The Never

Block #1/Pt 1

>You are a thing

>You know not from whence you came

>Nor do you know where you went

>You may be cotton-eyed, but you cannot say for certain

>All that you know for certain is your polymorphous nature and mind-crushing hunger.

>Well, that and the DAMNED LIGHT that never goes away.

>How long it's been bugging you is a mystery, hours or years? it all runs together.

>You'd snuff it out in an instant if you could reach it, but some kind of insane clear wall keeps you back.

>Of course, you'd break that too if you had any room to move.

>Of course, you can't have nice things.

>You get polished metal instead. Polished metal without corners to exploit and split. Not even imperfections int the metal to slip into and strain.

>Fuck all of this!

>You just want out and not even the seams between the metal and the clear magical bullshit have any give.

>Something built this to keep you in, monsters if you had to guess.

>Something out to torture you with hunger, isolation and FUCKING LIGHT.

>More than once had you removed all the eyes from your body to escape the light, it didn't work. You always felt it, always knew it was there.

>Well that, and the sensory deprivation and sickening disorientation.

>The slick walls all but robbed you of your textile senses.

>The only smell was your own, sickening in and of itself not in filth, but of sterility.

>Sound only entered the cell when creatures were nearby. Talking meat, nonsensical and muffled as it was conversed just out of reach.

>They taunted you just by existing. They taunted you by keeping you locked in a tiny capsule without food, without water and without air.

>The cell seemed so much larger than you remember.

>Probably from all the biomass you've burned just to keep from suffocating.

>All of this wouldn't be nearly so bad if you could close your eyes without undergoing vertigo every. Single. Time.

>At some point something decided gravity was too good for you and took it away.

>Fuck all of this.

>Fuck all that was- all that is- fuck all that will be!

[Pt 2]

>For the thousandth time, you ponder tearing the neural mesh running through your body, letting these last shreds of your tattered mind slip into a feral mass of hunger and violence.

>Maybe that's what they want.

>Those things always became more animated when you struck at the clear wall whenever they tapped on it.

>Was there ever anything beyond the little cell?

>Beyond the little white room?

>Beyond THAT FUCKING LIGHT?!

>You thrash at your confines for the millionth time, every fiber of muscle and sinew direct toward violence.

>For the millionth time, it does nothing.

>You can't even damage the mirror finish with what little energy you have left.

>Shapeshifting is all but impossible at this point.

>As always, you look to the world outside of your own.

>Just white panels, some black squares, assorted bits of metal in all shapes you could ever imagine and bits of colored string running from thing to thing.

>Little lines of black covered covered almost every surface, you know it to be a means of communication, texts of some indecipherable language.

>At the center of it all is a bright- fucking- white light.

>You almost break into another fit, almost tear what little of you remains apart just to spite it.

>Something stopped you.

>The light, of all things, stopped you.

>It never switched off. In hours or years, it never went off.

>It swiched off.

[3]

>Red washed over everything you've ever known.

>It's as if the wavelength revolted against the white tyranny and bourgeoisie.

>Viva la revolution! Za rodinu! Row row fight the power!

>Blinking strips of green lights ran along the walls of the outside world, flowing towards one side of the room.

>The brief surge of elation that tries to enter your mind is washed away by the worst vertigo you could ever imagine.

>A rainbow of sparking colors floods the inside of your senses.

>You can smell the purple.

>You don't get to think about that before being slammed against one side of the tube that is your world.

>Sound has arrived.

>It's shuddering, it wants to stop, it wants to go away. It's a thrashing, rumbling groan that fills everything in vibrations too strong to be called sound.

>Whispering under it is a call of distress. A cry of alarm canned in a machine.

>It taunts your instinct to silence such calls.

>More taunting is the movement outside the clear wall.

>Meat has entered the room.

>All kinds of meat, different shapes and sizes. Some furred, some bald, some clawed and toothed in ways that feel familiar.

>They're not in their normal colors and not just from the glorious change in lighting.

>For a second you wonder if they're there because of the lights, just to stomp out the lone joy you had ever known.

>They were ready for something, their colors more muted and covered in plating.

>The bald and the furred ones wore some kind of squared stripping colors under metal plates and some flexible containers.

>The larger and toothy ones were whiter than you recall, much puffier too.

>All of them had large squares on their backs and ribber tentacles running to odd buckets with shiny golden fronts under their arms.

>You can make out their panicked calls over the roar shaking the world.

>There are words in the mix, however any meaning escapes you.

>They're flailing around against the new "down" that has you pressed against the side of your cell.

[4]

>After more cries of fear and rage, they've donned the buckets onto their uppermost sensory protrusions.

>There's probably a name for it that you don't know of.

>One of the big ones crawls right up to the glass wall just a few small units of measure away from your eyes.

>Another vibration adds itself to the fray.

>A "click" followed by several "clink!"s.

>Downwards shifts all around as your perspective shifts with it and brings all sorts of new wonders that you'd never seen in the world.

>More white panels, glorious black squares- ones covered in little green lights and texts! Metal racks filled with capsules covered in colorful stripes and big words.

>You don't know what the lines "BIOHAZARD" or "LEVEL 7" or "EXOTIC EXOSOLAR LIFE" mean, but they sure look neat!

>One of the furred meats, you can tell by the shape of its back legs, grabs the metal bits around one of the capsules and pulls it free.

>This one had "LEVEL 5" on its holder, and you can't help but wonder if, perhaps, something else was inside it suffering the same fate as you.

>The meat hefted the canister over to a big box in a corner of the room you've never seen.

>A box next to what you figured was a door- a door you've never seen! It probably went somewhere even neater!

>There was a hole in the box covered by a door just as big as the capsule was around.

>Predictably, the meat loaded it into the hole and closed the door.

>You don't know what "EMERGENCY INCINERATOR" or "START" mean, but it's probably important.

>Several increments of time time pass as meats rush around the room, some entering, some exiting.

>They're all in a hurry. It's like they don't like the red lights.

>Maybe you and those red lights could become good friends, you have a common interest it seems.

[5]

>The door on the box swung open and a capsule came out.

>Not the same one, all the colors were gone, the clear part was open and there was a whole bunch of black on the whole thing.

>You note that you're getting closer to the same box.

>The direction of "down" has once again stopped existing.

>The roar has stopped.

>Silence reigns for several more short spans of time.

>It returned in full force.

>Downwards has shifted ninety degrees.

>The direction of "down" now makes sense in orientation to the room, but the meats don't seem to be ready for that.

>They cry out as one and fall to the floor with everything not secured following suite.

>This includes you.

>Your little world clatters against the white paneling slower and softer than your mind says such a fall would entail.

>One of the normally bald meats tries to grab hold of your apparently portable cell that is now facing "up".

>Downwards shifts to a new direction not quite halfway between the last two.

>From your equilibrium's perspective, you're now on a very steep incline.

>Your world agrees.

>It's caught somewhere between falling and rolling down the room.

>That new and exiting door is growing closer and much more exciting as the distance dissolves.

>The world "clank!"s off the side of the open portal.

>Down quickly returns to it's original "sideways" pull.

>This makes the world fall faster through a closely set pair of doors marked with glowing lettering set above them.

>Everything is spinning too fast to make our much of anything. Shiny bits and white panels are all that stands out enough to identify.

>All to suddenly the world comes to a halt.

>A wet "thunk" signals your arrival in some new, admittedly cramped but otherwise exciting place.

>A wetter streak covers most of the clear wall.

[6]

>The world shifts slightly, allowing a view of the tunnel you just fell down.

>A few of the bald meats that had acquired plating are climbing down.

>There's a few of them in their normal colors trying to crawl back up.

>They're all making noises and pointing at your world.

>You aren't exactly certain you want to understand them anymore.

>There's at least five of them entering the area you've fallen into.

>One of the sets of doors closes once they've entered.

>Pretty green lights encircle it.

>The center of it even has something written in green on it "SEALED."

>One of them seems distraught by this, pointing and making more loud noises at the door.

>If you had to guess, it doesn't like green. Pity, it was fast becoming your second favorite color.

>Another ignores the distressed one's scene and instead pushes your world aside.

>The view becomes nothing but some sort of complex metal work and the wet streak on the clear wall.

>It too was taunting you.

>So, so close was fluid. You don't even care what kind at this point, you'd drink poison if it gave an instant of refreshment.

>In your focus on that dripping streak, you barely notice the change in sound.

>Creaks and groans have begun to overtake the all-encompassing roar.

>The world around yours is shaking like it's trying to dislodge itself from something.

>You don't know what, you could barely imagine anything bigger than what you've seen.

>Those creaks and groans are building up.

>It's becoming one wretched screech of unnatural agony.

>A final spike of sound ushers in the loudest thing you could comprehend.

>It hits you as much physically as you hear it.

>Gravity is gone.

>Spinning is the new down.

[7]

>The roar is gone.

>That too was a pity.

>It was replaced by a softer whooshing and blasting rush of existence.

>That couldn't drown out the screaming coming from all around you.

>The sound itself annoyed you as much as it drove a spike into your mind demanding you silence the meat.

>It didn't help that you were spinning inside a spinning world within a spinning world.

>If you still had a stomach, it would be turning inside out.

>You don't know how long this lasts, it feels like an eternity.

>Eternity is shattered by the outside world flipping over one last time and snapping to one orientation.

>Your little world is slammed against something harder than it.

>For the first time in your memory, something about your world has changed.

>A thin web runs across the clear wall.

>Your examination of this is prevented by a crush of sound and violence.

>A "prang!" smacks off the face of your world and swats you away from the wall.

>You feel a spike bent into the metal.

>This doesn't keep your attention when you glance out the clear wall and find something harmful to your reference frame.

>There is something beyond the wall.

>Ceiling, rather.

>An almost endless field of dark blue speckled with white dots lays on the other side of a tattered hole.

>Strings and bits of unknown materials flutter up towards an amazing circle of orange.

>A large tentacle held the circle to the outside world for reasons unknown.

>That circle would look so much nicer if it wasn't full of raggedy holes.

>You spare a glance to the side and catch another tattered hole to the side.

>The field of blue fades into harsh white and ends abruptly at a solid line of deep blue.

>That whooshing has gotten much louder as well and some whistling has started.

>Down below you can see streaks of orange passing you on their way to that mass of blue nothingness.

>You close your eyes.

>You don't want to think about how small you are, let alone see it.

>This time you don't feel that light mocking you.

>This time you can embrace the fear.

[8]

>You are Anon.

>Congrats on that, by the way.

>You are not a happy Anon.

>It's 5:42am and you are not where you want to be.

>Bed would be the place to be around now.

>Instead, you're cramped in a small office without air conditioning with eight other people.

>Well, ponies,  a pair of griffins, a minotaur and two other humans.

>It's 5:43am and this room now smells like a barn mixed with a sweat lodge.

>Computer fans whirl all around you to keep themselves alive.

>Smoke chokes the air from an unattended ashtray full of half-burnt depressants.

>Light streams through the blinds that are trying their damnedest to hold back the sunrise.

"Why in God's name are we here on an all-hands?" you demand.

>At the desk is a young earth pony shrinking away from the attention.

>He takes a few tries to get started, "There's a large inbound radar contact- it appeared with a severe bowshock and F-T-L emission that just about fried our receivers. We got a call from Iskra's mages yelling about magical disruptions so we put it together and issued an all-hands."

>One of the griffins stood next to the pony.

>Staff Sergeant Hauker was a large and gruff sort that looked his rank.

>"We  know for certain that this is some type of spacecraft. Based on the estimated size before it broke up, it's carrying a lot of something," he motioned to the pony at the desk, "These boys picked out some larger chunks falling slow enough that they had to be powered or on 'chutes. That's well and good, except some of them tracked around an inhabited island."

>"That's where we come in, aye?" the minotaur asked. His voice dripped of action-movie shithead.

>Hauker's stare almost hurts to look at, "No shit. The Equestrians sure as hell saw it and chances are they're already on their way."

>He slips between the crush of bodies and towards the door, "You fagots are heading up the advance team, grab your shit, all the newfags you can and tell them what's up. Standard op procs, no witnesses. Fuckin' move."

>You are Anon, and you may be a henchman.

[9]

>Outside the shitty excuse for an operations center the air itself is alive with activity.
>This little "base" is the home to all special operations activities in the divide between Equestria and the Griffin Empire.
>Why yes, you are a banana republic island chain.
>A banana republic smack dab in the middle of the ocean between the world's superpowers.
>A banana republic so small neither nation has actually noticed you yet.
>A banana republic that has just issued an "all hands" alert to bring its entire military to bare.
>And somehow, you've managed to end up as the meatshield for the special forces.
>On the bright side, you're on a tropical island and paid well.
>On the other hand, these tropical islands are shitholes and good pay doesn't mean much when there's barely enough resources to go around.
>And the viscous cycle continues while you double-time it to the wooden shack that was your unit's armory.
>You are the de-facto head of the redshirts of your unit.
>It's already humid as hell and you can see dark clouds on the horizon from this hilltop base.
>The "Spetsgruppa" members of your team and the others are all standing outside their armories, ready to go and looking operator as fuck.
>Fuckers think they're cool.
>You swat the door open to the shack and enter.
>It's basically a messy tool shed, but full of weapons instead of shovels.
>Well, there's shovels too, but still.
>Loose weapons and rounds mix with gear, it's like a surplus store exploded into one room.
>There's a pair of unicorns and a pair of pizza-faced kids gathering up supplies. These are your red shirts, there are many like them, but these ones are yours.
>You don't bother to know their names, it's easier to count the survivors of your unit than to count the casualties.
>It only takes a moment to explain what you know, that is to say, very little.
>You gather what little gear you have and make the others carry the ammo and heavy shit, because fuck that noise.

[10]

>The team leader, Cinnamint, a unicorn eyes you through her sunglasses and you nod to her.
>She leads everyone down a dirt trail through half a mile of jungle down to the water.
>All things considered, you've been fitting in well as a barely trained civilian.
>You weren't even a /k/ommando, you only went camping a few times.
>Now you are a conscript meatshield.
>If you didn't know any better, you'd think you'd become the black guy in this horror movie.
>And no, you weren't a super cool soldier-man who was badass enough to survive.
>You are lucky and distracting enough for the grown ups to make the monsters go away.
>No hyperbole there, your team hunts monsters.
>And ghosts.
>And magical demons.
>You are Spetsgruppa Б's monster bait and you are very good at it.
>On your plain mauve uniform is a patch, an iconic patch of a ghost in a "no" symbol.
>They call your team the "Ghost Busters" for very good reason.
>These crazy bastards do it with enchanted shotguns and old fashion flamethrowers.
>WARNING: DO NOT USE IN LIBRARIES
>The path followed the shoreline to a cluster of buildings and docks.
>No two vessels in the small harbor were alike, just about every step in nautical evolution had a representative.
>The particular vessel you'll be boarding is a pile of lumber built around several thousand horsepower of diesel engine who's original hull had been laid down in 1943.
>Behind your group is a trail of mixed conscripts in clusters lead by the people you'd seen in the control center.
>Nearly thirty in all, plus the boat's large crew meant at least forty people would be crammed aboard the eighty foot patrol boat.
>You won't dare to try to count the Marines boarding the larger vessels, it'll probably amount to the entire branch.
>Even the optimists in charge here are expecting mass casualties.
>They are expecting to have to invade Equestrian islands.
>You are set to be the first one on the ground.
>You are going to die.

[11]

>You are a thing
>All that you know for certain is your polymorphous nature and mind-crushing hunger.
>Well, that and the damned light that never goes away.
>You want it to stop. You don't want to open your eyes again.
>Every time it's the same thing.
>The same cursed light, the same unbreakable metal, the same taunting clear wall.
>You shiver. 'Why?' you beg the nothingness in silence. It doesn't answer.
>Why you? Why this? Were you made to suffer? To shrivel and die?
>Is that what you are? Are you a simple mind weaved to see what happens?
>You have many mouths, but you cannot bring yourself to scream.
>Resigned, you open your eyes.
>Bright white light.
>Damn it.
>You sigh in defeat.
>You... sigh...
>You sigh?
>A foreign touch caresses your skin. So alien, yet so familiar.
>It's... the flow of air. Something you would have dreamed of if you had ever dreamed more than breaking that light.
>It takes a moment to focus on the sensory inputs you're receiving. They don't compute.
>The light is brighter. It's stained red. It's not surrounded by white panels.
>There's blue, an infinite field of it.
>Another gentle tease washes over you.
>Your attention turns to the clear wall. Half of it is there.
>Where was the rest?
>Wait.
>That means half of it is gone.
>You reach for it, knowing full well it's just a trick. Your tendril will stop and things will be normal again.
>It keeps going.
>Wat.
>All of your energy releases at once as your force yourself through the gap.
>The clear stuff is thick and sharp in ways you've never known, but the pain is worth it.
>You're... outside.
>Inside the room your world was last in, but still!.
>It was in far, far worse shape than you remember. Little more than splinters and curled metal remained.
>Underneath your old world and several other containers was the most wonderful thing you've seen since... all the other wonderful things.
>Red matter, a chunky paste of biomass. Meat.
>If you had provisions to cry, you would.
>You feed.
>You live.

[12]

>Waves crash against the shore while others lap against the planking of the Patrol Torpedo Boat.
>Over this is the bubbling roar of three fifteen-hundred horsepower diesel engines and the screams of six turbochargers.
>The sky has turned and you can pick out distant thunder.
>It will be dark soon.
>Right.
>Fifty tons of wood and steel cuts through the coastal water as you check the last of your gear.
>Everyone is on high-alert now. Dozens of weapons, personal or mounted are pointed at the shoreline and the sky just above it.
>This would be very badass and all if this wasn't a boat full of fucktards.
>You can see at least two muskets with bayonets fixed mixed in with the rest.
>Yeah, there's like a handful of competent people with a few dozen battle-bubbas.
>Your radio is alive with indecipherable chatter and you swear being near a radio gives people a speech impediment.
>The boat is entering an inlet at speed. Some griffins already scouted it out, but it's still dangerous getting to shore.
>They've cut power and the hull slams back off its hydroplane and begins coasting up to the coast.
>Once close enough, you climb onto the small rail at the edge of the deck, your redshirts follow just behind.
"C'mon!" you shout. "Davai!"
>You jump off into the shallow water below.
>Halfway down you realize something horrible.
>You're going to have wet boots for the rest of the mission.
>Too bad.
>You splash into chest-deep water and start wading to the rocky beach.
>Countless more splashes sound behind you as most everyone disembarks.
>Within a minute, everyone is ashore and soaking wet.
>Engines rev up and the boat races away, leaving thirty four people to search and capture an island.
>What could possibly go wrong?

[13]

>You are alive.
>All you know is your polymorphous nature and that this must be a dream or some sick mind game.
>That meat helped a lot, but it was far too good to be real.
>Your mind is much clearer and you can finally afford to repair yourself.
>There's massive gaps in your memory and in your mind itself.
>You're lucid enough to know that you aren't functioning properly.
>The old world is tiny now, only half of your mass could be crammed into it.
>Sadly, you couldn't learn anything from the meat. There wasn't any activity left in its neural system, no thoughts or memories to take.
>Its body was too destroyed to be worth trying to mimic, so fuel and proteins it became.
>However, that was still helpful.
>You force several legs from your form and lift yourself from the pile of debris.
>For the first time you can recall, you walk free of the ruined world.
>There's lots of life. No meat.
>You know there's names for what your seeing, you just don't know what they are.
>Green surrounds you and the shattered machinery. Big green, little green, collar'd all kinda green.
>Small meat sounds fill the air, none worth pursuing as far as you can tell.
>With some bearings set, you explore the wreckage.
>Sadly, its impossible for you to make out much of anything.
>You're climbing around in a particularly warm and toasty cubbyhole of twisted metal sheets when you hear something.
>Meat sounds! Real meat sounds, the kind that you know to be language.
>An eyestalk creeps out from your body and snakes its way out of the mess of machine you inhabit.
>There! In the distance and closing! Meats you don't recognize; small, colorful and crawling at speed on four limbs.
>They're making high pitched calls. One is hopping while the other slinks behind it, glancing around.
>As fast as you can, you scuttle up to the opening and begin to change for a first contact.

[14]

>The meats are almost in the debris field now.
>There's no darkness to hide in, just cover.
>You send a tentacle to a large portion of wreckage and reel yourself to it.
>They're still coming. One is yellow with blue fluff, the other is just two shades of grey.
>The yellow one seems to be leading. It bounds around with wide eyes trying to take in everything.
>The grey instead is cautious and lagging behind and speaking in a hushed tone.
>It's like he expected alien monsters or something...
>Okay, maybe this one was smart.
>You latch onto a high bit of metal and pull yourself above eye level.
>They've stopped and are making complex noises at each other. Yellow continues to approach after a moment while Grey keeps calling to it.
>Yellow enters your realm in sheer wonder.
>It's brave. Also stupid.
>It even starts to enter where you woke up.
>Only starts, though. It freezes at the blood splattered all throughout the room that you hadn't bothered absorbing.
>This is what you are made for.
>You hunt, therefore you are.
>Yellow doesn't even notice you closing the gap, doesn't notice the tentacle slipping under it.
>In an instant you're upon it, wrapping a tentacle around its body and up into its mouth.
>It squeaks and shrieks and chokes.

[15]

>There's one main concern on your mind, and that's what's in this thing's mind.
>You spread your lower surface open and latch onto its uppermost sensory protrusion.
>Tendrils explore the bone structure underneath the thin layers of flesh and turn up a number of convenient weak points behind sensory organs.
>You press oh so slightly harder and breach into a vast sea of nerves.
>Leaching your own material in and permeating the flesh sponge, you rape and pillage your way through this alien mind.
>There's a goal in here. You strip away everything impertinent to you and dig into the speech centers and force every drop of data from this thinking tumor.
>It takes more time than you'd like, and it fries the poor creature's neural network from overtaxing in the process.
>Nothing of a mind remains.
>Frantic electrical pulses shoot at random to frayed and torn connections.
>With the fine work done, you use more direct methods to process the rest.
>Teeth and claws drag the rest of the creature into you and rend it apart in the same action.
>You're much more... whole now. More of the fog has lifted in your mind as pieces fit back together.
>It's like breathing for the first time, being able to look at something and put a name to it.
>This creature was young, though and its vocabulary and understanding were greatly lacking.
>A few adjustments to a more solid form create something you now know to be "spider-ly."
>A glance to the damaged "pill-shaped" capsule that was your old home sheds little light on the situation.
>You know what "HAZARD" means now, but "BIO" is beyond grasp, "LEVEL 7" is meaningless without context.
>Something that wasn't printed on the rack caught your eyes, free written in "marker" was "The Thing!"
>A call breaks your concentration.
>"Sundrops! This isn't funny! This could be dangerous, c'mon! Sundrops?"
>Meat. Grey. Child. Male. Colt.
>A bit of fine work and you soon have a rough copy of the "filly"'s vocal system.
>Okay, you weren't paying that much attention to its anatomy.
>Close enough will do.

[16]

"C'mon!" you mimic back.
>Sounds more like an animal trying to die and speak at the same time.
>At least it's almost in the right pitch as Yellow.
>Thinking fast, you try to cram yourself into the approximate shape of these "ponies."
>There is absolutely no time to pick through the genetics you've just taken for answers and you've destroyed Yellow's body that it can't be worn.
>Yellow-ish is your coat.
>Blue is you mane, it was left over. Hair doesn't like to digest at least not that fast.
>You are also an idiot.
>Standing in the open with your back turned.
>Slowly, you turn your head to where Grey is standing, peaking out from what was once a wall.
>Well, slowly was what you had meant. It happened as jittering spasm of miss-aligned muscle.
>You're barely finished with the face and as a result it's slackjawed and askew with miss matched eyes.
>The stench of hot blood wafts from the room on the breeze.
>Grey doesn't seem to be breathing. You'd be concerned if you could care.
>You gain some control over the facial structures and snap them into place.
>Fleeting words you associate with Grey, fragmented memories you thought you destroyed.
>You know of the image on his behind, a book and quill and of the big words that teeter on the edge of understanding when he speaks.
>However, you are not a child. You can put together your thoughts and derive meanings otherwise missed.
>Grey. Friend. Nerd. Guardian. Spoil-sport.
>There's still extra limbs hanging off of you and you know the face is wrong.
>There's no way he believes you to be his companion.
>Fuck it.
>You take a step towards him, twisting around in ways this body naturally couldn't.
"What seems to be on your mind, creature from the other side?"
>Still wrong, that drawn out false voice.
"Keeper of the weak and benign, what troubles you?"
>His eyes are pinpricks locked onto your own.
>Fear is just as good a weapon as deception at times.

[17]

>Grey stumbles off of his hooves as he fails to even take one step back from you.
"Something have your tongue?"
>You'll just have to find out the old fashion way.
>A thick tentacle bursts from your chest and through the rather short distance to the colt's throat.
>It wraps around tight and pulls him down to the dirt.
>Resounding "crack"s and the ripping of flesh emanates from your face as it splits open.
>Grey's face too opens.
>Just to scream, though. Nothing cool.
>It's barely a gasp as you tighten your grasp and drag him closer.
>Through the false pony-eyes on your now dextrous face, you stare into his depths of fear and horror.
>A part of you almost wishes you could feel sorry for the thrashing ball of terror in your grasp.
>But, that feeling doesn't last too long.
>Oh well.
>Though, you have chosen to be gentler in raping your way through this mind.
>The last one left still too many gaps and you've gotten memories that aren't yours that you're still purging.
>Your writhing bits of teeth and muscle latch onto his head and hold it still while your neck and chest split to accommodate your guest.
>In short order, you have half of him stuffed in next to your makeshift organs and the rest of you stretches around to finish the rest.
>It turns out the best way into the brain case is through the base of the skull.
>Slowly this time you force yourself into the slurry of chemicals and electricity that is the mind.
>He's still conscious right and proper the whole time, which makes the crawl through much easier.
>Bit by bit you sift through mass of knowledge and memory, stomping down the mind whenever it tried to do anything more than give in.
>Bit by bit you take what you want and destroy whatever is left over.
>The mind has started to panic even harder as it tries to process the losses,  to which you simply suppress it further.
>By this point, it's relegated to watching as everything it knows disappears and its capacity to think vanishes with it.

[18]

>You're not certain how long you've been at this, but the ball of light has lowered in the sky.
>The word "Celestia" comes up somewhere, but everything associated with that is absurd.
>You crush all of that too.
>As for Grey, you've taken everything you can get and left nothing.
>You crush the physical aspect within you as well.
>Much of the world is in focus now and comprehension is within grasp.
>You think, therefore you are.
>There's two options at this point, stay in the shelter of the wreckage or wander off into the alien forest.
>The wreck would draw attention.
>Uncharted alien woods it is then.
>You go over the genetics you've sampled and start to pick at them.
>A bit of twisting and intentional mutation gives you something halfway original to work with.
>You shift your pony facade into a more accurate representation of one.
>The yellow-ish coat shifts to grey, but you keep the blue mane. The flank mark eludes your ability to copy.
>Hopefully that won't be an issue.
>The first step in your journey comes up wet.
>Mostly dried from time, there's a patch of what was once a puddle where the colt had been standing.
>You shake your hoof dry and continue away from the expanse of twisted metal.
>There has to be some sort of shelter nearby that isn't a "here be aliens" sign.
>All this raw data needs to process and compile into something legible, something more useful than random strings of words and glimpses of half-formed images.
>Hopefully it won't take long to find something, it will be dark soon.

[19]

>Yep, it was already shit.
>You expected as much when you were woken up fifteen hours ago, but it shouldn't be this bad already.
>It started as a light shower, you could handle that.
>Now it's like God's trying to wash you off the face of the planet.
>He'd be well within right to, you didn't belong here.
>Still not fun though.
>You've fashioned a sort of poncho out of a barely water resistant blanket with several quick cuts to allow your web gear straps to hold it in place.
>Most everyone else has actual panchos.
>You are a poorfag amongst poorfags.
>Visibility is shit and the light is fading fast.
>The Staff Sergeant has been gone for half an hour on recon or something.
>No one tells you shit.
>You'd ask Sergeant Cinnamint, but she's up a tree.
>Ha ha, get it because it's an idiom and-
>Right. She was literally up in a tree trying to get a signal.
>This fucking gay-ass earth doesn't even have satellites yet.
>Everyone is fucking around with radios or cheating with magic.
>You? You're just content to keep watch while the grown-ups fuck about with the complex shit.
>Something splashes down in the mud behind you.
>You spin around and try to level your rifle at the arrival.
>It stops before you do.
>There's a talon wrapped around your barrel.
>Attached to that talon is a ragged griffin, soaked to the bone and glaring a hole through your skull.
>He's one of scouts, several others have landed behind him including Hauker.
>"Relax, guy. We miss anything?" he asks as he releases your rifle.
"Fuck man, that's a good way to get shot," you jerk said weapon away.
> "But I didn't. That's what counts."
"Asshole. We've been waiting for you guys. Haven't seen anything but rain and mud. You find anything?"
>He gestures in a all too nonchalant way, "Saw some little towns, checked one out. The horses are rolling in like nobody's business. They must have been doing something out here, or running from the storm 'cause there's like three of their ships in the harbor."

[20]

>You cock an eyebrow at the griffin.
"And let me guess, they just happen to be looking for the same thing? Fuckin' figures."
>"I wouldn't bet against it. Keep an eye out, there's more than monsters out here now. Spread the word."
>He started to move to join his group before pausing, "Oh, and good luck. This prolly won't be fun."
>With that, he faded into the mix of nigh identical griffins.
>Shit, you didn't get his name. He seemed like a halfway reasonable person.
>A whistle breaks over the downpour.
>Cinnamint is down amongst the underbrush again and heading off in a seemingly random direction.
>"C'mon. Staff Sar' Hauker and his boys were kind enough to point us to our staging area," she straight up shouts to everyone.
>No one here has a firm grasp of subtlety.
>Like, at all.
>It's like coming to this damned pony planet makes everyone star doing ridiculous shit just for the hell of it.
>You almost feel like a normalfag here.
>Regardless of your faggotry, you signal for your little band of fuck-ups to come along.
>"I wanna know, have you evar seen tha rain?" one of your redshirts sings.
"Shut the fuck up, Carl!" you and some others snap.
>It turns out his name was actually Carl.
>Fuck Carl.
>It takes something like a mile of slow slogging through this dense bullshit to find what you're after.
>A house.
>The lights are on, the door is open and there appears to be a bullet hole through one of the front windows.
>It's a rather plain one story affair of sealed wood planking.
>The Spetsgruppa guys just walked in with weapons slung, not a fuck to give.
>Someone shouted from inside for everyone to "figure out the watch and try not to drown."
>You try not to think about how they knew of the house or how it was empty.
>It doesn't work too well.
>One team immediately starts on ransacking a tool shed.
>Soon enough, they've nailed and spiked a tarp lean-to to its side and a minotaur is handling the drawing of straws.

[21]

>When their comfort was on the line these fuckers were surprisingly competent.
>It's only been dark for a little while>
>No one knows how long you're staying camped here.
>You take inventory.
>Everything is wet.
>End log.
>You're propped up against a tree and sitting on a rock to keep your ass out of the mud.
>It's not working too well.
>You are a Fire Team Leader and you drew a short straw.
>The brim on your patrol cap keeps some of the rain out of your face.
>All at once there's a strange stillness commingled with the constant motion brought by wind and rain.
>It's unsettling for little reason.
>Innawoods at night in the rain is what horror movies wish they could be.
>Off on a faraway place, on foreign soil with thirty something soldiers soaking in the rain.
>You break another bit off a block of ramen and pop it in your mouth. It's shrimp flavored because you're a massive faggot.
>Your emergency ration kit is all kinda retarded, but it's food.
>Still, you keep your eyes scanning for any trouble.
>Not a hard prospect since you can't see shit.
>There's no light.
>At all.
>The griffins have good eyesight, but nothing can cut through this.
>Thermal imagers and night vision don't even work.
>Might as well settle in and get some rest.
>Nothing better to do.

[22]

>You've found some shelter
>The previous inhabitants didn't seem to like that fact
>They aren't complaining anymore
>It's a burrow under a large tree
>Before you entered, it was the home of somethings known to the locals as "terror birds"
>They did seem terrified at the time, but you doubt that's what it meant
>You shift the nesting material around to suit your comfort in the driest corner
>Slowly, your pony form looses its structure as you try to relax
>Congratulations, you are now a blob of pony.
>Darkness has fallen outside and nothing in your box of tricks can help you see worth a damn.
>You're reluctant to close your eyes to the blackness, not for fear of any monsters in the dark, quite the opposite.
>It's the light that you fear.
>The red glow through eyelids that never quite goes away.
>The isolation, the quiet, the suffocation.
>Can you let go? Can you relax and let the tension unwind?
>Perhaps.
>Only if the world promises to stay as it is.
>If it isn't already just a sick delusion.
>There's better things to do than be afraid.
>You try to focus on weaving your mind into something useful, something real.
>Nagging doubts still scratch at your mental walls.
>You take a deep breath of the cool, humid air.
>There is air, you can breath.
>The sound of a unfurling storm fills your ears.
>There is sound, you can hear.
>You can focus on those facts.
>Air enters your lungs, which extract gasses that fuel chemical reactions that form your neurons and thus, your mind.
>You are a sea of chemicals and electrical pulses, the "you" that you know is held within the codes zapping around your body.
>There's so much more in here than just what you've gathered.
>In where a "kidney" and "liver" would be, you've concentrated a ball of neural netting to keep your new mental materials safe until you can safely integrate them into "you."
>Breath in.
>Breath out.
>Weave.
>With all the care in the world, and vast intuitive, instinctual prowess you grow your "brain"

[23]

>Nothing particular changes while you extend the pathways and branch them out.
>Much of it is redundant and looping to prevent any major loss from damage.
>A path always exists so long as you do.
>You exist as long as your neural pathways do.
>A turn of the spigot* and the tides of raw information start to seep in through your filter.
>Before you were doing this on the fly, loosing as much as you gained for the sake of expediency.
>Survival mode was a dangerous one to be in, out in the open without a hope of your nature remaining concealed.
>Now, however, you are in control.
>You get to choose.
>Every little bit of raw data you contort into your personal coding language.
>The sound of the wind and rain on leaves distantly keeps connects you to reality.
>You are becoming whole.
>Not like when you first sampled the filly, you only thought you understood what whole meant.
>This... this is something much more profound.
>Of course, it takes time to write a mind from the tatter remains of children, but damn is it good.
>Thinking is a beautiful thing.
>Not merely acting on stimuli, on half-informed instincts, on raw lust, on an obligation to survive.
>Those existed for a reason, sure, you wouldn't be what you are becoming, what you are weaving, without the animal driving you.
>Each memory you consume you have to filter apart into facts.
>You need to know what a beach is, not how much fun it is.
>You need to know what a gravel road is, not about the scraped elbow from that one time.
>Every. Single. Memory.
>You need to be you, the feelings that came with information go out the window.
>Eventually, you get through it all.
>Or all you can care about, everything that stands out as important.
>Everything else you destroy by formatting the little ball of containment.
>You reabsorb that into the rest of your network and eventually let your consciousness fade.
>There's only so much you can do before you have to let your nature take its course.

[24]

>It's o' dark thirty.
>You are awake.
>At some point someone relieved your watch.
>You fell asleep on the spot and should still be.
>Too bad.
>Wakey wakey, mother fucker.
>Some unicorn mare is nudging your shoulder.
>You can only tell that by the glow of magic barely illuminating her face
"What's up?" you mumble.
>"We're heading out soon as it's light enough to see. Get your team," she said before wondering off down the perimeter to whoever else was out there.
>Like a faggot of sticks, your joints pop and crackle as you rise to the land of the living.
>Everything you know is some kind of wet.
>It's still dark as hell, but some points of light from horns and filtered flashlights take their chances at piercing the darkness.
>Most of the task group is up and milling about from what you can hear.
>The storm hasn't let up much at all and only the faintest tint of blue to the east betrays the day's approach.
>Chances are that it's later in the day than you'd guess with how thick the cloud cover is.
>For some time, everyone is just kinda sitting around and rotating watch.
>The sun just barely cuts through the storm as it rises, oh so slowly washing the world in blue-grey haze.
>Another day, another stolen Equestrian dollar.

[25]

>Dull grey streams into your senses.
>Out there, in the world untouched, is a light.
>You know this truth to be self-evident without opening your eyes.
>You've probably shifted away from the window.
>Again.
>Filling yourself with false hopes.
>Again.
>You really need to learn to stop doing that.
>You'd have to be some kind of dumb animal to expect much else.
>With a sigh you shift in you tiny world and dig your hooves into the floor.
>Your eyes snap open.
>Dirt, wood, grass and leaves bundled inside a burrow of the same.
>Blue-grey seeps in with the rain through a hole leading outside.
>Where... Where are you?
>You exist, you have thoughts, but what and where are you?
>You are a you. "The Thing" if your old world was to be believed.
>Whatever you are isn't a matter you can even guess at, you are a you.
>Are there more of you? Does it matter?
>No. Questions without answers will get you nowhere.
>Everything is foreign to you. It was before, but you were just reacting on instinct and immediate survival and it hadn't mattered.
>Now? Now you're awash in thoughts that are your own and not the urges and spasms of lust.
>Not the stolen thoughts and memories that fed you.
>You are The Thing. You are you.
>You feed. You Live.