The Rift Saga - Book One: New Arrivals.

*Prologue: Arachnids*

“Chi! Arachnids incoming!” The large, fairly muscled man shouted, scanning the monitors in front of him with an anguished fervour. He scratched lightly at the sparse hair on his head, before reaching into the back pocket of his crisp, neat suit. Pulling his brass goggles down over his eyes, the large male pulled out a small, flat disk, akin in size to a micro-CD. Holding it one hand, he relaxed his posture, rolling his broad shoulders, as a number of Carbon-plated steel panels started folding out of the disc, covering the back of his hands, and piercing just under his skin with a multitude of microfilaments, injecting him with a cocktail of drugs, allowing him to move the thick steel plates with ease. As the plates encompassed the entirety of his right arm, he grinned, just a little sadistically, and slammed his metal fist into the flesh of his left palm. “Let’s rip them a new one, huh, Steele?”

The scientist who was just mentioned, Steele, looked up with his eyebrow raised, before shrugging, turning a large gear on the nine-meter long device he carried. It was...thin, almost a tube, apart from one end which had an obvious handle, a trigger, and a lot of gears, springs, and metal bolted on. His right arm grabbing the handle, he lifted the metal monstrosity with ease, small bumps on all four sides of the tube sparking as he did so. He leveled it, still with one hand, out of the nearest window, sighting along the long-abandoned street. His bloody, torn lab-coat swayed behind him, his silver hair over his face as he got ready to take a shot at the oncoming horde of mutated...things. His giant gun balanced neatly on his right arm, he flipped open a sight, and glanced along. “Yeah. Even more to kill, how fun..” he murmured sarcastically, before glancing at the third, and final person in the group.

      This one was tall, but not as tall, or as muscled as the first one. He was wearing a long, flowing cloak, a pure black in colour, which covered him entirely apart from his face. His hands were covered by long sleeves, that travelled down almost to his knees when his arms were by his side. The trail of the cloak was sealed up completely, his feet covered by strange darkness exuding out of the cloak. On his face was a white, hard mask. With slightly angular eye pieces, made of a black glass, and a mouth, also painted in black, with two vertical lines at the corners. With the hood of the cloak up, he looked like some kind of masked spectre. A soft sigh escaped from under the mask, before a quick bob of his head as he turned to look at his friends. “Yeah. It’s something we have to do, though.” He gave a humorless chuckle, watching as his cloak gave off little wisps of darkness, before he peered out of the glass double doors that made up the entrance of the ruined building they were in. “Guys. Here they come~” He sang, his hand pulsing outwards inside his sleeve to push the door open from a few metres away with a blast of air.

And come they did. At first, just a soft screech in the air, then another. Then a whole host of them, piercing the air like so many arrows of sound. The large, metal-armed male winced slightly at the sound, before slowly striding through the doors, followed by the cloaked man. Steele sighted along his gun, wary for signs of movement through the ever-present dust cloud. And there they were. Basically human in shape, with four triple-jointed spiderlegs sprouting out of their backs. Walking on them, and bouncing forwards using extremely strong back legs, they moved incredibly quickly, able to walk up walls by digging the four spider-esque legs into stone. From this distance, their tortured faces couldn’t be seen, distended mouths and plain white eyes, with no pupils. Chi looked at the pair, Steele nodding through the window, before speaking. “There is always a big one, remember that. Steele, if you would?”

Steele raised his eyebrow, and then smiled slightly. “Sure. Keep that big one alive though, Chichi.  I would like to know how they move.” And with that, he pulled the trigger. Apart from a series of violent shakes, there was nothing. No noise, at all, for the metal armed man, at least. And then his hearing slowly returned, along with the floor no longer vibrating. Steele smirked in his direction, before turning a cursory eye to the horde of Arachnids. It was strange, there seemed to be nothing had happened. And then the eye was drawn to the floor. Scattered body parts strewn about everywhere, mere ends of extremities and parts of heads. And then the giant gouge in the floor, ripping up rock as something moved at extreme speeds away from the trio. Chi nodded softly, before advancing towards the rest of the horde, his large friend just beside him. “Ready, B.Jha?”

The large man, metal plated arm swinging lazily by his side, simply grinned, before the mutated creatures were upon them, their horrible screeches sounding as they clawed at the pair. His first punch caught one of the monsters as he was about to bite, his hand between it’s jaws. And then his fist powered out the back of it’s head, the lower jaw falling neatly to the floor, as he tossed the Arachnid aside. The second blow, he used his metal arm to block a blow from the side, the thin point of the spider leg scraping across the reinforced steel. With a simple movement from his index finger, two of the metal plates closing inwards to trap the leg, and then saw it off. As soon as the tip of the leg was removed, he span around, metal shifting rapidly to create a hollow tube. And then the pointed spike of bone was fired out of the arm-cannon, through the brain of the Arachnid who had lost it. As he was swinging for the next, it was obliterated by seemingly nothing, before he span in a three-hundred-sixty degree circle, and saw Steele slamming another cylinder of metal into his Railgun. As he turned back round, and extended a sharp metal plate out of his knuckles to stab a darker Arachnid in the eye, he saw Chi almost flowing between them. “Having fun there!?” He yelled, performing a straight axe kick underneath one of the mutated monster’s chin, and sending it into a backflip.

The masked crusader flicked a hand into the air to show he had heard, whilst forming a small ball of dark energy in his hand, and another of the tip of each of his covered fingers. Darting through a small crowd of Arachnids, he stuck one to six of the monsters, a little space between each of them. As he got to the end of the crowd, he raised his hand, and then formed a fist. In sequence, the small energy balls detonated with a lot more force than something that size could muster. He turned and glanced at  B.Jha, tilting his head to the side as an Arachnid pounced at him. His fist was brought up, and he backhanded the monster away, before pointing slowly at it and firing a stream of small energy pellets, each one making a miniature explosion. With the body fully annihilated, Chi started walking back towards the building the scientist was in, dodging a razor thin wire that stretched from a metal spike embedded in the chest of a still-alive Arachnid, and the elbow of a large, metal armed businessman. As he walked past his friend, he grabbed him, and pulled him along, the spike retracting and whipping around until it entered the port in the armored arm. A quick nod to Steele, and then a third and final earthshaking round was fired at close to ten times the speed of sound, eviscerating the remaining section of monsters. Walking away from the explosion as the round hit a nearby gas station, Chi gave a light chuckle as he pushed open the glass doors, giving Steele a pat on the back as he walked past into their temporary base.

The entrance to a hospital was what it once was, or so Steele thought. The rest of the building was more on the ground than not, and with rubble blocking the pathway into the next room, there was little room to work. What they HAD done, however, was to clear out most of the room, to make a wide open space, and set up two futons. An odd, spherical generator was hooked up to both a series of monitors, and a vending machine, the coin slot tampered with so it didn't need money to run. When Steele asked the logic of B.Jha when he first played with the machine, he had replied with the simple fact that it was more satisfying to watch the food drop down. With the three of them back in the same room, B.Jha gave a tired nod, before sitting down on one of the futons. “Good fight. I got 17. Chi?”

      The cloaked man, tapping away on one of the five screens raised a sleeved arm to show he heard, before tapping the side of his mask in a slow rhythm. “Good job, B. I think 25 or so. Steele?” Chi turned his masked face towards his thin friend, the ever present grin directed at the railgun wielding scientist.

      “You know I don’t care for such games, Madness.” Seeing the frown that the black markings on his mask now made up, he waved a dismissive hand. “Hey, It is what I used to know you as. And what you technically still are.” The masked man gave a short sigh, before chuckling, and shrugging at the same time. “Eeeexactly. Now, if you will excuse me..” And he set about polishing his shaft. Railgun shaft, that is.

      There was silence for a few minutes, before Chi visibly stiffened. “Guys. Outside NOW. WE HAVE A BIG MOTHERFUCKER.” Steele and B.Jha looked at eachother, before shrugging. Steele opened his mouth, a questioning look on his face, but Chi interrupted him. “NO TIME TO EXPLAIN, ONWARDS.”

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

In the exact same place, at the exact same time.

The Princess’ of the Sun, Moon and Magic were sat in the Canterlot Castle dining hall. With them, were six other ponies, the other Elements of Harmony. Oh, and one Draconequus, but he was more floating around above their heads eating cotton candy. Ah well.

As the eight ponies discussed...something, the blue Pegasus looking extremely bored, and the pink Earth-Pony watching the Spirit of Chaos with a pout on her face. After a short while, the purple Alicorn started yammering excitedly to the yellow princess of the Sun, and stood up, trotting quickly over to the side of the room. A soft purple light focused around her horn, as she charged up a spell. And then, a small, mirror-like sphere popped into of existence, before a book came out of it, the surface rippling around the book. She grinned happily, before bouncing over to the white Alicorn, and nuzzling her happily. The aura around her horn vanished, but the sphere stayed, slowly turning darker and darker.

XXXXXXXX

The terrible trio strolled out the door once more, before B.Jha looked up with a odd look in his eye. “Hey, that’s an odd cloud…” And indeed it was. It looked like an incredibly mutated person, horizontal in the sky. Hands hanging down just above them, and feet a long way down the central avenue. Scattered around with the bodies of the Arachnids. And up above, the clouds seem to connect to four massive skyscrapers. B.Jha blinked, then his eyes went wide. “Oh...my...sweet god..”

That wasn't a cloud. That was a titanic Arachnid, framed against the sky. It’s feet slowly swung downwards, kicking up earth, rock, and smaller arachnids. Chi sighed, before grabbing his friends, and started breathing incredibly slowly. “We are out of here..” And with that, the entirety of the three started distorting wildly, before a vortex claimed their extremities. The last thing Chi saw before he vanished into nothingness was a severed Arachnid leg flying straight towards him, before a tug pulled him through the portal...And to somewhere he didn’t know.

As he rushed through the void, he thought one simple word.

“MotherfuckerIdontlikethis”