Locus

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.