs. Some ponies just can't look past them. After a while I just gave up on it...”

An awkward pause later, Derpy excused herself to go sleep. Gerald was about to get back to waiting for his watch to end when he saw something move into view a short distance off in the almost-dark.

The moon and unfamiliar stars weren’t very bright, but they were enough to make out, about 20 feet away from him, the most unpleasant monster he thought he would ever see. If it had been standing next to him at, say, a bus stop, the two scythe-like appendages that stuck out of the top of the creature would have seriously inconvenienced Gerald by removing his arm if it had decided to tap him on the shoulder and ask if the next bus had arrived. The two clawed arms that hung down below its armored raptor-like body would have further gouged, if not completely bifurcated, the said removed arm, if the monster was courteous enough to help him with his lost appendage. And its fanged, tusked mouth, with the mad focused eyes, would probably have made Gerald faint out of sheer terror, if he hadn’t already fainted at that point from pain and blood loss.

Gerald immediately grabbed the rifle he had been given for his watch, and instinct took over.

Five shots rang out in the moonlit night. Three missed. One actually bounced off the monster’s back, and the final one hit something soft around the area of its head. By that time, it was already charging at Gerald with a spine-chilling scream, so animal it came right back around to being almost human. A further five shots later at the unmoving tangle of clawed appendages found everybody else in the makeshift camp either trying to disarm him or staring at the scythe-clawed monster he had unwittingly killed.

To call it the most terrifying monster Gerald could ever imagine would be a bit of a short sell; this one had two advantages over the average imaginary monster, the first of course being that it was distressingly, completely, and shockingly real. The other was the gruesome injuries it had already sustained before Gerald had even tried to shoot it. He could see them now because he wasn't concentrating on not dying.

One quick glance showed him that a good portion of one of its legs was missing—and it still had charged at him, at a terrifying pace, even in the adrenaline-fueled world of the nearly-dead. That, along with a whole host of other very serious injuries, most of which would have crippled or killed anything, in Gerald’s opinion, made it the most terrifying thing he’d ever seen—imaginary or not.

It was also the most terrifying thing Ditzy had ever seen, Ponyville had been set upon by a number of different monsters in recent months, but none of them had ever seemed so... dangerous. The Ursa Minor certainly seemed dangerous right up until Twilight was magically carting it back into the forest. But this, this thing looked evil. If there was a manifestation of pure hated it would probably manifest itself as a healthier version of this.

Was this really what had been skulking around the edges of the forest? Her mind raced and concluded that it couldn’t be, this was probably the thing from the crater. That left a disturbing thought for her all alone inside her head.

What if there were more of them out there....

Gerald realized that he had been staring at the corpse of the monster for far too long, and that somebody was trying to find out what happened from him. Snapping back to reality, he essayed a blank expression at Rodger, who was holding his shoulders as if he was about to try to shake him back to his senses—or perhaps as though Rodger had already attempted it, and he was just waiting for a reaction from Gerald that never came. Gerald couldn’t tell which.

It was then that Rodger’s years of training took over from his instincts. He stopped trying to ask a man who hadn’t reacted to anything for almost a full minute “What happened?” Instead, he decided to try and figure it out on his own. It seemed fairly obvious what happened, but that didn’t answer any questions for him. He decided that he really, really should have brought along a biologist. He was talking to Carlyn about the mysterious creature, when Gerald piped up.

“I’d like to study it.”

Everybody nearby stared at him in disbelief; nobody had quite collected their wits at this juncture in time, and he spoke with a quiet authoritative certainty that was very reassuring to those who weren’t used to heavily armored hellbeasts charging at them in the dead of night. This meant everyone.

Before anybody could react in any meaningful way, he had already walked over, sat down next to the beast, and started asking for various implements in the manner of a preoccupied mechanic. Fifteen minutes later, he had only answered a few questions, which seemed to open up a lot more questions. He had determined that the creature didn’t have a number of important organs, most of which had been determined to be absolutely essential for multi-cellular life. Its carapace was bulletproof, and the only reason he had managed to kill it was that the armored shell around its head had actually been torn off, apparently, in an unexplained prior incident. Possibly when it had dropped in from space.

Not long after Gerald finished examining the horrific monster he drug himself off to a bedroll and fell asleep. Gradually everybody else fell into an uneasy rest with many glances back at the silhouette of the monster. Except for [atuhor name] he was staring at the zergling in a way that people who knew him well(a group consisting of nobody in the entire universe) would identify as “very nervous.”

His mind was spinning a mile a minute with small nervous thoughts ranging from “zerglings here?!” to “how can we stop them?” and even “am I on the right side?” Very few of the thoughts even approached becoming action and none of them were vocalized. Every one of them was considered as a possibility however.

He sat staring unseeing at the deceased zergling idly chewing a fingernail long into the night. Never once though did he consider telling anybody else anything he knew about it. [atuhor name] would have to figure out where he stood in this coming conflict first.

Chapter 6

It was several hours later. Rodger had tossed and turned his way through an uneasy rest, and was now on the last watch of the night. Somehow, the predawn sunlight slipping its way over the horizon was worse than the twilight before dawn. He didn’t like it, it played malevolent shadows through the trees, but it was a sign that they had made it through the night with only one incident. The corpse of the monster was still apparent a ways off in the water where they had rolled it. One of its clawed arms stuck out above its lifeless corpse.

Gerald had been able to determine that the creature could not functionally reproduce, and had the mental capabilities of an amoeba. It also looked engineered in some way, as if some Frankenstein doctor had designed the most terrible killing machine ever imagined, at the expense of any other capability that would allow it to survive without outside help. Gerald’s summary to the group: It could not exist on its own; it was part of something larger. This thought would keep Rodger from sleeping well for quite a while.

At this point though he wasn’t sure which thought he was more afraid of though. That there was such a horrid monster that was, perhaps, just a type of space ant, or that Gerald had once again shown that he was far more intelligent than anybody realized. Did Gerald set this all up? He was certainly smart enough to, but...

No. Rodger couldn’t start thinking about that until he found this Adahn character. But even still something at the back of his mind whispered a dark thought.

“Nobody knows anything about him, he barely even has a D.O.B. All that academia and nobody’s even heard of him...”

In the camp, people (and pony) were beginning to stir. Rodger decided that the first order of business was to decide which way to go this morning, and with any luck they might make it to Ponyville without going the wrong way around the other side of the world.

Rodger wasn’t going to hold his breath, though.

Applejack was irritated.

More specifically, Applejack was very irritated that nothing seemed to be going right for her today. The farm’s more or less constant state of summer chaos was even more chaotic than usual. The meteor had not helped things in the least, what with the strange creatures being sighted around and the sudden meteor landing. It had fallen onto her to calm the various animal residents of Sweet Apple Acres down.

And then Twilight had wanted to go and study it, study some rock from the sky.

“It’s just the same as all the other rocks we got around here Twilight, what’s so special about it?”

She had said- Sweet Celestia, what is that?!

A gaggle of strange creatures were walking out of the forest. And walking with the strangely dressed two-legged ape creatures... was Derpy Hooves.

Immediately after Derpy led the humans into sight of Sweet Apple Acres through an unintentionally indirect route Applejack took her aside.

“Derpy, I know we’ve talked about this.” Applejack was talking the same way she would to a disobedient pet.

“What?” Derpy seemed confused until Applejack pointed out the sizeable group of humans anxiously waiting to find out what was going on. “Oooh, them…”

“Yes, them, what are they doing here.”

Despite having very good reasons, Derpy still looked guilty, after all, this wasn’t the first time. “Well, they aren’t from around here,” And in a rare moment, she managed to coordinate her eyes and make a shy look down at her hooves. “I think we should have Twilight talk to them, really. They can explain it better than I can.”

Now Derpy is having trouble explaining to Twilight why there were well over a dozen alien interdimensional creatures are inside of her library.

“Ok, so they are from where exactly?” Twilight wasn’t taking any of this well.

“I don’t know.”

“Ah don’t trust them Twilight, they look funny. And they popped up ‘round the time those monsters started appearing around the farm.” Applejack was trying to stay out of sight of the windows as if the mysterious “Humans” for lack of a better word, had some kind of laser vision. “Who says they aren’t related to them?”

“Do you know who they are?” Twilight was getting annoyed and it seemed like nobody was helping. Derpy could see Pinkie Pie peeking through the window mumbling what she sincerely hoped wasn’t another song.

“No.” Right now Derpy was regretting bringing them here; all her reasons seemed rather flimsy.

“One last thing, do we know why they are here?” Twilight looked very annoyed.

“Well… they say they are following somebody named Adahn who is supposed to have come through here.” Twilight continued to look skeptical. Then Pinkie piped up.

“Twilight, I think those are clothes they are wearing!” Everypony stopped for a moment and tried to find the problem Pinkie had with this. Twilight, who was getting a feeling of deja vu here, shattered the silence with a stony stare and said, “This is almost EXACTLY the conversation we had about Zecora, now we are going to go in there and talk with them calmly. OK?”

There were some minor grumbles to this but nonetheless, everypony crowded behind Twilight as she opened the door to the library and stepped inside, managing to hide very well her strong feelings about doing so.

Writing down everything that was said in the next 16 min and 28 seconds (according to Gerald’s watch) would be pointless and, in the case of Marco the accountant, a frivolous waste of time.

During that time there was a lot of arguing between Rodger and Twilight as to who or what this “Adahn” character is. The various soldiers looked uncustomarily nervous surrounded by life size pastel ponies they last saw as a girl’s toy. After a nervous pause Carlyn got to talking to Rarity non-stop about fashion which translated almost perfectly from one world to the other.

Richard had decided to stuff his inhibitions about talking to a life size doll and was now asking strange questions to Rainbow Dash, who looked more than a little creeped out. Sanat seemed to be having a less creepy exchange with Applejack.

During the entire time only four people stood apart, Gerald, [Atuhor Name], Derpy, and Pinkie Pie.

Pinkie was having too much fun watching Rainbow Dash try to get out of a conversation with Marco. Derpy was sitting looking dejected, she felt responsible for all this and nobody seemed to be listening to her.

[Atuhor Name] was in a state of nervous shock, caught between the world he’s dreamed of for almost a year now, and his sense of morals.

Gerald was working furiously on the final touches of something that had started when he first saw the Locus. After a particularly frustrated outburst from Twilight he decided it was time to set all this straight.

“I think I have the answer here.” Within seconds everybody in the room was staring at him.

“Umm… I’ll need something to write on, you people have blackboards right?” The tremor of uncertainty in his voice managed to jolt everybody back into action, and within a minute he was chalking exceedingly complicated diagrams and equations on the board.

A short time later, he turned it over, and started writing on the back. He managed to squeeze in the last parts of an equation in the corner.

Throughout this he was spouting a tirade of scientific polysyllables fully unaware that the only person able to understand any of this at all was completely unable to speak.

It was some time before Sanat hesitantly raised his hand like a student asking for permission to ask a question.

“Yes?” Gerald was not quite fully aware that the tidal wave of math and science had gone well over the head of anybody who could speak and even Gordon looked puzzled.

“So. Ummm, what does all that mean?” Sanat gestured at it like it was an overly complicated tax form. Gerald didn’t quite get that this was going way too far too above everybody’s heads and launched into a shorter tirade of polysyllables. Again, confused looks were the only result.

“Could we have it summarized into a single sentence?”

Gerald wrinkled his eyebrows in deep concentration and assembled, as his best effort, two sentences.

“I think the giant hellbeasts are going to start falling out of the skies because the interaction between our two universes has… ‘stretched’ the boundaries between universes enough for things from their universe to enter one, and possibly both, of our universes.”

Applejack seemed to get it and paraphrased.

“So… they’re slippin’ through the cracks?”

“That, and the interaction might be starting to tear both of our universes apart.”

Chapter 7

The room was full of stunned silence, everybody was waiting for the pin to drop. Applejack was the first one to speak up.

"Could you just repeat that." Her voice was tense pronouncing each word carefully as if she was afraid that talking too loud would break the universe.

"I said that the interaction between the two universes could be tearing it apart." Gerald didn't quite understand that nobody understood exactly what he said. "That's probably why those monsters are here, and if we don't close the portal as soon as possible. We could be fighting a super organism."

The room was unnaturally quiet, even spelled out like it was. This was a heavy thought to get across. It seemed like a long time before Roger, with his years of training, finally decided it was time to take action.

"Looks like there's no-time Toulouse then!” Rodger's face was scrunched up in the expression he had learned from the drill sergeant that taught him that voice. “Everybody pack up, we've got a portal to close!”

Everything was running smoothly up until Rodger noticed the ponies were also getting ready for the trip.

“What do you think you're coming with us?”

Rarity flipped her hair in an affronted way that Rodger would regret if he ever had the chance.

“And what precisely is the reason for that?”

“Well, its uhh dangerous... out there.” His voice lacked any trace of the certainty it had a few seconds ago.

In answer Rarity's horn began to glow and she flicked her head at a table. A Pale blue energy wave glided through he table as if it was as thin as air, and it fell in two perfect halves.

“I think we can handle ourselves,” Then she regained a bit of her composure. “Oh sorry Twilight I'll make sure to pay for the table.”

And that was that.

The Everfree Forest was usually fairly unfriendly by Derpy's recollection; even as a pegasus flying well above the tree line it was always bristling with silent menace. Now walking directly through it, the forest seemed angry. The air was stagnant and tense, knowing what the shadows of the forest contained at this very moment didn't help at all.

Just then Three monsters careened out through the overgrowth around them from different directions. Their claws gleamed effortlessly tearing through the undergrowth. Just then Gordon Freeman stepped in front of one of them holding something much larger than the other “guns” Derpy had seen.

*THUNK*

Derpy could feel the heat off the explosion from where she was standing. It was an unpleasant sight, she averted her eyes only to see what Twilight and Rarity had accomplished with their magic. It wasn't much better.

“ALL RIGHT,” Rodger was using his drill sergent voice again to great effect. “Gordon I need you to keep us pushing us forward, Twilight, Rarity you keep them off our flanks, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Derpy,” Rodger looked around confused slightly by the apparent lack of Fluttershy who was hiding behind Gerald. “Ah, I need you three up in the air call out when you see them coming,” He looked thoughtful for a moment “Applejack, Pinkie Pie what can you do for me here?”

Pinkie pie was rolling out a small circus cannon from Celesita knows where.

“Ok you keep that on anything that looks like it gets too close.” Rodger turned and didn't look too hopefully at the rest of the civilians. “Everybody else grab a gun, try not to shoot each other and pray we make it through this alive.”

then orders given he turned around and brought out an unusual looking radio. Derpy didn't catch much of what he said but she did catch something interesting near the end.

“... Yes I know, yes its a class 9 xeno threat I need a mile perimeter around the locus, bring out everything,” He paused to listen briefly before; “I don't care what they are saying damn it bring everything!” Right after he was done Derpy heard quietly “goddamn morons...”

Rodger realized everybody was staring at him and he shifted straight back into an enraged bark.

“I'M SURE YOU ALL HAVE ORDERS I DISTINCTLY HEARD MY LIPS MOVE!”

Somehow this fall felt so... Natural to Dr. Freeman, almost as if he was born to fight aliens from another universe in a HEV suit. If he had time to think about that at all he would have seriously thought about a career change.

But there was no time to think. One of the bastards had got in close enough to cut his leg, through the HEV suit. Now he was limping and everybody else was depending on him to carve a way through these monsters.

*THUNK*

Dr. Freeman had lost count of how many he had killed at this point, their numbers seemed endless and if anything the backpack full of ammo felt a whole lot lighter than when he put it on.

*THUNK*

He already knew the rest of the group was getting tired, and even now the abandoned temple was just coming into sight over the dense treeline.

*click* *click*

And then there were no more little monsters, they all seemed to have vanished. Freeman took a moment to take in his surroundings while reloading the last fresh clip of grenades. It was the only sound in the forest.

It gave him time to wonder what happened and also to remember his leg. The deathly silence began to get on his nerves. What were they planning?

And then a tremor ran through the forest.

Gordon Immediately looked to the pegasi to see what was happening, they were frantically pointing to something out in the forest shouting at the top of their lungs. But they were drowned out by a roar.

Gordon could swear he could feel it in his bones. The leaves in the forest rustled as if even it gave off a shiver of terror.

“Could that be an....?” But before [AN] could finish another titanic roar rocked the forest.

“Ultralisk.”

Gordon could already see it towering over the treeline, four gigantic tusks that were too large for any convenient comparison. It was already bringing its massive armored frame into a menacing run crushing trees into matchsticks. The very earth shook at its thundering footfalls as it sliced its way through the forest like a tornado.

Nobody had to be told what to do next.

The Ultralisk couldn’t run very fast for how large it was, but it had an important advantage over them.

It could run faster than they could.

Rodger and the group made it to the temple with enough time for the ultralisk to be bearing down on it like a landslide. He couldn’t squash the temptation to look back just once as he ran into the temple, and stopped dead in his tracks.

Dr. Freeman was standing directly in its path with his back to Rodger. He looked thoughtful even as hundreds of tons of alien monstrosity bore down on him.

Agonizing seconds passed as it thundered its way closer, a rain of debris began to fly past Gordon who stood motionless.

He raised his grenade launcher.

*THUNK*

A direct hit to its tiny exposed head.

Gordon turned around and calmly began to walk back to the temple grenade launcher resting on his shoulder while behind him a mountain of armored death crashed into the ground dead.

“WHOO YEAH!!” [Atuhor Name] was showing some uncharacteristic enthusiasm. “BOOM HEADSH-“ And then he was hit in the back of the head by a zerg projectile.

“From above! More of them!”

Chapter 8

Another worm exploded into the wall, too close for Derpy’s liking, she had been carrying ammo to the defending soldiers for the longest five minutes of her life. There hadn’t been any casualties yet because Twilight put some kind of shield over the soldiers, but it was only a matter of time. Derpy could already see how taxing it was to keep up.

Horrible flying bat worms were careening out of the sky at steady intervals spewing deadly acidic worms on the temple, and Dr. Freeman…

Dr. Freeman was singlehandedly holding back an assault of the smaller kind of demons, with a crowbar. Derpy suspected he dropped his gun because he thought bullets were just too slow.

Then Derpy heard a snatch of conversation, it was coming from the other side of the “Locus” She decided to investigate.

“…So we have to close down the Locus then?” Rodger didn’t seem to happy about that.

“Yes either we close it down or get overrun with these monsters.” Gerald had a sense of certainty about him that Derpy hadn’t seen when she first met him; he was truly in his element here.

“Ok then how will we go about doing that?”

“I have to shut the portal down, when I do everybody else must get as far away from here as possible.” There was something about Gerald, talking that way…

“You’re not expecting to come back are you?” Derpy broke into the conversation, Rodger surprised faced her like a cat ready to fight.

“Well anybody nearby could have everything happen to them.” Gerald stated in a matter of fact voice.

“You mean anything right?”

“No.” He placed his hands on his forehead as if he was thinking hard for a second “We are dealing with the separation of two universes here there is a distinct possibility that everything that is possible to happen could happen to anybody that is too close.”

Rodger was having a minor crisis of conscience, but in the end it won out and he had [Atuhor Name] carted off the field. He was still alive but Rodger could never figure out why he was so goddamn useless.

But he had larger concerns than that, he had to get everybody out of there while they were still under attack, the extremely tired looking purple pony… Twilight told him that her brother could shield the place so they could escape but only for so long. Gerald would have to work fast and even now on the Earth side of the Locus there were flashes of lighting as a tempest of a storm was raging through the sky.

“I need three minutes in order to completely shut the portal down safely,” Gerald was explaining to Twilight. “any shorter than that and we may have some serious problems disconnecting.”

The last of the marines was already about to leave the Equestria side of the portal, and there was a small window in order for the pegasai ponies to escape carrying the rest before the shield went up.

Derpy was watching for her signal to flee, She was ready to carry Applejack off out as far away as she could manage. Twilight was going to teleport out on her own.

The signal came and she burst out through the portal, Applejack was seriously weighing her down. She looked back only once to see through the Locus; Gerald standing alone working feverishly at a computer.

Already the shield was going up around the temple, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy had already made it out, and it looked like she was just barely going to make it through.

She clipped her wing on the edge of the shield.

Careening out of the air she and Applejack landed in the forest unable to fly and seriously hurt.

Derpy got up to see the monsters careening through the forest directly at them.

She put her wing up and closed her eyes waiting…

And they just passed her by.

Taken completely by surprise she turned and saw them gathering on the edge of the shield, attacking it with all their terrible strength.

Gerald was working feverishly at the hacked together piece of junk computer trying to get it to work faster; three minutes already seemed like too long.

Seconds ticked by accompanied by thunder in the distance and the sound of the straining shield on the other side of the Locus.

2:30;

He couldn’t tell exactly but he was sure the magical shield couldn’t hold up much longer under the strain, certainly not for long enough for the Locus to shut.

2:00;

Gerald’s face sets in a grimace of determination, he turns to the portal and hefts the grenade launcher.

1:43;

The shield shatters under the combined effort of the zerg and they all rush at the still open portal like a tide of death.

Time seems to stop for Gerald, in front of him he can see a Zergling mid leap into his oncoming grenade. The Locus in front of him like a burning hole in space is still open, out of the corner of his eye through the window he can see a transformer on a telephone pole.

And a lazy bolt of lightning slowly snaking its way down directly into it.

The power went out, the hacked together computer setup flicked off.

The portal wavered.

And then there were only white lights.

Rodger was Frantically running up a hill some distance away when the lighting struck. He turned just in time for the space around the house to distort and tense up.

And then it exploded in a white light.

He was knocked to the ground just like several of the houses closest to the explosion.

And then…

And then it was later, Rodger was standing in the wreckage.

Around him rescue teams were sorting through the rubble. At this point neither Gerald nor the mysterious electronics had been found. Rodger wasn’t hopeful that they would be, not with the way Gerald had been talking.

He frowned and turned his gaze about the distraught neighborhood. He had never even found out of this “Adahn” character existed or not.

He found himself looking at a patch of rubble without even seeing it, something about it looked sort of familiar. There was a hand sticking out from under the rubble.

Rodger couldn’t believe it Gerald was alive, with a pulse, being carried out on a stretcher before his very eyes. But something felt wrong here.

Epilogue

Gerald wasn’t doing so well in the hospital.

The doctor said it was only a matter of time. Gerald was suffering from extremely advanced radiation poisoning. His skin looked burned, he twitched constantly in the hospital bed mumbling incomprehensibly and constantly.

“Truth be told I’ve never seen a case like this,” The doctor seemed flustered and unsure “At this point its only a matter of time, most cases this severe the patient dies within 48 hours, but your friend here seems special.”

“what?”

“I fully expect he could eat an nuclear reactor and probably survive the experience, but from what I hear from you, we are dealing with levels of radiation that really only have a theoretical existence.”

Rodger had decided to stay with him. And two weeks had passed. It was almost pitiable but Gerald had no relatives that the C.I.A. could find alive or dead.

And then suddenly the mumbling in the bed next to him stopped for the first time in two weeks.

A stone cold bony hand grabbed his shoulder and eyes that hadn’t focused in a very long time were staring directly at him, they looked dead.

“I CAN SEE HIM! I CAN SEE THE SPECTRE!” The rasp of Gerald’s voice was like the winds of hell itself entering the world.

Gerald raised a single finger and pointed at the end of the bed, a look of pure terror on his face that only seemed to intensify those dead eyes. And again a rasp like the passage into another world.

“YOU!”

By the time Rodger looked back from the empty spot where Gerald had been pointing, he could already hear the steady flat-line whine of a heart rate monitor.

Rodger frowned at the sky before getting into his car, it seemed inappropriate for an occasion like this for it to be this mucky mess that could at best be described as “partly cloudy.”

He slammed his car door in a foul temper and drove away from the cemetery.

It all seemed wrong somehow; this was just not how things were supposed to go, Funerals especially. The cemetery was empty except for him and the funeral home staff, who had forgotten about this occasion entirely.

He frowned and asked to nobody;

“For whom is it well?” No answer came.

“For whom is it well?” No answer, and under his breath he answered his own question.

“There is no one, For whom it is well.”

Later he arrived at Gerald’s house for one last search hoping to find a relative somewhere.

He was fruitlessly searching through Gerald’s computer which like the house was as personal as a hospital room. Nothing, no installed games, no installed anything but the bare bones essentials for doing his job.

Frustrated he was about to turn the computer off when a folder caught his eye.

It was labeled “inventions.”

Intro

It was a tiring day for Derpy. She had always tried not to directly blame her condition for things, but it certainly made getting jobs harder. Other ponies tended to judge her by that, subconsciously labeling her as unsuitable. Eventually, she just had to pick up a job in postage; even then, she got the worst job—delivering packages around town by hoof.

Today, Derpy was having a particularly hard time because the local ponies were scared of something. Rumors didn’t have an exact answer as to what, in particular, they were scared of. But the rumors generally pointed to something, or things, seen on the edges of Ponyville. Monsters, or worse, were skulking about the fringes of the Everfree Forest. She, however, had no time at the moment for any of that. It wasn’t rain, wind, or sleet, after all. Although something unpleasant in the back of her head added the addendum, nailed up below the original slogan, “Huje green things with teeth.”

She was having trouble with her last delivery of the day. The Apple family, normally gregarious and outgoing, were especially spooked about all the various nasty rumors. Right now, Granny Smith would not open the door and sign for her package again...

“Ah don’t care if you demons have our new encyclopedias.” Granny Smith was very agitated. “I’m not going to let you in so you can ravish us in our beds!”

Derpy let out a heavy sigh.

“Ma’am, I just need you to sign for this package, and we can both be on our way.”

“None of your clever tricks. You would say anything to get into this house. But you aren’t getting in, no matter what you say.”

Derpy was about to give up and just leave a note on the door, when Applejack trotted up, taking a break from her chores, and saw her at the door.

"What are you doing here sugarcube?” Applejack asked, nervously glancing between Derpy and the door Granny Smith was shouting from behind. “Ah heard y’all way out by the apple orchards!”

“Well, I'm trying to deliver a package but-” Derpy was cut off by another shriek from inside.

“Don't you let those demons in, Applejack!” Granny Smith wailed.

Derpy let out a heavy sigh of tired frustration, wordlessly got a signature from Applejack and flew off.

“Get a job at the Post Office,” they said. “It'll be easy,” they said. She had only expected to have to deal with the whole rain, wind, and snow thing, like it said over the door. Again, that little addendum popped into her mind of its own accord. Derpy had never signed up for dealing with the panicking residents freaking out over monsters skulking about the edges of the Everfree Forest.

As she flew off back to Ponyville, she could have sworn she saw a shadow on the edge of the forest.