Chapters ☣☣☣Jacob☣☣☣
I just finished putting the hood of my costume back up as I stepped onto the sidewalk of the comic-con entrance. I am currently going as the iconic Alex Mercer for this con and honestly the only hard part of this costume was the leather jacket itself.
I looked around and smiled at the familiar hustle and bustle of people as they went about their business. I pulled out my pre-bought ticket and headed on in. When I got in I noticed how packed it was and decided to not fight the crowd just yet. Getting into the flow of people I meandered about the con talking to a few familiar faces, browsing wares, being complimented on my costume, and eventually I quickly found myself growing a bit tired.
Deciding to take a small break I sat down at a dining area to eat a few snacks. As I finished up a bag of chips and a soft drink I looked up to find a man dressed as the Merchant from Resident Evil four. The man was flagging me down, and despite the growing unease I had when I was looking at the strange man I decided to put aside my better judgement and go see what he wanted.
When I got to him, the strange man asked, "Hello Stranger, I think I might have something in my shop that'll interest you."
It was a perfect replication of the Merchant's voice. I felt a bit of respect for the man, he played his role perfectly after all.
Deciding to humor the Merchant I said, "Alright then sir, you got my interest. Lead the way." The last three words were said with a flourish of my hands.
The Merchant cracked an unseen smile. "Follow me then."
We walked through one of the hallways until we got to a stall that seemed a bit out of the way. I felt it was a bit strange that the man just left his wares out on the table where anyone could take them. But the man didn't seem to think that anything was missing so I just brushed it off.
The Merchant reached down behind his table and seemed to carefully pull out a vial. He held it out to me so I could observe it. I noticed that whatever was inside of the vial was red and that there was a label on the side of it clearly named, Blacklight .
"Well it is very pretty but isn't that just colored water?" I asked. Even though I said that, I did notice a few odd, orangish bubbles and that it was a little more sluggish moving than water.
The Merchant chuckled. "Oh no dear Stranger. Genuine article here. Just be careful with it, this is after all, a deadly virus. And don't worry, though this was hard to come by I'll give it to you for only twenty dollars."
I felt a bit conflicted. On one hand I could act out Penn Station, on the other it was twenty dollars spent on what is still quite possibly colored water, a vial, and a label. Deciding that nothing ventured, nothing gained, I bought the vial and held it up to the light to look at it much more closely. Upon closer examination I decided that it really wasn't water.
"Hey so where did you get th-" I was about to ask when, in a flash of light, I was whisked away.
☣☣☣Third Person☣☣☣
Ponies went about their business in the incredibly busy subway station. Boarding, unboarding, chatting and just general day to day cares. That all changed when a very bright flash of light appeared and out popped an odd being that nopony had ever seen before. The creature fell to the ground with a mighty crash and bits of small debris pelted ponies. Many ponies cried out in shocked and worry for the new being's safety.
One brave pony carefully walked up to the prone form. "Um, excuse me sir. Are you perchance alright?"
With no response the pony gave a shrug to the crowd and decided to gently nudged Jacob's arm. "Are you alright?" The unnamed pony asked again.
And with a sudden gasp Jacob's eyes shot open. The anonymous pony backpedaled in surprise. Jacob pushed himself back on his feet with a grunt and he shook his head to get rid of the dust and other debris. Then he seemed to stop with a start and looked around at the crowd of ponies staring at him with faces showing a mixture of feelings.
☣☣☣Jacob☣☣☣
"Ponies? Colorful ponies at that. Familiarly styled colorful ponies as well. Friendship is Magic? How the hell did I end up here?" I thought. I noticed the crowd of ponies were still staring at me. I decided to try and communicate.
"Er hello, I'm a... I'm fine and uh, you know what? I think I'll head off now. Uh... bye!" After that awkward and failed moment of communication I then sprinted off and out of the subway station. The ponies quickly got out of my way as I barreled through.
"Is it me or am I much faster than I was before?"
I idlely noticed the sign that told me where I was, Quill Station.
Odd name, but I do get the strangest sense of trepidation though. Getting rid of that thought with a shake of my head I burst out of the doors, and quickly looked for an alleyway. Spotting one I duck inside of it and lean against the wall while ignoring the cries of shock from the ponies I probably scared shitless with that little outburst. I slid down the wall and sat on the concrete.
I grabbed my head with a hand and said out loud, "What the hell? How the fuck am I in Equestria of all places?! This is a god damn show! Though I get the feeling that this can't be a dream or coma. This feels too real, and I've never lucid dreamed before in my life. There could be worse places I could be sent to though..." I shook my head as I tried to wrap my head around the fact that I am in an alternate universe. "The last thing that I remember was..."
I growled in anger as I recalled the merchant that sold me the vial. That must have triggered this mess, he might also be responsible for the disappearances of the other people missing at other cons. In a fit of anger I slammed my fist into the ground and for a second I felt fear that I would break my hand. That was unfounded since in a glorious and loud crack the weak concrete gave way to my fist of righteous anger.
I stared at the ground in astonishment. I brought my hands up in front of me and I didn't notice anything too different in the looks. But now that I was paying attention I finally noticed that I felt strong . I felt that I could control everything about me and to prove my point my arms had a series of, well, wriggling of the red and black tentacle variety. But before I could put two and two together I heard a noise from my right.
"Well well well. What do we have here boys?" Said a rather unimportant voice. I turned my head to my left and saw three earth ponies in the alley. They were all dressed as stereotypical gangsters from the 1940's. The one in the middle was dark green with a short brown mane and tail. The one on the left was brown with a black mane and the right one was black with a brown mane. These ponies were screaming that they were unimportant and it was the middle one who spoke. The other two just decided to chuckle quietly.
I got up and brushed myself off. I turned to them and spoke up, "You have yourself an agitated human who honestly doesn't want to be bothered right now."
The leader of the trio snorted in amusement. "Tough guy eh? Well this is our turf here and I feel we should show you what happens when you trespass. Get 'em." The last part was directed at his two lackeys and they bum rushed me.
When one got close I did what I felt was natural and gave him a quick right hook to his face and he was sent flying into the wall of the building. If he didn't die from his face being caved in from the force of my hit he would've died on impact with the wall. I briefly felt a bit stunned as I watched him die against the wall, but that bit of emotion was squashed as I turned to the other. His friend saw what I did and screeched to a halt, but it was futile and I grabbed him by the neck with him squirming in fear all the way. With a quick squeeze of the stallion's neck it broke and the squirming pony fell limp in my hand. I tossed the pony to the side.
The leader of the trio screamed in horror, "M-Monster!" I looked towards him and began stalking him. "N-No! No! Leave me alone!" He scrambled to get away from me but tripped over an upturned trashcan. He looked behind himself and saw me standing over him. My fist was the last thing he saw before it went through his chest, instinct took over and tendrils covered his body and brought it into mine.
I gripped my head as a sudden rush of memories flooded into my brain.
☣☣☣
"Daddy! Daddy! Look at what I made!" Yelled my excited filly of a daughter by the name of Color Twist. The little blue filly bounced around around my legs until she held up a painting she made.
"I'm looking, I'm looking, sweetheart." I said to Color Twist. "Oooh very nice. You'll be a wonderful painter someday Color." I smiled at her considerably more brightened face at my praise.
"Uh huh! I even got my cutie mark today! Got it right after I finished my painting!" Color wiggled her rump and I saw her cutie mark was a paintbrush with a multitude of colors coming off the brush end and wrapping around the handle.
I grinned at her, "I think this calls for a celebration! How about I pick something up for you when I get back from work?"
Color gasped, "Really?! Oh thank you daddy!" Color sped towards me and gave me a hug. I hugged her back.
"You're welcome sweetie."
☣☣☣
I gasped and fell to my knees as the last bit of recent memories faded and the rest stored into the recesses of my mind to be viewed later. I looked on in horror at the last place the pony, no, father was before his death.
"I-I just killed speaking and intelligent creatures. One even had a daughter sitting at home, waiting for the dad that will never return." I looked at my hands and what I became finally clicked in my mind.
"I'm Alex Mercer... That bastard turned me into Alex Mercer! How? How?!" My arms had tendrils writhe around because of my agitation. I calmed down a bit when I realized that. "This is unreal, I mean sure it's kind of cool but I can't even be called human anymore. Do I have to kill and consume just to survive now? At least the real Alex had the benefit of losing his memories so the transition was easier for him, but me? I really don't want to think about it."
I sighed in defeat since I can't change what I have become now and it's likely being a virus will kill my empathy soon anyway. Grimly I focused on changing my form to 'Grassy Knoll' the pony I recently consumed, strange though why a pony with a name like that would be in a city like this. I could sift through the memories but I didn't honestly care after all that recently happened.
In a blaze of tendrils my form quickly took the shape of the pony and memories of how to walk and do daily pony things instantly buzzed through my mind. I searched the others for any bits, took the two bags and have my biomass create some saddlebags for me. Quickly dumping the bits in there I trotted off to the local bakery to pick up the cake Grassy was going to get for Color.
It was the least I could do for the little filly after all. She won't likely be happy when she eventually learns the truth.
☣☣☣
Color's cute-ceañera was a success in Jacob's opinion. All of her friends joined and had a blast and their respective parents all mingled together talking and laughing in the moderate apartment. I was being the gracious host for a house that isn't mine but since I have flawless identity theft on my side and all of Grassy's knowledge it worked out well.
"So Grassy did you hear about the disturbance at Quill Station today?" Asked one of the random mothers here by the name of Cream Cheese.
I think I had a faint idea. "Disturbance? No not a thing, what happened?" I asked, keeping to my role.
"Well some sort of creature just appeared out of nowhere and destroyed a part of the floor. It fled and not too long later somepony reported two murders in an alley right next to the station! Absolutely horrid! In my opinion that is an awful bit of coincidence there..."
"Oh hush Cream. You should at least give the benefit of the doubt. Not every new creature is going to be bad you know!" said another mare by the name of Starry Night.
"Humph! I shall stand by my opinion thank you. That strange Tirek thing was proof enough to me." Huffed Cream. I was just glad I got some form of timeline awareness now.
The party went on for a while longer and eventually it was time for the whole thing to come to a close. The children were tired and I could see the parents were as well.
"Well it has been fun everypony but I think we can all agree it's time for bed!" A few adults chuckled and some of the young colts and fillies groaned. "Now now none of that. You children need your rest."
All the guests began walking out the door, the kids either sluggishly walking beside their parent or parents or laying on that parents back. Cream walked by me with her child snoozing on her back. She stopped and looked at me.
"I know how hard it is being a single parent Grassy. So if you ever need any... comfort , then please come and visit me sometime." She ended that little statement with a sly smile and wink and walked out into the street.
"Pony poon, yay or neigh?" I briefly entertained the thought, but it's not like I could actually do it anymore. Sad as that may be.
I brought Color to her room and tucked her in. Technically she was supposed to brush her teeth by now but she was already out like a light. I looked down at her sadly. To her I am still her loving daddy but to me I am his killer that is just fulfilling a role that I could never keep. I turned and headed out the door of her room and slowly closed the door.
"I love you daddy." I heard her whisper in her sleep.
"I love you too... sweetie." I whisper back as the door finally closed. I sighed in depression and walked back down to the living room.
Looking around I decided to get to cleaning, not like I felt tired anyway. As I was cleaning a chemistry set the kids were using an important thought suddenly rushed to the forefront of my mind.
"Wait, if the Merchant sent me here and gave me the powers of Alex Mercer then does that mean the vial..." I choked in absolute horror as I realized I didn't have the vial anywhere with me.
"Oh dear god, the trepidation I felt at Quill Station makes sense now. Even the name makes more sense now! Quill Station is equal to Penn Station, the same station where Alex Mercer released Blacklight on Manehatten in both the video games! I don't even have a way to track all the ponies there, for all I know the virus is already spreading wider and wider!"
I dropped the bag of garbage and stared out into the city from the window.
"What have I done?"
Author's Note
So a new story I'll be working alongside my other. Just wanted to get some darker stuff out of my head and I haven't seen an Alex Mercer displaced yet. If there is one though feel free to point it out for me!
Also a member of this site by the name of Wadusher0 created some artwork for this story!
Here it is!
Day Two Part One - Mobsters
☣☣☣Jacob☣☣☣
I cursed, ranted, and raved in my head as I paced back and forth in the living room. It was still around midnight and I was trying to be extra quiet to avoid waking Color or the neighbors. Eventually I sighed and sat down on the couch, the couch giving a creak. I winced because I forgot how heavy I was now, being concentrated biomass does that to you. I tried thinking up a plan.
"Alright, this is day one so there won't be a whole lot of infected yet, hopefully. Greene isn't here to control the outbreak so maybe the pony police force or guards can keep the infection in check. Without someone to direct the infected it should die out. But it probably won't be that easy, these kind of problems usually aren't." I rubbed my chin with a hoof and pondered something.
"How long would it take for the virus to take effect on a pony?"
I shook my head and got back up to clean the rest of the apartment.
"I should get get everything done, then head out to get the layout of the city."
☣☣☣Meanwhile...☣☣☣
Hocus Pocus is an old unicorn, but he is an old unicorn that has years of built up spell knowledge and practice. He studied long and hard in Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns to get where he is and obtained many degrees. He also has a large magic pool, larger than the average unicorn no doubt. Spells came as naturally to him as breathing. Needless to say he was very talented, hardworking and was always raring to study something new and fascinating.
That strange creature that fell into the floor of Quill station definitely counts as new and fascinating. Especially when it was obviously intelligent and spoke Equish of all things.
Hocus Pocus trotted down the sidewalk humming a tune he heard in his younger years. Suddenly he had to stop, because he started to violently cough. Hocus staggered into the wall of the building on his left holding his chest, coughing all the while but this time flecks of blood spewed out of his mouth. He tried to use a healing spell, one he learnt while briefly studying medicine. His horn started to glow but sputtered out, a small pop was heard and blood and other fluids ran down his face.
To Hocus's horror horrible growths appeared around his horn as he tried to use magic. Not too long after the growths spread across his body as whatever ailed him fed upon his magic, mutating more and more as he screamed. His entire body was soon covered head to hoof and he fell over convulsing and all the while screaming bloody murder. Hocus suddenly stopped his movement, but the growths kept constantly moving around. The bubbly growths began to converge on each other, becoming one and soon started to take on a more pony like shape though larger than before. The fleshy colored equine like form started to take on more features as it evolved. There was no cutie mark on its fleshy flank, a body that had little muscle suddenly looked fitter than an athlete, eyes that once showed a twinkle of mischief instead glowed an eerie orange when they cracked open, and its horn grew longer and sharper.
The abomination stood still as it processed its newfound life. Within its head something sparked, connecting to more beings like it though not nearly as intelligent of course. A hive mind of similar monsters with a single goal.
"Is there somepony in trouble?" Asked a voice from somewhere behind the abomination.
The new Supreme Hunter turned its head to the pegasus pony behind it, eliciting a scream of terror as the pony saw its sharpened teeth and gaping maw. It lunged at the terrified pony.
To kill, consume, grow, and most importantly....
The Hunter stood over the body of the pegasus pony.
Spread the virus.
☣☣☣Jacob☣☣☣
I was back in my base form and running up a skyscraper close to the apartment, being careful not to destroy the building with every step. It was harder than you think but after practicing my powers I managed to get a good enough grasp on them, it was all nearly instinct after all. I finally got to the top of the building and stood on the edge of it, quickly taking in the city. Finishing that I sat on the edge and looked up to the night sky. Amazing how you could still see the stars in a city like this, usually there would be too much light pollution.
A smile tugged on my lips and I laid myself down parallel to the edge all the while staring at the stars.
"I might not be able to sleep anymore but that might not be too bad if I can look up at this every night." I said to myself. This could be one of the few pleasurable moments I'll get during my time here. I sighed, this will become a common occurrence I am almost certain.
After a few minutes of staring at the sky I decided to look through Grassy Knoll's memories. I closed my eyes and brought them up. The best way to describe looking through the memories would be to play the game. It was kind of like that but actually going through it gives a much more in-depth understanding of that ponies life. After I finished I reopened my eyes and once again sighed.
"Ugh, this guy got himself involved with the pony mafia. Just great... I'll have to be on the look out in case they decide to investigate what happened earlier." I groaned in annoyance but decided to burn that bridge when I get to it.
I stood up and took one last look at the city from my vantage point before dropping down onto the closest smaller building and heading back to the apartment. The sun just starting to rise up.
☣☣☣Day Two Begins☣☣☣
I got back to the apartment about two hours before Color's school starts and started to make some breakfast for her, carb-cakes er... pancakes seemed like a good idea. Thankfully her school wasn't all that far so I let her sleep in until they were done.
"Fuck... I'm getting too into this."
With a frown I set the food on the table and went about the morning rituals, which was really just waking Color up, feeding her and walking her to school.
Waving her goodbye I turned around and started walking away. Or, at least that was the plan.
"Psst. Hey Grassy!" A stallion's voice harshly whispered to me. I looked at where the voice was coming from and spotted a shady alleyway.
"Why is it always an alley?" With a mental shrug and a roll of my eyes, I trotted into the alley to see what the stallion wanted. He obviously knew me and Grassy's memories told me he was a messenger for the mob boss he worked for. Didn't really know the guy too well though, not even a name.
"Sup?" I said.
"Look Grassy. One of the boss's Lieutenants wants ta meet wit ya. He says he needs ta ask ya about somethin, dunno what for though." Did I forget to mention the stallion was wearing a fedora and trench coat? I did, and honestly I was trying not to laugh.
"Sure thing. Now?" I asked, practically forcing my mouth to not twitch.
"Yeah, follow me." The stallion motioned with his head and turned around, heading further into the alley. With a shrug and a small sigh of annoyance I followed him and we kept a brisk trot. After many twists, turns and street crossings we got to a very original setting, a warehouse.
"Good god, is this place nothing but cliches?"
I entered through the warehouse door and it closed behind me. I could hear it lock and looked around to see quite a number of mobster goons standing around me, trying to look sharp, tough, and mean.
"Hello Grassy." Said a cloaked unicorn as it walked out of a shadowy section of the warehouse.
"Dear god the horror... Did this guy actually use the 'walk out of the shadows' thing?"
"Hello Lieutenant Striker. What can I do for you?" I answered back.
The cloaked unicorn tossed his head back a bit to drop his hood. A grey coated, light blue and white maned unicorn silently glared at me. He walked a bit further until he stood across from me, staring into my eyes all the while. We held this little silent stalemate staring skirmish for a few minutes.
"He likes his theatrics I guess?"
My musings were cut short when he finally filled the silence that was starting to get a tad awkward.
"Very interesting, so my lookouts were right. You are certainly not Grassy Knoll. He would have been quivering in fright since he was first summoned."
"Aw shit! Shit shit shit!" I mentally screamed. I knew I forgot something about this dudes character! Despite my inner raging against my forgetful self I didn't let it show on my face.
"Maybe I just finally grew a pair Lieutenant?" I said to try and get things a little lighthearted. It worked to a degree, a few goons chuckled lowly. Though the same couldn't be said for Striker, he stared at me unamused.
"Doubtful. I have many lookouts around the area of Quill station where they say Grassy Knoll died. And they told me quite an interesting story."
"Really now? But I am here right now aren't I? So what do they say?"
"Very well then, I will indeed tell you what my lookouts say they saw." He paused for dramatic effect before continuing and all the while began pacing. "A strange biped creature wearing clothes stormed out of Quill Station and rushed to the alley where Grassy Knoll was. When Grassy and two standard thugs confronted said creature, that creature killed the two thugs with his bare claws. He then proceeded to kill Grassy by shoving his arm into his chest and, as they had no better way of describing it, sucked Grassy into himself. Now, what do you say to that, creature ?"
I chuckled quietly, Striker raising an eyebrow at that. "They are called fingers, not claws dude. But anyway enough about that, what do you really want? All of this can't be for one single lowly goon that got offed. Tell me Strikey." Ok yes, I am getting a little cocky. But you would too when you realize you became a character that made you feel like a god compared to normal people as you play.
Striker didn't take the bait from that Strikey comment. "What I want is simple. I want you to work for our boss, you became Grassy. We have many ways we could put that particular skill into use. It helps that you seem to be physically strong too."
"Join the mob eh? Hell no, I don't care if I am not actually Alex Mercer, I don't work for anybody."
"I think I'll pass. I don't think I'm cut out for the whole being a mobster shtick." I said with a smirk when I saw the frown on Striker's face.
He sighed, "Very well." He took a few steps back and pointed a hoof at me. "Beat him boys, but keep him alive enough for use."
And like that something clicked and many things happened at once. One was me instantly turning back into my base form and forming my claws. Two were all ten of the pegasi taking to the air. Three were the twelve earth ponies charging me, either bare hoofed or some type of weapon in their mouth. Four were the five unicorns charging up a spell behind their comrades.
This couldn't be called a battle.
When the first earth pony got close to my left I merely flicked my arm out and the front of his body was shredded. I dashed forward and slide between two more with my arms flashing up. The two other ponies were cut in half horizontally. A pegasus tried dive bombing me but I grabbed him with a clawed hand and stabbed with the other. Consuming him at the same time for the genetics, I forced down the memories this time and continued the fight.
I jumped into the air, which shocked the ponies since it was at least twenty feet. With a spinning kick I launched the nearest pegasus into a steel beam, braining him on impact. Quickly changing my right arm to whipfist I snared another in my grasp and slammed him into the ground. As I fell back to the ground a flash of light hit me in the cheek and caused my head to snap to the side a little. I looked to the unicorn who hit me and my glare made his eyes shrink in fear and his knees wobble. I jumped up again and charged a flying kick. Launching myself forward my foot met his face and I slid across the ground on it, using his body as a makeshift skateboard. With a final backflip kick his dead body slammed into the wall leaving a bloody smear.
I couldn't help the one liner as I looked over at the rest, "Really, that last kick was just beating a dead horse." The other ponies, gulping in terror, blanched and backed up a bit.
I used my whipfist again to grab the nearest unicorn and quickly consumed him, I wanted magic really badly. As it turned out that was a huge mistake because right after the last of him disappeared I felt a horrible pain as my body started to mutate. Gripping my head I fought with all of my might to suppress these symptoms and fight back. As if on cue the mob ponies decided I was probably weak enough for them to take on. They all rushed me and wailed on my body, I didn't even notice since I was trying to fight these sudden mutations.
I squirmed and writhed in agony until the last of the forced mutation was put down with a vengeance. The ponies were still hitting me so I likely wasn't out for very long.
"Enough ." I snarled as a huge amount of tendrils shot out of my body and through the ponies. All of the tendrils grabbed ahold of each of the ponies and I sucked them all inside me, effectively ending the fight and getting a hold of a lot of extra biomass. Thankfully, whatever happened to me with the first unicorn didn't happen again when I consumed the others.
I got back to my feet and stared down at Striker. He was staring in open shock at me. Horror dawned on his face when he realized it was just me and him now. He attempted to flee but my whipfist caught his leg and I slowly dragged him back towards me, he all the while tried to grip the floor with his hooves.
"No! No! Please have mercy!" He begged and sobbed. A clear contrast from before.
"Now why should I do such a thing? You were so willing to force me under your hoof a few minutes ago." I changed my left hand back to normal and gripped him by his throat.
"Be-Because you'll have the boss after your head if y-you don't!" He was nearly in tears at the point. "He is the most influential stallion in all of Manehatten! There wouldn't be a safe place in the entire city for you!"
I laughed darkly and shook my head. "Sorry buddy. But even without him going after me the whole city won't be safe for anypony anyway. A real shitstorm is going to happen soon and I don't need a distraction like you around." With that last statement I snapped his neck and consumed him.
I knelt there on the ground for a bit before getting back up to my full height. I looked at my hands and finally realized I didn't even hesitate with any kind of killing. It scared me to be honest, but I once again had to put that aside for now. I had some exploring to do and a plan to come up with before I had to pick Color up from school. I walked to the warehouse door, punched it, and walked back out into the city through the demolished metal.
I crouched down, charged my biomass and leapt up and forward to the roof of the nearest building, but not before a random piece of paper stuck itself to my face. Coming to a less than graceful roll on the roof I tore the paper from my face with a small curse. Looking down at it I saw something that could either be a potential lifesaver, or my doom. I read the paper.
The National Museum of History Proudly Presents
A History of Equestria
With Special Guests Princess Celestia and Princess Luna
A chance to hear history from the ponies that lived it!
Times are:
Don't miss this exciting event!
"Huh, how convenient. This should be interesting, it will be a bit too late for the one o'clock showing so how about the six? I could even take Color with me, her grades are slipping in history anyway..." I face palmed, "Ugh, I'm doing it again. Whatever, I need to figure out where the museum is and Color won't get out of school for a few more hours anyway. I have time to spare."
With that I crumpled the paper up and tossed it to the side. I charged my biomass once more for a jump and rocketed across the rooftops of the city.
"Hopefully I won't have to fight this menace all by myself. And hopefully I can figure out what the hell was up when I consumed the unicorn..." I mutter to myself.
Day Two Part Two - Royal Introductions
☣☣☣Jacob☣☣☣
I found the museum.
Yeah, big life changing event right? Well, sarcasm aside it actually is . This is the site where I will contact the Princesses and give ample warning about the huge threat looming over this city. This is also the site where two of the, maybe three or four, beings that could potentially beat me are currently hanging around. Naturally I will try my hardest to stay in their good graces, because I'd like to think myself a smart man.
Anyway it is only a twenty or thirty minute walk from the apartment so I won't have to deal with taxi carts trying to move me. I stretched my back and then proceeded to drop down from the roof of the current building I'm standing on. I landed with a rather loud crack of concrete and I quickly disguised myself and hurried out of the alleyway, straight towards the museum.
I was going at a bit of a brisk trot so I arrived fairly quickly, though I would've preferred sprinting. I'm impatient like that. I entered through the glass doors and walked to the ticket counter. It was surprisingly empty, I figured there would've been many ponies lining up to buy a ticket before hand since the Princesses were there. Shaking my head in wonderment I approached the mare behind the counter.
"Excuse me ma'am but may I buy two tickets for 'History with the Princesses' at six?" I politely ask.
The mare looked up, "Oooh, sorry sir. But we are already sold out." She gave an apologetic smile. "It was actually sold out before the first showing."
"Damn! Should've figured the ponies would want to see their beloved Princesses."
I sighed, "That's too bad. Well have a good one." With a nod of my head I walked out of the museum silently cursing this massive waste of time. It was around two in the afternoon now and Color gets off at three. I should start seeing what the unicorn consuming did to me. I quickly trotted to an alley around the corner and changed back to my base form.
I lightly hopped to the roof of the museum.
"Now let's see-"
"Halt!" Shouted a voice from my right.
I turned my head and saw a a royal guard pegasus galloping to me. Raising an eyebrow I said, "Yeah? What do you need fuzzy?"
The guard skidded to a halt in front of me and pointed his spear at my face. "What are you doing up here? This area is off limits for the duration of the Princesses stay. Also... how the buck did you know my name?!"
I mentally snorted, this dude's name was actually Fuzzy? Get real. "Well I am here to enjoy the view. And as for the name... it was a wild guess to be honest. Now please point your toy away from me." I pushed the point of the spear away with a finger.
The guard repointed it at me and said, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to please leave the rooftop. Any other day and this would be fine but the guard is here to protect the Princesses while they work here and stay in their hotel."
"Hotel? Hmmm, perhaps a late night warning? But how to get the location and room number?" I looked at the guard pony.
Should I consume him? It honestly wouldn't be hard to do and I know I wouldn't hesitate while doing the deed. It would be wrong, because I completely understand murder is wrong, but I simply can't bring myself to honestly care. Looking back at my previous kills one thing truly shined and I finally had the epiphany of a lifetime. It wasn't the act of killing that actually made me feel bad . No... the first two goons I killed? It was because of how easily they died from a single one of my punches that left me stunned. Grassy Knoll? Didn't actually care that I killed him, I was more worried about the kid and believed the two feelings were the same thing. The mobsters from before? I didn't care about their deaths, I was scared because I didn't hesitate and that had me worried.
I looked up and thought about this new revelation I had discovered, it was the fact that I never hesitated to end a life that made me realize what I truly have become. A monster, one that wouldn't hesitate to kill if it furthered its quest and kept it filled with biomass. Strange that, since before I came here I wouldn't have the stomach to do such things or even witness a dead body. Perhaps my transition to the life of Alex Mercer and the introduction of a weaponized virus has made me a sociopath.
I looked back at the guard pony and simply stared at him with glossy eyes. He started speaking again but all I was hearing was garbled noise as I was accepting the fact that I was no longer who I once was. It hasn't even been two days and my entire life until now went from normal and shot straight through hell in an infinite loop.
The pony shouted something one last time, I still wasn't paying attention. He lunged with his spear and that was when I broke out of my little trance. I let it pierce where my heart would have been, if I still had organs. The pony was clearly shocked that I didn't even wince, honestly it barely tickled. Just for the fun factor I walked towards him with the spear sliding through me his eyes getting wider as I drew closer. Soon I was upon him and quickly grabbed his neck with my right hand.
Lifting him casually in the air I used my free hand to pull the spear out of my chest and tossed it to the side. Snapping the guards neck with a twitch of my hand I quickly consumed the body and took his memories, paying close attention to the ones telling me where the Princesses are residing within the city. I decided to get off the roof of the museum, charging the mass in my legs I jumped to the next building and parkoured my way across the rooftops back to the apartment.
I still had forty minutes until I had to pick up Color and I'll use that time to see what my new mutation was.
☣☣☣
I stood in front of a full body mirror just staring at the new mutation in my right arm. My arm had boney plates randomly placed along it with tiny spikes on them, and it felt light so it likely wasn't meant for melee. Spikes that suspiciously looked like demonic unicorn horns lined the top of my arm. They came in six pairs of two curved horns in a wide U-ish shape along the top. At the side of my forearms were two very long but not too wide curved horns, kind of like pinchers. They extended just a bit past my hands. My fingers were segmented, each segment looking boneish, and each segment of a finger being connected to each other with black biomass. Interestingly enough I could actually move my hand a full 180 degrees in either direction until my palm faced upwards without moving my arm. My shoulder looked to be made of ebony bones, segmented to allow for easier movement. Finally this all tied together with the usual red, black tendrils that made up a lot of my other weapons. All in all I thought it looked kind of cool.
Taking a look through the memories of the unicorns I tried calling on my magic to pick up a stool that I had placed next to me for experimentation. On a side note my magic pool would be considered extremely large to the average unicorn. That's because a magic pool is determined by the body and the mind. It's like chakra from Naruto but what they mean by body is simply practicing spells. When a unicorn is born, no matter from what family, they have the ability to have their pool grow to increasing heights the more they study and practice. Most don't, since they find their special talent and stick to it, never trying to learn more because they don't need to. Some simply don't have any talent whatsoever or just suck in either study or practice.
My body is unique, since every time I consume someone I gain everything that they are. Hours of study and skills and the more I consume the more I gain. Theoretically I could have infinite potential if I continuously consume ponies. The best targets would be old unicorns that have a special talent in magic. Also when unicorns use magic they get physically tired if used for too long. It's like a muscle and when they have rested enough their magic starts to come back. I will never tire physically so that is a good thing, but my magic pool is still finite so I will run out eventually if I continue to use it. However, it will immediately and quickly start to recharge itself. A bonus to being a bioweapon that doesn't tire.
I concentrated my magic in a basic telekinesis spell, my entire arm glowed a blood red as did the stool. Guiding the stool with my arm, I didn't need to since I could just use my mind but this felt better, I moved it around the room in circles. Satisfied I put it back down next to me and looked back in the mirror while changing my arm back to normal. I discovered I had two mutations one was my arm and the other was a new sense. I lovingly dubbed it magic sense because I'm unoriginal and that's what it senses. Like how thermal lets me see bioheat, magic sense lets me see the magic in living beings or enchanted objects. If I mutate it further I could possibly see what enchantments or spells are being used on what or where respectively. It's just a guess though.
Extra cool factor about it is that my eyes glow like the Lich King's eyes do, all wispy and glowy like. Though the color scheme could use some redecorating. I like red and black and all but... this is too much. I at least want to be able change the glow of my eyes and magic arm. Preferably my eyes to the icy blue of the Lich King and my arm to maybe hot pink. Just for kicks.
I decided to try something new. I quickly changed to my Grassy persona, closed my eyes and concentrated on my biomass to do what I wanted. When I opened them I still had the same face of Grassy but my coat was black, mane blood red with black streaks, and I was an alicorn.
If I was still able to vomit I would've done so that very instant.
I immediately changed back to regular Grassy and I collapsed.
"Ugh, I am never doing that again. I feel dirty and unclean now." I thought to myself. I looked at the clock and saw that it was ten minutes till I had to pick color up from school. Getting back up I stretched and left the apartment.
☣☣☣
Rooftop jumping and running was, in my opinion, vastly superior to walking around on land. It was faster and you didn't have any annoyances in the form of people, or ponies in this case, massing together on sidewalks. It was too bad Color wasn't able to do what I could, and I wasn't about to tell her my secret just yet. Instead I dutifully walked next to her as she talked about her day.
"And Cheery said 'No! The red crayons are yucky! Eat the blue ones!' and I was like 'bleh'!" She stuck her tongue out cutely as she practically bounced along next to me.
I chuckled, "Yeah, the reds are the best aren't they?" Color made a face at me.
"Ew! Not you too daddy!" I merely smiled at her and continued to laugh to show her I was just kidding. The rest of the trip was uneventful and soon Color was settled in. I looked at the clock and it read 3:30. I needed to get out into town, I want to test to see if I could achieve flight using the pegasus DNA I gathered earlier.
I got up from the couch and flicked off the tv, yeah they have these and it's great! I trotted to Color's room and told her I'll be out late tonight and that dinner was in the fridge.
With that out of the way I left the apartment and walked up the side stairs of the building to the roof. I undisguised myself and ran to the tallest skyscraper close to me. I got to the last building on my side of the street and charged my legs enough to leap across the street and onto the building. When I made the leap I looked down and saw that some of the ponies were pointing to me, I guess when a part of your race can fly you tend to learn to look up at times.
Anyway I finally got to the building and immediately began to run up it. I avoided the windows to spare the ponies inside some headache and when I was close to the top I charged my legs to leap up the last bit. I rose over the edge and did a dramatic front flip and landed like batman. The little things mattered, even if no one saw them. I turned around and looked out at the city.
I closed my eyes and called forth the DNA of the pegasi I killed and I could feel the wings growing from my back. I snapped my eyes open looked behind me.
They were tiny, dinky little black sprouts that buzzed a bit when I tried to move them.
I face palmed hard and dragged my hand down my face and said to myself, "God damn it, I was too focused on bringing forth the DNA and forgot to add more biomass. Let's try again."
I pulled them back in and tried again. This time I added much more biomass and when I opened my eyes again I saw that they were much larger than before, about my height and a half on each wing. They looked like black, seriously the color scheme, angel wings. It fit in a weird way considering, but the only thing that mattered now was flying. I brought forth the memories of flight from the various pegasi and dived off the building.
I was about halfway when I heard the screaming of horror the populace was doing as they saw me quickly descend to the ground. I flourished my wings out and rode the air, skimming above the ponies as I made my way through the city, turning at random streets. I pumped my wings harder and I felt the wind rush by me as my speed picked up. I gave a wide grin, twice in one day I did something humans only dreamed of. Magic and unassisted flight.
In my random flight path I eventually found my way back to the street that led to the museum, and what looked like a parade was going on. But as I looked closer it was actually just the Princesses going back to the museum for their final showing, ponies cheered as the two royals and their guard-ponies went about their day.
I decided to give them a quick show of myself and I flew in the center of the street heading in the same direction they were. This quickly got the attention of every guard and civilian alike. The guard pegasi flew up to intercept me and I quickly shot upwards. They chased me a bit until I gave a sharp turn downwards and beat my wings hard , I shot down like a cannon and I barely pulled myself up from crashing into the ground. Good news was that the guards were left behind in my figurative dust. That little stunt left me close to the carriage and I weaved my way over the ground based ponies until I was casually flying a little in front of the Princesses. Luna looked tense and Celestia looked a little wary, I needed to break the ice.
I flew backwards casually, it was easier than you'd think with the help of pony magic, and put my hands behind my head. "Hi." I gave a sly grin with added eyebrow movement, "How ya doin? The name's Alex Mercer. How's your day going? Huh?"
Luna still looked a bit tense but Celestia went from wary to giggling. She put a hoof over her mouth to stifle them, Luna just looked at her like she was crazy.
"Sister, why do you laugh at this creature's strange antics? Should we not be worried that it disregarded our guards and flew straight towards us?"
Celestia rolled her eyes, "Oh come now sister. If he had any malicious intent he wouldn't just lazy fly in front of us like that."
I smiled, looks like the ice breaking was a success. But the two were speaking quietly so the guards didn't get the memo. A lot of magic bolts struck me across various parts of my body but I didn't even deviate from my flight path. They stung a bit but it was nothing I couldn't shrug off. Not like they did anything other than leave some very small burn marks that instantly healed.
The princesses seemed a bit stunned that I just casually ignored that, and judging by the lack of continuous fire the guards were as well. I just continued on like nothing happened.
"Excuse me ladies but I didn't come here to just casually flirt with a pair of b-e-a-utiful mares. I came here to tell you that I will stop by your room at your hotel tonight to deliver a message and a warning about the dire future of this city. I won't tell you just yet, you'll fret too much over it all day if I do. We also do not have enough time for the whole story anyway and I don't want to only give you bits and pieces of it." I adopted a serious face during this, as did they.
"Very well... Alex. What do you say to, hmm, 11?" Said Celestia.
"It's a date." I said and with that I flew away but not before blowing a kiss at them. It's fun to mess with people when you don't have to be serious right then and there. I pumped my wings hard and rocketed off to the place where I first fell into the world.
Around the midpoint there I slowed down a bit and had to land onto one of the roofs, blinking in astonishment as I realized something about my powers that I forgot. My wings going back into my body.
"I forgot about infected vision..." I said in bafflement. "I could be out in the city right now killing infected and carriers. Instead I'm just fucking around playing house with a filly that isn't mine, and playing prophet with the princesses when there could be ponies dying right now!"
A brief pause.
"Gaaaaah ! I am such a fucking retard!" I screamed to the skies with my head in my hands.
And with a primal roar I charged my legs and, completely forgetting about my new wings, I charged across the roofs straight towards Quill Station.
I needed to scan everything and every pony there before it was too late.
I was just thankful there isn't an Elizabeth Greene or Supreme Hunter in this world.
Author's Note
Bonus info, I was writing this while listening to this music .
Also here is a bit of artwork showing the new mutation as drawn by Turning Gears :
Day Two Part Three - Infection Confirmed
☣☣☣Alex☣☣☣
I blindly charged to the station as fast as I could and I was nearly three blocks away when I heard the screams. I slid to a halt on top of one of the rooftops close to the station. I looked to the streets and saw ponies running from the station in blind panic and from out of the station walkers (zombies) charged out in a massive horde. Even the pegasi weren't spared since some of the walkers were also flyers and managed to catch a few, chewing on them as they fell back to the ground.
Police ponies were bravely trying to rescue the civilians and fend off the infected. No matter how badly they failed at it, they didn't have any guns after all.
"I guess I don't really need my infected vision now. But I'll turn it on anyway, I need to see if there are any carriers within the civilians." I said to myself.
I closed my eyes for a bit until they snapped open, glowing a tad orange. My vision changed immediately, the landscape and regular ponies turned red and every infected turned a bright orange. I looked back down to the street and activated whipfist in both arms. I needed to get the carriers first then deal with the walkers.
Finding one my right whipfist went out and snared the mare, consuming her when she got back to me. My left went out at the same time when I found another and consumed him. This went for only about a minute, thankfully there weren't a whole lot of them. Changing my right arm to the blade and my left to my magic arm I charged up a jump and leapt to where the pony police and walkers were fighting.
I landed with a crash that knocked every walker and pony alike away from me. The police were wary of me, I assume they saw me pick off civilians and my entrance didn't earn any bonus points from them. Ignoring them I quickly swung my blade out at one of the walkers, consuming it at the same time. I figured the less infected flesh out and about the less chance a pony will get infected by moving it.
When the infected walker died all of the others charged at me in a mob. I rolled my eyes and swung at them again, this time my blade cut through six at the same time. This didn't deter them and I soon found myself constantly swinging, slicing, and consuming my way towards the station. Occasionally I would use my magic to grab ahold of one or a few and crush them with it or push them away with what was basically a Jedi force push.
In my frenzy I barely even noticed that the police were all dead or running. Jumping up into the air with a backflip my blade arm became a whipfist and I swung it into the huge wave of infected. Dozens of walkers were killed and I couldn't help a smile that cracked on my face.
"Achievement unlocked."
I continued to sweep the streets, so to say, of the infected. That is until something crashed in the middle of the walkers. The infected parted and a primal roar came from the new arrival. It was a huge pony looking hunter. Which shouldn't be possible without the help from Greene or the Supreme hunter. It was also only the second day, they didn't come until the third, I think. This had me a bit worried and I cursed myself for tempting Murphy.
The hunter was easily five times the size of a normal pony. There was no fur, only pinkish-orange flesh, the eyes weren't large anymore they were instead tiny. And its mouth was huge and full of razor sharp teeth. It leapt at me with he intent to crush me like the Hulk. Instead of letting that happen I dodged backwards and formed my blade on my right hand as I backflipped and slid for a few feet. Its hooves slammed into the ground where I was with a mighty crash.
Not giving the chance for the hunter to recover I began my counter attack. I used my magic to slam its head on the ground and disorient it while I used my blade to sever one of its arms off. Its screamed in pain as it clutched its arm with its other bulky hoof, flipping onto its back in the process. Showing no mercy I used my magic again to fling it in the air and when it came falling back down I skewered it in the heart with my blade, consuming it all the while.
"That was a lot easier than in the games." I muttered but passed it off as the fact that I am not using any sort of silly game mechanics like health and targeting. I looked at the entrance to Quill Station when something caught my eye. It was another hunter but this one looked different. It noticed me looking and turned to head back inside that station. I sprinted after it, subconsciously knowing what it really was, but I was in mild denial at this point.
I burst through the doors to the subway station and ran down the stairs, casually swatting away the mindless infected that got in my way. Eventually I got to the tracks and looked down both ends trying to see if I could find the strange hunter again. No such luck with either infected vision or thermal. I groaned as I clutched my head.
In a fit of anger, after figuring out that there is a Supreme hunter controlling everything, I roared, ripped a bench from its bolted position in the tiles and flung it as hard as I could at the nearest infected. That walker had a bench through its head and was pinned to the wall. Breathing heavily I slowly calmed down enough to form my whipfists and methodically killed the last of the infected down here.
Of course two more hunters had to make an appearance. They each ran at me from one of the tunnel exits and leapt. I dive rolled behind them and using both of my whipfists I grabbed the closest one by the legs and swung around in a circle. When the hunter was in the correct spot I let go and it smashed into the other as that one charged at me again, sending them both crashing into the wall. My arms swirled around with tendrils and started to grow increasingly heavy until my hammerfists fully formed. Slamming them dramatically on the ground yielded decent craters.
The two hunters picked themselves back up and shook off the debris gathered on them. This time I charged at them with a hammertoss and each hunter threw a punch while I matched each hoof with a punch from my hammerfists. When the punches connected the hunter's hooves caved in to the elbows and they were sent flying away once more. Changing my left arm to magic form I levitated both to me, and when they got closer a few tendrils pierced each one and they got consumed.
Sighing, I shook my head and headed back out to the city.
When I got out I noticed that the infected were thinned out enough that I could probably leave the rest to the pony police. I reactivated my infected vision and sprinted off to see if I could find any carriers amongst the populace. Abandoning all stealth and property damage minimizing, I roof hopped and ran across building walls as I scanned the ponies below. They were still running around in a panic, getting in each others way. Of course me occasionally picking out ponies in a seemingly random, to them, pattern wasn't helping. Not seeing any more with my limited range I remembered I had wings now and flew off.
It was barely six o'clock, time flies when you're killing zombies, and I was already mentally tired. I was certain that Quill Station was just one of many staging points the Supreme Hunter was using to spread the virus from. The subway system connects all of Manehatten together and who knows how many infected it has down in the tunnels. I gritted my teeth in frustration, a simple infection was bad enough but adding this to the mix wasn't fair for the city.
Realizing that I would have to give up the 11 o'clock date with the Princesses I decided to crash their museum showing. This required immediate attention, not some history lesson. Plus I am only one man, even with my newfound superpowers even I can't be everywhere at once and protect everypony.
☣☣☣
My flight to the museum was repeated accosted by several infected pegasi. Naturally I wiped them out quickly but each time it slowed me down a bit. I was worried about the shear number of infected pegasi roaming the skies. The Supreme Hunter was likely using them to further the spread of the virus from the stations. The attacks slowed down and eventually stopped when I got closer to the museum, the ponies were panicking down below in the streets.
It seems that word is spreading of the zombies attacking and killing other ponies. There were royal guards trying to direct the ponies and keep them from stampeding themselves but it was a slow effort. Ignoring the commotion I continued my trek to the museum's entrance, the guards gathering around while forming a spear wall when they noticed my approach.
My wings receded into my body while I was still a few feet in the air and I fell down, cracking the ground at the foot of the steps. I calmly walked up the flight to the spear wall and when I was just barely out of range I suddenly jump up over them and jog into the museum. The guards scrambled to get back in front of me but it was too late as the Princesses already saw me.
Honestly, they looked like complete shit. Luna looked a bit depressed and Celestia's eyes looked red and puffy, she was likely crying not too long ago. Understandable, since their subjects are being massacred all around them.
"Hello Princesses. It seems that things moved a bit faster than I expected it would. Pity that, I wanted you two to have one more normal and fun day with a pleasant late night date before this hell started." I stated calmly.
Luna looked just a little pissed, "How can you speak so calmly and talk about 'fun' and 'normal days' and 'dates' at a time like this?! Our subjects are dying left and right!" She snorted a bit of hot air after that mini rage.
"Luna please calm down. Getting mad because he is speaking calmly isn't going to help." Celestia reasoned with her sister. Luna reluctantly calmed down, but still giving me a bit of a glare.
I cleared my throat. "Yes, anyway. My original plan was to tell you everything you needed to know tonight but since things have... escalated . I need to tell you now." I walked towards the Princesses until we were only a few feet away from each other. "What is going on in the city is the result of a virus. A bioweapon that goes by the name of Blacklight."
"A bioweapon?! Which country would dare commit such an atrocity?!" Shouted Luna. I only shook my head at her.
"Not a country no. And please hear me out when I tell you this next bit." I paused. "I was the one that released-"
That was as far as I got before a golden beam struck me in the chest, actually going through me and leaving a decent sized hole. The pure force behind it sent me flying to the wall. Celestia was breathing heavily, her horn smoking from the magic that was released. Her eyes were filled with a rage that lesser beings would have cowered from. When I didn't move she seemed to calm down a bit and turned back to her sister who was staring at her in astonishment.
"It's rude to interrupt people, especially when they say to hear them out first." Celestia froze with wide eyes as she turned back to look at me. I was already back up, the wound already closed and I looked none the worse for wear.
"Wh-What are you?" Celestia said.
"In due time, now may I explain things now?" She gave the subtlest of nods. "Good! Now as I was saying... I was the one who released this virus technically ."
Eyebrows were raised.
"It was completely accidental I assure you. This is not something I would wish on any species but it has happened nonetheless. To put a long story short I bought a vial of, what I assumed to be, red colored water from a shady merchant. I was dressed as a character from a game and he was intimately familiar with the virus, he helped create it and was the one to break the vial in a station in the game. As it turned out it I bought a vial of the actual virus from the merchant and by some power he sent me off to Equestria, the vial flying out of my hand sometime during my fall into Quill Station. It likely broke on impact and had every pony in the station at the time exposed to the virus."
Celestia was much calmer now and asked, "But if every pony was exposed in the station why were you not infected as well?"
I smiled at her, "A good question! When the merchant shipped me here he turned me into the game character. Alex Mercer after releasing the virus fell down dead after being shot. His body landed in the virus and the virus consumed and became him. He was Blacklight itself, that is why I was not infected."
Luna stared at me, "So are you the virus as well?"
I paused and gave a bit of thought to that. I then shook my head, "No, I did not die when I was turned by the merchant. The original Alex lost his memories when he died, the same did not happen to me. Instead the virus is now a part of my body while I basically remain myself."
"I see. Why does the virus not do the same to the others like you?" Celestia asked.
"Honestly, I haven't a clue. Sorry. But we have wasted enough time, I need to tell you a few thing to handle this situation. You need to block all outgoing traffic from the city. Let no one leave, it could run the risk of one of the carriers of the virus leaving the city and infecting another. Put up a shield around the city as well, gotta keep the pegasi most of all out as well. Stick to ranged attacks when fighting the infected, otherwise you run the risk of your soldiers getting infected too. Use hazmat suites if you ponies have them." I paused a bit to let them take some of this in. I continued, "Usually this could be taken care of rather quickly but there is a monstrosity known as a Supreme Hunter roaming about the city. It controls the infected with a hive mind, that's why the attacks are strategical and not just a mob of infected lashing out at random. Do not let your soldiers engage it, it will rip them to shreds. Let me take care of that, I am a bit annoyed at it right now. Unless of course you feel like you could take him, just keep him out of melee range and blast him with high level magic. Don't let even a puddle of him remain, he has a massive healing factor. Do not underestimate him if you do choose to fight him."
As I was about to leave Celestia stopped me with a question. "What is a carrier and how do we find them?"
I looked back at her, "Just a pony that has the virus within them but hasn't shown any symptoms yet. The pony wouldn't show symptoms until the virus overtakes them completely. By then they will turn into the zombies you see outside and attack anything it sees. You won't be able to find them, I have infected vision so I can see who has the virus in them or not. When I see a carrier I immediately kill them."
Celestia's moth dropped in horror. "No! No don't kill my little ponies! There has to be a way to save them right? Some cure we can come up with? There has to be a better way!" She practically pleaded that last statement, her eyes started shining with fresh tears.
I shook my head sadly at her, "I'm sorry, there is no cure to my knowledge. Even if there was the virus is too fast acting. I'm sorry but once one of your little ponies is infected they are essentially dead. And a fair warning, I will kill all carriers I see. Civilians, guards, police, or even what counts as an important pony does not matter to me. I want this to spread as little as possible. I'll leave the rest of the planning to you, don't fuck up please."
I started walking away before stopping, I turned back to the Princesses and said, "I'll be bringing a filly over here by the name of Color Twist. She is the daughter of the first pony I consumed when I got to this world. She doesn't know he is dead just yet, I'd like to drop her off and leave. Tell her that her daddy is fighting the monsters outside with the guards when she wakes up. She should at least remember him as a hero."
With that I sprinted out the doors and into the city, leaping when I got to the edge of the stairs and took off on my wings.
☣☣☣Around 7ish☣☣☣
I was flying as fast as I could on my way back to the apartment so it only took about a minute at most. When I got there however...
"Color ! Noo !" I shouted in dread. The entire area of the apartment complex was saturated with infected, I didn't realize the infection has spread this far yet. Forgetting all about my disguise I cannonballed my way through the wall where the apartment was. The wall gave way and chucks of brick and plaster scattered across the floor.
Nothing.
"Color?! Color answer me!" I desperately yelled as I ran to her room. I burst through her door and just stood at the entrance, staring at the city through the massive hole in the wall. Holes could be found all around the room but something on the wall to my right caught my eye. It was a message scratched onto the wall.
Tomorrow, Noon. Come prepared to fight for your 'daughter' she'll be in Trotfeller Station. Don't come before then, she'll be killed otherwise.
It took me a bit to process this new information. When I finished I grit my teeth in pure unadulterated anger. I slammed my fist into the wall and watched it buckle and crumble. I dropped to my knees when I realized what horror Color is probably going through right now. I felt something wet on my cheek and when I rubbed a hand on it I saw a tear.
Staring at the tear as it dried up all I mumbled, "Maybe I'm not a monster or a sociopath after all..."
I clenched my hand in rage.
That damn monster will pay for what he's done. For what he's taken from me.
Author's Note
Oh! And if anyone knows a good artist that would enjoy drawing a random scene or scenes that he or she likes in this story then please recommend this to him/her! I can put the relevant pictures in the chapters and on a separate blog!
Day Three - Confrontation
☣☣☣Alex☣☣☣
I was sitting on top of the apartment and just staring up at the sky. And by sky I mean the giant magical dome stretching across the city that prevents any unwanted outward or inward traffic. I wasn't even paying attention to the chaos spanning the city streets below, it was pointless to try killing all of the infected now. The virus has spread much too rapidly in much too short of a timeframe, and so I only had two goals at this point in time.
The first goal was to brutally murder the Supreme Hunter, consume him while he is still alive, and make sure Color was safe. Simple, direct, and the top priority. My second goal is to pull off a Heller when I defeat the big baddy. And by that I mean pulling out a big ass devastator and kill off the virus in the city. If I manage to do both I could minimize the loss of the city to approximately forty or fifty percent, much less if I can kill the Supreme Hunter before the end of the day.
One small part of me was actually morbidly impressed at how quickly this city went to hell. Another part wondered how the Supreme Hunter even managed to get such a large army of walkers, or even the bodies, underground without any pony noticing. But none of that mattered now, the only thing that did was the end of this little nightmare. I pulled out a pocket watch I found inside Grassy's nightstand and checked the time.
11:50
I sighed and stood back up on the ledge. My hot, unbridled rage last night was finally worn down to a cold fury. With no further thought I formed my wings and took flight at a pace that would get me there in about eight minutes. The hellish city landscape sped by me as I flew towards Trotfeller Station. My route there was flooded with the infected, not a single soul to be found. Gritting my teeth I shook my head to clear it for the upcoming fight.
I arrived at the station and I pulled out my pocket watch, waiting for the exact moment the hands reached noon. The seconds ticked by as I watched the watch. Eventually it reached noon and I put the watch away. Retracting my wings I fell down a few stories and landed at one of the entrances to Trotfeller Station. Getting up from my crouch I descended the steps and entered the station, I looked around for any sign of Color.
I was about to scream for the Supreme Hunter to come out until I heard a noise from one of the tunnels. I looked in that direction and saw a regular Hunter staring at me, it growled an took off down the tunnel.
"I guess that's my cue. " I thought and gave chase.
While sprinting down the ruined tunnel I couldn't help but notice the growths. Pods and other basic viral decorations lined the subway system. I suppose that would be why and how the infection has spread in such a wide area. But I was sure that it took much longer than this to get enough walkers to spread further. That begs just one question.
Why is the virus so much more infectious now?
My train of though ended when I spotted what was likely the meeting spot. The wide array of various infection helped confirm. Skidding to a halt I stood fearlessly in front of a few hundred infected. Not even giving them the time of day I scanned the area for Color, silence was the only sound that could be heard.
"You won't find her here just yet. That would be too easy of a game." a voice spoke out from the eery quiet.
I looked in the direction the voice came from and there stood a lone guards pony. I wasn't fooled by the guise though, I knew this was the Supreme Hunter in the flesh.
"Humph, finally appearing before me and you don't have the courtesy to at least show me your real face? What? Too ugly? Too bad you got the bad viral strain isn't it?" I sneered at the Supreme hunter.
It merely shook its head at me, all the while donning a condescending smirk. "Your taunts will not bait me, besides what use will looks give me? And what good would they do to you? You will die soon enough anyway."
This guy was pissing me off and my patience was already running thin. "Enough with the talk. Where is Color?!" I shouted the last sentence with a deep growl. My hands clenched and a few arm tendrils squirmed wildly about, all the while staring down the Supreme Hunter.
"No need for yelling. And don't worry, your 'daughter' is safe. For now. Locked up just passed those stairs in fact." He waved a hoof behind himself indicating the mentioned stairs. "Of course in order to get to her you need to get passed all of this." This time he waved to the infected. "And any other... surprises, I might have in store for you." He smiled at that.
The Supreme Asshole turned around and walked back to the stairs. At the foot of them he stopped and turned his head to me, "Don't take too long now, because every second you waste is another second that your dear Color might become... infected." He turned back to the stairs and started walking up them.
"If she is so much as scratched when I get her there will be nothing in Hell worse than what I will do to you! DO YOU HEAR ME?! NOTHING!"
The asshole disappeared from my sight without so much as a glance back to acknowledge my statement. Frustrated I turned my head to the other infected and snorted in contempt. I needed to clear my head of all this pent up rage before rescuing Color. It would not do to have her see me like this.
Activating my claws I entered a standoff, the horde of infected and I just looking at each other, waiting for one to make the next move. Deciding to abandon all strategy I slammed a foot down in front of me and shot myself forward with a bit of a leap, my clawed arms cocked back. The horde took this as their signal and charged back.
☣☣☣
I sliced my way through the first infected with no problem. Swing after swing, slicing, dicing, the infected fell by the dozens. I did a quick Link styled spin to clear a small area and turned my arms into whipfists. With newfound reach I decided that I needed to get rid of these things and save Color, I didn't have time to play around. I did a quick spin and extended my arms wide, easily killing many of the weak grunts. A few more sweeps and the room was cleared of all the infected but me and the debris and dust clouds from slamming my arms down.
"Humph. Did that bastard really think these grunts could hold me off?" Just as I finished that sentence I heard deep growls come from behind me. I groaned, "Ugh, did I really need to jinx myself? I need to learn to not taunt Murphy."
I spun around, changing my right arm to the blade and my left to magic. I decided to do a power I hadn't used yet as well, armor . Tendrils swirled around my body and my biomass hardened into the black armor. I was curious at how well it would protect me, and I wanted to look and feel cool.
The first hunter came charging from the shadows, leaping at me. I decided to test my durability by letting it hit me. I braced myself and felt the force of the hunter hit me, I stopped it dead in its tracks with little to no effort. It tried clawing me but that did nothing against the armor, it probably won't work on multiple hunters. Or it might, I'm not part of a game so I could be far legitimally superior to a hunter and not have any game mechanics blocking me from my full potential. After all Prototype isn't like Saints Row 3 where you can upgrade yourself to godhood, they wanted to keep it challenging at some sort of level. Perhaps now that this is real life I have this superficial godhood against grunts, it would explain why killing a hunter is so pathetically easy now.
I guess I only have to worry about bosses now, or what would constitute as a boss. I casually stuck my blade into the abdomen of the hunter and consumed it halfheartedly. I was never fond of becoming this overpowered in video games, it sucked all the fun out of it. Of course I shouldn't complain really, this keeps me from dying, and I don't like dying. I glanced back to the tunnels and saw three more hunters coming my way.
I caught one more in my magic and did an uppercut with my blade on another when it got too close. I yanked the one in my magic towards me, impaling it head to ass, like a spit roast, on my blade. I pointed my magic arm at the last and charged up my magic. This time instead of telekinesis I tried firing a rather large bolt of magic, and despite the seriousness of the situation I couldn't hold back a smile when I realized I shot a laser out of my hand. It ripped through the head of the hunter like a Zabuza Sword through rice paper.
The room got quiet and I figured there were no more. As I turned around to head to the stairs I heard another growl. I turned back towards it and blinked when I looked at this absurdity.
It was a normal hunter... but it was purple.
"I don't...." I didn't even bother finishing that sentence. I raised my magic arm and fired the biggest laser I had. The hunter was struck and knocked back, but it wasn't damaged much.
This just got interesting, I turned to face this new foe with my full attention. And that was when its friends joined the party. Five more leaped and sprinted over debris as they charged me. I put away my magic arm, it was useless here apparently, and focused on my new objectives. Getting that magic resistance DNA. I jumped to the left and grabbed the nearest hunter by the throat. Cutting it in half and consuming it at the same time. I activated muscle mass and grabbed the arm of a hunter as it tried to swipe at me with its claws. Ripping it off, tendrils shot from my body and sucked both parts of the hunter into me.
It was at that time one of them hit me in the back, it seems that these new hunters are more powerful than their color scheme makes them out to be. That attack actually hurt me a bit through my armor. I stumbled from the sneak attack but quickly retaliated with a back hand. Grabbing the body before it flew away and slamming it on the ground before consuming it. The final three charged me at the same time.
I activated my blade and waited for the right time to strike. Events started to move in slow motion and I watched as the claws got ever closer. When the new hunters finally got within easy reach, I swung. My blade went through the first hunter and traveled to its brethren. When the pieces of the final hunters fell to the ground, my tendrils shot out and dragged them to my body. It took a little more time than usual because of the quantity.
With this finally finished I ran to the stairs and activated thermal vision. I looked in every direction but did not even see a single heat signature. I was justifiably worried now but I calmed myself. Color could just be in an area where thermal can't see through, like how Superman can't see through lead. It wasn't much, but it was all I had at the moment. So I decided to go through the normal way of searching a building.
By busting down every single door in this damnable place.
"This fucking guy couldn't even give me the courtesy of telling me which fucking room she was in?!" I cursed when I destroyed the twentieth door in a row with a kick.
After breaking everything on the first floor and a half my search was finally rewarded with progress.
But it was not the progress I could have wanted...
Author's Note
Sorry this took so long. I was busy writing a crossover with FrostTheWolf on my other story, "Wub Me or Hate Me"
But what a cliffhanger eh?
Day Three - Revenge Part 1
☣☣☣
I quietly stared down at the little section of the room from the barely lit doorway. My eyes were closed and I was biting my lower lip hard enough to bleed, I tried not to cry...
But I don't think I succeeded.
"God... fucking damn it." I cursed as I wiped my eyes with a sleeve. After taking a moment to pull myself together I quietly asked a question I knew no one would be able to answer, "Why? She never deserved this. She was just a god damned filly."
I still did not understand why I felt so protective of her. I never liked kids back on Earth, so why is this any different? Is it because she's an adorable little pony? Do I secretly wish to someday become a father and was pinning that wish fulfillment on Color? I decided to not dwell too much on it right now, I can always try and figure out why at a later date.
After forcing myself to look at the filly for a few minutes in a silent prayer to whatever religion ruled this place I simply couldn't bear to look over there any longer. So I frowned, walked over to her cold body, and closed her eyes with my fingers. I turned on my feet and walked over to the window that faced the city street. I put a hand on the window sill and I stared out into the hellish looking city, seeing all the destruction, the chaos, the occasional fire from what was likely some forgotten stove. I finally and truly realized just what my presence here has done. No matter how inadvertently, and no matter how much I didn't want any of this to happen. No matter that that damn creepy salesman sent me here in the first place. I needed to end this farce as quickly as it started, and I needed to do it now.
There was no truth for me to seek here in the city, no running around trying to find answers for what happened to me, what caused me to change into a living weapon. I knew that already. There was only one thing I needed to do here... I need to skip straight to the boss fight and I will eat the damn monster that has done this. I will destroy every bit of the virus in this unfortunate city. I will avenge Color by killing the beast responsible for the loss of her young life. Then... I think I'll do a bit of soul searching throughout Equestria. Meet the citizens firsthand and see what really goes on in this world.
But first things first, revenge. My frown turned into a sneer, and then a snarl when I thought about the Supreme Hunter. My only focus now was finding him, my anger boiled, my grip on the window sill shattered it into thousands of tiny pieces, the virus within me writhed and wiggled frantically, and then suddenly something like a ping sounded out in my head. I was suddenly broken out of my rage, I put a hand to my head in confusion, and furrowed my brow as the odd ping happened once again. For some reason, somehow... I knew where the Supreme Hunter was now.
Then it hit me. I had viral sonar, just like James Heller. I had somehow forced a mutation in the virus when my anger at the Supreme Hunter reached an all time high, or at least that's my best guess at any rate. I grinned maliciously, finding the Supreme Hunter will be a breeze now. Thanks to my newfound hunting sense, it seems that he is heading to...
Oh... No, this will not end well. Not at all.
☣☣☣
My newfound wings were a huge convenience for me. I can see why Rainbow Dash enjoys flying so much.
But I can't marvel at this liberating freedom right now, I needed to get to the survivor's camp as fast as possible. My wings lifted up and charged with biomass, then shot back down. I was sent flying at breakneck speeds, all the while pinging away with my new sense for the ugly bastard's constant location. I barely even noticed the building or two I crashed into with that flap and thanks to my speed I landed on top of a roof just opposite of the barrier, well within a minute or two at most.
He was already inside the protection dome, I knew that much. But he hasn't done anything yet from what I can see and hear. He must have had a specific target if he wasn't going around infecting or consuming ponies right now. I racked my brain for any targets he would want in there and it finally clicked. He wanted the Princesses!
I could not let that happen. Not only would he get a god awful power boost from it, he would even gain the knowledge of how to move the sun and moon. He had no business knowing that, far too dangerous knowledge for the likes of him. I narrowed my eyes in his direction.
"Besides... Nothing should ever happen to Luna. She is best princess after all." I muttered.
I dropped down from the top of the building, landing with a crash between it and another building. I was completely out of sight from the barrier's guard ponies. Remembering that I consumed a guard pony back at the museum I quickly shifted my biomass into him. But I wasn't the uniform white or dark grey, seems that there really is an enchantment on their armor. Grumbling to myself I switched the aqua fur coat for a dark grey one, and made sure the tail was a white and light blue like the other unicorn pony guards and added the horn on top.
With that disguise complete I quickly trotted out of the alleyway, making sure to keep my face completely serious like the others. Normally I wouldn't be able to keep a face like that without busting out laughing but for some reason it is so much easier now. Maybe the past few days killed my sense of humor, I hope not. It's all I really have left of my previous self.
I approached the gate, well calling it a gate was a bit of a stretch really. It was basically a hole in-between two roughly made walls. The walls themselves were piled up concrete and building parts. Fused together, likely with magic, and standing at least two stories tall. Pretty impressive honestly considering it was made with junk and rubble.
I got to the surrounding magical barrier, right in front of the little hole. The guards gave me a scrutinizing look before their horns glowed and a hole in the barrier large enough for me to walk through opened up. This was way too easy. For all they know I could be infected, heh, and could potentially spread the virus. And they just let me in?
This had to be a trick. But I couldn't prove it and I didn't want to make a scene, so with my paranoia on high alert I strolled through the hole. Not breaking stride and not breaking my stoic mask. Even if I was metaphorically sweating on the inside. The guards didn't even make a passing glance at me, either they were really good actors or they really did not know that I was not who they thought I was.
I hope becoming Alex Mercer didn't increase my paranoia levels.
Anyway, I needed to intercept the Supreme hunter before he gets in the presence of the sisters. I pinged the sonar once more and turned right, passing many different refugee tents and various stalls that passed food, water, and other supplies around. Various guards patrolled the streets of the improvised refugee camp, occasionally one of the unicorns would fire a beam of magic into he surrounding dome. Probably donating some of his magic to keep it stable.
I continued to look left and right as I walked down the street, not paying attention to what was in front of me. I felt the tiniest bump against myself and heard a squeak of surprise. I looked down in front of myself and saw the last filly I'd expect to see. It was Babseed full in the flesh in front of me.
"Oh... uh, sorry citizen." I said, she might not have been my favorite crusader but damn it she's still pretty fucking adorable up close. Babseed shyly nodded, a guard pony is probably intimidating to a filly. She gathered herself up and galloped off to join some other foals in play. My eyes turned orange for a brief second and I sighed in relief when her fleeing form did not show signs of infection.
Perhaps she has plot armor or maybe she is just a lucky filly. I shrugged it off and decided to end this much more quickly and galloped back in the direction of the Supreme Hunter, I did not care if I raised a few eyebrows on the way. Stealth was not really my main concern once I was inside the dome, it was just beneficial to a degree.
I had to force myself from pulling out a full on sprint though, I'd probably kill anyone that I'd accidentally bumped into if I did that. While I might not care about taking lives now doing so would dampen any talks with Celestia and Luna. Funny enough, they don't seem to want their citizens to die, imagine that. Thankfully ponies seemed to part ways in front of me as I ran by, I probably look like I'm in a hurry and delivering something important. Perhaps I should disguise as a guard more often, it's helpful.
The Supreme Hunter was only a hundred feet in front of me, and he was nearing the building the two royal sisters were currently caged up inside of. My gallop became a little faster, I highly doubted they would be able to see past his disguise if they couldn't see past Chrysalis's. I finally spotted the building ahead, the ping in my head rebounded off of the guard pony quickly trotting into the building.
I growled in frustration and slammed my back legs into the ground. I left a large indentation in the ground and shot forward like an artillery shell. The door was closed by now and my heavy body blew them open, shards of wood went flying everywhere. Every single pony in the room, even the sisters, were speechless. I sent a ping out and it locked onto one of the guards in the back.
I leapt in his direction but was caught in a golden glow. Then Celestia spoke, "My little pony. What seems to be the problem? We were in the middle of a very important meeting."
And true they were. Celestia, her sister, and many guards that seemed like they were of higher rank were all sitting around a circular table. A map of Manehatten was lying on top of the table, red X's and O's and various other scribbles were all over the paper. My head snapped in her direction and I pointed at the guard in the back, where he and a few other normal pony guards were stationed, probably for security.
"That one! That guard in the back is no pony! He's one of those monsters out in the city!" I shouted. "I saw him change shape and enter the camp!"
I tried my best to make my little act believable. Celestia's head quickly shot in his direction and he did not hesitate to act now that his cover was blown. His form exploded with fleshy colored tentacles and killed the honor guard around him before he leapt at Celestia.
She was shocked and couldn't form a proper defense, before I could do anything a heavy bolt of magic knocked the Supreme Hunter back. I knew it didn't do anything though, he had to have incorporated the magic resistance in himself at some point. The magic hold on me dispersed and I too leapt into the fray.
"Wait! No my little-" She cut herself off when, in a mass of red tentacles, I changed back into my base form and swung my blade down at the Supreme Hunter. He rolled on his back to dodge the blade and, in a show of acrobats that did not suite a four legged creature, he twisted himself off of the ground and leapt backwards onto his clawed hooves.
"Alex?! What is going on?" Celestia asked.
I didn't turn to her, I needed to keep my eyes on the bastard in front of me. "Sorry, no time right now." I said apologetically. "Right now I need to fight that guy and you two need to get away from here, he wants to consume you for your magic and spells."
"Then let him try. I will not simply back down and let somepony else do all the work, I am a Princess of Equestria." Luna stepped up boldly to stand next to me, head held high.
"Princess please, magic won't do you any good here. This needs to be a purely physical fight, one you'll be at an extreme disadvantage in, and if he gets a hold of you even once you'll be dead. If that happens... he will win. Please, let me do this."
Luna seemed to hesitate and was about to protest when Celestia interrupted. "Sister, let him take care of it. He is right, you're magic did nothing to it when you struck it at point blank range. Once we make sure the camp is truly safe we can possibly join him in battle if it is still going on by the time we get there."
I didn't wait to hear Luna's response. I charged the Supreme Hunter, while he charged back at me. The Princesses and the few remaining guards scrambled out of the building. I could hear the shouts and orders of the Princesses once they got outside. My blade clashed against his blade, a blade formed from an extra limb that grew from his back like a wing. We pushed against each other, I was glad he grew to just below my height as it made it less awkward to fight.
We disengaged and skidded back a few feet and I glared at the Supreme Hunter.
"You realize that in the end, I will win don't you?"
His voice was annoying me. "Shut up." I growled. "You gloat too much."
I ran at him and swiped with my blade. His blade arm swished at mine and deflected the attack. My left arm formed a claw and I pressed my attack. I gave a downward slash but he jumped back, his blade arm flashing for my neck. I ducked under the strike and lashed out with my claw, lightly scratching the surface of his blade arm.
He didn't like that and a new arm formed on the other side of his body. The two blades slashed at me from two different directions, "Shit." I cursed as I did a matrix styled dodge, the two blades barely missed my nose by a bee's cock.
I righted myself and slashed with a claw, that attack left him open. One of his arms was diced by my claw's blades and he screamed in rage. He backpedaled and snarled at me, his teeth bared.
"You just won't give up will you?" He questioned as he tried to glare a hole in me.
I couldn't help a satisfied smirk, "Hell no. Now be a good little infected and let me consume you."
"It is I , who will consume you ." With that he tensed himself and leapt through the building, destroying most of the wall before taking off in a random direction.
I growled in annoyance, "Come back here you coward! You can't run from me!" I shot out the hole he made, casually grabbing a chunk of the destroyed wall and chucking it at him as hard as I could. The wall piece flew but just barely missed his head. Dissatisfied I charged a jump and rocketed in the direction the Supreme hunter was headed.
Author's Note
I'll post the chapters up until the Manehatten storyline is complete, then a crossover chapter to get Alex into the multiverse, and then the wait begins for new chapters once again. I really need to work on this story more, my Vinyl story is up to 30k words and this is sitting under 20k right now.
Good news is that I'm writing this story again.
Day Three - Revenge Final
"Get back here!" I screamed as the Supreme Hunter and I sprinted over roof tops. We left the refugee camp a while ago, though we had to force our way through the barrier. Seems that we aren't immune to defensive magic, simply magic of the more forceful kind like assault spells and unwanted enchantments.
He seemed to ignore me, that probably ticked me off more than a snarky comeback would have. As I leaped over a gap between buildings I had an idea. I smirked and continued to focus on the Supreme hunter, changing my left arm to my magic arm. Still keeping my sprint up, my arm glowed with magic and I did what demon Sunset Shimmer did to the wall of her school. Meaning I used my telekinesis to grab part of the building that the Supreme Hunter was on and ripped it off.
I yanked my arm to the side and the rubble from the building shot towards the infected beast. He growled when they hit and tripped, violently tumbling across a building's roof and slamming into a concrete railing hard enough to deeply crack it. I made the last jump and slammed on to the same roof as him. I ripped some sort of blocky machine off the roof and chucked it at him.
However he regained his wits and dodged, the machine slamming into his previous spot and destroyed the concrete railing. The machine and the railing shards falling down into the city. The Supreme Hunter straightened up and cracked his neck.
"It seems you will be tougher to crack than I thought. No matter," He closed his eyes and his horn charged with magic. "You will still be consumed in the end."
His horn fired a large beam of magic at me. Three things happened at once, time slowed down and my reflexes kicked in, my right leg moved behind me to brace myself, and my left forearm brought itself up with my magic glowing around it. The beam struck my magic arm, my arm's magic creating a shield that protected my body. The force behind the attack would've shattered a normal person, and it was at this time that I was thankful for my new physiology.
The beam kept its assault on me, bits of it parting around my shield. This was simply a test of magic and we both knew it.
His beam gave up, likely growing bored of the power struggle. There were quicker ways of beating each other.
"Had enough already? Guess I'm stronger than you thought huh?" I smirked at him.
"Strength isn't everything." The Supreme Hunter snarled back. "Intelligence takes precedence over it. It just helps to have both, it is why I have such control over the infected."
I sneered at him, "And you wouldn't have such control if it weren't for me. As much as I despise the thought. You should be worshipping the ground I walk on."
His sharp, toothy maw grinned at me, it was creepy. "Perhaps I would have. If I did not mutate so wildly when I was first exposed to this wonderful substance known as magic."
I narrowed my eyes at him, "What do you mean?"
The Supreme Hunter let out an evil sounding chuckle and pointed at my magic arm, "I assumed you would have known yourself, you must have mutated that magic arm of yours somehow. If you didn't posses it in the first place."
I stretched the thin fingers of my magic arm as I thought about what he said. "My magic arm... I got it when I consumed a unicorn for the first time. But why didn't it mutate when I consumed Grassy?" Then it hit me.
"Unicorns have a much greater concentration of magic." I said aloud.
He slowly nodded, "Yes, the large amount of magic in them reacts with the virus. Forcing a mutation and accelerates the viral takeover of the body." The Supreme Hunter said.
I grew confused, "But why are you telling me this?"
He chuckled, "Because, I want you to come to realize how much more powerful I will become when I consume you once our fight is over. Truthfully, I wanted to consume the Princesses first, that would have boosted my power enough to let you continue to grow and watch safely from the sidelines. Once you were strong enough to put up a decent fight I would have destroyed you and consumed you, thus gaining even more power than simply consuming unicorns."
It made a twisted kind of sense. Though I was pissed that I was essentially being used like a long term potential meal. Being slowly fattened up for this guy's afternoon tea and biscuits. It was a plan that could've worked if I didn't get the sonar, he would've consumed the Princesses before I even knew what was going to happen.
I rolled my shoulders and cracked my neck, "Well, I guess that plan is out the window then huh? Looks like we need to settle this here and now." I casually swished my blade arm back.
He formed a blade tentacle from before and swished it around, "Yes, we do."
I sprinted across the roof, jumping over his low swipe with a front flip and shooting down at him with my blade primed. He jumped to the middle of the roof, dodging my attack as it cut through the roof. I cursed and pulled it out, leaning back to dodge his counter attack. His blade passed in front of my neck, an inch from scraping the skin.
My arms turned into whipfists and I snarked at him, "Alright then, long range it is."
I swung my right whipfist in a horizontal arc, the Supreme Hunter used the tentacle body of his weapon to block. A loud, booming smack was heard when he two dense biomass weapons struck. My other fist shot forwards as my right retracted. The blade of his tentacle struck mine, they sparked off each other with a loud clanging sound.
"Is that all you've got?" Mocked the Supreme Hunter.
I growled and charge jumped into the air in an arc over the Supreme Hunter. His gaze followed me and I swung my whipfists in constant fast arcs, each attack attempting to strike somewhere new. As I neared the apex of the arc I managed to smack his blade away with one fist and shot my other into his back. He snarled when the attack struck home, but I wasn't done. My free fist grabbed ahold of the ground near him and I pulled myself at him as hard as I could.
I rocketed towards him, making sure to increase my speed by charging my biomass like I would when I use a charged attack. I flipped and righted myself, and my feet struck him in the face with great speed and his head slammed into the roof. I heard a resounding crack, I didn't know if it was his head or the roof. Likely both.
He skidded a few feet, leaving a trail of broken concrete roof and I landed lightly, most of the force went to the hit on his head. My fists formed hammerfists and I launched myself at the prone form of the Supreme Hunter, not wanting to give him respite. It was in my rush that I didn't see his tentacle flash at me, it smacked me in the face and I flew to the other end of the roof. I smashed through the railing and fell over the side.
I spat to the side and formed my wings. I righted myself in the air and flapped hard, I shot upwards and over the roof. I twisted in the air and my wings flared out, flapping silently as I kept myself floating just over the rooftop. I scanned the roof, noting that the Supreme Hunter wasn't where I left him.
I looked to my left and saw one of the roof machines I initially threw at the Supreme Hunter come flying at me. I flapped hard and barely dodged the surprise attack. I had to dodge upwards this time when another came barreling at me. I dodged a lot of flying objects, after a while most of them ended up being bits and piece of the roof. He probably ran out of things to rip off the roof and resorted to the roof itself.
I was flying in a circle around the building at this point.
"Give up with the throwing thing! You can't hit me with them!" I bellowed at his throw happy form. He was slamming the roof, creating chunks to throw.
He didn't answer and I groaned. But I had the chance to try something new. I flapped hard and shot straight into the air, dodging the occasional concrete roof. I reached about three thousand or so feet above him, the roof chunks have stopped at this point, he was probably curious at what I was about to do.
I dived down, flapping my wings as hard as I could as my feet turned thicker and heavier. Hammerfeet is what I'm calling them, and when I got around the five hundred for mark I charged a bullet dive. I increased my speed dramatically and I righted myself as I neared the roof, my new and heavier feet as the focal point of my attack.
I swear I saw the Supreme Hunter's eyes widen when he realized what I was about to do. He jumped to the side in a desperate bid to not get hit by the full force of my new attack. He was lucky I couldn't change the course of the attack, my feet struck his previous location, missing him by three feet.
The force of my now newly dubbed 'Artillery Dive' struck the roof with tremendous force. The concussive blast hit the Supreme Hunter and he was flung over the side. I didn't see what happened after because I misjudged how powerful my new attack was. The added speed from my height, wings and bullet dive, plus the weight of my hammerfeet created enough force for me to completely shatter the roof and continue to the next floor, and the next, and the next.
I got all the way down to the first floor of the building, once at ground level my feet slammed the ground and cracks appeared on the floor. The building shuddered and rumbled. Dust and building pieces polluted the air and I coughed as I tried to waved it all away. My legs turned back to normal and I stumbled out of the building through a hole I punched.
Just in time too, the building gave one last shudder before starting to collapse in on itself. I must've hit some support beams or something. I had to run across the street, I stared at the building as it fell. I put an arm in front of my face as a wall of dust slammed outward from the falling building. I coughed once more and shook myself in a bid to get rid of the annoying building dust.
Suddenly I found myself back hoofed through the other building I was standing in front of. I was slammed through a few walls before I stopped myself. I dodged the Supreme Hunters secondary attack by diving through the window of the shop we were occupying. I rolled on the sidewalk and grabbed the light post next to me. I ripped it out of the ground and swung it like a bat.
The attack hit home, the Supreme Hunter flew down the street, hitting abandoned carts and other light posts. The post I currently had was bent and broken, clearly not a Martell. I threw it to the side, it clanged against the ground as I stalked my way over to the Supreme Hunter. He got back up, not surprising really, and stalked towards me as well.
I formed muscle mass when we got about twenty feet in front of each other. The Supreme Hunter bellowed and charged the last few feet, as did I. He threw a right hook and I ducked under it, countering with an uppercut to his chin. He leaned back and the uppercut barely missed his snout. He tried head butting me and I jumped left a bit.
"You can't win this. Just give up!" I shouted and slammed a left jab into his cheek.
Blood splattered out of his mouth from the force of my hit and he staggered back. He spat the blood out of his mouth and leapt at me. He swiped at me with one of his clawed hooves, they looked weird but were still deadly. I jumped back a bit but did not anticipate the claws growing, they slashed my chest and left gaping claw marks on it.
It hurt, I wouldn't lie. But the wound healed instantly and I struck the Supreme Hunter in the face with a strong right cross. A boxer I was not, but I knew the basics well enough. He flew into a wall with a crash, bricks and mortar falling around his body. He bursted out of the pile and sneered at me.
"Just die already!" His sneer changed to a smirk and I didn't have time to dodge the interference.
A bulkish, purple hoof slammed into my head and I was rag dolled down the street. I groaned and picked myself back up, shaking my head to get rid of the stars. I straightened up and looked around. Many of the new hunters slowly walked into view, I counted at least ten. I formed my armor and twin claws as they all bum rushed me.
I shoulder checked one and crushed its shoulder to paste, I twirled around and one of my claws met its neck. The head was parted from its shoulders and blood gushed out of the hole. A tentacle absorbed both parts of the hunter it as I rushed by. I had to dodge right, one of the hunters dropped down from above. I kicked it into one of its brethren and knocked them both down for a bit. Another of the hunters struck me in the chest, I was prepared in this instance so I merely moved slightly. I swiped a claw into its face, blood and brain splattering the ground and our bodies, a trail of it following the arc of my claws.
I jumped into the air, the other hunters following me, the two I knocked down earlier as well. I air dashed forward at them, the front two didn't have time to react, my claws met their necks and they dropped like bloody sand bags. I kicked one of the heads into the face of the nearest hunter to distract it. I rolled away from the strike of another as it slammed into the ground crouched and thrusted one of my claws forwards, it pierced the head of the hunter. I widened my claws and the head exploded in a shower of gore. I didn't have time to get back up however, one of the hunters bucked me in the side and I flew out of the group.
I skidded across the pavement, and I used my shoulder to use the momentum to fling me back onto my feet. A screech was heard when my armored feet skidded across the pavement. I took a step and then stopped when a shadow loomed over me. I quickly turned around in surprise and cursed when I saw the Supreme Hunter slamming his hooves down on me.
I grunted from the impact and slammed back into the ground creating a dent in the pavement, the force of his hit made me bounce off the ground. He raised his hooves into the air and I saw the other hunters falling down at me as well. I tsked and charged my biomass around my body, my armor disappearing. As the hooves fell my biomass reached its peak and with a yell I unleashed the tendril barrage devastator.
The tendrils pierced all the hunters, dragging the weaker ones into my body. The Supreme Hunter staggered back in surprise and pain. I took this chance to form my muscle mass and grabbed ahold of his hooves. I planted my feet on his chest and pushed with them with all my might while pulling with my arms. His hooves were ripped off his body and he screamed in pain. I admit I relished in that one scream.
I did a quick sit up and tackled him to the ground. Sitting on his chest I slammed fist after fist into his face. I roared in rage and the onslaught picked up the pace, the punches growing heavier and heavier until it seemed like thunderclaps were resounding from the strikes of viral flesh meeting viral flesh. His face was a broken and bloody as it lay on the ground, I slammed my fists into his chest, ripping into his body and grabbed a hold of his ribcage. With a mighty tug, I roared as I forced his chest to explode outwards in a bath of blood and gore. Countless tendrils swarmed around my body and his, breaking his entire body down at the cellular level and converting it into biomass for myself.
His body took some time to absorb, but when it finished I knew everything he did. Control of the infected belonged solely to me now, his death and consumption by me gave me the keys. My mind spread outwards into the head of every infected in the city. I was new at this but it felt like I had done this a hundred times over. I ordered every infected in the city to cease all hostile actions.
I felt power course through my body. I groaned as the biomass built and built. I gasped for air once the biomass reached its peak and let out a yell as I performed the same devastator James Heller did in the ending of Prototype two. The tendrils shot out of my body like bullets, I knew where each and every infected was and the tendrils honed in on every single one. I felt the virus in the subway system, the growths and infected walls. The tendrils swallowed them up as well. The tendrils met resistance at the pony's magic wall but I didn't press on that area, I couldn't feel the virus in there after all.
The tendrils reached every part of the city, absorbing all of the infected biomass. Everything was completed and they retracted back into my body. I groaned from the discomfort of using a devastator this long. Once the final tendril snapped back into my body I fell on my knees and braced my body with my hands before I fell on the ground. I sucked in one last large breath before my breathing evened out and I got back on my feet.
"What a rush..." I muttered. I put a hand to my head, "Ugh, wow. That guy had a lot of memories in his head. I need to put the ones I don't need away, I just want the spells..."
I walked down the street, rubbing my temple to try and ease the headache I had. I got to a park after a few minutes of walking and simply sat down in a bench. I nodded to myself after half an hour of sorting my head out. I shoved everything back into the depths of my skull and relished in the feeling of not having a headache.
I breathed a sigh, "Who knew beating a super monster would drain you so much."
I simply relaxed for a few more minutes, I slapped my hands on my knees and pushed myself back up. I stretched my body, I didn't need to but it was mostly habit. My wings formed on my back and I took off towards Grassy's apartment. I might not need the bits but it was good to have some on hand. If only to keep attention off of me if someone asks why I didn't have any money.
A few minutes of lethargic flight brought me to Grassy's destroyed apartment complex. I flew into the hole that lead into Color's room and gazed sadly around it. I shook my head in sadness and strolled into Grassy's room. I took the bits from many of his hiding spaces, I formed a satchel on my side and shoved the bits inside it. It was only a temporary bag though, there was a shop not too far from here that sold backpacks for bipeds.
Once the house was cleaned from anything useful I walked out the front door and went to the backpack shop down the street. I found a simple dark blue bag and shoved everything inside of it, bringing my biomass satchel back inside of me. I slipped the bag across my shoulders and stepped outside, I looked up and saw that the sky was starting to clear.
I could see pegasi cleaning the air above the city, the ponies must have realized that the threat was over. I didn't feel like staying though, I didn't think that my presence would cause any sort of comfort. I adjusted the bag and took off in a sprint down the streets, there was an overland train track leading out of the city. I was going to follow that and simply walk around the country, maybe seeing and exploring a whole new world would lift my spirits from these disastrous three days...
Author's Note
Huzzah! Alex is ready to meet displaced now!
I'll do a crossover chapter and then begin writing a good chunk of the story.
Day Five - Meeting Someone
It’s been two days since I left Manehatten. Right now I was just walking down a dirt road that supposedly led to Ponyville, if the map I stole from a shop on the way out of the city was correct. I stole many things on the way out, things I probably didn’t need. Like a flashlight that ran on magic, I could see perfectly in the dark so I basically just took it for kicks.
I also found a medical research lab, pure curiosity led me inside. There was nobody inside the lab, not surprising really, and everything was in a state of mess. I did find a box full of lab supplies though. Inside were vials, vials that looked like the one the blacklight virus was originally stored in. According to the paperwork attached to the box the vials were actually made of a magically shaped diamond, the vial itself and the stopper were enchanted to help prevent the vials from having any sort of breakage or accidents.
I took one on a whim, as well as a roll of labels that are put on the vials and a pen.
The final thing I did before leaving Manehatten was give myself a change of wardrobe. While I really like Mercer’s normal clothes I did not feel like constantly wearing the exact same style every day. Three days was enough for this style, I’ll have to come back to it later.
I was wearing a pair of white bermuda shorts that reached just below my knees, a black belt holding it up, though it was mostly for looks since my clothes were made from my biomass. A pair of brown sandals on my feet, and a form fitting, orange t-shirt with Sunset Shimmer’s cutie mark in large print in the middle of the chest. I felt a bit smug about my new muscular form, so sue me.
Wearing such bright clothing was an interesting choice since my skin was now a pale white. Honestly, I doubt anyone would have recognized me as Alex Mercer even if they knew who he was. I looked like a guy who was deathly sick because of my pale skin, and the sickly grey rings around my now light blue eyes. I made sure to keep my brown hair just a little messy, just the way I like it.
I kicked a small rock out of the way as I strolled down the road, stuffing my hands in the pockets of my shorts. I huffed and wondered when the creatures following me would show themselves. I couldn’t see them, they were hiding in the very thick forest surrounding me, but my enhanced hearing picked up the sound of their heartbeats and breathing. All five of them.
I walked a short distance more before suddenly stopping, losing patience with them.
“I know you’re out there!” I called out to the forest, my arms in a ‘come at me bro’ position. “You’ve been following me for like the past half hour! Just come out and face me instead of hiding like cowards!”
I heard the rustling of leaves and branches. Then five black streaks shot out of the canopy and surrounded me in a five pointed star like formation. I looked around and noted that they were all changelings. Interesting, I can see how their transformation magic works now.
I rolled my eyes, “Finally, you show yourselves. Now... what do you want?”
The one directly in front of me was probably the leader. And that was kinda confirmed when he was the one to speak out. “We need to bring you to the hive, to drain you of love.” He simply stated. It was an understandable goal for them, but not something I felt like helping with right now or ever.
With that simple statement the other four rushed me, horns glowing, and a green magic field surrounded my body. It was probably a restraining spell of some sort. I didn’t even move, not until the four changelings latched onto me in some sort of subduing maneuver. I snorted when I didn’t even budge and my hands closed into fists.
They were clearly surprised when my arms easily moved into a T position, they assumed I couldn’t move. I was glad that I got some magic resistance, it might've been harder to counter the spell with brute force alone. Once my arms were in position I swung them down as hard as I could, my fist met my fist in a glorious thunderclap. A shockwave exploded outwards with overwhelming force from the point of impact. The changelings that were latched onto me exploded in gore and innards from the force. A large ring of destroyed earth, blood and various body parts surrounded me, the blood soaking the ground. I was honestly surprised it was red, I thought it would’ve been green or something. There goes that fan theory of mine.
The changeling leader stepped back in abject horror at the fate of his comrades. He threw up to his side and tried to run away. I changed my right arm into my whipfist and threw it at him, grabbing him and dragging him to me. Once he was in my usual arm length my arm changed into normal, the changeling now in my unmoving grasp around his neck. My body wriggled with tendrils as it consumed the excess blood on me.
“Welp, guess this isn’t your lucky day dude.” I said as I shrugged, my left fist reared back, ready to smash through the changeling’s chest as he attempted to frighteningly claw at my hand around his neck with his holed hooves.
My fist didn’t get to move though, I was distracted by a random object bonking into my head and falling at my feet. I looked down and saw some sort of weird black cylinder covered with green lines. I reached down, the changeling still in my firm grasp but now completely forgotten, and picked it up in my curiosity.
As soon as I picked it up I heard a voice resonate in my head.
"I am the changer of shape, seeking to understand the many forms of life. Call for the man of many shapes during your hour of need and I will come, a one man army. Activate the cylinder and in a flash I’ll be ready to clash."
“Huh, this is a curious little thing. Now... how do I activate it?” I turned it around in my hand after shaking off some of the changeling blood and saw a button. I pushed it with my thumb and waited for something to happen. There was a bright green slash and a young human male appeared through it, his head covered by shaggy, shoulder length hair. His clothes consisted of a pair of torn blue jeans and a well worn black hoodie.
I looked at the individual, curious. It’s not everyday that a stranger slashes a hole in space and time and walks out the portal. This seemed to get more and more interesting. I nodded at him in greeting, still ignoring the squirming changeling, “Hey there. I guess you were the strange voice I heard coming from this cylinder thing?” I held the object in question up.
“What uh...whats with the changeling?” he asked, his gaze moving to the squirming insect, eyebrow raised.
I looked back at the changeling and shrugged, "He and his buddies tried to take me to their hive to drain me of love."
“That's something my changelings stopped doing years ago.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I take it they're still starving in the desert?”
"No clue, I just got here."
He sighed, bringing a hand to his face. “You're one of the new guys. What, is this the eighth time I’ve done this?”
"New guys?" I looked at the newcomer oddly.
“A Displaced that doesn’t know the ropes.” He explained. “I’m Jason by the way, Jason Hughes.”
I put the cylinder in my pocket and stuck my now free hand out for a handshake, as is polite, "Alex. Now, what's a displaced?"
“We are, you and me.” He looked at my hand. “Anyways, to answer the question in as little effort as possible: we all bought something from some weird guy, usually a costume piece, and then ended up in Equestria, having become the costume.”
“I got the last part when I first arrived, but I gotta ask why. Doesn’t seem like there is a point to it.” I brought my hand back down, he didn’t seem to want to shake it. “But oh well, so where’d you come from?”
“You called me from my Equestria.” He eyed me closely, crossing his arms.
“Ah, so there are multiple Equestrias then? Guess multiverse theory is a thing now.” I shrugged, “Sorry for calling you for nothing then.”
“It’s fine.” He waved it off. “Just a word of warning, don’t try to assimilate me.”
I rose an eyebrow, “Assimilate? Why would I do that?”
“Because you’re Alex Mercer, that's what he does.”
I waved him off, “Yeah, but why would I? You’ve done nothing to me.”
The changeling in my grip weakly called out, “Help me…” He stuck a pathetic hoof out to Jason, weakly waving it.
“Will you let the poor guy go?” he asked, gesturing to the changeling, “He can’t actually hurt you.”
“Ugh, I wanted to consume him though. Don’t know when I’ll find another changeling.” I blew some air out my mouth. “But whatever.” I said after a pause and tossed the changeling off to the side, he immediately began to scramble away from us and took off flying.
“I guess he is a lucky one…” I muttered as I watched him leave before I looked back at Jason, “So, how’d you know I was Alex Mercer anyway?”
“I played Prototype duh.” Jason responded with a roll of his eyes.
I shrugged and put my hands in my short’s pockets, “Fair enough I suppose. So how do I do the whole multiverse travel thing like you did with the cylinder? Looks like a lot of fun and I have nothing but time now.”
“You sure you want that? That's really a two way street. There are things out there that will squish you like a bug.”
“Then I’ll grow stronger, I have like infinite potential to work with here.”
“That's not going to save you from things like Buu, or Kat, or Gilgamesh, or god forbid Drake.” Jason shook his head. “Or even me.”
“There’s a Buu out there? Nice. But anyway just tell me, no need to act arrogant or warn me, I’ll deal with things as they come.”
“Just find an object that represents you, focus and place a message in it.” Jason leaned on a tree, watching me closely.
“Gotcha.” I think I already had something in mind. I slung my backpack around and dug through the contents. I pulled out a vial, the labels and the pen and said, “I knew there was a reason I took these things.”
I chucked the bag at Jason, “Hold this please.”
I stuffed the pen and labels in my pocket and turned my left arm into the magic arm. A glow surrounded the vial and it floated in front of me. I gathered biomass in my mouth and blew, red smoke came out and I used my magic to keep it from spreading everywhere. I guided it into the vial, compressing the smoke until it turned into a liquid version of the virus.
I sealed the vial with its stopper and put a label on it, writing ‘Blacklight’ on the paper. I looked at Jason, “Now, how do I focus on what I want?”
“Just close your eyes and concentrate on the vial.” He shrugged, crossing his arms.
I did as he said after grabbing the vial in my right hand. Not much longer I felt some sort of magic take hold. This was when I had to say something I’d wager.
“Anyone who finds this vial, just ask for Mercer. Let’s have some fun. And word of warning... don’t try and break it.” I underhand tossed the vial and it disappeared in a flash of some sort of magic.
I turned my left arm to normal and dusted my hands off. I walked out of the circle of changeling blood to Jason to retrieve my bag.
“That didn’t sound too weird did it?” I asked.
“You're fine.” he tossed the bag over, looking at me. “I’m not going to be infected from touching that am I?”
I snorted, “No dude, I only infect what I want. I could shove my hand down your throat and you’d still not be infected.” I paused, “Not that I would but still…”
“Good, I don’t need another virus in my system.” he shuddered a little, rubbing his arm.
“Sounds like you should’ve used protection buddy.” I said as I raised an eyebrow, clearly joking.
“Yeah, I know that.” he shook his head, holding his arm out. A strange, watch like device chirped, passing a yellow light over me. “Well thank you for the scan.”
I narrowed my eyes, “That better be reversible buddy. I might not’ve watched ben 10… but I can guess what that did.”
“Why would it need to be reversible?” he asked, raising his eyebrow.
“Because you and I know what that virus can do… I already had to deal with that the first three fucking days I’ve been here. Reverse it.”
“I can do a lot worse than this virus my friend.” he didn’t move crossing his arms.
“I don’t care about what you can do, I care about what the virus can do, my friend .” I crossed my arms as well, glaring at him.
“Do you even know what the Omnitrix did?” he questioned, “Or are you just blowing smoke?”
“From what I can remember of my wiki days it scans the DNA and replicates it, keeping shit from going extinct.”
“That’d be correct.” he nodded. “But like I said, there are a lot worse in this watch.”
I rolled my eyes, “And like I said, I don’t care . Not only was that incredibly rude I still don’t want that shit to be scanned. Keep your other aliens, leave my virus alone, you don’t need it and it doesn’t need to be kept from eventual extinction.”
“I’m not getting rid of it.” Jason narrowed his eyes. “And there really isn’t a whole lot you can do about it.”
“Very well,” I uncrossed my arms and cracked my neck. “Let’s settle this then.”
I instantly morphed my whipfist in my right arm and swung at Jason. Jason caught the fist before swinging me around, sending me flying.
“You really don’t want to do that.” He cracked his neck, getting into a stance.
I landed on my feet, “Then remove the virus, that’s the only beef I got with you dude. Don’t be a fucking glutton for power.” I morphed my left into my magic arm and lifted a nearby boulder with the magic and threw it at him.
“I might need it one day.” The boulder seemed to go through him, his image vanishing. “Besides...I have my reasons for wanting it.”
“What kind of irresponsible douche wants a bioweapon built to kill?!” I yelled, looking around for him.
“Who are you calling irresponsible?” Jason asked, sitting in a tree. “I’ve been doing this stuff for fifteen years, and trust me, I know what I’m doing.”
I pointed my whipfist at him, “I’m calling you irresponsible. I don’t care how long you’ve been doing this.” I swished my fist down, “Nobody collecting bioweapons could possibly have a good reason for it.”
“I’m not collecting a bioweapon, I’m collecting a species.” He swung his arm, firing off a blast of energy.
I raised my magic arm and set the magical shield to max, blocking off the blast. “What species?! It’s a virus, not a living organism!” I pointed my arm at Jason and charged my own blast, firing off the large magical beam at him.
“If it wasn’t alive, I couldn’t have scanned it. The Omnitrix only scans sapient species.” Jason vanished from the tree, reappearing in another.
“Then what ‘species’ did you get then? Blacklight contains RNA not DNA!” I stared at him, waiting for his response.
“Are we really going to sit and debate on whether or not a virus is alive? And for that matter I can turn into beings of pure radiation and two that are made out of freaking crystal, the human definition of what constitutes life is a joke.”
“We wouldn’t be having this debate if you’d just reverse the scan. Why is it so fucking difficult for you to understand? If you’d have asked first then I’d have been more willing.”
“It would have scanned you anyway, that’s what it does.” He jumped out of the tree, popping up the dial on his watch. “Anyway, I have a new form to test out...”
I snorted, I wasn’t going to wait. I condense my biomass, slammed my feet and shoved my arms at Jason. Red smoke shot out of my body at the entire surrounding area, but this strain of the virus was kill switch only.
Jason’s watch went off, shifting him into a car sized lizard, covered in thick bone armor, rocking an electric blue mane. “Whelp, that was a bad mistake.”
It was an interesting form, my arms turned into hammerfists. I charged a jump and flew into the air, I bullet dived at Jason with my hammerfists at the forefront of the attack. He didn’t do anything, just sat there.
“You try as hard as you like, you won’t hurt me.” He informed, letting out a yawn.
My hammerfists slammed into his back, the attack didn’t seem to do anything. I was annoyed now and jumped off his back, doing a backflip for style. “That’s rather annoying, let me step it up then.”
My hammerfists shrunk into my normal arms and my wings grew out of my back. I shot upwards, flapping as hard as I could. I found myself around the stratosphere and I looked down, I nosedived, flapping occasionally to get that extra force. I managed to break the sound barrier and sped up considerably, when I arrived to the one thousand mark my legs turned into hammerlegs and I bullet dived the last stretch, giving myself a small boost. I flipped, my heavy legs below me and I pointed them at Lizard Jason. He leapt up into the air, grabbing me around the waist. He slammed into the ground, pinning me down, clamping his jaws around my arm. He ripped it off, swallowing the limb whole.
“Let’s try that out.” He leapt making his body shift into a bipedal stance. He spread his arms out, his arms changing into a copy of my claw arms.
I used my other arm to spring myself back up, my legs turning back into their normal state. My arm quickly regenerated and I looked at Jason with contempt, “Humph, you’re a better copycat than me. You still need to reverse the scan.”
“I’m not going to,” Jason replied, “Even the most stupid of scans might save my ass one day.”
“I can’t argue that it might be of some use to you in the future. But that doesn’t make it any less of an invasion of personal space. Doesn’t help that you’re acting like an arrogant cunt.” I snarked. “I hate guys like that.” My right arm turned into the blade.
“If I come off as arrogant, I apologize. It would have scanned you anyway, even if I hadn’t helped it along. That's it’s job, what it’s programmed to do.” Jason said, going back to a quadrupedal stance.
“Apology accepted. I haven’t watched Ben 10, can’t you just turn it off? If it’s programmable that means you could.”
“No, why on Earth would I do that?” He asked, tilting his head, rather like a dog.
“Maybe because people wouldn’t like to be randomly scanned for their DNA? Especially without giving permission?” My stance shifted into a more neutral, less aggressive one.
“This unit would rather not have its program altered.” The device chirped from its place on Jason’s chest.
“I should also mention mine is self aware.” Jason added, sitting on his haunches.
“Wonderful, self aware robotics.” I rolled my eyes, “I’m not gonna argue with a computer over shit like this. It’d be pointless.” My arm shifted back to normal. “Whatever, keep the fucking virus, hope it infects someone you know.” I turned around and started walking off.
“You do realise that when I use the scan, it’ll give me a form like you right?” He asked, following me.
I didn’t comment on him following me, “Yeah I figured, and what’s your point?” I stopped and suddenly turned back around to our impromptu battlefield, I forgot something.
“You're acting like I’m going to use it as a bioweapon, I’m not.”
I stood in the middle of where we fought, “Well gee, I’m sorry for not trusting the guy that’s taking a bioweapon in the first place. I’m becoming a paranoid guy.”
I spread my arms wide and tendrils wiggled around my form, “Also give me a second, need to remove the virus I managed to spread around here.” Tendrils shot out from under my feet and ran across the ground, removing traces of the virus from everything around here. Excluding us of course. Once done the tendrils retracted back inside my body and I resumed my walk to Ponyville.
“Uh....sorry about all of that...” he said, gesturing behind us, “I can be a bit of an ass sometimes.”
I sighed, my shoulders slumping a bit, “I’m sorry as well so it’s not all your fault, I’m still a bit agitated from all the things that happened back in Manehatten.”
“What happened?” He asked, tilting his head, “I take it nothing good.”
I spat to the side in anger and growled out, “No, nothing good.” I paused to get myself under control, “When I went to the con I dressed as Alex Mercer, as you already knew, then that damn Merchant guy flagged me down. I stupidly bought a vial of the blacklight virus thinking it was just colored water. Next thing I knew I got chucked here, vial completely forgotten and broken in Quill Station, and a wonderful viral outbreak right in the middle of Manehatten. Had to fight the Supreme Hunter too.” I crossed my arms in residual anger.
“You know...I could fix that for you. Make it like it never happened.” Jason offered, shifting back into his normal form.
“It happened two days ago, if you could still do it, then be my guest.” I chuckled, “Hell, I wouldn’t even be angry about the scanning thing anymore. I’d probably kiss you.”
I paused, “Would the ponies I consumed over there be restored as well?”
“I’d restore them to life so yeah.”
I nodded at Jason, “Then do it please. I’m a fan of the show, they don’t deserve what happened to them." If he could actually do it, I’d be one happy viral bioweapon of mass destruction.
“Omnitrix, Alien X.” he shifted again, this time into a tall black humanoid, covered in stars. He stood there motionless, not even breathing.
I rose an eyebrow, “You alright there buddy?”
“Motion carried!” He threw his arms out, unleashing a pulse into the air. As it hit me, I almost felt the world around me shudder, almost like Reality itself was wrapping. It spread out of sight and after a moment, he changed back.
I shook my head, “Whoa, what a rush. So… I guess it’s done?”
“Yeah, like it never happened. It still did but, all the damage is repaired and I brought back everyone that lost their lives though...” he paused, looking uncertain.
“What’s up?” I asked him.
“Well… see in order to do anything in that form, all personalities have to come to a consensus and uh well...all the resurrected unicorns are now bicorns and all the earth ponies are now tatlzponies.?
“The hell is a tatlzpony?” I asked, absolutely confused.
“They have a split jaw and have three tentacle like tongues.”
“Gross, tentacles are weird.” Funny I say that… “But if they are alive then I don’t care about their appearance all that much. What about the pegasi?”
“Eh, they're the same. Turning them into batponies didn’t really seem ideal, since the idea was to introduce new species.”
“Ah, odd choices of species to be introduced but I won’t complain. I’ll take what I can get.”
Jason nodded. “Anyway, is Twicorn a thing here?”
I nodded and replied, “Apparently, Tirek got defeated a while ago. I’m going to Ponyville to get ready for the second movie appearance. Got some stuff to do in the other world.”
“Hey...you wanna dick with Twilight?” he asked, a mischievous grin appearing on his face.
I rubbed my chin in thought, interest piqued, “And how might we go about this?”
He smirked. “Omnitrix, Star Dust.” He shifted again, this time into a green alicorn. “How’s about a little time travel prank...?”
“Well….” I pretended to think it through, “Yeah! Sounds fun.” I grinned evilly.
Twilight was simply laying on her bed in her new crystal bedroom, a book in her magic grasp and a content smile on her face. She sighed, she was completely and totally relaxed, fully in her element.
There was a burst of light, causing Twilight to cover her eyes. When her vision cleared, she saw a green alicorn had teleported into her room. He stood a head taller than her, his coat a deep green. His mane and tail were black, with green stripes. His cutiemark was a little odd, being a symbol made out of three interconnected triangles.
“Oh thank Faust! It worked!” he cried, lighting up when he saw her.
“What the hay?! Who are you?! And how are you an alicorn?!” Twilight yelled, freaking out.
“Just relax ok?” he asked, putting his hooves up. “This might sound crazy but my name is Star Dust and I’m from twenty years in the future.”
Her eyes widened, “Wait, is there some sort of catastrophe?! Why twenty years?!”
“Didn’t I just tell you to relax?” he asked, giving her a flat look.
Twilight cleared her throat, “Right, sorry. I get a little over excited sometimes. Heh.” She smiled sheepishly.
“I know that first had, after all you are my mother.” he grinned a bit.
Twilight’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped, she simply stared at him with a look that screamed her mind was miles away. “Uh...” was all she could say. She finally regained some of her wits and yelled, “I’m your what?!”
“Surprise! I’m your son!” He grinned, flaring his wings. “But anyway, I came back to make sure nothing changed.”
“What?! What hasn’t changed?!” Twilight rushed him, grabbing his cheeks, her face in his, and a crazed look in her eyes. “Who’s the father?!”
“Uh...Flash Sentry...aren’t you two uh...already together?”
She looked confused, “Flash Sentr-...” She blushed, “No! We aren’t together!”
“Then that means...” he pulled away, looking down, his eyes widening in horror. “Oh Faust no!” he screamed, his left hoof slowly fading away.
Twilight’s eyes widened, “Ah!! Nonononononono!” She grabbed her head, “What do I do to fix this?!”
“Damn you Glimmer!” he shouted as he faded away, leaving no trace behind.
“Well, I think I could help.” A strange mechanical being appeared, his body gold with a glowing green section in his chest. “I’m what you’d call a...time guardian.”
Twilight looked at the strange being, “What’s a time guardian?”
“We try and keep the timeline flowing correctly. Though, obviously since your son just faded from existence, I can tell you that I haven’t been doing my job correctly.”
“Then how do we fix this?! I don’t want to be the cause of somepony’s existence being erased!”
“The only real way to fix this is to go back in time and make sure your past self hooks up with Flash Sentry.”
Twilight blushed, “Wha- but I don’t even know him that well!”
“And that's what SHOULDN’T happen. You’re supposed to be pregnant already but that bitch Starlight Glimmer decided to screw you over.”
“Who is this Starlight Glimmer?” Twilight asked.
“Dammit Twilight! I can’t tell you the future!” he glared at her, “All I can tell you is that, she is a bitch, she hates you and she decided to change history to spite you, consequences be damned.”
“Alright alright! How do we fix this then?!”
“Alright, you remember the first time you meet Sentry, ja? Not Brad, pony Sentry.”
She nodded, scrapping a hoof on the floor, “Yeah, back at the Crystal Empire, right after I got back from the other world.”
“Good, now all you have to do is go back to that night and convince your past self to go out with him.” He nodded, crossing his arms. “While you do that, I shall keep Glimmer from interfering.”
Twilight gulped, her resolve hardened quickly and she puffed out her chest, “Ok. Let’s do this then!”
“Let’s!” he nodded his head, turning the wind up key on his head, emitting a green pulse that whisked Twilight away to the past. After a moment, he burst out laughing. “Oh man, that worked perfectly! Did you see the look on her face?!” he asked, falling over, cracking the floor under his weight.
“Hah! Yeah, it was absolutely brilliant! To quote Discord ‘Priceless!’” I stumbled out of the closet, holding my gut, laughing and smacking the floor with a fist.
“Think she’ll do it?” he asked, shifting back to normal, sitting up.
“Bet she’ll somehow mess it up. Probably confuse the poor bloke and makes things needlessly complicated before returning back empty handed.” I sat back up as well, “These kinds of things have a way of messing up in weird ways.”
“Alright well, just let her know it was a prank, I don’t want her being sad over a kid that never existed in the first place.” Jason nodded, picking himself up.
I gave him a thumbs up, “Can do. So I guess you’re ready to leave?”
“Yeah, unless you had something else you wanted to do.”
I shook my head, “Nah, I don’t. I’ll just sit around town and wait for that book shipment to arrive. Since I don’t sleep it’ll probably end up being a long wait.”
“Alright then, it was nice meeting you Alex.” Jason smiled, holding his hand out.
I smiled back and took his hand, “Agreed. Now... how do I get you off my universe?”
“Just say ‘Jason, our contract is complete.’”
“Jason, our contract is complete.” I parroted.
“Seeya around.” He waved before vanishing into a bright flash of light.
I cracked my back and sat down in Twilight’s bed, waiting for her eventual return. I breathed out a heavy sigh, it was going to be a long wait. I eyed a bookshelf and wondered if I should read a book to pass the time. This is a book nerd’s house after all.
Author's Note
Crossover with The Equestrian Edda by Shagohad12
This was fun to write.
