Sister or Unicorn?

The dinner was delightful, as much as I didn’t want to admit it hanging out with Crystal was a nice relaxer to the recent events. Sure she asked me tons of questions about me and Twilight, but that was expected of her, since apparently she had known about the crush for a long time now. The diner we went to was a recent addition to the city. It brought a nice change to the regular dull living complexes that occupied for what felt like miles of land.

The coffee however was outrageous in price; thankfully Crystal offered to cover half of the cost.

Coffee wasn’t even that good anyway.

After a long evening of catching up however it was time to say goodnight and we went our separate ways. It was night now and the city light danced with the shadows of cars and people walking by. They felt like they taunting me in a mysterious way.

It wasn’t until I was nearly a block away from my flat that I noticed a bunch of shadowed figures surrounding the place. I felt threatened but for some reason I continued my approach.

“Hey what are you doing outside my house?!” I yelled at the shadows, unaware that they had been watching my approach for a while now; I also noticed that while I had been walking that the population of the once busy streets surrounding my house was suddenly void of all life.

Except for those mysterious figures.

I didn’t even notice when one of the figures that was keeping a lookout nearby had pulled out a rifle and was aimed straight for my head.

“Seriously can’t you guys get…” Was all I was able to utter until I felt a sharp pain in my neck and my vision faded to darkness.

Twilight was alone. Studying like she usually was. She had given up on trying connecting any similarities to her life with the show hours ago. She didn’t learn anything useful from it. Just things she already knew.

She was one of the most powerful Unicorns in existence, that wasn’t really new to her, she figured she had tremendous power, but didn’t bother to use it. There was no point, sure she could alter the world as she pleased but that would draw unwanted attention, which was something she liked to avoid.

It was around this time that she noticed something was wrong, that danger was approaching.

She normally would shake off this sense of dread, but this time it was strong and beckoning her to run, as fast as she could anywhere that got her away from here.

But she couldn’t just leave Tristan behind.

She loved him; he was the best thing that ever happened to her. There was no way she was just going to up and disappear without him.

Then she started feeling attracted to her room, that it was a place of sanctuary that would allow her to leave her worries behind. She wouldn’t even be far from Tristan; she would just be in her room.

And she did just that, as she approached her room and opened the door, she was blinded by a flash of intense light, it felt welcoming and warm.

She welcomed the light’s embrace.

I awoke in a dark room; I was bound to a chair my hands chained to a table in front of me. But no matter how hard I tried I could see nothing in front of me. I struggled for what felt like minutes, trying to escape my binds. Until a bright light suddenly appeared illuminating the table and a man on the opposite end. His face shrouded by darkness allowing me no access to what he looked like, other than the fact that he was bald.

Although at the moment I didn’t exactly want to know who the man was.

“Glad to see you are awake Mr. Sparkle” The man greeted with what felt like a welcoming and yet dangerous tone.
I didn’t answer immediately, afraid of what was going on I continued to struggle with my binds until I realized it was no use.

Finally seeing no other option I decided that I might as well answer him.

“Um hello?” Even in the face of danger I still wasn’t the greatest at making good first impressions, though at the moment I couldn’t have cared less.

“Would you like to know my name?” The shrouded man answered in the same dangerous yet strangely kind tone.

“Uh… not really if that’s okay you’re kind of freaking me out with the whole silhouette thing.” I replied, not entirely sure of my situation. My only thought was of escape, to return home to the safety of my warm comfy couch with Twilight lying beside me.

“That’s all right its better we keep this as brief as possible, but for the sake of simplicity you may call me Shroud.” He answered back a few moments after I stopped speaking as if he was reading off of a script.

“So mind explaining exactly what is going on here? And why I am chained to a table Shroud?” I demanded with a not so nice attitude, mostly because I was immediately not very fond of the man.

“Please call me Mr. Shroud if you would.” He answered calmly as if we would be friends if it wasn’t for the circumstances.

“Okay Mr. Shroud why am I here?” I obliged his request with a hint of sarcasm.

“You are here because we detected a large amount of Aradon radiation in your house.” Shroud answered without hesitation showing no signs of falsehood.

“I’m sorry Aradon?” As I had never heard of the name before I was confused about what the thing was and more importantly why it was inside my house.

“Yes Aradon” Shroud continued “It’s a rare energy that comes in what looks like a crystalline bone. It’s not surprising you haven’t heard of it before, since it’s an incredibly hazardous material found on comets far from our planet.

“Wait, so why is that in my house, and where is my sister?” I pleaded, just wanting this all to be a horribly bad dream and that I would wake up in my bed.

“Well actually Tristan, is it all right if I call you by your first name? Anyway we were wondering if you could tell us that.” Shroud continued with his smug tone offering security and danger on the hang of every word.

“I’m sorry but I have no idea what you are talking about, as for my sister she was last home when I left so I was hoping you would be able to tell me about that.” For some reason I felt like crying, like this man was shouting at me while smacking me in the face. I found it increasingly difficult to look at his shrouded face. Like the cover of darkness would release and I would be faced with some horrible monstrosity that only looked human.

“Perhaps you would know about the EQUA project?” Shroud adjusted his seat a little, giving him a sense of humanity yet keeping his being an air of mystery. However it calmed me down a little somehow. And I was glad for the relief.

“I’m sorry what?” I replied honestly more confused than anything at this point.

“It would be better for you to understand what the cause of the Aradon radiation was if you knew what its purpose, or what some little group that first discovered it used it for.” Shroud explained “That is if you’re willing to listen.”

“Well I don’t suppose I have a choice in the matter.” I answered with a bit of spite.

“You are correct, you don’t have a choice, don’t worry however it is a short tale.”

Many years ago, about thirty give or take a few, some scientists found this rare substance and decided to use it for their experiments. They were trying to create mythological creatures. However their attempts led in failure. That is until they found out how they could harvest the power of this alien material. Soon they started to make breakthroughs. Creating what some would call miracles. However what they failed to understand was just how much power these creatures, now alive and infused with Aradon, contained.

“Pardon me...” I interrupted trying to get a word in edgewise however Shroud would have none of it.

“Don’t interrupt Tristan I’m getting to the interesting part.”

However there was a problem you see, these creatures had no limits and if they were unleashed upon the world nobody
could stop them. Thankfully one of their members had informed the government to step in. And we quickly took steps to destroy the experiments.

“I’m sorry you did what now?” Tristan tried to follow with earnest but found most of the story confusing.

“I did nothing Tristan; I wasn't in this business at the time.” Shroud replied with his usual snakelike tone. I was starting to get a sense of fear, similar to when we had been told ghost stories to prank us as children. “Now let me finish.”

We thought we had destroyed everything. We killed all the scientists, destroyed all the equipment burned all the documents.

And most importantly destroyed the experiments. But apparently we didn’t get rid of everything.

“How do you figure?” I asked, disgusted but intrigued.

“I have to admit I appreciate it when you add to the conversation instead of bluntly interrupting like an idiot. Definitely suits you, try to do it more often Tristan.” Shroud answered with a slight hint of praise. However at the time it sounded more like he was insulting me. He didn’t give me time to react however as he continued his story.

Obviously the scientists before completing the project wanted to test out how the experiments would react when set in civilization. So they recklessly sent out a few to see if they were able to interact without causing panic.

“So why did you, well your organization have to kill them then if they could interact peacefully with society?” I questioned starting to connect some of the pieces together but still confused about the problem. One question was answered however, if these people had no problem killing plenty of scientists, they would have no issue taking out a simple civilian.

“I’m glad you are able to separate myself from my business, it will make our conversation much easier Tristan. After all I am no killer, and hopefully never half to perform that act.” Shroud exclaimed almost glad that he was able to be viewed as somewhat human. I didn’t feel safe however.

Well obviously the experiment worked we else’s there would have been reports. We could try but we can’t hide everything from the public. But people never found out thankfully. What boggles my mind is that they didn’t notice the pegasi; it’s hard to hide a malformed horse with wings.

“I’m sorry what?” my world stopped, with that simple line my threat of danger increased skyward. Now it wasn’t involving just my life anymore.

It involved Twilight’s.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of pegasi before Tristan. It wasn’t just them either, it sounds ridiculous I know but these people were also creating unicorns and other talking horses.”

“That, well that just sounds silly” I laughed it off trying to hide my newfound awareness of the situation I thought we were talking about I don’t know alien life forms or something angels or something.”

“Well you never know about scientists, I personally found the whole idea ridiculous. I mean these men and women had the ability to create life, to be their own gods. And not like a farmer does with breeding two cows together, to actually create life.” He paused to bask in the glory of the idea. “The possibilities are just, amazing.”

But that is where our stories end I’m afraid, obviously some of the experiments still existed and we can’t find all of them, so we started looking for them. We had some successes but few, maybe the scientists had a program built into their genetics, one that made them flee when they knew they were being looked for. They always knew who we were when we finally caught them. Thankfully we had some help, some inventions we crafted after a while. Usually ones involving sensing Aradon.

“So there’s one of these things in my house?” it didn’t feel right, calling them things, Twilight wasn’t a thing, the way he treated these things like animals was disgusting.

Twilight wasn’t an animal

But if I made it sound like I didn’t know anything about this, maybe they would let me go.

And I could warn Twilight

“It seems so, it was hard to pinpoint it but we finally pinned it down to your house. You might not have even known. It wouldn’t be the first time that one of them was simply invisible. In all Honesty I think you’re innocent.” Shroud chuckled lightly to himself.

“Innocent?” I yipped a little with glee on the inside. My hopes of release were coming to me, right in front of me.

“Yep so innocent that I think we’re just going to let you go on home. Obviously we have to come with you at first, to find the experiment, but after that life can go back to normal, for you and your sister.”

My world stopped.