How to Train Your Alien 4

Icy fear stabbed Thing’s hivemind like a frigid dagger.  It slid easily to the most vulnerable parts of her mind, instantly causing her body’s equivalent to an adrenaline response.  Thing hastily stretched her tentacle towards the falling biped but only grasped at thin air.  Thing felt dread.  Similar to how one would lunge to catch an object falling from the table, Thing exploded into action.  The main mass of Thing’s body was hidden within the Oak tree.  Amorphous, pseudopod-like tentacles, curling, fusing and sliding against each other with various eyes propped up with fleshy tentacle eyestalks.

The tangle of tentacles rapidly retracted, feeding biomass into the tentacle that was stretched above the Biped’s garden, reaching for the endangered specie.  The main tentacle was supplied with extra biomass, allowing it to stretch and lengthen, quickly and desperately lunging forward with bulging muscles.  Eyes sprouted on the end of the tentacle, aiming for the falling biped.

The tentacle violently lunged forward, slicing the air with a sudden burst of speed as it closed the gap to the accelerating biped.  Thing continued to stretch her flesh, the biped was already 20 feet below the edge of the cliff.  She had to push harder, her violent lunge accelerating.  The lunge caused the skin on the tentacle to tear apart, revealing the red muscle beneath.  The skin could not mutate fast enough to accommodate the violent stretch.  Finally she felt the biped’s ankle and desperately curled herself around his ankle.

The eyes she had grown on the surface her tentacle saw the rapidly approaching ground.  They had already fallen 80 feet down the hundred foot cliff.  Thing did the only thing she could.  The entire length of her tentacular body suddenly bulged and flexed, working against the elasticity she needed to reach the human.  Her shrinking tangle of tentacles that were still at the tree curled around the branches, bracing against them as the incredibly long rope of a tentacle flexed, retracting, fighting against the inertia of Anon’s falling body and gravity.  Anon rapidly began decelerating but it was not enough, the ground was approaching too quickly.

Panicked and out of options, Thing yanked Anon’s ankle with all her strength, her elastic body tightening dramatically.  She felt pain at the extreme stretching and flexing her amorphous muscles had to go through.  Her muscle fibres tore apart as she pushed beyond her limits.  SNAP  Anon’s ankle broke at the extreme pressure put on it by Thing’s tentacle.  Thing’s grip slipped as the jerking motion of Anon’s limb breaking jostled her.  Thunk.  Anon’s head hit the ground.  The blow was strong enough to knock Anon unconscious but he had slowed enough that he didn’t even get a concussion.  All his blood had been forced into his head, the blood pressure contributing to his unstable consciousness.  Thing let go of his broken ankle and allowed his body to collapse on the ground, trying to gingerly place his broken ankle without hurting it.

Thing’s torn muscles and skin along her horribly stretched tentacular form rapidly repaired themselves as she allowed herself to relax.  She let go of the oak tree high above and allowed herself to fall down the cliff.  Her long tentacle coiled together as it fell in a pile like a rope would do. The final clump of smaller tentacles on top that were braced against the oak crashed into her long coiled tentacle with a loud smack as her entire body reached the floor at the bottom of the cliff.  Blunt force trauma had little lasting effect to her boneless body.

Slightly dazed and disoriented, Thing slowly raised an eyestalk from within her fleshy pile and gazed at the unconscious biped.  Why did these indigenous species have to be so fragile?  She was slightly annoyed at the rapid contortions she had to put her body through to save the biped, she still felt a bit of discomfort from the rapidly healing internal hemorrhaging.

Thing rolled her eye, perched on top of the stalk.  It was an involuntary expression she inherited from the mind of the pony whom she had absorbed, it indicated her frustration.  Her eye gazed at the blue sky and the fluffy white clouds, lost in thought.  She looked back down at the human.  What in the world was she going to do with him?  She had failed at her initial goal of quick, temporary abduction.

Thing quickly fused her coiled body together into a twisted blob of organic matter.  Pseudopod tendrils and eyestalks suddenly sprouted out of her, lengthening and growing like vines as her central glob of flesh shrank to feed her new growing vines.  The nightmarish creature crept up to the unconscious biped and examined his leg, gingerly feeling the fractured bone through his skin with her smooth, curling tentacle.  Hmm, yes, she could fix this.  All it would take is some surgery and a bit of mild mutation and his bone could be mended in a jiffy.

She stretched out two of her tentacles, they began mutating and branching like roots into smaller and smaller tendrils until they resembled hair.  She would use these appendages to carefully fuse herself to the biped’s skin and peel his flesh apart, away from his bones so that she could easily perform her surgical healing.

Just as she was about to touch his skin, the biped suddenly stirred.

Oh no.

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Anon was confused, dazed and in pain.  He groaned as he tried to sit up but hissed in pain when he tried to move his leg.  More carefully this time, he sat up and gingerly felt the other injury on his head.  It was a huge lump but it didn’t hurt nearly as much as moving his leg did.  There were dark spots in his vision, he could barely see anything but he focused extra hard on his shin.  Well, it was broken alright.  Fortunately, it didn’t seem to be too bad, but there was no way he was going to be walking on it.  He would have to create some sort of makeshift crutch or maybe hop on one leg if he wanted to make it back to Ponyville.

Anon took deep breath, willing his vision to clear.  Ah, man!  He had a killer headache from that lump on his head.  He took a few breaths and calmed himself.  It was best to keep calm in this type of situation.  After a few slow breaths and getting a good look at his shin, he began to look around-  Anon’s heart stopped.  In front of him were fleshy vines covered in soft skin, the same he had seen before he fell- Anon suddenly remembered what had happened to him.  These were the same “vines” that had attacked him!  More unsettling and frightening were the eyes.  Suspended in mid air, they stared at him, unblinking and unmoving.  Anon sat very still as his heart began beating at a much faster pace, the mysterious creature was also completely still.  It surrounded him with its tentacles.  They all seemed to be attached to a central mass.

Anon flinched as he felt something slowly stroking his cheek from the side.  A cold fear traveled down his spine.  He turned his eyes and hyperventilated at the creepy tendril petting his cheek, but his breath slowed as the slow stroking of his cheek continued methodically and gently.  He turned his eyes back to the trio of eyes that were gazing him from their perches at the end of their stalks.  They bobbed from side to side, looking like they were sizing him up.

A second tentacle curled through the air, slowly approaching him, this time from the front and gently brushed his hair to the side of his forehead, out of his eyes.  Anon watched the strangely flexible appendage with fear despite how gently and carefully it seemed to be treating him.  His eyes followed the appendage as it snaked its way through the air to his broken shin.  Anon’s breath hitched as the tentacle approached his broken leg and the tendril stopped short, the eyes turned back to face him.  They almost looked like they were concerned.

The tendril softly traced the skin over his broken bone but retreated, it was hesitating.  What did it mean to do?  Anon stared at the creature, it looked back at him but its eyes slid away from his face, was it thinking?  Suddenly, a brightness seemed to glint within the eyes of this tentacle creature.  It poffered up a tentacle.  Suddenly it began to shift.  A horrifying and grotesque transformation took place.  The tentacle made snapping and crackling noises and its skin stretched.  Hair suddenly grew on the tendril and it seemed to be getting stiffer and more defined.  The tip transformed into a deer’s cloven hoof, joints appeared and the skin changed texture.  Finally, the tentacle seemed to have transformed into a deer’s leg.  Where it should have been attached to a shoulder, it grew directly out of the tentacle.

Anon watched the transformation in mute horror.  What in the hell was this thing?  Suddenly the deer’s leg snapped loudly and the bone appeared to have spontaneously broke itself.  Anon jumped slightly, shaken by the sudden snapping noise.  The creature extended two more tentacles, these two transformed as well but they transformed into something different, they branched like roots multiplying and shrinking as they grew out until they became hairlike.  Hundreds of tiny hairlike tendrils extended out of them and reached for the deer’s leg.  Suddenly they touched and seemed to fuse to the skin of the leg.  Then, to Anon’s horror, they peeled the skin and fat of the leg away, revealing the bare bone and muscle.  Larger hairs gingerly spread the muscles apart, revealing the bone.  Hundreds of tiny hairlike tendrils fused to the bone and the larger ones curled around the bone, bracing and setting the bone in place as the smaller hairs fused the bones together, seeming to rapidly heal the fracture.

Anon watched the whole process with equal parts horror and fascination.  What did this- this- eldritch abomination mean by this?  He glanced at his leg and his eyes widened.

“Oh.”

The eyes of the creature focused on him as he vocalized his thoughts.  Fear crept into him as he realized the monster’s intention.  It wanted to fix him.

“O-okay, ah, I think I’ll be fine…”

Anon trailed off as he watched the healing hairs seal the deer’s leg back up, fusing the skin back together.  He was dumbfounded.  The leg looked like new!

“W-wow…  Uh, yeah.  Thanks for the offer but I think I would rather my leg heal the natural way, ha, ha.”

The monster gazed back at him, it didn’t seem to understand.  Its eyes bobbed back and forth and its tendrils slowly snaked their way to his shin once more.  They began morphing into their hair-like surgical form as they reached for his shin.  Anon suddenly jerked his leg away, scooting backwards.

“Wait!  Um, I don’t need that!  I’ll be fine!”

The monster sat completely still for a few seconds but it developed what almost seemed to be a determined posture.  Suddenly all of the tentacles began to move at the same time, slowly but resolutely.  They curled around his limbs and torso, he tested his strength against them, they were like bands of steel, he was immobilized.  He was suddenly very scared, this creature was very strong, it could probably snap him like a twig if it so wished!  Anon began shivering, this was a nightmare, he had no power or control.

“Please…”

The monster began to slowly stroke him again with soothing rhythmic motions, petting his head with one tentacle and slowly rubbing his back with another.  Anon saw the the tendril hairs approaching his shin, he tried to jerk his leg away again but the monster held him tightly in place.  The tentacles snuggling and flexing against his attempts to move.  He saw the hairs fuse to his skin.  Then, something even more strange occurred, a feminine humming noise emanated from the monster’s central mass.  Anon was suddenly distracted by the familiar sound.

“Fluttershy?”

When he had first had arrived in Equestria he contracted a few illnesses that were alien to his world, he had no immunity to them, and Fluttershy was the one who had nursed him back to health.  Fluttershy would hum to him in the exact same way when he was too weak and sick to do anything.  Anon was shocked to hear the same noise emanating from this abomination.  So much so that he was distracted while the creature mended his bones.

Suddenly, the creature uncurled itself from his body, sliding away to reveal his newly healed leg.  Somewhat skeptically, Anon stood up and examined his leg.  It was as if it had never been broken.  Anon flexed and stretched his leg, huh, incredible!

Anon looked up cautiously at the abomination that had healed his broken leg.  It was still creepily hovering over him with way too many tentacles.  He looked at one of the eyes.

“Look, I have no idea what you are or even how I ended up in this situation.  How did I survive that fall?  Thanks for healing me, I guess, but I need to get back to ponyville.  I can probably introduce you to Twilight, you seem intelligent enough.  So, um…  Stay right here and I’ll be right back!”

Anon was incredibly creeped out by the monster’s lack of response.  It seemed to be struggling to understand him.  He started to inch his way away from the monster but the monster curled a tentacle around his wrist, keeping him from leaving.  Then he suddenly felt something nip him in the back of his neck.  It felt almost like a mosquito but slightly more substantial.

“Ow!  What was…?”

Anon suddenly felt dizzy.  He also felt very tired.  The tentacles surged forward and around Anon, ready to catch him.  Sure enough, Anon fell over and the tentacles swept him off his feet.  Anon was soon unconscious.  The abomination held him up like a doll and examined his body features with curiosity, invasively touching and feeling him with many tendrils.  Satisfied, the tentacles curled around his limbs and pushed his body into a fetal position.

Suddenly something even stranger happened.  A few of the tentacles fused together to form a kind of organic membrane.  The membrane stretched and grew, it began to engulf the curled up biped.  Soon Anon was completely engulfed by a semi-transparent membrane and a warm liquid matrix was pumped into the membrane with him by one of the tentacles and a tentacle inside fused to his belly button.  It acted like an umbilical cord, supplying him with oxygen and nutrients delivered directly to his circulatory system so that he didn’t have to breathe or eat.  Anon resembled a jarred specimen, preserved within preservative fluid except instead of that he was trapped inside the monstrous womb of an eldritch abomination which kept him swaddled and unconscious.

The creature slowly merged and fused with the womb, engulfing the pickled specimen until Anon was engulfed and stored inside the abomination’s central mass, trapped inside the womb and at the mercy of the nature-defying abomination.