The Discovery

Once Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Maud returned from the site where the specimen was found and showed the rest of the crew the photographs of the spaceship, they all began to speculate in the rec room.

"Could we really be dealing with an alien?" Rarity asked Applejack as she stared down at one of the photos.

"You saw what happened in the kennel, it seems like an alien to me." Applejack responded.

"This kinda stuff happens all the time, they're dropping out of the skies like flies." Soarin spoke up.

"Yeah, the Princesses probably know all about it, right Applejack?" Rainbow Dash added, tapping Applejack on the shoulder. Applejack simply shrugged in her seat and took another sip of cider.

"You don't actually believe any of this boulder dash right Twilight?" Rarity asked Twilight, who was also busy looking over the photographs and the autopsy notes.

"I'll run some more tests and see if I can deduce what this thing is." Twilight said as she stood up from the couch and walked out, passing Pinkie Pie in the process.

"Okay, somepony better tell me who threw their dirty clothes in the kitchen trash bin!" Pinkie shouted as she appeared in the doorway to the rec room. Everypony looked at each other, giving confused looks before looking back at Pinkie.

"Really, nopony's gonna tell me?" Pinkie asked.

"It was probably Vinyl." Rainbow Dash spoke up sarcastically.

"Kiss my flank Dash!" Vinyl shouted from the other side of the rec room.

Twilight sat in her office at her computer so she could possibly figure out what exactly they were dealing with. She booted up a simulation with the help of the cells from the dog-thing corpse and booted it up. The simulation showed the red cell marked as the intruder among blue cells. When the red cell touches one of the blue cells, the blue cell is absorbed by the red one, and then the red one turns blue.

Twilight now deduced that this creature eats other creatures, and imitates them to keep from being detected long enough to feed again. Twilight then began to think, this organism could already be in the base, one of her colleagues could be this creature, in disguise, like the dog. Twilight then had the computer make an estimate on how long it would take to assimilate every living creature in Equestria and beyond. It read 27,000 hours, about 3 years.

This made Twilight realize what she had to do, if one of the crew was this creature, they must be kept here, and destroyed, so that the world would not end. Twilight opened the drawer to her desk and pulled out a revolver.

Back in the rec room, the rest of the crew were still speculating on things, when Shining walked in, "Dash, Vinyl, Go and put that dog-thing carcass into storage." Shining ordered. The 2 groaned as they got up and and went to collect the corpse.

They put it onto a stretcher and rolled it down to the large storage room. "You don't think this thing is still alive, do you?" Vinyl asked, visibly uncomfortable being close to it.

"No way, Rarity got it pretty good with the flamer, it is definitely dead." Dash responded confidently. The two rolled the stretcher into the storage room and nearly ran into Applejack.

"Hey AJ, whatcha doin?" Rainbow asked, seeing Applejack carrying a bunch of her stuff.

"Shining told me to move some of my stuff out to make room for the corpse." Applejack explained.

"Well don't go to bed just yet, I'm gonna grab some more drinks for the party tonight." Rainbow said as she walked over to the area where they kept the liquor.

"What Party?" Applejack asked.

"The Party for getting the specimens, we'll probably get bonus money for this discovery." Rainbow said as she rummaged around.

"Okay, I'll think about it." Applejack said as she turned around and left the room.

"I'll go grab the keys from Shining so we can lock this room for the night once we're done." Vinyl said before she left Dash alone to find the liquor, but Dash didn't notice the dog-thing corpse rustling under the tarp...

Applejack walked down the hall when she bumped into Dr. Whooves, who had a worried expression on his face.

"Applejack, I need to talk to you, it's an emergency." Whooves explained. Applejack raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, what is it?" She asked. Dr. Whooves glanced around.

"Not here, let's go somewhere private." Dr. Whooves said. Applejack reluctantly agreed and followed him.

They ended up going outside and sitting in Applejack's snowcat.

"Okay Whooves, what is it that was so important, you had to drag me out here for?" Applejack asked. Dr. Whooves then took some paper out of his pocket and looked it over.

"Twilight's locked herself in her office, and I just figured something out from her notes.." Whooves went on to explain how the thing mimics other life forms and stays disguised until it needs to feed again. Applejack listened with wide eyes, they encountered not only an alien, but a hostile alien that acted like a changeling, only about 100 times worse, just great.

"Also, there is still some activity on these dog-thing remains, it's not completely dead yet." Whooves said, Applejack jolted up and looked at Turner.

"What?" Applejack said, a terrified expression now on her face.

Vinyl walked back down the hall towards the storage room with Shining's key ring.

"Alright Dash, let's finish this up so we can part-" Vinyl started, but stopped when she entered the room. On the floor was Rainbow Dash's clothes, including her parka, all bloodied. Vinyl turned toward the direction of the tarp.

"Shit." she muttered at the sight.

Rainbow Dash was next to the table now, and from under the tarp several red and bloody looking tendrils wrapped around her body, and dug into her skin, she even looked all bloody.

Vinyl dropped the keys and quickly ran out of the room.

She grabbed her jacket and ran outside to get Applejack. But before she could go for the tower, she saw Applejack and Dr. Whooves in the Snowcat, and ran towards them.

"Rainbow Dash is alone with that corpse." Applejack shouted to Dr. Whooves, making his expression turn terrified. The 2 got out of the snowcat and were met with a frantic Vinyl. "AJ, Whooves, Help." Vinyl shouted.

"What's wrong?" Applejack asked. Vinyl stopped in front of them panting.

"Something's happening to Rainbow Dash." Vinyl said in between gasps. Applejack and Dr. Whooves gave each other worried glances before running towards the station, followed closely by Vinyl.

The 3 made it back inside and eventually made it back to the storage room, but upon entering, the room was empty, and the corpse on the stretcher was completely still under the tarp.

"She was right there AJ, I swear to Celestia!" Vinyl said frantically, worried that the others wouldn't believe her.

Dr. Whooves looked towards one of the windows and saw that it was broken and ran towards it. He saw the figure of a pony running outside.

"There she is." Whooves shouted and pointed before running out after her, followed by the other 2.

They managed to get the attention of the rest of the base, and so every crew member ran out with their coats to see what was happening. They looked around and saw Rainbow Dash running, before falling to the ground. The crew rushed over to her, Soarin heading for her to check on her, but was tackled by Applejack.

"Soarin don't, that isn't Rainbow Dash." Applejack said as she dragged herself and Soarin away from the form of Rainbow Dash.

The rest of the crew gathered around and watched, as the Rainbow Dash lifted her head, and extended her front legs. But, instead of hooves, there was two bloody looking claws. The crew all gasped and stood shocked at the sight.

Dash-thing then let out an ear piercing shrieking noise that made Applejack stumble back and knock over a barrel, spilling gasoline on to the ground near Dash-thing. Applejack then got an idea, and pulled a flare out of her jacket, lit it, then tossed it at Dash-thing, and it lit into a blaze.

The Dash-thing let out several howls and shrieks that were unlike anything the crew had heard before. When the thing finally seemed to be dead, Applejack went back into the base to retrieve a flamethrower for her plan, followed by Shining Armor.

"What the hell was that?" Shining shouted as he a followed AJ into the weapons locker. "What happened to Rainbow Dash?"

"It only looked like Rainbow Dash, and in a few minutes it would have sounded and acted like Rainbow Dash too, so it's a good thing we stopped it." Applejack explained.

"So what's the plan now?" Shining asked as AJ slipped on the flamethrower.

"Dr. Whooves said that that body in the storage still had some life to it, which is how it got to Dash, so we need to burn that body, and just to be safe we should burn the other body that's in the cooler." Applejack explained. Shining nodded in agreement.

Some of the other crew went and got the dog-thing corpse, and the 2 headed pony corpse and brought them outside where Applejack burned them with the flamethrower.

The crew was all gathered outside while the bodies burned, but Dr. Whooves then realized that they were down one scientist.

"Where's Twilight?".....