Awakening *Edited*

The rubble around him stirred as consciousness slowly returned to him. Pebbles and loose gravel fell onto his head, rousing his senses and with it the headache that had been lying in wait for its moment to strike. It pounded within his skull, like a thousand jungle drums banging to a wild beat, each accompanied by a jagged ice pick.

He laid there in his crater, his senses trying to catch up with perhaps the twelfth, maybe eleventh, worst experience he’s felt in his life. His nerve endings were screaming, his body felt like someone had pushed him through a woodchipper and put him back together with crazy glue. Through the daze he commanded the pain to end, and in less time than it took to blink his nerve endings went dead. He sighed, Just another day in the day in the office.

Sunlight shined through his eyelids, adding on to the pounding that persisted within his skull. He haphazardly tried covering his eyes. Protected from the harsh light, his eyes snapped open and he sat straight up. For a second he could feel the cold steel under him and the scalpel drag across his chest. For a second he could see the men in biohazard suits, standing over him, treating him as nothing more than another specimen in their petri dish. And then, they were gone. The dissection table was replaced with a concrete crater, that at one time had been a busy street. The smell of disinfectant was replaced with the raw sewage pouring out of the broken pipelines, not ten feet from him. And the sounds of Manhattan: the traffic, the construction, the people, had all gone silent.

Alex looked up at the blue sky with a scowl. The headache that had pained him since he regained consciousness had subsided and his memories had returned. Well, for the most part. When trying to think of how he got here, or where here was, he came up blank. I have to stop waking up like this. He pushed himself off the ground, wiping off the sewage that had reached his impromptu bed.

His arms reached out, above his head, stretching more out of habit than out any actual need. Grabbing his wrist, he pulled his right arm across his chest as he walked up the steep slope, his mind trying to wrap around what had happened earlier.

While he was doing all this, tendrils of jet-black flesh snaked up and down his body as they healed any injury he happened to acquire getting to here--wherever here was. The black flesh, or biomass as he called it, made up his body and made his all his inhuman abilities possible.

Alex had infected Heller a few months ago, Heller derailed his plans with the Whitelight. And then ‘Alex’ died fighting Heller and caused Heller to use the devastators to end all devastators, absorbing every piece of infected tissue in all the red zone. All according to plan, with Heller none the wiser.

The last thing he remembered, was swinging on a swing set in the backyard of Heller’s new house, waiting for him to come home. Maybe that was why; Heller might have been an idiot, but he was also a herculean brute. If anything had the power to knock me down hard enough to lose a memory or two, it’d be him.

As Alex walked up the steep incline, his gaze became fixated on the skyscrapers surrounding him. The buildings around him were familiar, but... seemed off.  After spending so long running along them, above them, through them, he knew a thing or two about the buildings of Manhattan. He peaked over the mouth of the crater and knew that wherever he was, it definitely wasn’t New York... Or at least not the New York he was used to. Unless someone used the Blacklight virus, or Mercer virus as they had renamed it, to replace all the infected zombies with cartoon ponies of every colour of the rainbow. He stared at the crowd that had formed a few dozen feet from the edge, a line of ponies in police uniforms pushing back civilian ponies.

None of them seemed to have noticed his head peeking over the edge, judging by their relatively calm voices, or as calm as one would expect with a giant crater appearing in the middle of the street. He looked to his right and saw a massive gaping hole that went straight through one of the skyscrapers. Apparently he had a rough landing. Naturally.

Even for him, a sociopathic bioweapon terrorist, the embodiment of the deadliest virus to ever exist and a genius in every sense of the word, this was unexpected. If I didn’t already kill off the evolved, I’d think this was some elaborate joke, before skinning whoever did this and feeding what was left to a goliath. Shaking his head, he grabbed the lip of the crater and vaulted over the edge, their voices rising to a feverish pitch as he stood straight and looked over them all.

He smirked, turning his back to them as he surveyed the rest of this place. At first glance, it looked like he traveled back to before the first outbreak. But the longer he looked the more differences he found between the two. The most notable being the fact that anything that had to do with humans was replaced with ponies. Bronze statues of famous philanthropists and celebrities from American history were now of ponies with an extremely eerie likeness to their counterparts.

Billboards strewn across the rooftops had ads with pony models in a language he and the hundreds of people he had consumed had never seen before. Even the graffiti was of ponies, one catching his eye being of pale ponies standing side by side wearing black suits, sunglasses and holding what was unmistakably a neuralizer.

He took a deep breath in, the air clear of the smog he traveled through while running through the streets. But there was still one constant. In a slow exaggerated movement, he spread his arms to his sides and took another deep breath, the sweet intoxicating scent of fear permeating the air. Lowering his arms back down, he smiled. Just like New York.

Glancing back at the crowd, the question of how he got here resurfaced. As great a mind as he was, he wasn’t infallible. Maybe he’s just imagining all this, and he’s actually standing in the middle of the street, like some madman. Maybe consuming the minds of the craziest people the world could spawn, finally caught up with me. At that moment a small pink unicorn  with large blue eyes, lighter pink freckles, a curly blonde mane and bright white teeth, sneezed in such away that several people he consumed off the street felt their no longer existent hearts explode within their imaginary chests. Highly unlikely, he thought, his scowl returning.

Turning his head back forward, he stuffed his hands into his coat pockets as he mused to himself about how any of this made sense. Maybe all of this is an adverse effect to splitting myself into two? A thought that made his scowl deepen. He absentmindedly grabbed his chin, while thinking of other theories that didn’t include his mind conjuring a world where he could dance around on magical rainbows with pink fluffy unicorns.

A slight clopping noise alerted him to one of the ponies coming up behind him. Turning around, yet again, he was surprised to see it within only a few feet of him, barely able to keep itself from shaking as it stared up at him with nervous eyes peering out from under the brim of its police hat. It squeaked as he looked at it with vague disinterest and looked back to its comrades, as if to ask for advice and one of them motioned it forward.

Gulping, the little thing took another step forward its eyes running up and down Alex’s body. He didn't know whether to call it cute or pathetic, so he just remained silent. It muttered a few unintelligible words under its breath as it raised its hoof and held it there as he stared at it.

Was it asking for a handshake? Was he being treated with both respect and fear? Alex stared at its hoof for a good few seconds that felt like a number of hours for both involved before he responded.

It’s kind of cute how it thinks we’re equals. Snorting he pulled out his hand and pushed the pony’s hoof down with a forceful shove and walked past it. As he walked closer, all the little freaks started shouting amongst themselves while one of the police ponies stepped forward, a spear twice its length held in its teeth. Why did a cop have a spear? Better yet, why did a pony have a spear? That seems incredibly impractical.

He stood still, head cocked, his mouth held slight smirk. The yellow pony knit his eyebrows and glowered at Alex. Aww, They’re even cuter when they think they’re a threat. This’ll be good for a laugh at least. They shouted a few more unintelligible words at him before saying something to the one holding the spear. The spearpony screamed something unintelligible  through the spear and charged him. The entire time Alex was smiling, until it disappeared in a brilliant flash of green light. He had only a moment to register what happened before he was knocked head over heels and landed on his face as a metal object slammed into the back of his head. The spearpony smirked through the spear while his comrades marveled at the head shaped dent in the head of the spear. Mercer laid there, more out surprise than any actual pain, after all he didn't shrug a nuke for nothing.

The yellow pony laughed through the spear held in its mouth, unaware of his gawking comrades or the hell brought upon himself. Is this eighties cartoon reject mocking me?

He slowly stood, giving the pony a dirty look that morphed into a manic grin. Whatever that thing just did… it would be useful, very useful. So would its body, and its memories, like what he knows on how I got here. Yes, everything about this pony would be unbelievably useful. Tendrils of biomass jumped from one part of his body to another, like a sick dance of shadows, as he let the Blacklight virus go wild, let himself go wild.

Half a second later a large tendril sprung out of his body, impaling the yellow pony through its barrel and out the other end. Offshoots grew out of the tendril and latched onto the pony from the inside, shredding his organs into a bloody visceral pulp. His eyes were glazed over before the large black tendril returned to Alex and the body ragdolled to the floor. The pony didn’t even have time to let out another breath before it died; the crowd more than made up for it as they all screamed bloody murder at the Monster of Manehattan before running away in the opposite direction, including a good half of their police force. The half that didn't run, quaked in fear of the beast before them. Exceptions being the one or two brave, or foolish, individuals screaming at him in what was without a doubt, absolute hatred.

One bystander, of questionable intelligence, made a move to try and help the dead pony but joined the majority as the tendrils reached back out and dragged the body across the pavement, a bloody trail left behind. Soon that trail was all that was left of the downed pony as the body was pulled into his chest, the tendrils cocooning the body before it disappeared within.

Name: Grease Lightning, born in Hornlem, Manehattan… why? Why is everything a pun? Greased Lightning? Hornlem? Manehattan? Ponyville? I’m not even sure if that’s a pun of Humansville or if they were just being lazy? Subspecies: Unicorn, specializes in controllable magic. As if I wasn’t already unstoppable. He paused at the term cutie mark. Definitely not a term I will be using anytime soon. Oh now here's something, specialization with teleportation, now that is going to be handy.

Alex closed his eyes, relishing the momentary flood of memories going through his mind. He ignored those that served no purpose: first steps, kiss, date, other nonsense and instead focused on his classes on magic, spending hours each day perfecting teleportation, joining the force and hoping against hope to grab the attention of the the most powerful ponies of them all, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. How they could raise the sun and moon on a daily basis, kept a being of pure chaos on a leash, were mentors to the bearers of the Elements of harmony. The list went on and on, each accomplishment more impressive than the last.

He turned his attention back to the police, the officers words had become recognizable. In less than a minute, he was a fluent native that knew each one of the officers standing before him his whole life. Including the fact that here stood the best the Manehattan police force had to offer. Each one quick on their hooves, highly educated, and no slouch in a fight. Not to mention the wings and horns that a good amount of them had. His grin grew wider than any smile had any right to be before he slammed his fists into the ground.

A wave of spikes being their only warning before they found themselves violently suspended in the air. Their bodies hung there, impaled, as bodily fluids flowed down the bony protrusions jutting out of the ground. To the naked eye, the attack was finished, but on a microscopic level the Blacklight virus poured from the syringe like spikes. It flooded their systems consuming their bodies from the inside out.

By the time he had exhausted each and every memory of Grease, the rest had been fully consumed, not even their blood remained on the wave of spikes. Each of them with a valuable piece of information regarding his arrival… he'd came down like a flameless meteorite, just one of many. He had no idea why he was falling out of the sky earlier, but he’d bet his claws he wasn't alone.

Gazing upwards, his eyes skimmed the skyscrapers, the evidence of the storm being evident. All up and down the streets, buildings were littered with smoking craters where the debris had crashed into them. His eyes flashed red as he turned on his infected vision, a little something he’d taken from a Lead Hunter. The world changed colour, everything becoming a shade of orange or red, and sure enough one of the craters glowed orange with infected material.

His evolved were dead, and the infected were gone, but if it was one of them, he would’ve felt it. He was Blacklight incarnate, one of the two, maybe three, Hive Minds left in existence. By that leaves one man left. The man who had ‘killed’ him only a few months earlier. The man who’d sooner die than see a slight against him go unpunished.

“James Heller… this is just too perfect,” He hissed with a smile as he stalked towards the glowing crater. “Hope you’re ready, James, cause you’re getting no mercy from Mercer.”