Mass Core 3: Thebe Paridigm

Inte, it seemed, had taken a great amount of liberty by describing the descent elevator as “pressurized”. There was air, certainly, but only in the barest sense. As Scootaloo sat amongst the cargo, she could hear what little air she had hissing out through the damaged and porous walls.

It was cold. Incredibly so. Scootaloo found herself shivering, which made it extremely hard to control her breathing. As a Pegasus, she had something of a genetic advantage when it came to thin atmospheres. The combination of her lung damage and the fact that she had never actually been physically able to fly in low-oxygen situations, though, negated that advantage completely.

Still, despite her consciousness drifting in and out, Scootaloo was able to witness her descent as the elevator raced down a nanopolymer cable toward the planet below. Not that there was much to see, of course: the planet below seemed to be covered in what looked like a combination of perpetual storms and heavy smog. Through those clouds, Scootaloo could see the rays of orange lights emanating from what were either cities or refineries.

The conditions slowly began to warm, and the oxygen began to return. The air that came with it smelled terrible. Scootaloo could tell that it was not only heavily contaminated but it had been recycled for a long time. When the doors finally opened and that hot gas rushed in, Scootaloo almost gagged.

She stumbled out of the transport, barely avoiding the automated machinery that began to unload cargo from the elevator and the others around it. She was in the center of a large room, with the several cables from Omega continuing down to somewhere below her. What immediately became apparent to her was that this place was not really meant to be inhabited. There were walkways, but they were covered in oily, gritty dust and led past modular walls that looked like they had not been cleaned or repainted since they had been installed centuries ago.

The surface, Scootaloo realized, was clearly meant to be largely industrial. What kind of industry, she did not know, nor did she want to. Just that it seemed as though all commercial activities took place far above in the main port high above. That was where people lived and worked. Whatever happened on the surface was out of sight to the majority of people.

Scootaloo took this as being toward her advantage. The main unloading bay branched into tens if not hundreds of channels that spread out throughout the various city-sized complexes; to any bounty hunters who arrived on the next habitable elevator, she could have gone in any direction. It would take them months to find her.

She, of course, knew exactly where she was going. Inte had given her detailed if rushed instructions, and Scootaloo looked around the room until her eyes fell on a dusty sign that read “61”. That was the path she took.

The path was long and seemed more like a tunnel connecting two boiler rooms than an actual corridor. As Scootaloo continued, though, it began to widen and enlarge into what she roughly interpreted to be a dusty and largely abandoned city street. She was by no means alone, of course. There were a few people wandering the streets; most of them were either vorcha or mechanical drones, although a few were members of different races that were either hiding from what was above or too poor even to live on the Omega Station. Most of them were dirty, and some were muttering to themselves in corners. A few scantly stocked shops and widely spaced shops had sprung up attached to the structures of the hallway, apparently to cater to whatever individuals had made their way down here.

Scootaloo eyed the various passerbys suspiciously, but none of them seemed to be interested in her. At least from what she could tell: as she passed a makeshift bar built into the front of a narrow alley, an asari and a baterian- -both in black armor marked with the sign of a star- -looked at each other and nodded before reaching for their faceplates.

After traversing a complicated network of roads and pathways for some time, Scootaloo arrived at what she could only assume was supposed to be her destination: an extremely nondescript prefab office building with a small plaque reading “Corporation #062”.

Scootaloo climbed the dusty, crooked plastic steps to the building, passing by a group of pink, curly-haired creatures that she had initially taken for ponies until they had stopped giggling amongst themselves and turned their hungry smiles toward her. At that point, it became obvious that this entire planet was likely completely infested with clingons.

Ignoring them, Scootaloo entered the office. What she found inside was a paradox: it was both a perfect match for the landscape outside and, at the same time, completely out of place. It looked good, like an ordinary office- -at least at first. There was a dull-colored carpet, some chairs, and some brightly lit white walls adorned with abstract paintings. It looked like an ordinary office, but, as Scootaloo walked toward the reception desk, she realized that the whole place had the air of a waiting room that a hospital had, somehow, inexplicably abandoned. The chairs were cheap and identical, and the paintings on the wall were reprints of generic, artistless color. Even the light seemed to white and harsh, as though it belonged in a garage workshop instead of a small frontroom. Worst of all, though, was that the entire place was completely and totally empty.

There was initially no one sitting at the reception desk, but as Scootaloo approached, the air behind it seemed to distort and flash. In less than a second, a humanoid VI had appeared.

“Hello!” she said with the same kind of vaguely disconcerting artificial cheeriness that her and Inte seemed to share. “My biometric scanners indicate that you are a new customer.”

“Yeah,” said Scootaloo. For some reason, this VI was more difficult for her to interact with than Inte; it just seemed to be staring expectantly, the expression on its face frozen in what Scootaloo supposed was meant to be an accommodating smile. Instead, it looked almost threatening, and Scootaloo could not help but feel like she was being watched by more than the VI. “I’m here to see Delilah. Aria sent me.”

The VI raised an eyebrow. “An Aria reference? This is unusual. Hold.” She paused, freezing completely. Scootaloo shivered. She had little experience with machines, and at that moment she decided that she did not like them. “Confirmed. You may go ahead. It is the very last door on the left.”

“Um…thanks?”

“Your welcome, small horse.” The VI smiled, and then flickered as it collapsed, leaving Scootaloo once again alone in the excessively bright room.

After pausing for a moment and wondering if this was the right choice, Scootaloo decided to at least try to see what would happen. She was nervous, and for good reason. She had no weapons, shield, or armor, and had been forced to leave Inte on Omega Proper to make her escape. If things went bad- -and there was a very, very high chance that they would- -her options were extremely limited.

Despite knowing this, though, Scootaloo passed down the narrow and overlit hallway. The glow of the white paint and the almost nauseating choice of “art” did nothing to assuage her fears; in fact, she was, in fact, finding her instinctual desire to run increasing. It only continued to grow as she passed a number of fake-wooden doors and she wondered what, exactly, was behind each of them. She could still not shake the feeling that she was being watched.

Then, finally, she reached the last door. The gold-colored metal plating on the handle was starting to peel off, and Scootaloo could not help but pause. Then, with some amount of care, she struggled with the handle and eventually opened the door.

Although she had thought that her situation could not possibly get any stranger, Scootaloo immediately found herself standing on a beach. She had no idea how that was possible, but that was what was around her: the door stood, still leading out into the hallway, but now standing in sand. To her left was a choppy, gray ocean beneath an even grayer sky. Snow was falling, and in the distance Scootaloo could see and old lighthouse.

“What the actual buck,” she swore to herself. She continued to look around, and found herself slowly walking along the edge of the pristine sand past a decaying wooden fence. The whole situation was just bizarre. Stranger, though, was that although the scenery around her LOOKED completely realistic, it did not feel like a real shore at all. The air did not smell right; it smelled mechanical and oily like the rest of the prefab. Likewise, the air was only mildly chilly and the snow neither melted nor accumulated, even when it fell against Scootaloo’s body. Near the fence, the tall, dead grass swayed in nonexistent wind, and Scootaloo quickly came to realize that this whole setup was likely a hologram of some sort.

This became even more likely when Scootaloo encountered a desk. It was situated in the middle of the beach, and though level, it had the distinct appearance that it had been deposited there by the tide. Its surface was covered with a number of distracting kinetic objects: a Newton’s cradle, several magnetic swings, and a drinking bird that was repetitively sipping at a large mug of water.

The desk also had a chair, although it was facing away from Scootaloo, up toward the rocky hill that the lighthouse was built on. As Scootaloo got closer, she heard a heavily accented voice yelling at someone.

“No, I said no more!” said the voice. “- -No, I don’t care if she had a reference from Aria! It is not MY job to do what she says, I certainly pay her enough- -what do you MEAN you sent her in already?!”

“You wouldn’t happen to be Delilah, would you?” asked Scootaloo.

The chair swiveled quickly. When Scootaloo saw Delilah, she gaped. Delilah seemed to do the same.

She was a pony, a mare of roughly the same size and proportions of most stallions. Two large violet wings emerged from the back of her clothing, and her long violet and pink hair was pulled back from her horn and tied into an extensive braid. She just seemed to stare at Scootaloo, slowly closing her omnitool.

“Scoot…Scootaloo?” she said.

“Six?” replied Scootaloo, herself apparently experiencing an identical level of disbelief as the large alicorn sitting in front of her.

Six’s response was unexpected. She leapt over her desk, sending all of her various kinetic toys flying- -although she quickly caught them with her magic, returning them to their original locations as she passed- -and wrapped Scootaloo in an incredibly forceful hug.

“Scootaloo!” she cried, squeezing. Several things cracked inside Scootaloo. “I thought- -I thought you were dead! How- -how- -no! I don’t even care! Oh, Scootaloo! You have no idea how much I’ve missed you!”

“Six…can’t…breathe!”

“That just means the hug is working!”

Six continued to hug until Scootaloo began to black out. At that point, the alicorn set her down into the sand and Scootaloo began to choke and gasp.

“I highly doubt you could comprehend the mixture of emotions I’m feeling! Well, knowing you, you certainly could, but I surely would fail to express them to their fullest depth! I mean, after all these years!” She paused, and frowned, as if counting. Then she looked at Scootaloo. “Actually…you’re very old, aren’t you?”

“So are you!” choked Scootaloo, somewhat offended.

“I’m thirteen years younger than you. And I’m 282. I don’t mean to be offensive, but you shouldn’t be alive.”

“Neither should you!”

“I’m an alicorn. I don’t age. Neither do you, apparently. You know, you could have called. I really did miss you.”

“I was…busy…”

“With the cryogenic freezing?”

Scootaloo’s eyes widened. “How did- -”

“Because your gushing a veritable torrent of blood and getting it all over my sand. Here.” She gave Scootaloo a hankercheif to wipe her mouth. “Your lungs are damaged, and- -and is that a gunshot? On your leg?”

“It’s a graze.”

“A graze,” sighed Six. “Of course it’s a graze. With WHAT is the question? Corrosive? Polonium? Forus worm eggs? Here, let me…” She paused again. Then, slowly: “Scootaloo. Why do you have a gunshot on your hind leg, cyrodamage to your lungs and that…interesting haircut?”

“I need help,” said Scootaloo, simply. “I really, really need help.”

“Well, you’ve come to the right place. I think I have a chair around, if you can…” She trailed off, and then slowly started looking around at the beach.

“What?” asked Scootaloo. “What is it?”

“You weren’t followed, were you?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“Because my security system just started killing a surprising number of intruders.”

“Buck!” swore Scootaloo.

“Maybe later,” said Six. She leaned over her desk for some controls on the far side. The beach hologram flickered and then vanished, revealing the fact that Scootaloo was actually in a surprisingly small and strangely shaped darkened room. “Right now, though? We need to get out of here.”

“Out? But you just said there were intruders coming in the- -”

“We take the back door,” said Six, pointing to a smaller pony-sized door that had initially been concealed by the hologram. As she walked toward it, she simultaneously opened it and kicked over her desk. A pair of auto-turrets immediately came to life, their mechanisms whirring as they directed their attention toward the main door. Through it, Scootaloo could already hear the sounds of weapons and screams of agony as whatever Six had installed behind those excessively lit walls tore through the approaching aliens.

Scootaloo barely made it to the door when she was nearly knocked over by an explosion. The larger of the two doors nearly hit her as it was torn off its hinges by the blast. Six turned almost immediately, catching Scootaloo and charging her horn. She fired off a trio of singularities that shot around her turrets and froze the first wave of mercenaries in place, pulling them off the ground and allowing the turrets time to perform their primary function.

“Keep moving!” She pushed Scootaloo and projected a biotic shield behind them. “GO!”

Scootaloo started to run, and Six followed her into what seemed to be a basement. It was a section of the prefab that had not yet been finished to look like a cheap office; instead, it was a number of dusty, cobweb-filled prefab components. They were barely even lit, and Scootaloo could not help but smell a vaguely familiar and sour scent wafting through the drafty hallways.

For a moment, Scootaloo thought they might have a chance of being safe. Some of the bounty hunters, though, were more intelligent than the others. Rather than fight their way through the security system above, they had already infiltrated the lower area.

Six turned around suddenly, just in time to shield Scootaloo from a blast of rounds from a turian soldier. Scootaloo turned her head to look and nearly ran into an asari who had stepped out from the shadows. The blue-skinned woman smiled as she raised a shotgun, pointing it at Scootaloo’s face.

There was suddenly a violet blur from the depths of the basement. The asari screamed as she was pulled down by her neck. She continued to struggle and cry out as her attacker dug her teeth deep into the soft blue flesh before completely tearing out the woman’s throat.

The pony, having finished the asari, pulled her head back and looked up. Her face was still stained with violet fluid that almost matched her coat and wings. She was the same height as Six, but much thinner. She had the same color hair as well, although hers was cropped short, revealing her badly scarred and nonfunctional horn. Her eyes were covered in an opaque tech-visor, and her enormous fang-like teeth were so long that she was almost completely unable to close her mouth.

“Seven?” said Scootaloo, still somewhat in disbelief. She then looked beyond the alicorn to where a pair of mercenaries were charging toward her. “Seven, behind you!”

Without hesitating, Seven moved with almost beautiful fluidity, spreading her long alicorn wings and floating backward. She raised both of her front hooves and summoned a pair of omnitools. Two orange bolts shot out, striking both of her targets in their chests. They slowed and screamed as they were immolated form within, grasping at their chests as their internal organs began to combust while they were still alive. The whole room began to smell like cooking meat.

“Got to love that smell,” said Six, pushing past her sister as they traded places so that Seven could produce a subtractive tech barrier that peeled the flesh off of several ponies unfortunate enough to step through it while Six concentrated her magic into a thin beam and bisected all of the individual still blocking their path. “Yeah, I know,” she said as if Seven had spoken. “Scootaloo!”
Seven seemed to smile. She and Six pushed Scootaloo forward and then to the right into a small antechamber, at which point Seven closed a metal door behind them.

“That’s not going to hold them for long,” gasped Scootaloo. Her lungs were burning, and her whole body was shaking. As she predicted, something started pounding on the door.

“It doesn’t need to,” said Six, opening a small cabinet. She removed a set of respirators and passed one to her sister and the other to Scootaloo.

“What are these for?” asked Scootaloo, not wanting to know the answer.

“The primary exit has been blocked. We need to take the tertiary exit- -” Something hit the inner door of the airlock hard, deforming the metal. “Damn- -just put it on!”

Scootaloo slid the respirator around her face. It was sized for a pony, but not one of her smaller than average size. Six leaned over her and pulled the straps with her magic, tightening the facemask.

“Okay,” she said. “Breathe normally. And if you smell either fresh cut grass or rotten eggs, well….”

“Well what?”

Six looked at Seven, then back at Scootaloo. “Well, that would mean it’s already too late.”

Then, without waiting for Scootaloo to react, she slammed her hoof into the emergency release switch. The second outer door clanked, and then pulled quickly to the side.

There was an atmosphere outside, so the room did not experience explosive decompression. The process was no less unpleasant, though. The pressure did immediately drop, and Scootaloo felt her ears pop painfully. The air was incredibly cold, and Scootaloo shivered as Six pushed her forward into a wide, decaying tunnel. Scootaloo promptly landed in something wet and ankle-deep that she was absolutely sure was not water.

“Left,” said Six. “Go left!”

Scootaloo did, and she waded through the debris and liquid of the tunnel. As she did, she became aware of a sound, a kind of low whistling that grew louder and louder as she advanced. It sounded like wind, and when Scootaloo was finally close enough to the end of the tunnel to see the dim light of distant lightning strikes outside, she realized that it was. The sound was produced by the massive storms raging outside.

Another sound became apparent, though. The sound of rapid footsteps splashing through the muck behind them. Scootaloo tried to run faster, but he she was too small and too tired to keep going much more quickly.

Then, when they had almost reached the end of the tunnel, two figures stepped out from either side. Scootaloo slid to a stop and looked up at them. Both were dressed entirely in black armor, and both were holding mass-effect miniguns.

Scootaloo ducked as they raised their weapons. They did not point them at her, though, but behind them at the oncoming group of bounty hunters.

“For the goddess,” one of them said as their miniguns spun up. After that, Scootaloo heard nothing but the roar of their weapons firing. In passing through the tunnel, Scootaloo had failed to find any viable cover- -and no doubt neither had the hunters.

The pair continued to fire, and Scootaloo felt Seven pulling her along. She did not know who this pair were, or what their goal was, but they seemed to be helping. For some reason, though, she could not take her eyes off them until she was literally dragged into the rocky and polluted landscape beyond.

Even after Scootaloo passed, the pair continued firing. It was effective at first, but eventually the more advanced mercenaries with actual modern shields arrived. They simply walked forward, ignoring the bullets as they ricocheted off their shields. Among these was a synth. He approached effortlessly and brought his hand down on the smaller of the pair, killing her effortlessly. The other dropped her weapon and stepped back.

“I die in Her glory,” she said, entering a command into her omnitool and screaming as her body ignited with pink-violet biotic energy. Her armor corroding almost as quickly as her body, she charged the synth.

In the distance, Scootaloo heard the scream, but only barely. The wind from the storm was deafening, and it was barely possible to hear Six, let alone noises in the distance.

The planet was a rocky mess, covered in jagged boulders and crags and dotted with the remnants of abandoned structures and crashed, decayed spacecraft. Overhead, a tempest was raging, pouring down rain that was something other than water and gusting with almost enough force to push Scootaloo off her feet.

Suddenly a corroded rock near her burst apart with a surge of blue light. Scootaloo ducked, knowing that she was being shot at. She fell against Six, who propped her up.

“Can you fly?” shouted Six over the sound of the storm.

“No! I can’t!”

Six nodded and grabbed Scootaloo under her shoulders. Then she and Seven spread their extensive alicorn wings and took flight. They were apparently very skilled, but the storm greatly impeded their ability to move.

Then, from above, something descended. Scootaloo saw the running lights passing through the clouds and realized that it was a ship.

“Aw shit,” said Six, charging her horn.

“Wait! WAIT!” cried Scootaloo, nearly bursting into laughter. “That’s MY ship!”

“Your ship? How did you- -” Six cried out as a bullet struck one of her wings and she plummeted to the ground, dropping Scootaloo painfully against some jagged rocks. Seven, seeing her sister injured, immediately descended as well, projecting a tech barrier as she did.

“Oh crap,” said Six, standing. “I’m hit.”

“Six! Hold on, I- -”

“We need to go,” said Six, pulling Scootaloo and Seven close. “This is going to be super rough. This was always more Eight’s thing than mine.”

Upon hearing this, Seven immediately struggled to get away, but it was already too late. Six, with a look of immense concentration on her face, charged her horn and activated a teleportation spell.

The three of them vanished, and almost as soon as they had, the ship above turned and began to rise through the atmosphere. What few bounty hunters were left shot at it, but their tiny weapons had next to no effect.

Then, as quickly as it had come and without even bothering to clear the atmosphere, it mass-jumped, vanishing to elsewhere in the universe.