Split Shift

“We should have at least buried him,” she said in a hush. Celestia registered what her companion had said, yet continued on, forcing her eyes beyond her toes to keep them, Celestia and Octavia, on track. The beam was hard to follow if you weren’t paying attention, even though it swept everything like a river towards the nexus called the DCC. Toru’s lead smashed face dwelled in the princess’s mind, the color of his ugly gore too similar to the dirt she and Octavia crushed under each step.

The sun was going down now, thankfully, and the baking heat with it. Time had dragged on, yet the angry hornet's nest behind the princess's unfocused eyes rioted with thought after unfinished thought. Images of Octavia holding her weapon preceded ones of her nude. In them Octavia had her slick, oiled olive-colored arms enwrapped a pole, her body spinning around it. Just when she began to enjoy the picture, Celestia’s internal cinema showed the next slide with Toru's corpse, also nude and his face hamburger, his gross, hairy pile of junk hanging between his legs.

Stop that, she told herself. Thinking won’t help. Just follow the beam and get out of here.

Where is here? Celestia looked up, going cold inside at what she beheld. An indomitable behemoth of rock and silt loomed over everything. It was just a bump on the horizon a minute ago. She couldn’t see even the top anymore. What was blazing pink-orange earlier was black as obsidian in the twilight.

The sight took a few unthinking steps to sink in. Everything was in dimmed light. The white clad explorers stopped to digest their environment. Celestia knew they were heading uphill, but it seemed like a fairly short period of time, definitely less than an hour. Time was bizarre here, indeed. She turned as fast as she liked and looked back to the swamp, which was surely still pretty near, and was surprised to see nothing but a orange expanse, a sliver of the horizon still lit by the blazing sun. No green dot, no cliff from which she fell, just a vast flat expanse. To the left and right of herself were plateaus, of sorts, areas that flattened out after the climb they had made. They looked like shelves, dotted with enormous rocky pieces and, to her wonderment, regular shapes. On both sides, what nearly resembled concrete or clay defied the irregular jaggedness of the rocks, but also the plain flatness of the surroundings.

In front, immediately, the path of the beam turned into a flat road. Celestia had not noticed, or cared to, in her distracted state. It continued far behind them, and deep into the veritable mountain in front. Wild cliffs and boulders flanked either side, but the steepening way looked viable for a decent sized vehicle. Shame they didn’t have one, as sweat had built up in her suit during the expedition, and the faster mode of travel would mean less time to dwell on unpleasant things.

“It’s an ocean,” Octavia thought aloud. “Or was, look. You can see the shoreline all around, and that looks almost like a lighthouse.”

“Huh?” Celestia muttered, following Octavia’s lazy finger. A cylindrical orange-pink-red item stood from the ground a few hundred feet away. The object was definitely built by someone, something, manufactured from materials. The tower-like ruins were hollow, further reinforcing Celestia’s and Octavia’s guesses.

She looked ahead again along the path, the ever stronger path that now seemed more and more like a river that Celestia was neck-deep in. The force was compelling, pushing her along, almost, like a stiff wind was coming from the northwest. The air was still. She began walking again.

“Celestia?” Octavia said, stopping her with a touch on the shoulder. The princess turned, tired again. Walking all the way here wasn’t so bad, but now it felt like she had worked hard for hours.

She dropped the muzzle of her weapon to the dirt and held onto the butt. “Yes?”

“I want to talk about it,” Octavia said flatly, her big eyes demanding she comply.

Celestia sighed and paused to think, but instead remained silent. She had no words that she thought could help.

“I’m just- it…” She brushed her long black hair behind her ear and breathed deeply. “I just can’t come to grips with it.”

“It hurts, I know,” Celestia said softly. “But it’s the type of thing that even when it happens, things still need to get done. The sun will rise again, no matter who’s there to see it. Octavia, I need you, and I need you all the way. One hundred percent, or nothing. What lies ahead will surely try us both.”

“I-I understand.” Octavia looked up. “I’m sure it will get easier as we continue, princess. But… I’ve never done that… even tried that before.”

“Look, we-” Celestia’s throat caught, Toru’s death no longer the only thing on her mind. “What exactly are we talking about?”

Octavia’s face was bright red. She touched the zipper of her suit and pulled on it, undoing the outfit imperceptibly. “Your… f-finger, in my.... I just- I fucking loved it, okay? Do you like hearing that, princess? I just love the way it felt, oh my goodness… Celestia, I know it’s bad, but I’m…” she trailed off, her soft voice fading into the background dust, her beautiful eyes holding water.

Speechless herself, Celestia’s lips hung open in the dry air. She took one small step forward and was nearly taken to the ground by Octavia’s sudden embrace. Celestia hugged her back, feeling soft, full lips on her collarbone. “Ah…” Celestia moaned, the touch too much and too soon. She took one big handful of Octavia’s bottom, the tight flesh responsive to her ruling grasp, and pulled her away.

“Later!” she hissed, nearly giving in herself. “I don’t- we can’t do this right now, not when we’re so close.”

Octavia backed away and sat on a boulder, leaning back against the jagged rock behind her. She spread her legs and breathed deep, composing herself. Her hands went up and down her open thighs, but didn’t go where Celestia wished she could go the most. “I’m so sorry, Princess. I’m… so hot right now, it’s hard to go on. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“You better think about finding the DCC for just a bit longer. Come on,” She said, picking up Octavia’s discarded weapon. “We’ll fuck later, alright?”

Octavia scoffed and half fell to one knee with some effort. She held her head up and her body followed, her feet under her once again. “Alright. Let’s get moving.”

The pair continued in tight formation, but there were no more breaks to copulate. They walked along the path up the smooth, steep, wide slope. Something was certainly meant to go down, or up, this path of sorts. What was the oddest was that the road seemed to stop abruptly only a quarter mile or so from it’s source, a gigantic opening in the rocky cavern ahead. In addition to that, the slanted slope wasn’t flat, but concave, like a gutter. Celestia walked down the dead center. It rose around her, however, each line on either side left the center behind. The curved slope reminded Celestia very much of a pinball track. The pair climbed on either side and readied their weapons.

They reached the opening above them. The track continued into the miniature mountain, which was now becoming pitch black in shadow. The moon was out, a bright, bright, almost blue crescent in the sky which lit up things like the sun. It, however, was of little use once they were inside the gigantic insides of the cave.

Her eyes adjusted quickly to the pitch black insides. The duo clicked on their flashlights, bathing cones of sweeping light once again across whatever they aimed at.

When she saw what was in the cavern, Celestia stopped in her tracks. Piles, heaps, mountains of rusted metal laid in mishmash jigsaws everywhere. Were they scaffolds, walkways, assembly lines, or any other machinery, Celestia couldn’t tell. Nothing was intact, and most was brown-orange in her flashlight’s circle.

“Watch your step,” Celestia said aloud, her voice distantly echoing off the solid walls. Octavia was close behind, her flashlight constantly scanning left and right, up and down. The circle never really reaching the ceiling.

Celestia misjudged a step and kicked a heavy square, cursing at the pain in her shin. “Fuckingpieceof-” she stopped, surprised to find something non-metallic. “Wait up,” she breathed back over her shoulder. “Look.”

Octavia did. In front of them on the cement laid a white plastic sign, about ten feet long and three feet wide, that read in big blue block letters:

D · C · C

DRYDOCK CONSTRUCTION CENTER

Octavia fell to her knees on the sign, deflated, defeated. “A shipyard. An ancient, forgotten, dried up, piece of shit fucking shipyard! We came all this way for this?!”

Celestia was speechless herself, Octavia’s breaking of her normal calm composure fell to the side of her worries. They had reached their destination, or nearly just. This wasn’t over.

While Octavia vented her frustration into furiously stomping the sign, Celestia investigated further into the depths of the DCC. She refused to believe this was merely a long-dead place where water-sailing ships were made. She felt it. In her bones, there was an urge, a stubborn little core, that denied, defied that simple explanation.

The princess continued on in the enormous interior, the sound of plastic cracking echoed off the walls, the parallels reporting immediately but a later reply a second or so after. Ahead in her path, with no apparent bypasses, was the heap of metal, mostly rusted bits by now. She climbed. Hand over hand, she grabbed the most solid bits where she could, where rivets and bolts didn’t protrude and rust hadn’t made little knives out of the bars. There were no solid pieces, and once she was one overhead onto the pile, every beam of quarter-inch thin metal creaked and groaned a squeaking protest. The pieces whined in lower and lower pitch as Celestia went up and up, like a child becoming more serious with his protests to waking up. Soon, however, she was on top, and swung her leg over to begin descending. “Octavia!” she shouted.

Her companion looked up, white and blue splinters sprayed about her in the white circle Celestia cast. “Come on,” she said, noting the splits in the remaining sign. The junior of the two shuffled awkwardly to catch up.

As she climbed down, Celestia took her time, taking glances back. There was, she was sure of it, a door. About a hundred feet off, she was sure it was there. The floor was bare, no tracks, no debris, just bits and pieces of rubble and plenty of dust. The air was turning hotter and more poisoned by iron floating in the air with every hand over foot.

At last, Celestia got back down to the cement, and Octavia not long after. They walked in silence, Celestia now sure a light was coming from the door. The warm air became hot, and muggy, the moisture content nearing one hundred. Celestia’s skin crawled over her tense muscles. She pointed, and Octavia nodded. They remained noiseless, weapons ready, steadily walking until a faint ringing came into the princess’s ear.

When Celestia turned to ask Octavia if she heard it, she saw her companion and friend doubled over, clutching her ears and holding in a scream of pain. Celestia got on one knee to grab Octavia’s arm when she felt a thump, then another, far off, like a tap on the glass.

“Come on,” she hissed under her breath. “Come on, we gotta get to the door, okay? Get up!”

Thump.

Celestia picked up her own gun in her weak hand and ran with Octavia coming around, regaining her power to act quickly. “I’m okay,” she said, trying her best to keep her feet moving.

Thump.

Celestia slowed up a little, noticing all sorts of doors and square holes and giant angular offshoots of the main cavern to other wings and areas. Ahead, no more than seventy feet, was that door. It was blue, she saw, deep, saturated blue with white markings.

Thump.

Celestia and Octavia were now nearly sprinting, passing one of the giant intersections without even looking around the corners. Celestia sucked the hot, poisoned air and tried to just run faster. Ahead was the coming door, the one place in the universe she desired to be. Octavia, slightly smaller of stature, was now nosing ahead. Another giant intersection loomed, the pair running along the body of the T, the magic door smack in the middle between either leg.

Thump.

They stopped, Celestia sliding on her toes. They reached the door together, Celestia less gracefully than her companion. Celestia wasn’t mistaken; the door was clearly navy blue with black and white swirls, dots spread throughout like stars. She didn’t hesitate to grip the silver doorknob, but a sharp shock caused her to release it instantly.

“Ow!” the princess yelled, turning away and shaking her hand out, like that would throw the pain away from her fingers like water.

“What, what?!” Octavia asked, eyes wide, wide, tensely looking up and down Celestia, then the door, then Celestia again, all within a second.

Thump.

It was louder, now, much louder. “It shocked me!” she blurted. “Keep a lookout, I’ll fry the door knob.” Octavia lifted her weapon to the ready and covered both sides and the rear as Celestia simultaneously charged her shot. She doubted a little metal knob could possibly be an obstacle after enough molecular kinetic energy to vaporize a hundred pounds of steel instantly was sent through it, but she charged her PIAR that high anyway.

Thump.

“Just one second!” Celestia whisper shouted. Her PIAR whined a higher and higher pitch, overloading higher and higher, until the heat on her supporting hand was too much to bear. Celestia screamed from the pain and gripped harder, squeezing, not jerking the trigger until it discharged.

vvvVVVVVV-THRAK!!

The door flew out off it’s hinges and impossibly exploded past them, missing both Celestia, who was right in front of it, and Octavia, who was at her shoulder. The pressure wave didn’t knock the princess back, but it did shock and deafen her. Black-blue smoke and fumes billowed out from behind the door, suffocating and blinding them both. In the chaos of the dead ship-building cavern, a creature long dormant sprang forth from the secret door of the DCC.

Celestia’s feet were taken out from under her right away, pulled by unknown forces, sending her hard to the concrete. She landed square on her ass, then fully prostrate. She was dragged silently into the midnight-black depths of the secret door, lungs emptied of any air to scream with. Octavia, however, found luck in reflexively retreating away from the door. She escaped the growing cloud and turned in place to see black masses of organic matter slithering forth like snakes. They were emanating out plodding, yet rapid, mostly blind. Octavia somehow knew if she could avoid the tendrils, or snakes, or whatever the tubular dark masses were, she had a chance of retreating further. They were dumbly seeking out, and had surely seized Celestia, but Octavia resolved to get away. They had made it here, which meant they could do anything.

The ensign shot one tentacle, vaporizing an inch or so of it’s body and severing the tip. The severed section twitched and danced itself out in a second while the rest spastically flailed in pain, grotesquely whipping it’s shorter length around. The smoking section where it had been cut off bled white goop all over. The disgusting substance solidified quickly, and the intact creature still grew and slithered, ignorantly unphased.

Octavia’s stomach churned, yet her feet knew what to do. She turned and ran away, or attempted to. She shrieked bloody murder when her feet were quickly taken out. Her rifle flew forward, and the last thing she saw before she hit the ground hard was a heavy tentacle lurch up and smash her weapon like a twig.

When she hit, she hit hard, her chest impacting the cement. The fall caused her to bounce up and flip over as she was dragged by the ankles to the smog-shrouded door.

“NO!” Octavia wheezed, out of breath. She kicked frantically, digging her heel into the living rope as much as she could. It was no use, and she was moving too fast to hope to sit up and do anything. Warm tentacles slithered around her thighs, arms, midsection, chest, hands, neck, every bit of her, and lifted Octavia into the air. She closed her eyes in the opaque blue smoke, adrenaline flowing and tears streaming. She whined one last scream before her mouth was gagged by a smaller, hot, slimy feeler.

Even though the fog suffocated her, Octavia’s nostrils cleared, and she found she could breath the hot air easily, despite the shocking situation she found herself in. When she could, Octavia opened her eyes and tried to calm her racing heart. Her breath had returned a little, so she resumed struggling. It was hopeless to fight, but she had to.

Pitch blackness engulfed her, still, but there was warmth besides the pulsing pitch organs entombing her. Octavia flexed her muscles, attempting to remove the pain digging in her side. The smooth, slippery tentacles weren’t jabbing like what was in her hip, so what was it?

She realized at once: the heat engine, the Stirling generator she had made! Even if it was useless, Octavia had one last trick. She knew if she could just undo the generator piping from the hot end muzzle of Toru’s PIAR, a blast of heat would sear whatever was in front of it. That is, if the weapon weren’t already crushed in her bag. She closed her eyes and felt with her right hand stuck to her thigh. If she could squirm just right, Octavia could do it. With luck, her best guess at the rifle’s orientation was correct, and was pointed right at a thick organic cable around both her legs. She resented the way she liked how it was squeezing her thighs and butt.

“Okay”, she mumbled around the tentacle between her teeth. Octavia breathed deeply in through her nose, then blew out around the wet, slimy, salty cord, spraying warm goo out in sticky strands. Octavia grunted, flexing and tensing up, trying her best to give her hand just a little room, that’s all she needed. She pushed her ass out and pulled the lip of her satchel up with her fingertips, then bit down on the revolting tentacle in her mouth as it squeezed her tighter.

She felt the hot metal elbow at the muzzle of the PIAR. All she needed to do was unscrew the set screw that held the generator onto the hot end, then she could yank it off, and hopefully not burn her arm too much. She decided not to think about the bots in her bloodstream that would die, releasing gamma rays and neutrons and protons and electrons and positrons and neutrinos and antineutrinos in lethal abundance in less than a microsecond, then more and more every specific half-life she could remember from power school.

She had it. With her nails, she managed to undo the two small screws a few turns and could finger loosen them out. She had it. Octavia was as good as free, at least she chose to believe, until a light suddenly came on, bathing her shut eyes in yellowish light. The tentacles spasmed and went limp within a second, jiggling and writhing as they fell, and Octavia with them.

“Hello?” a man’s voice asked from behind a desk, but Octavia couldn’t hear it. She couldn’t perceive much when she was swimming in receding adrenaline. “Hey, hello?”

Octavia flipped onto her front and brought her arms underneath her, spitting out disgusting slime and coughing up more. She heard him now, but wasn’t in much condition to get up, or even respond.

“Hey, who are you? What are you doing here?” he asked again. Somehow, Octavia thought he was younger, his voice lacking the gravel of an old man or the mirth of a true adult.

Octavia fell onto her side. She managed to prop herself up on a pile of limp jet-colored tendrils. Their texture was smooth, yet when they curled around in their limp state, Octavia saw that they were also rough in patches. Cylindrical in construction, the creature’s limbs were soft and mushy, like old fruit, yet returned to a pipe-shape when she let them go. They definitely could get firmer, Octavia vividly remembered with a shiver.

“What?” she spat, out of breath, her fingertips on her right hand throbbing from mild burns. “Where… Celestia? Where is she?”

“Our Princess Celestia, you mean?” he asked indignantly. “She was escorted into Princess Luna’s office. Answer my question, miss, or you will be asked to leave.”

What a silly thing, Octavia thought first. She opened her eyes to a brightly lit interior room, white walls with white fluorescent lights hidden behind slick fixtures. In front of her was a blurry man, his outline slowly sharpening to reveal a picture-pretty boy of a man. His neck was thin, but his features were sharp. Shoulders that sloped supported crossed, surprisingly thick arms. Octavia wiped her lips and got up, finding herself unharmed. She laughed, mostly at herself, for allowing this episode to frighten her so much.

“Octavia,” she said with confidence. “My name is Ensign Octavia, an officer in the Equestrian Royal Space Command.”

The first human in a long time sat down in his high-backed chair behind his desk. The wall behind him read:

DCC

Dream Control Center

The man, in his simple white button-up shirt with his sleeves rolled up, typed something into his computer, gave Octavia a blatant appraisal with his blue eyes, and sat back. “Well,” he said with a sigh. “You’re in the system alright, but you’re early for your appointment.”

“My what?” Octavia asked, lifting her arms and remembering she didn’t have what she held more dear than anything. Well, almost anything. She crossed her arms under her slime-covered chest instead. “You… aren’t concerned with… with this?” Octavia asked with a gesture. “I-I mean-”

“Did I stutter, lady? Your appointment.” He spoke louder and slower, a serious pet peeve of the furious woman. He interlaced his fingers and ran his back and forth across his soft, perfectly styled black hair. “But since the Princess’s schedule for tonight was flexible anyway, I’m going to risk MY neck JUST for you, and call in to see if we can’t get YOU what YOU want.”

Octavia ground her teeth like she wanted to grind his face into the white wall, or his white desk. Appearantly, being abducted and bound by a monstrous alien creature and dragged into the office was a common occurrence. He cracked his fingers and sighed, like it was a great burden to reach for the intercom. It buzzed, and he asked into it: “Your Perfection?” and waited.

It was tough not to roll her eyes, but self-control was a virtue to Octavia.

They made eye-contact while he waited for a response, and Octavia neither showed discontent nor impatience. She also did not blink.

“What is it, Thalamus?” a giggling woman asked through the clear speaker. Octavia’s stolid stare was shaken when she recognized a second voice there, underneath, not tense but smooth, sweet, as if she wasn’t just abducted against her will. Celestia was inside, supposedly with Luna. Both princess, here? Despite her best efforts, especially after tonight, Octavia was surprised.

“Your Supremacy, your three o’clock is here early. Shall I send her in?” He let his finger off, but remained near the intercom like a dog waiting for a treat.

“YES! Oh my gosh, yes! H-hold on Celestia, Octavia’s here!” The intercom went blank for a moment, but the secretary and the officer could clearly hear muffled discussions. “Octavia, come on back, sweetie. I’ve been w-watch it, Celestia! Try that again and you-”

The intercom cut off this time. Thalamus, if that was his actual name, was unphased. He shot the red-faced woman a look a mocking sibling might give. “You heard her,” he said condescendingly. “Go back there.”

He turned and resumed whatever pointless business there was on his computer. Octavia dropped her satchel into the crook of her arm and watched her step as she walked to the door on the right. Reverting to her Academy days, she knocked solidly three times and entered.