Locus

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.