First* Contact

The distinct smell of medicine permeated the air, mixing with an aroma of hot coffee fresh out of a vending machine, creating a decidedly unique combination. It was a relatively slow evening for head physician Redheart, the mare sipping her hot drink in an attempt to get enough caffeine to last her through the night shift. Not that it was necessary, of course, Appleloosa Hospital wasn't exactly a hotspot of activity even during the flu season, one of the few perks of working in a small town hospital.

It was one of the reasons Redheart accepted the work offer, many of her Ponyville colleagues criticizing her seemingly swift decision to relocate. It wasn't something the mare would admit to out loud, but the less than creatively named town had grown too big for Redheart's taste. Ever since Twilight was crowned the newest Princess of Equestria a few years back, they had to be running out of titles by now, the quaint town became sort of a tourist hotspot, bringing with it both never before seen profits, as well as a flood of patients.

Because of this rather relaxed routine Redheart was doubly shocked when her latest evening patrol throughout the clinic offered her a most unwelcome surprise. The main entrance doors slid open, arhythmic clip-clops announcing the arrival of a patient. Redheart's gaze lifted from the mug of coffee she was holding, ready to question what was bothering her clinic's latest arrival.

Time slowed to a crawl as the mare's grip faltered, the hot drink taking a collision course towards the lobby floor. For a good few seconds Redheart failed to identify the thing that entered her clinic, the only familiar feature of the creature being its cutie mark. Braeburn, or whatever was left of him, shambled past the slide-open doors of the clinic, mumbling something under his breath.

Now, Redheart had a good ten years of experience under her belt, a number of cases involving animal attacks, freakish workplace accidents, even a couple magic mishaps that made her skin crawl, but whatever was happening to Braeburn made all the previous injuries look like foal's play.

Chunks of coat were missing from his body, leaving patches of empty skin sprinkled randomly throughout his frame, angry red skin exposed for the world to see. Black, razor sharp spikes peppered the right side of the stallion's face, the cancerous growth completely obscuring his right eye. His fetlocks were covered in tiny black needles, dried blood sticking to the coat around his wounds. His head was covered by a tattered blanket, the thin fabric providing little protection against whatever was plaguing him.

"Braeburn?"

The stallion's head jerked in response to the sound, his good eye focusing on the mare, the pupil shrinking as his mouth hangs open, a raspy voice Redheart never heard from the stallion emanating from within.

"Help me..."

She caught herself reaching a hoof out towards the stallion, shaking her head and instead turning to call the medical staff. She faced the stallion once more when she heard a sickening cracking sound coming from the stallion, her mouth opening to offer words of encouragement to Braeburn, only for her jaw to go slack.

His sclera turned a shade of pink as the blood vessels burst, the spikes on his head jutting in and out ever so slightly. Redheart managed to slip her facemask on, before Braeburn emitted a deep guttural howl, rushing the head physician in an attempt to tackle her.

The was a hoof away from coming within touching distance, when a teal glow encompassed Braeburn, giving Redheart enough time to stumble away from the crazed stallion. Medical personnel rushed the duo, one of the nurses straining to hold Braeburn in place. Redheart blinked, recovering from the initial shock of the encounter enough to begin giving orders.

"Morning Star, sedate him, now!" One of the earth ponies scrambled for a syringe, Braeburn lashing out as a nurse ran past him. "Set up a quarantine room, I'm talking BSL 3 health bubble!" A small group of medical staff scrambled to follow Redheart's orders, just as Morning Star came back, syringe in hoof.

The nurse came closer to Braeburn, the stallion thrashing against the magical restraints in an attempt to grab him. The needle connected with flesh, only to stop dead in its tracks, an audible ding emanating from the point of contact. The nurse tried to administer the sedatives a number of times, each attempt failing just like the last.

"I can't sedate him, ma'am!" Morning began, trying again and again to do what was asked of him. "It won't break the-"

The coat peeled away from Braeburn's fetlocks, exposing a thick, black carapace rapidly growing over the pale skin of his legs. The small spikes on his fetlocks violently contracted, expanding to grow over the entirety of his front legs, violently jutting out to stab at the pony standing closest to him.

Morning Star cried out in pain as a razor sharp carapace sunk into his flesh, the stallion backpedaling in an attempt to get away from his assailant, bumping into the unicorn casting the telekinesis spell, breaking his concentration. Free from the magical bonds that restrained him, The-Thing-That-Used-To-Be-Braeburn was quick to overpower the earth pony nurse, sinking his razor sharp front legs into his torso.

The lobby descended into pandemonium as a blood curdling scream emanated from the nurse's throat, devolving into a series of gurgling noises as The-Thing-That-Used-To-Be-Braeburn continued to stab its splinter-like front legs into his chest. A well-built earth pony orderly grabbed the infected from behind, restricting its movement to the best of his abilities. The earth pony grit his teeth as black needles pierced his skin, growing from the thing's back.

The orderly's distraction worked well enough, giving the unicorn enough time to recuperate, a teal glow encompassing the rabid infected, dragging him away from the hemorrhaging stallion lying on the floor. A group of medical staff returned to the scene, rushing to help the critically injured stallion.

"Get him to the ER, but be careful, these black growths could be infectious!" Redheart commanded, turning to the other injured pony, the bleeding stallion carried away by a green aura. She watched the orderly wince as hee peeled away the black splinters that peppered his chest, some of them refusing to come off no matter how hard he pulled. "You, quarantine yourself in the serology lab, report any symptoms. I'll see you in a moment." The orderly nodded with a wince, giving the rest of the saff a large berth as he proceeded to his destination.

Redheart turned to The-Thing-That-Used-To-Be-Braeburn, watched it snarl and swipe at anypony close enough to agitate it. "Don't just stand around, get him contained!" She sighed, trotting in the direction of the serology lab, the hurried hoofsteps coupled with angry snarls growing more distant with each step.

Redheart took a deep breath, the air stuffy through her facemask.

What in Tartarus just happened.

I cut the feed from Braeburn as a thick steel door closed shut, locking the stallion in a hastily assembled padded cell. I chuckled inwardly as I watched the remains of a straitjacket hanging loosely from the stallion's frame, the failed attempt to reign the stallion in doing them more harm than good. Around a dozen blips appeared in my mind's eye, all moving through the rough map of the hospital I visualized based on the memories of the ex-farmer.

All in all, it was a positive first contact situation. Positive to me, of course, I doubt that guy was too happy having both of his lungs punctured. I noticed one of the blips flickering in my 'peripheral', speeding up only to disappear a few moments later. Speak of the devil.

I managed to stuff a smaller cluster of spores into one of Braeburn's lungs, the modification seeing a partial success. Despite the fact that the spores succeed in infecting a decent bit of personnel, the production rate left much to be desired. Ideally, one individual should've been enough to contaminate an entire room, instead of a small area surrounding him.

While on the topic of failures, my mind wandered to the peculiar teal aura that immobilized Braeburn, several times, might I add. My first thought was to think of some advanced technology, but a helpful tidbit of information surfaced from the depths of patient zero's inflamed mind, answering my question.

Apparently, magic was a thing here, and not only was it just as powerful as I thought, it was also widespread, a good part of ponykind note to self, re-check safety protocols regarding memory storage, prevent possible memory bleed, was apparently capable of wielding this magic to great effect, the resulting 'spells' taking may forms, including telekinesis.

It was just my luck then, that the pony I had at my full disposal was as good at casting spells as me. I just had to land on a farm, not a library or a school, no, I landed in a place run by a God damn mud pony. I took a deep, metaphorical breath, rubbing the non existent bridge of my nonexistent nose. It wasn't exactly a setback, if my calculations were correct, at least a couple unicorns were going to succumb to the parasite the following day, give or take a few hours.

In the meantime, I bothered myself with figuring a way to get patient zero out of the predicament he was stuck in, namely swatting uselessly at the steel door of his improvised cell, to no avail, might I add. I honed the root in on the infected stallion's position, ordering them to grow in that direction, hoping they'd be sturdy enough to pierce the building. A problem quickly made itself apparent, the speed with which the spikes grew rivaling that of a comatose snail.

This was unacceptable. If I was to secure my prolonged existence, I had to devise a way to penetrate reinforced surfaces, the ability no doubt proving useful once the pony S.W.A.T. arrives. Do- Do ponies even have S.W.A.T.? Shit, do they have a military? Tanks, planes, the whole shebang? How- how would a pony operate a tank?

I got sidetracked.

Leaving the topic of militaristic ponies for a later date, I began pondering the possible solutions to my situation. The more passive solution was to ramp up the production of nodes, the spiky tree-like growths that supplied my entire ecosystem. My initial fear of running out of 'frames' for my nodes, but a quick dive into the anatomy of these nodes revealed a pleasant surprise.

It turned out that after modifying and assimilating enough of the apple trees, the sprawl 'remembered' their anatomical structure, creating a sort of blueprint that eased the creation of further nodes. Digging a little deeper into the 'body' of my ecosystem, I found out that the same process applied to parasite hosts, a 'streamlined' process of modifications resulting in the creation of something I endearingly called 'grunts' already engraved into my neurons. I wasn't yet capable of creating these out of thin air, mind you, but it was a step in the right direction.

With that out of the way, it was time to devise a more proactive solution, one that didn't require active intervention of the roots. The ridiculous thought of pony-operated tanks resurfaced once more, a grain of truth hidden behind the humorous facade. Even if these equines didn't have tanks per se, they had to have some sort of cavalry, pardon the pun, something heavy hitting, something employed when simple ground troops proved to be ineffective.

Something that was most likely armored.

Now, as much as I wanted to make something close to a biological RPG, my current struggle for resources made me shelve the idea, starting a different train of thought in my head. If I couldn't rely on firearms, literal ones in this case, I needed something that was capable of delivering an explosive blast from a close range. It needed to be fast enough to cross great distances before the enemy could react, resilient enough to withstand a shot or two, and preferably low to the ground to avoid drawing attention.

A horrible, awful idea crept up on me as I realized that the carrier didn't necessarily need to survive the blast, especially if it reached its intended target.

My attention turned elsewhere as an image of an earth pony stallion appeared in my mind's eye. He was a big fellow, if not to say a little overweight. Nevertheless, his physical condition didn't stop him from immobilizing the patient zero for a few precious moments, which indicated his above average muscle mass.

He was a perfect testing ground for my new idea - enough fat to draw energy from, all the while having a good amount of muscle to carry the explosive load I intended to supply him with. As I theorized what kind of biochemical reaction could kickstart a detonation process, an image of a frag grenade came to my mind, serving as additional inspiration. The stallion's broad back and shoulders served as a wonderful platform for the tumorous red growth, high concentrations of nitroglycerin flooding the bloodstream and saturating the lumpy flesh of his back. Hard, black carapace grew outwards from within the tumor, sharp spikes splintering to pepper the flesh. Additional carapace broke through the skin in random parts of his body, an inevitable side effect of such rapid cell division coupled with the high saturation of the parasite in the blood.

If my calculations were correct, the explosion would be powerful enough to send these spikes flying into whatever hostiles the infected encountered, nevermind the direct damage from a close proximity explosion. Hopefully this would be enough to breach the enemy lines, clearing the way for grunts.

The process was far from perfect, of course, the conversion rate was positively abysmal, my first 'breacher' losing most of his fatty tissue as it was cannibalized for energy. I was so enthralled by the activity, I missed it as evening shifted to night, daylight breaking me out of my stupor, thanks to the photoreceptor-cells in my sprawl.

I established a connection to the freshly-made breacher, eager to test its capabilities like a kid who got a new toy.

Redheart hobbled to her chair, placing a petri dish under the light of her microscope. Her hooves trembled as she leaned to peek through the lens, her nerves taught as a string.

Tiny black bits of something moved throughout the blood sample she took, aggressively searching for something. One of the black things came into contact with an erythrocyte, stabbing a sharp edge into it. Black splinters began to spread from the point of contact, turning the entire erythrocyte into something resembling the black thing.

The antigen disconnected from the erythrocyte, moving to seek out its next target. It spun in place for a moment, before shooting out a splinter at the microscope lens, cracking the glass.

Redheart yelped, falling backward in her chair, recovering after a moment, rushing to close the petri dish shut. The mare's heart pounded in her ears, the gears turning in her head as she, to her own shock, realized.

I'd never seen something like that before...