So An Engineer and A Librarian Walk Into A Laboratory…

WARNING: THIS CHAPTER AND THE FOLLOWING CHAPTERS CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR DEAD SPACE 3

"Ellie? Ellie…" said CEC Engineer Isaac Clarke as he fell away into the Convergence Vortex. He had just caught the transmission that Ellie Langford, his girlfriend, had sent out before she had shocked off to Earth, her job done. However, Isaac had to be left behind, bits of the planet known as Tau Volantis falling past him into the vortex. The destruction of the Brethren Moon had left it unstable, causing it to spin around faster and faster. It was sucking things up, but there was no known place to put them. Isaac just let himself float into the vortex before falling unconscious.

When he came to, Isaac saw something he thought he'd never see again: a blue sky. He slowly sat up, his Engineering RIG activating the helmet sequence and covering his face with pieces of brownish-yellow metal. Three eye slits glowed a neon blue when the whole helmet was in place, and a screen popped up in front of him. It was a RIGLINK video feed, but he didn't know whose it was.

"That's odd…" the engineer said to himself. It showed a man in black armor holding a pistol to the back of another person that wore a Special Forces RIG, whose eye slits were red. He was breathing heavy, but he eventually shouted out, "I'll fucking kill each and every one of you, EVERY SINGLE ONE!"

Off the screen, a woman gave a slight laugh and said, "Oh, there's no way you're getting out of this one. You've got so many guns trained on you, you'd think you were red and white! Now, this is where we say goodbye. You are hereby dishonorably discharged from the Equestrian Armed Forces, Lieutenant Killswitch."

Just as a shot rang out and the RIGLINK cut, Isaac yelled, "CARVER, NO!" He was too late, though. He couldn't connect back to who he suspected was his partner in crime on Tau Volantis, John Carver. Isaac groaned and kicked a tree, causing a few woodland creatures to scurry away and someone in hiding to give a little scream, along with some leaves rustling.

THUD! A large purple thing fell from the tree Isaac kicked and hit the ground hard. Isaac jumped back and reached for his 211-V Plasma Cutter, only to find out that it was missing. "Damnit!" he yelled, pointing his left hand at the purple thing and priming his Stasis module, a low hum coming from it.

Suddenly, the thing groaned and tried to stand up. Isaac saw that it had four legs, a snout, abnormally large eyes, and… a horn? He wiped his visor, thinking there was something on it. However, when he looked again, the horn was still on the animal, now back on its feet. Isaac knew unicorns didn't exist, but there it was, standing in front of him, exhibiting major signs of a fear reaction. Nevertheless, the unicorn stood as straight as it could, still trembling, and asked, "What… what are you?"

That was the final straw for Isaac. "Stay back, don't you dare move!" he yelled. The creature stood still. "Alright," he continued, "wh-what the hell are you?!"

Finally, the unicorn spoke again. "Well, I'm a unicorn. My name is Twilight Sparkle." She stuck a hoof out at Isaac, who rejected the offer. "Unicorns aren't real, you can't be a unicorn!" he shouted, as if to convince himself of that simple fact. Is the Marker doing this to me again? the engineer thought to himself. Twilight nervously chuckled and said, "Well… they are, and I am. Let me show it to you."

Suddenly, before Isaac could react, he was enveloped in a lavender aura and lifted up off the ground. He flailed around, but to no avail. "H-hey, put me down!" he yelled, trying to use his suit's boosters to land on the ground. Twilight slowly lowered him until he was a few inches off of the ground, then released her magic grip. Isaac stumbled a bit before saying, "That proves nothing, you're probably using a Kinesis module. Magic isn't real either. Besides, I can do that too." He aimed his left hand at a stick on the ground, which instantly flew to his hand and stayed there, pointing in the same direction Isaac was. He then aimed at a tree in the distance and willed the artificial gravity field to fire the stick at it. Instead, it dropped to the ground in front of him.

"What…?" Isaac muttered, turning his arm over and inspecting the Kinesis module. He saw the metal partly crushed and groaned. "Goddamnit, it broke! And there's no place to get it fixed in… wherever the fuck this place is!"

Twilight cautiously trotted up to Isaac and looked at the Kinesis module, then cast a spell that covered it in the same lavender aura. Suddenly, the metal pieces started to shudder and shake, and the module began repairing itself. Isaac gazed in awe at what he was seeing. "How are you doing that?" he asked, and the lavender unicorn replied, "I told you that magic existed."

Soon, the whole piece was fixed, and Twilight said, "Try it now." Isaac picked the stick back up and once again willed the artificial gravity field to fire the stick at a closer tree. Not only did it fire, but the module had become so powerful that the stick had left a sizable hole in the trunk. "Woah…" whispered the engineer, whose helmet started to fold back into his RIG. He turned to Twilight and asked, "How did you do that?" The unicorn simply said, "Magic."

Before Isaac could respond, though, a small red holo-display popped up in front of him. In the middle was scrolling text that read "Transmission Intercepted". From a speaker on the outside of Isaac's suit, the woman's voice from before said, "You heard what she said! There was remnants of a Convergence event found over the Everfree half an hour ago! We've either got a Marker or an unexpected visitor on our hands and hooves! Arm yourselves to the teeth and carry out the necessary procedures!" The holo-display then blinked out of existence, leaving the engineer staring where it had been.

"What… what was that?" Twilight asked. Isaac shook his head and said, "Twilight Sparkle… that was a warning. We have to get out of here now, quickly and without raising an alarm! What's the nearest town?" The unicorn stood up straight, the fear leaving her, and said, "Well, I can take you to my library in Ponyville. How about that?"

Isaac nearly started to argue about the fact that the town was called Ponyville, but there were more pressing matters on his mind. "Good, we can go through this forest. Let's go." As he started walking into the Everfree Forest, Twilight called, "But sir, we can't go in there! There's a lot of dangerous animals in there!" When no answer came, she followed after the strange man in the metal suit and said, "This is a very bad idea, you know!"

"Stick around!" he called back. "I'm full of bad ideas!"