Aliens: Consuming Equestria
Chapter 7

There is a fine line where someone who has been though harsh suffering in the past and survived only to do it again snaps. It’s not quite anger, but anxiety. Ripley had seen it all before, twice, and she knew what was coming next. There was no stopping the same formula from happening again now. She had almost gotten used to the nightmare about to come, but she snapped all the same. She snapped because of that anxiety: she could have prevented history from repeating itself but fell short of doing so, leading it to happening again. You might have thought that she has become a veteran of this scenario – and in other circumstances she might have taken up that status – but the simple thought of these innocent, harmless, colourful creatures were the ones to die this time got to her. The humans she had seen die had long since lost her respect, but it became hard to hate these ponies, she could tell from the shocked and sometimes distraught faces of the ponies that there were many in their communities that upheld the same belief as she did; that there were only a few who had other intentions. The anxiety returned: this world was doomed already. Its people were doomed.

Ripley would not let that happen.

But first, she had to escape the situation she had found herself in now. In what she presumed was a medical section of a larger facility that she had had the Queen removed from her in; said Queen now likely laying more eggs after the lesser beings had escaped in record time; a collection of likely defenceless ponies that she is also powerless to save in time. The only ponies she had much hope of saving at the moment were these two scientists standing before her, and it wasn’t as if she particularly wanted to save these two anyway. They fell into the category of ponies not following her ideals.

“What are we going to do?” the scientists began to wail in despair. “How did it escape? How do we escape?”

“Look,” Ripley intervened, “Stop panicking! You’ll only attract them by making noise, which will only decrease the time it will take for them to find and kill you.”

That shut them up.

Ripley sat back for a moment to collect her thoughts on what to do. They needed to act fast, and if they execute a hasty plan correctly, they might have enough time to stop the infestation at the facility, stopping it from spreading to the entire planet – maybe even saving some of the ponies in this now probably eerie facility. Ripley can even picture it now. Each wall smeared with blood, a particular trail leading from the metal hall into a small window-less room with a strong sliding metal door. As she approached it, the desperate screams of hapless ponies became louder and louder, till the blood-curling screeching became nearly unbeara-

“AH!” Ripley jumped from her morbid vision. Everyone in the room looked concerned at her.

Ripley took no notice of them, only shaking her head to loosen the images from her mind.

Shortly, she announced a plan.

“Alright, if we act fast, we can contain the Xenomorphs in this building, assuming they haven’t already gotten out. You”, she said pointing towards the scientists. “How many Xenos did you create?”

“What?” the female scientist replied in confusion. “What do you mean ‘create’?”

“As in how many did you impregnate into ponies to get your specimens?”

“While we are aware of the specimen’s nature to impregnate, we don’t know how and don’t intend to impregnate a specimen.”

“Don’t talk bullshit. I can tell what you scientists are like. As soon as you saw the Queen laying eggs you would have put ponies on tables in seconds.”

“She lays eggs?”

Ripley had a brief epiphany. What if they genuinely weren’t like that? What if she had been wrong about their intentions all along?

She could think about that later, for now the plan.

“So, none is what you are trying to say?”

“Exactly,” the male scientist said.

“Right, well in that case we can only guess that there are ponies being cocooned at the moment so we don’t have to deal with many Xenos right now. What we need to do is get down to the where the Queen is and exterminate her ASAP. Do you know where the Queen is, and are there any safety measures that we can use to destroy her?”

“Yes.... and no,” the male scientist responded.

“You don’t have any safety measures here?” Ripley asked, her mouth gaping.

“We didn’t need any. The animals we research here are usually smaller than a timberwolf. They didn’t pose much of a threat and so we just hired a few guards with magically electronic rods. We didn’t expect the Queen to get so big, so we put her in an empty section of the warehouse out back fitted with harnesses to hold her in place and stationed most of our guards apart from the entrance guards there.

“No wonder it got out so fast,” Dwayne exclaimed. “It had practically no resistance to encounter. Electric rods? It took us the entire vacuum of space for us to defeat one of those things!” The scientists’ faces deflated.

“What is the level of security in this place other than useless guards? Are the doors metal and automated?”

“We have a much more advanced level of door security than even the Royal Castle because of our own individual technological advances. The doors are stronger and activated through a series of magical crystals that hook up to each door separately. If a breach in the sector is discovered by motion sensing magic, then the critical staff doors seal to avoid any creatures entering the staff only areas until help arrives.”

“Seems reasonable,” stated Dwayne. “The doors sound like they should be able to hold off the bugs till some form of ‘pony military’ shows up to deal with the problem.”

“Excellent!” the female scientist exclaimed excitedly. “We should head towards the hall that leads to the exit. It is currently working hours, so all of the doors will be unlocked. We can shut the doors with our magic, but you must first use a key to enable us to shut the doors. It’s just a little safety measure to make sure a random unicorn doesn’t just waltz in and shut or open all the doors without authorisation.”

“Well let’s get going!” Ripley hurried.

“Wait!” the male scientist called looking concerned. “What about the others in the facility? Shouldn’t we try and help them?”

“Don’t worry,” the female scientist said reassuringly, “The staff doors should protect them, remember brother? Your friends will be alright.”

“Of course... almost forgot about the doors.”

At last, Ripley jumped out of her bed and picked up Bishop while Dwayne shouldered Newt and the six exited the room into the hallway.

The hallway was clean with white walls with small slit windows and coloured lines with labels leading to different colour coded areas of the facility. A black line led them to a small, narrow corridor with a more worn feel to it. Some parts of the walls were cracked and the paint was severely damaged to the point where most parts of the wall were just completely black. In some corners and edges of the walls, nature was taking its course as small weeds and patches of green were showing and growing more prominent the close to the exit the corridor got.

The doors were as the scientists had said: they looked to be made out of titanium and through a double glazed window that went the entire span of corridor you could see small purple crystals each in a small pedestal on the wall. The room behind the glass was clearly some form of work station for a few receptionists with office chairs and a small opening in the glass to talk through. Besides each opening was a cash-machine, though each one was rusted and looked like abandoned.

“Did you used to be open to visitors or something?” Dwayne enquired.

“Yes, but due to an accident with a visitor who fell into an exhibit with a strange species of giant crab, the facility was nearly shut down, but instead only limited to not having any unauthorised visitors. The poor pony wasn’t killed, not even hurt that much. They had only suffered minor scrapes from the fall and emotional trauma. It’s hard to remain particularly calm when you have just fallen into a pit with at least ten giant crabs sitting next to you after all.”

They began their operation. The female scientist gave Ripley a key and a sheet of complicated manoeuvres to do in order to unlock the crystal’s locking ability. The series was very time consuming and made even more difficult by the lack of light bar a red flashing light accompanied by an annoying repeating recorded message.

There were three doors in the surprisingly short corridor, and after only seven minutes, they were still on the first. Despite Ripley’s haste to get everything done quickly, she was unable to complete the sequence quickly the first time round. However, after ten minutes of bending over and squinting at a sheet of paper, the first door was complete. Ripley quickly picked up Bishop and charged over to the second door before the unicorns had a moment to shut the first. Now more familiar with the sequence, Ripley was able to complete it a bit quicker.

Half way through the second door sequence, a low growling noise echoed through the halls of the facility.

“She’s ordering the mature Xeno...” Ripley quickly realised. “Where is the mature lesser Xenomorph?”

“That’s actually not too far from here,” the female scientist answered. Soon, she too realised what was amiss.

“We need to hurry.” The rest all nodded in agreement.

Ripley, despite now knowing the sequence, still had to glance at the paper but the light was dimmer nearer the centre of the corridor right in between the two red lights in the corridor. This meant they potentially took longer this time around than the last to lock the door.

In the distance, though inaudible to the rest, Bishop could hear a small scuttling noise. One part of him that was still fully intact was his auditory system which could hear vast frequencies others couldn’t. The Xenomorph was approaching.

“We need to hurry up,” Bishop stated, “And not for our sake either.” Ripley looked to see what he meant. She realised that if the Xenomorph came, the motion sensing magic would shut the staff doors and lock the two scientists in, their only asset to finding out how to get back to civilisation. The doors were also very slow, so maybe they might be able to escape, but the Xenomorph was also faster. The doors closed from the floor up, which would be no problem for the Xenomorph.
Ripley’s pace sped up considerably.

The second door was complete, and Ripley was very familiar with the sequence by now, or at least as familiar as she would ever be.

The scientists had seemed to work out by themselves that time was of the essence for them, so they had their horns prepped to activate the crystal way ahead of time.

One minute:

Ripley expertly twisted the key, but still didn’t have the sequence down to memory. At least the light was brighter here.

Two minutes:

Dwayne had the idea to read the instructions to her to speed up the process.

Three minutes:

The scientists were growing anxious by now, sweat visibly dripping from their foreheads.

Four minutes:

The sequence was almost complete. Only a few turns to go.

“I’m almost there!” Ripley announced.

Suddenly, a loud sound of metal grinding emitted right by them.

“No!” the scientists shouted in unison.

Finally, Ripley turned the key for the last time and ripped it out of the lock, breaking it in the process.

“Do it!” she screamed.

“We can’t! The key is still in the lock!” the scientists screamed desperately back.

Dwayne quickly looked down to see half of the key sticking out of the lock. He quickly pulled, but failed to pull it out. He tried again more cautiously, eventually pulling it out. The scientists hastily charged the crystal and turned to vault the door, but when they turned, it was too late.

Ripley and Dwayne grabbed hold of the top of the door and tried hopelessly to pull it down. On the other side, the male scientist had embraced the despairing female who was clutching at his chest, the male shedding a few tears of his own. A low growl sounded next to them.

Dwayne had stopped pulling, but Ripley pressed on with her assault on the door. She screamed at the door and punched it, begging it to move. Dwayne eased her off of her attack. She soon saw why.

The small window in the staff door was blood red, the liquid showing clear signs of being smeared across the glass. A small crack had appeared on the glass where something hard – a head maybe – was smashed into it.

Ripley’s anxiety had returned. She had once again failed to save someone. She did not allow herself to cry, but hanged her head dejectedly. All that made it worse was the silent disembodied cries of agony in her mind, her imagination giving her a noise to centre her guilt around. It tormented her, the anxiety. It was something she never wanted to experience again.

The four of them left the building through the exit which was a set of metal double doors, clearly recently polished to shine cleanly. It was like a beacon of hope; a light where it reflected the light so brightly. It was a change from the grungy corridor they had endured at least half an hour in. The outside was even more relieving. There were fields of long grass wet from morning dew that sparkled like stars in the slightly dim early morning. A few metres off were at least fifty ponies all with white coats and blue manes in bright golden armour that had a slight purple hue like an aura of sorts. A large cart carried by two more ponies in the same armour was being rushed towards them. It had a large red cross on it, like in a hospital on Earth.

A larger pony came beside them.

“Are there any other ponies inside?” the pony asked.

“We don’t know,” replied Dwayne, “But there are probably casualties. We know of two in the reception room. Be careful as well, the cause of their death is in there also.”

“The Xenomorph? Excellent, we won’t need to venture too far into the facility to find it then. Thank you for your cooperation citizen.”The pony then went over to a squadron of what one could only assume were a rescue squad and relayed orders to them: “We shall quarantine the Xenomorph and then head inside to find survivors. Check the staff rooms first.” The ponies all then entered the facility whilst the humans and android entered the large cart and headed back to Ponyville, leaving the military ponies to work.

Author's Note

I'm slowly running out of chapter names.