“What’s so important that you needed to call me out to Arasaka Tower at this hour, Yoshiya?”

“Thank you for coming Zach, there was an… Incident… Yesterday.”

“What kind are we talking about?”

The two suited men walked down the corridor toward the laboratory, accompanied by the standard corp guards, “An unidentified object appeared on radar, about half a kilometer up.”

“Anything flying in toward the tower should have been spotted long before it got that close.”

“Correct, but this was not at the tower itself, but rather by the corporation’s private waterfront area, west-north-west of the tower. Still, you are correct that it should have been spotted earlier… At first, we assumed it to be either a stealth aircraft or ballistic missile, it was not responding to attempts to contact it on radio or hack it, however, quick scanning indicated it biological in nature, so a team was sent to inspect its landing point on the coast.”

“I see, did it survive?”

“Yes, but it is… Odd…”

“How so?”

“You should see for yourself, it looks something like one of those westerner fairy tales, ‘Unicorns’, however it also has a set of wings. And strangest of all, none of the telltale signs of genetic modification.”

“Wait, what?”

They passed into the lab, inside a room, transparent from the outside but stark white inside, was the mare. She was asleep on the hard polymer-coated metal flooring. “This is the creature, possibly a hybrid of swan, white rhinoceros, and shetland pony, tailored to look like one of these magical unicorns… On the outside, at least that was our first assumption.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Yoshiya drew a tablet and loaded a series of data, “Gene-scans, observe… Very low resemblance to all known animal species on Earth, mutant strains included. Less than five percent.”

“Where do you think it came from then?”

“Possibly a fully synthetic organism, however… This field of research among both corporations and independent research teams is very primitive at best, no one from Arasaka to Biotechnica has the technology to produce a fully functional living synthetic organism like this one… Here, let me show you something else,” The suit then pulled up another image on the tablet, “Brain scan, particularly of the neural tissue around the base of its horn and frontal lobe.”

“Holy shit.”

“You see what I mean, these bundles of nerves are too complex to artificially produce, either from synthetic growth or gene-modding, I had our best biologists look at it, they can’t begin to explain what some of these tissues do… This organ right here, in the base of the horn, seems to bend the quantum foam around it. I contacted Misaki Roka in Tokyo, the best physicist Arasaka has to offer, he said it was impossible for any machine to do that let alone a biological organism!”

“So, what are we going to do, start cutting it apart?”

“No, too risky, there is a lot of potential for the company right here, we can’t afford to lose or damage the subject in any way right now, imagine what scientific advances will be rolling out of the company’s HQ when we learn how to control this!”

“Well, what are we going to do with it then?”

“Listen.” With that, the suit pulled up an audio file, strangely beautiful but alien melodic sounds came out.

“What is that?”

“The creature speaking… But, these aren’t the same kind of sounds dogs or horses or other creatures make… There are repeating sounds, syntax, patterns that seem almost like a form of grammar, it’s trying to speak, like actually speak, like a human! With a language!”

“T-That, isn’t that illegal?”

“Illegal to give an animal human speech yes, and also extremely difficult, nearly impossible… We need to find this creature’s creator, whoever or whatever synthesized it, they will be an invaluable asset to the corporation, until then we make do with the one subject we have… During its fall, the creature suffered severe damage to its spine and wing bones, likely would have died had it not been for our discovery of it… As it stands now the creature is paralysed from the middle of the back down to tail-bones, and its wings will never heal naturally…”

“Gives us the chance to kill two birds with one stone?”

“Yes, yes it does, we can replace the spine and wings with cybernetic versions, will give us a convenient connection to the animal’s central nervous system to help monitor brain activity and give us insight into how it works, perhaps we can figure out how to translate the language it is speaking in.”

“Can also take the chance to fit security systems, just in case the animal turns aggressive.”

“Precisely.”

“Are you sure the prosthetics will function properly, this thing isn’t human…”

“You saw the brain scans, despite being a genetic anomaly, the brain structure seems nearly identical to a human’s, aside from the horn nerves and frontal lobe, but none of our biotech we plan to implant will interact with those segments until we know exactly how they work.”

“What about the markings on the creature’s posterior?”

“We assume them to be brand markings, most likely an addition by whoever produced this creature… We’re replacing them with our own markings, but they seem oddly resistant to our techniques… Tattoos don’t show up underneath the fur and tend to fade rapidly, dying the fur has the same problem with rapid fading, almost as if the fur itself is resisting the chemicals.”

“Physically burn-off the old markings?”

“No, when we do the augmentation we’ll simply remove those pieces of flesh and put synthetic replacements on its flanks, I checked the net, that particular sun-symbol isn’t used by any corporation or independent group, so once we add our branding and finish some paperwork the animal will officially be our property, meaning we can copyright the licenses to the technology we produce by reverse-engineering the animal’s brain.”

“Have you told our higher-ups and investors?”

“Not yet, I intend to tell Saburo once the required paperwork is done to license the creature.”

“Smart… I assume the reason you called me in was for this cyberware implantation job?”

“Correct, you’re one of the few I can trust to not kill the creature and keep the information discussed here between ourselves.”

“Yoshiya, we should do this as soon as possible.”

“Agreed, get yourself ready, I can direct you to the required facilities in the tower, I also have the cyberware of choice on hand, I will flood the creature’s chamber with sedatives to keep it unconscious for the duration of the procedure. Do this right and by the end of the year we’ll both be richer than we’ve ever dreamed.”

“Of course.”

Luna trotted angrily through the desert, the plants here tasted like she had expected, prairie-garbage, too dry and sugarless. And there wasn’t a drop of fresh water in sight… The mare had found a puddle earlier but it reeked of all kinds of scents, some familiar and very much toxic, others she had never smelled before but were most likely unhealthy in the extreme.

The creatures she had met were odd… She remembered them talking in some language, she had lived for over three thousand years now but had never heard that language. They looked like some kind of hairless abyssinian or diamond dog, but they sounded nothing like them… And their weapons… Strange things, like the one in her teeth right now… It was heavy and metal, but she had seen how they worked from watching that one with the Appleloosan hat, pull back the metal bit, and it produces a blast of sound and hole where you point it, not too unlike a crossbow… Useful, but loud, not good for keeping herself hidden…

Celestia… “Tia, where are you!” Luna called out, knowing already that she wasn’t close enough to hear her… She was going to find her, somehow… Just needed to know where to start looking, where would her sister be in this deserted mess… She had seen towers, huge black things on the horizon, covered in lights that seemed to shine even during the day, but she dare not go there, too many of those creatures, undoubtedly, and she would rather not be surrounded by potential enemies… But, if Tia was there…

Luna sat by the grass, chewing it, even if it tasted awful, thinking over what she knows… Grogar, dark flesh-weaver of the Hayseed Swamps, he was ruling over Equestria now, possibly the world… Her ponies, her thestrals, they would resist, they would rather fight to the last mare and stallion if it came down to it… But, that was the problem… She needed to get back to Equestria, to save her ponies, but she couldn’t go without Celestia, even if she knew how to get back, even if she had her magic…

She sat, for what felt like hours of being paralyzed by indecision, but was most likely a mere few minutes. Then stood back on her legs. There was something coming, a roaring sound, she could hear it, coming from the north, from the direction she had came, from the towers…

The mare ducked behind a rock, hoping that whatever this was would not notice her… A cloud of dust coming over the hills signalled the thing's arrival, a beast of iron, some kind of large wagon but it was not pulled by strong ponies, or any other creature for that matter, rather it just drove across the rough terrain with nothing pulling it. Luna withdrew the weapon, she had no idea how to use it without her horn, so, she held it in her mouth and tried to work her tongue through the small hole around where the lever was to activate it, being careful not to use it and reveal herself.

A thing stepped out from within the ponyless carriage, tall, looking like a hairless and skinny diamond dog with a flat face and a nose bent into their flesh, holes on the sides of their head, perhaps their ears? Luna recognized the creature from the bloodied bandage around its shoulder. The thing withdrew a weapon, but then dropped it on the ground, saying something in a language she could not understand “I know you’re here, I don’t want to hurt you”, while the words did not make sense, the tone was clearly one of nonaggression.

Luna stepped out from behind her cover, weapon still in her mouth, she dropped it as well so she may speak “I do not understand you, do you understand me?” However, it was clear that the creature did not, as it simply looked at her confused.

Luna then tried a different approach, crouching down, wincing at the pain, still cut and bruised from her crash-landing last night, and put a hoof on the sand, tracing symbols in the dirt, drawing the crude shapes of two ponies. The creature looked at them, pointing a claw at one of the two, and then pointing to Luna. Luna nodded, pointing to the other one and then shaking her head.

“So, are there two of you?” The creature said, but Luna still could not understand the words. So she merely started drawing more figures in the sand.

Celestia was inside the box, pointing her horn toward the wall… Still nothing but sparks… Grogar had not gotten rid of all her magic, but what little she had left inside her soul was not enough to do anything with, not yet, but she was sure she could gather strength with what she still had… Perhaps… She started to feel tired, odd, she hadn’t been moving or exerting herself since she arrived in this box, impossible to, seeing as she could barely drag herself around. No… Someone was trying to put her to sleep, it didn’t feel like sleep magic, but this exhaustion was not natural… She got up, tried to drag herself to the wall, planted a hoof against it… Then collapsed.

She awoke, pain burning through her flanks and back, she was strapped down, she couldn’t see, a light shone in her eyes and everything else was shadowy and dark, her head held down and unable to move. She felt pricks of pain along her sides and something crawling down her spine. It felt as if there was a hole in the back of her head and sweat built on her chest. She pulled at the straps and tried to break free, but it was to no avail. There were strange shapes moving all around and stranger voices that she could not understand, then she felt something stab her in the side, and everything went black once again.

Author's Note

For those wondering, this takes place before the events of Cyberpunk 2077, and V does not exist in this universe.