Dead Space: Purpose

Once the group arrived in the Royal Castle, Celestia had to walk along with the girls to escort Isaac’s body to the guest wing, as to stop the guards from executing him on sight, or to keep the maids from panicking at the mention of him. She also had to find out what she had seen in his mind. Who was that figure? What was that spire? Why did he believe in exclaiming such vulgarities at the figures?

Why did it want him dead?

She pondered a massive amount of outcomes or reasons as they carried Isaac into the last hallway to the guest wing. As they turned the corner, however, they saw Shining Armor along with a group of guards with weapons at the ready, pointed at Isaac. Shining motioned to Isaac and began to speak.

“Princess, I heard that thing came here and what it did to Cadance! Get back! We’ll protect you!”

‘Dear Faust, news spreads that fast!?’ Celestia thought. She stepped in front of Isaac’s floating form and spread her wings out with a scowl upon her face. The guards stepped back slightly and lowered their weapons slightly as she addressed them.

“Isaac is a guest here, and will be treated as such, Shining Armor. Why are you even here?”

“With all due respect, I couldn’t stay in the Crystal Empire by myself, it’s too crazy there. I came here to ask how long Cadance was planning to stay so I could plan out meetings and such, but then I heard about how she was injured by that thing. So I decided to find my armor in the storage and- Cadance?”

Cadance gazed at Shining Armor with a hint of fear in her eyes, along with anger. She marched up to him and stared him straight in the eye.

“I told you that you need to learn how to keep things under control by yourself. And to the event at hand, it was me that hurt Isaac first.”

He shook his head and drew himself closer to her face. “I don’t care if you struck first, he shouldn’t have attacked you at all!”

“He didn’t! I went into his mind to see if we could trust him, based off of the love in his heart!”

Shining shifted a bit in place and contemplated what his wife had said. He blinked a few times as he licked his lips and responded.

“Is he safe? Can he feel?”

Cadance looked back at the exposed face of Isaac and remembered the horrific things that he had been through, seeing his lover die, no power to stop it, and being haunted by violent visions of her that threatened to even end his life. She knew that it was terrible that anything could have made it through all of that, and decided the best course of action. She turned to her husband, tears rolling down her cheeks, and spoke.

“He has felt more pain than anyone I have ever met, and deserves a chance to prove himself. If you could see the terrors he lived through…”

After that, she jumped and held Shining Armor as tight as she could, bawling out into the exposed portion of his armor. He stroked his wife’s mane as he returned the hug and nodded to Celestia. Celestia nodded back and motioned for the guards to stand aside.

Before they could move, though, Celestia heard a groan from behind her, turned around, and saw Isaac rubbing his face with one of his forearms.

\\\//////

When Isaac woke up with a weightless feeling in his gut, he remembered the actions that transpired recently. The machine, waking in a forest, ponies that talked, being shot in the face by a pink one with wings and horns, and just rubbed his head. It was pounding with the memory of the fight with the marker on Titan Station. Why he was remembering this, he didn’t know. But what he did know, was that the weightlessness had just transformed into a falling feeling.

Isaac crashed onto a solid floor, back down, thank God, and tried to feel for his everything. To his surprise, he wasn’t in a massively impossible level of pain that he used to awaken to. In fact, he thought it was rather preferable to wake like this, as opposed to having a Necromorph jabbing it’s way through the person in front of him, turning said person into a Necro, and forcing Isaac to badassidly headbutt his way out. That may have looked cool, if someone were watching, but it felt like literal Hell to Isaac.

Speaking of Hell, Isaac just remembered how he got where he was now. He was shot in the face, but when he rubbed it, he didn’t feel any relatively painful reactions. So Isaac decided to try and flip himself over and get a look at his surroundings. So Isaac shifted his weight and planted his hands on a solid surface and pulled himself to his stomach. After shaking his head and rubbing his eyes, he slowly began to open them, allowing a larger amount of light to focus each passing second.

Isaac looked around and blinked a few times, making sure he was taking in everything correctly. In front of him were the same ponies from before. Behind them, a pair that seemed to be hugging each other, one white with a horn and purple armor, and the pink one that shot him. Isaac looked to his left and saw a massive white one with multicolored hair that flew on a breeze that he couldn’t feel, with both wings and a horn, along with golden jewelry. Behind it, six smaller horned ones with golden armor and spears that floated by them, all pointed at Isaac.

“Hey, how’s it goin’?” Isaac asked nonchalantly, hoping that they would hesitate to kill him.

The tall white one stepped towards him and retracted her wings. It then stopped and spoke to him with a regal, stern female voice.

“Can you move Isaac?”

Isaac lifted himself up onto his knees and began to stand slowly, meeting it’s eyes at a slight crouch.

“How do you know my name?” he asked it.

It raised it’s head and held up a hoof.

“Where are my manners? I’m Princess Celestia. Co-ruler of Equestria and controller of the Sun. You are right now in the capitol city, Canterlot. The reason I know who you are is because my faithful student, Twilight Sparkle, informed me of your arrival. You’ve already met Princess Cadance, it seems.”

The pink one ran up to Isaac and began to wipe at it’s eyes.

“I-I’m sorry I shot at you Isaac. You didn’t deserve such treatment!” it blurted before sobbing again.

Isaac knelt down to who he assumed to be Cadance and spoke.

“It’s alright. You were scared at the time and acted in defense. Besides, you didn’t burn anything off with that.”

“But, I- there’s something I should tell you.” She managed before the purple armored one ran up to her and held her close, eyeing Isaac with confusion. Celestia coughed for Isaac’s attention and succeeded as Isaac turned to her.

“I would like to apologize for the news, but we may have intruded into your memories to see if you were dangerous or not. We… well… I saw you fight a white figure and a spire, and I would like to know what that was about.”

Isaac’s heart almost stopped when she mentioned that she saw his fight with the Marker’s Nicole. He had no idea that they were able to do this, but now he understood why Cadance was crying, and why there was fear in both of their voices. He took a deep breath and began to speak.

“That was an evil artifact, known as the Marker. It implanted itself into my mind and began to drive me crazy. What you saw was when it manifested itself as my dead girlfriend, Nicole, and made me believe that I could trust her again. But she’s dead. And they used her. So, I fought back and destroyed the signal from my mind, which destroyed the signal that kept the real one intact. It’s… pretty gruesome to describe everything else that I’ve seen, but seeing as how you’re still standing without looking around every corner in absolute terror, then I guess you stayed away until that part specifically.”

After his little explanation, Isaac looked at the ponies and saw the six mares from earlier with their eyes in tears, Pinkie with her mane deflated, Cadance and the other one with their mouths agape, holding each other in a near-death hold, the guards dropped their weapons in shock, and Celestia just looked at him in pure shock, her left eye twitching slightly.

He sighed and activated his RIG holo-screen to check his inventory, and took note on the specs of the place around him. Thanks to the ultra-sonic frequencies from his suit and the super-computer embedded in his spine, he was able to make a detailed map of everywhere they had brought him. He took into account the massive hallways and determined the size of the building, or rather city, he was in now. He flipped over to check the status on his armor, still fully functional, 5 medium med-packs, about 200 clips of universal ammunition, and all of the upgrades had remained unharmed inside his suit. Then, Isaac looked past the screen and saw the ponies staring in awe at the RIG’s display.

“What?” Isaac asked casually.

Twilight stuck out her hoof at the screen, “What is that?”

“It’s my RIG. It stands for Resource Integration Gear. It basically displays everything essential to certain people, depending on the profession of the person having one integrated. For military, it shows battle stats and friendly life signs. For an engineer like me, it shows maps, equipment, and assignment logs. It also lets me check what I’ve got in the storage compartment on my back, like tools and med-kits.”

As Isaac finished his explanation, the other mares, including Celestia, began to examine the screen as he scrolled through functions, mission logs, audio and video logs, until Twilight peeped up from behind Isaac.

“Is that what this light on your back is?”

Isaac turned his head to look behind himself and looked down at her.

“Yeah. It shows how my vital organs or over all condition.”

She continued to eye it with fascination almost pouring from her sockets. He held back a chuckle and turned to meet the gaze of Celestia, her eyes taken in seriousness and concern.

“Isaac. I would hate to keep you from everypony for too long, but I need to question you on a few things, concerning your past and what I saw in your mind.”

Isaac took a deep breath and sighed.

“Alright. But a warning: you’re not gonna like what you hear.”

Celestia nodded slowly, unsure of what is about to transpire. She motioned her head for the group to follow her into a random suite, and piled them into the room. The six mares entered and left Shining Armor, Cadance, and the guards at the door. She turned to them and spoke.

“Could you all please leave us to this? It’s very important, yes, but I’m afraid what we are to discuss is a more personal affair than a security risk to myself or Canterlot. You may all go where you please.”

Before any of them could answer, Celestia shut the door with her a golden glow and turned towards the inner part of the room.

Isaac had to admit, it was probably the best damn room he had ever seen in his entire freaking life. There was a bed that could fit what he assumed to be a king, golden sheets and pillows, along with spotless white marble walls and a near perfect red carpet that tied together a whole, “I’m beyond rich and important, so fucking bow down to me or you’re gonna find out how the carpet stays red,” look. He turned his focus to the ponies in the room as they all sat down in their own way.

Pinkie was jumping on the bed, ruining the covers in a childish manner, Rarity was sitting on a posh sofa, flipping a pillow with her… magic, they called it? Rainbow and AJ sat next to each other and occasionally bumped their forelegs into the other’s side, trying to gain some ground on the other, Fluttershy was next to Isaac, waiting for the story, and Celestia near the door along with Twilight, who now for some reason had a book and a pen to write down everything he was about to say.

As Isaac sat down, he saw the mares all looking at him with massive interest, as he was still about twice their size, even on his ass. Celestia decided where she would like to start with the questioning, and began.

“So Isaac, what led you to our world in the first place?”

Isaac took a deep breath and began.

“It started back on the Ishimura, a space-ship that we built to crack open a planet to make it easier for mining operations,”

Twilight raised her hoof and asked a question.

“Why would you need to do that?”

“Well, our planet, Earth, was dying off from our mass consumption of resources, and we needed something to prevent another war for materials, so the USG Ishimura was built, along with others like it, Planet-cracker class vessels, designed to mine out barren worlds and even smelt down asteroids. The Ishimura was hailed as the savior of Earth, with how it brought our entire species from the brink of collapse.”

The mares all ‘ooh’ed and ‘awe’d in wonder, until Isaac continued the story.

“Although, if we had known what it would eventually dig up, I think we would have never built it at all.”

With that, they all gave him a worried look as well as some confused expressions.

“In 2511, it went to a restricted mining world, known as Aegis VII. Pretty barren, no more than one little mining station, but some group decided it would be too dangerous to crack the planet open. Damn, were they right. Remember that I told you the Marker did all that shit to me? That’s where they found the one that imprinted itself into my mind. Everyone on board died after they found it, and I ended up having to destroy the ship and the planet, along with the Marker. But, when some people found me, kept me asleep for two years, and while I was out, they decided to try and build from the Marker imprint in  my mind.”

Twilight raised a hoof again and asked.

“How did they do that if you were asleep for two years?”

“I wasn’t really asleep as much as I was drugged enough to not remember anything they did. And the way they found the imprint is they stuck me in a machine that tapped into the memory center of my brain, and stimulated the area with enough electric currents to activate the signal.”

“With magic?”

“My kind can’t use ‘magic’, so they built a machine that drills through my eye into the memory center in the front of the brain. Relatively painless, almost no feeling. Until they trigger the signal, then all Hell breaks loose.”

They all dropped their jaws in horror at his explanation. Until Pinkie spoke up.

“They… they drilled into your eye? But… h-how did you remember?”

“The old saying the Marker also drilled into my mind. “Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in your eye”. Damn machine.”

At this point, her hair started to deflate as she spoke.

“Th-that sounds like a… Pinkie-promise…”

“I bet your’s is better.”

Celestia spoke up again.

“So, what got you here then?”

“Well, after I ran from Titan Station, where they held me, my ex-girlfriend, Ellie, went to a distant world, known as Tau Volantis. When I got there, we found out that it was the Marker homeworld. We fought through alien ruins and activated a machine that was supposed to destroy the Markers once and for all. I guess when I was supposed to die firing it, I ended up here, as some kind of reward for ridding the galaxy of their evil, or something like that. Gotta say though, I thought I was just going to die there and then.”

Fluttershy went up to Isaac and hugged his neck again, tears running from her eyes like a river.

“You-you’re not gonna leave us, right Isaac?” she begged with the largest puppy-dog eyes he had ever seen. He reached out with his arm and stroked her mane like a child.

“It’ll be alright. I’m not going anywhere. I can’t send a signal out anywhere anyways, and all I’ve got is my- …ah, Fuck!” he shouted as he tried reaching for his Plasma Cutter.

The mares all jumped back in surprise as he stood up and frantically patted every part of his suit. He stopped and looked back at a slightly cowering Fluttershy.

“Did I have a small device near me at the crater?” to which she nodded rather fearfully. “Did you bring it to your house?” to which then she shook her head.

Isaac turned to Twilight and Celestia and pointed to the window.

“I have to get it before someone gets hurt trying to mess with it. It’s too dangerous to leave out there.”

Twilight rose and spoke up.

“But, it was in the Everfree Forest. We can’t just go there without an idea of where it may be.”

Fluttershy walked up to her.

“Um… actually, I remember which clearing it’s in. I could lead us… If, that’s okay with you…”

Isaac clapped his hands and went for the door.

“Great, let’s go.”

Twilight cut off his path and spoke up to him.

“Wait, I can teleport us to the entrance of the forest. It’ll be quicker, but only a few of us can go.”

Isaac nodded and motioned to Fluttershy.

“Come on, you know the way, and I’ll make it quick. Anyone else wanna come along?”

They all looked at each other and slowly shook their heads. Rainbow was the first to speak.

“Sorry, but AJ and I have this… uh… thing! That we… need to do! At the farm! Right?” she bumped her elbow on Applejack, who looked back and forth frantically. “Uh, y-yeah! At the farm! Yeah. Some ah… shipment, that needs ta…” Isaac rose his hands at the pair to interrupt their excuses. “Yeah, sure. It’s fine if you just don’t wanna go.” He turned to Rarity who just gasped. “Absolutely not. I cannot ruin my new hooficure and I spent hours trying to get my mane like this in the morning. Also, I have an order to fill out.” Pinkie jumped for the door over Isaac as she spoke. “And I’ve got a party to plan for somepony!” she sang. Isaac shrugged and nodded to Twilight.

“Ready to go?”

Celestia went up to Isaac in a hurry.

“Wait!” she pleaded. “Make sure you keep them safe.”

Isaac nodded once more as his helmet began to encase his head in the familiar cheese-grater style. With a flash of purple energy, the trio found themselves at the entrance to the Everfree Forest, Fluttershy’s abode shining a faint light on the tree-line. Isaac began to walk into the forest, as Fluttershy flew up onto his shoulder for security, planting her hooves on the metal plates of Isaac’s suit. Twilight followed the glow on Isaac’s back as they began their trek into the dangerous forest.

For almost a solid half-hour, nothing much happened. Just a plant or two that they had to avoid for the sake of the unknown dangers they hold. They ran into a few obstacles, such as avoiding growls and climbing rocky hillsides. When they found a crater in the center of another clearing, but this one had something different about it: a Plasma Cutter, customized attachments. As soon as Isaac spotted this, he ran for the device at top speed, which startled Fluttershy enough to jump off his shoulder. The two mares followed suit and made it to the crater with Isaac. He examined every aspect of the weapon with pure thankfulness to whatever deity watched over him now. It was a Planet Cracker tipped cutter with a Rotator Cuff under-attachment, along with a Mk-V Damage Boost pack, as well as a Mk-V Acid bath attachment, and all the upgrade circuits in place: 2 circuits of +3 Damage, +3 Clip, One circuit of +3 Damage and +3 Rate of Fire, and one circuit of +3 Damage and +3 Reload. His most recent tool of survival. He began to inspect the functioning of the device and almost cheered at the revelation that everything was in working order.

Isaac turned to let the girls know that he had found what he needed, but stopped when he saw that they were staring into the bushes with fear. He looked to the bushes, but was met with a massive thud that reminded him too much of a Leaper, the way it jumped and teethed at him. As he heard the ponies scream in terror, he got a close look at the creature attacking him. It looked from the facial structure like a wolf of sorts, only made out of wood. It was the same size as a Leaper, and was still trying to bite off his helmet. Then, Isaac thought that if it moved the same, he could fight it the same.

With all of his might, Isaac turned over and pinned the beast to the ground on it’s chest, it’s hind legs still in Isaac’s grasp. He then pulled the creature back towards him and slammed his boot down onto the top of it’s neck. With a loud crack, the wolf whimpered and struggled even harder. Isaac brought down the full might of his foot and broke the head of the beast clean off the body, threw the body to the side, and raised his Cutter at the body, waiting for it to strike him again. The only thing is, it wasn’t a necromorph, so it couldn’t get back up. That’s when Isaac realised that he needed to help the others before they became wolf-chow.