Exodus

*Note: Sorry for the delay. My time has been increasingly taken up with work and socializing. The next update will be far less tardy.

An enormous egg shattered on The Ark's bridge window, obscuring the view of the battle with a splash of bright yellow yolk.

"What the buck just happened?"

Admiral Argo was hardly unique in his reaction. Shock and disbelief were evident on everypony's features as the Federal salvo which had threatened to annihilate the ships of the Exodus fleet was rendered utterly impotent. Megalaser bolts painted the hulls of Imperial ships with seemingly random colours, all obscenely bright and gaudy. Armor piercing shells were transformed into eggs and rotten vegetables mid-flight. Missiles detonated into colourful firework displays which would have mesmerized all who gazed upon them, had their audience's attention not already been captivated by the winged pigs which had once been Federal Warhawks. The crews of the Exodus fleet, shocked into inaction, could do little beyond observing the surreal scene which now unfolded before them.

All the Federal fleet could do in turn was drift. It had been rendered, for all intents and purposes, dead. The crews giving the warships life had abandoned their stations, at no fault of their own.

For nothing less than hell had broken out aboard the Ninth fleet.

Fleet Commander Yeung Gao, master of the FGS Punisher, hero of Mars and commander of the Ninth fleet, was insane. He had to be. How else could he explain the yawning void full of absolutely nothing which threatened to swallow him whole? His pistol was shaking in his grip, as if it was angry that it could not be brought to bare against this particular threat that so terrified its owner. As Yeung Gao watched, it splintered, cracked, and was pulled out of his grip, spiraling into the distance to be swallowed up by the darkness.

Fleet Commander Yeung Gao did the only thing his terrified mind would allow. He turned, and sprinted down the hall. After several seconds, he noticed that he was not moving. The floor underneath him had transformed. Ribbed, studded with tiny nubs and bumps, pulsating and...suddenly wet. With a gasp, he tripped and fell. His hands pressed into the soft meat of the floor, and he began clawing at it, trying to drag himself to safety, like a drowning man clutching at flotsam. The floor was retracting backwards into the darkness, and he could not escape. A wet, slurping sound caught his attention. The floor was curling up. It was a tongue, about to throw him into the literally carnivorous abyss.  All notion of pride and strength left him as he soiled himself.

He screamed.

Sergeant Kieran O'Farrell racked the slide of his Bogatyr Type 2 assault rifle and fire on full auto, emptying his magazine with reckless abandon. Red hazard lighting flashed on and off, plunging the hallway into darkness and pulling it out of the same at regular intervals. With each flash of darkness the fanged monsters got closer. Corpses fell to Kieran's onslaught, only to rise and continue running after the lights flicker off. A grenade was pulled with shaky hands. The pin was ejected and the explosive was primed.

"F-Fuckin' die!" The resulting explosion showered him with entrails and gore. It seeped in through his clothes, and into his eyes. With a scream of horror, Kieran clawed at his face, at his neck, as the entrails wrapped themselves around him like snakes. Falling to his knees, he gripped a particularly thick strand curled around his neck and tore it off. The organ ruptured with a sickening, wet rip. As if on cue, the nightmare ended. The entrails ceased their movements and simply fell off. The gore and blood sloughed off eagerly, as if eager to be away from Kieran's body. The lights ceased flickering, and returned to the normal, warm glow of shipboard lighting.

Raucous laughter rang out, of the slightly crazed quality which comes from staring death in the face and beating it at its own game. Kieran got up, and took a closer look at the bodies.

They were farther from him than he remembered. And they were facing away from him, not towards. They all sported bullet wounds in their backs. And their uniforms...crewmen of the FGS Vindicator. His consternation and fear creeping back on him, he turned the nearest corpse over. Its face was fully human, and it was frozen in fear and desperation.

Stumbling away from the corpses in horror, the realization of his actions hitting him full force, he places the barrel of the rifle under his jaw, and fires.

Head engineer Ja'nik watched sullenly as death descended upon him. The ship's mastodon assault platforms, no longer machines of steel, but living, breathing creatures of flesh, were stampeding. They had violently torn out of their hangars and berths, and had set to the work of dismantling the ship with their razor sharp tusks and hooves. Crewmen and marines alike, clutching their heads as forgotten nightmares and long dead fears battered their sanity, were slain where they lay. Their blood dripped through the perforated steel floor of the ship's vehicle hangars as mastodons crushed, cut and threw them like ragdolls. Only Ja'nik and his people were safe. Only they had believed.

"To me, children of Jove." He commanded, his voice as solemn and emotionless as tradition commanded. "Our forefathers shall defend us." He walked around the group of Jovians standing in the middle, sprinkling ashes from an ancient Jovian horn in a ritual circle around them and murmuring shamanistic words of power. Their ancestors had would guard them from Rehn'amok's touch, in the same way that their ancestor's ancestors had defended them from the desert demons of ancient Jove. All they had to do was weather the storm.

All they had to do was weather the spirit of Chaos' rage.

"What in the hay is going on here?" Bolt asked, his tone revealing a war between confusion and genuine amusement.

"Oh Bolty, it's just Discord being Discord. No biggie." Pinkie said, as carefree as ever. Her words caused some confusion among her squadron mates, and several of them abandoned professionalism to call her out on her incorrect choice of words. "Incorrect? You silly ponies, that's his name! Discord!"

"Do this later!" Spectral Blaze barked, by now used to Pinkie's bouts of nonsensical rambling and wanting to adapt to this confusing new situation. "Whatever it is, its not affecting our ships. They're fine. That's an advantage in my book." His squadron wheeled around and away from the Federation frigate they'd been harassing. As he spoke, the frigate's engines exploded in a shower of glitter, revealing a magnificent pair of wings fluttering in their place. A flight of Federation Warhawks dove towards Primaris squadron, and were promptly smashed together by an invisible force. The metal of the strike craft melted and melded together, until a perfect sphere of molten metal remained. The metal became flesh. The flesh became a whale. The whale began swimming through space, utterly content with life and its place in the universe.

"Did you see that shit?" Decimo practically shouted "What the buck is this?"

"Some unicorn on the fleet must be trippin' balls and went apeshit or something! It's gotta be magic!" Tempestus offered, his voice almost cracking with laughter as he spoke.

"You know, unicorns can make themselves bigger. That probably makes them more powerful or something. Makes sense when you think about it." Bolt said, thoughtfully.

"You're an idiot." Silver Blur said. "An unrestrained, absolutely inconceivably-"

"Comm discipline!" Spectral Blaze demanded, his patience strained by the unfamiliar battle circumstances. The radio crackled. It was Flight commander Onis. Completely professional and composed even among the extremely confusing events occurring in the space outside.

"Marching orders, gents. Form up on my squadron. We're going to finish this farce once and for all."

"Stop gawking!" Admiral Argo barked, martial pride and professionalism asserting itself once again. There would be time for speculation later. For now, action was demanded. "Resume battle operations! I want all weapons loaded and ready to fire, and I want a targeting solution on hand immediately!" The admiral pressed a button on the side of the battle map, magnifying it and immediately setting to work analyzing the tactical situation. Ensigns tore their eyes from the viewing windows and began hammering at their keyboards, carrying out the admiral's orders with practiced, albeit shaky, efficiency.

Shining Sky and the Princesses did nothing but continue to gawk and stare even as the bridge sprang to life around them.

"Sister..." Luna asked, awe and fear causing her voice to quiver as she spoke. "What did you do?"

"I...I don't know. That being spoke to us. It...I've never heard of anything like it." Celestia replied, clearly uneasy at her decision. She regarded Shining Sky curiously and raised an eyebrow. "You, my little pony, are going to explain exactly what that thing is and how you came to discover it i-when..." Luna glanced at her sister, having heard the if almost slip out instead. "we are the in the clear again. I do not know if I have made a mistake."

Shining Sky, for her part, quailed under the attention of her princess and shrank back, her mind going into panicky overdrive as sweat began beading on her forehead. Images of dungeons, dark interrogation rooms and torture chambers began rampaging through her psyche unrestrained, causing her to rub her hooves nervously and fall on her rump. Meanwhile, Admiral Argo struck a heroic pose and banged his hoof hard on the abused and long suffering battle map projector.

"All fleet elements, open fire! Destroy them!" The blue arrows indicating the elements of the Exodus fleet accelerated towards the hapless Federal fleet, indicated by red squares. An assault line of strike craft had formed up behind the enemy, and was moving at maximum speed towards their targets even as the Equine warships fired every weapon they possessed in one titanic broadside.

(CUE APPROPRIATE MUSIC)

A draconequus danced through his metal garden, sweeping away trifling, loose debris from his path with the merest thought. The burning hulks of frigates, he twisted into elegant steel shrubberies, each depicting the perfection and beauty of his slender form with flawless accuracy. Strike craft became roses and tulips in full bloom, possessing metal stems but real petals. Larger ships were rent into hundreds of small metal lumps. From these lumps grew grand trees of oak and willow, all proudly displaying golden leaves in all their glory and splendor.

The draconequus jumped and pirouetted, gravity somehow applying in the vacuum of space for him alone. He traced the outline of a flamingo with a single finger, and it burst into existence with not a care in the world. Taking its wing in his paw, the draconequus danced, the flamingo matching him movement for movement. The pair spun through the airless vacuum effortlessly, gracefully. Starlight shone, lighting them like a spotlight. Finally, the draconequus took his partner by the waist and tossed it upwards, relative to himself. The bird transformed into a cloud of flower petals which slowly drifted down around its creator, and the chaotic spirit took a short bow, before resuming his work.

The lifeless corpse of the FGS Punisher, the Ninth fleet's former flagship, was rendered into its constituent atoms and reassembled into a grand lake of liquid water existing in space, kept together and given form in the empty vacuum with minimal exertion on the draconequus' part. His artistic work finished, the chaotic spirit took a large amount of loose debris and melted it together, forming a shining steel lawn chair. He sat on this, and floated backwards to survey his dominion. It was good.

It was also extremely boring. With a yawn, he floated everything, the trees, flowers and swans, into the lake of water. With a flick of a wrist, he allowed the water to freeze into ice. After a moment of contemplation spent scratching his backside, he tossed the comet into a random direction with as much magical force as he possessed. Someone on some planet somewhere was about to have a very bad day. The draconequus produced a director's cutboard.

"Scene change!" The board snapped shut, and the draconequus was gone.

"It spoke to me. During the battle." Shining Sky gulped as she spoke, the eyes of Celestia and Admiral Argo boring into her and causing her to sweat profusely, enough to make it seem like she'd been in the rain. "It showed me when it was being held, and explained that the Jovians had imprisoned it unjustly, which is why he-it wanted to help us."

"Did it tell you what it was?" Celestia leaned forward, her interest becoming evident.

"It said that it was a cosmic entity. A star spirit th-"

"A magical entity not born of Equestria?" Luna piped up, scholarly curiosity getting the better of her. "I always told father that there had to be other places of magical power. This is...overwhelming!"

"So...what you're telling me, young lady, is that some voice in your head spoke to you and told you to release it by blowing it up." Admiral Argo leaned forward across the stainless steel table, his face completely straight.

"And...you think that your imaginary friend justified you coming up to my bridge, during a battle, interrupting me and my crew and potentially causing the deaths of everypony onboard this ship?"

Before Shining Sky could reply, Celestia spoke up from her place beside Argo. "It was not a figment of her imagination, admiral. Unless you were blind throughout the entire second half of that battle, I very much doubt your claim that what we saw was imaginary."

"Whatever the creature is, it is powerful, possessing almost omnipotent powers over matter." Luna said, her face contemplative. "It was clearly strong enough to destroy the Federal fleet on its own."

"And it could, in turn, probably destroy us with even less effort." Argo reminded her. "What does it want? What could such a powerful...god-like entity possibly have to gain from helping us?"

"Revenge was clearly a strong motive. It isn't immune to...'mortal' emotion." Celestia observed. Tactfully, no one mentioned the irony of her comment.

"So we have even more questions." Argo threw his hooves up in frustration and leaned back, clearly uneasy and unhappy about this turn of events. "I don't like rogue variables like this. Where is it? Why hasn't it shown itself to us?"

I believe that's my cue.

A flash of light, accompanied by the tell tale crack of teleportation, blinded everypony in the room. When their vision cleared, a slender, ill-proportioned chimera of a creature was lying on the steel table, head propped on a single avian arm. It winked at Celestia in what it clearly thought of as a seductive manner.

"Why hello there. Allow me to introduce myself."

The marines in the room raised their weapons in shock. Argo looked like he might have ordered them to fire, but a raised hoof from Celestia stifled him. The creature just smiled slyly, and spoke in a playful, mellow voice which nonetheless carried a subtle, threatening undertone which put those sharp enough to notice it on guard.

"My friends call me...D. I just saved your lives."

Silence reigned for a moment, before Shining Sky spoke up, cautious. "D? That's...that's it? The all-powerful voice in my head? You said your name was Rehn'amok!"

"That is but one of my many names, my little pony." 'D' said, grinning and showing far too much teeth. "When you've lived and traveled for as long as I have, something as trivial as a name just becomes...dull and...boring. I decided it was time for a change."

"What are you?" Celestia's tone was firm and uncompromising. She was perfectly ready to leap to the defense of her ponies against this being, god or not. She was...somewhat confident in her own not inconsiderable magical power.

"My, my, my, princess, such unwarranted hostility. That's no way to treat some...pony who just did you a favour." The creature brought an arm to his forehead in mock distress. "Young ponies these days...no respect for their elders."

"What are you?" Celestia changed tack, unsettled at the creatures seemingly unflappable confidence.

"I am unique. Not something that you can just categorize and file away." D brought a finger and thumb to his chin and rubbed it in mock thoughtfulness. "A god? Well, to you mortals I might as well be. You were impressed by what happened out there?" He jerked a thumb at the wall, as if indicating the space outside The Ark.

"Your aid was most timely...D. Thank you." Luna inclined her head respectfully, curiosity and caution warring against each other.

"At last, a young'un with manners." D slid off the table and strolled over to a nearby Imperial marine. With a flick of his fingers, the marine's flechette blaster popped out of its shoulder socket and floated in D's hands. His voice turned hard, and the underlying menace was no longer hidden, but on full display. "I could take your lives in a second if I wanted to." A snap of his fingers, and the blaster shattered. "I could snuff all of you out...and I could just as easily give you your lives back." The blaster reformed, flawless and as pristine as the day it came out of the factory. It levitated back towards its owner and snapped back into its socket mount. D strolled around the table, his audience watching him fearfully but curiously.

"I find your plight fascinating, my little ponies." D said, his tone back to its normal, mellow self. "We are very much alike. Misunderstood, maligned, simply for being who we are." He paused, and produced a large multicolored lollipop. He placed the stick in his mouth and took a drag. The lollipop began burning. D exhaled, and the sickly sweet smell of the smoke permeated the room.

"I'll be watching your journey with interest, my little ponies. Immortality gets boring quickly without entertainment, you have no idea." D frowned, then slapped his forehead theatrically. "What am I talking about, you two will find out in a few centuries time." He gestured at Celestia and Luna with a grin, then took his lollipop out of his mouth and held it up. The candy blossomed, unfolding into a rainbow colored umbrella.

"Until next we meet, my little ponies!" The draconequus prompty floated out of the room, through the solid steel ceiling.

Stunned silence reigned after the one sided conversation, until Shining Sky found the nerve to speak up.

"How did he know about the Exodus?"