"Of all of the planets I could have landed on why was it this one?" Mused Quantum.
"You-*huff*-tell me-*huff*-alien boy!" Bounty shouted over her desperate crash through the brush.
"Well, I for one am wondering what mindfuckery happened to give trees legs and a pack mentality." He said, amusedly.
"Can't you pull some alien magic and get me out of here already?" Bounty said as she slid under a charging timberwolf.
"But why would I interrupt my musings for that?"
"QUANTUM!"
"Fine I guess I can- DUCK!" Bounty immediately dropped, just in time to avoid a timberwolf jumping from behind."Run to the east, there is a structure you can barricade yourself in."
Not even bothering to worry about if his information was trustworthy or not, Bounty checked her compass (Hey, it did come in handy!) and ran. She barrelled through the thick undergrowth desperately searching for whatever qualified as "shelter" to him. Just as she dodged around a vine covered tree she spotted a small dilapidated hut. It didn't appear to be that big, but it looked like it was sturdy enough to keep the wolves out.
Bounty began sprinting across the open ground between the trees and the hut, hoping that she could beat the wolves to the house since she lost her maneuverability without the trees to move in between.
"There's a window to jump through dead ahead." Quantum whispered to her.
'What kind of idea is it to jump through a window!?' She thought to herself.
"You don't want to know how close they are." In response, Bounty tried to pour on more speed, but found that she had reached her limits. The hut grew closer and closer, but so did the rapid thumping of paw steps. She could see the window now, twenty yards…
Ten yards, she could practically feel the disgusting breath ruffling the fur on her neck now.
Five ya- "JUMP, NOW!" Without even thinking her legs coiled and she sprung forward in a desperate leap of a shattering crash, she flew through the window and rolled across the dusty floor, along with the broken glass. Chest heaving she fought for breath after her prolonged sprint through the woods. "That was a long jump." she wheezed.
"Your other option was having a chunk taken out of your flank." Quantum decided to neglect mentioning that she only had a forty percent chance of making that jump.
Bounty lay there for a short while longer before standing and checking for damage; other than a couple of scratches that were slowly oozing blood she was in one piece. She turned and checked to window to see if her pursuer was still there, only to find a pile of smoldering wood scattered along the outer wall of the house. "What in the world?" she muttered to herself. She stuck her head out the broken window and looked around for something that might've come along and eaten the wooden wolf. Immediately, another timberwolf came bounding out of the forest and leapt at her, intent on grabbing her exposed head.
With a sound not unlike a bug zapper the wolf slammed into a flickering pale white shield that sprung to life around the hut. Runes suddenly appeared on the exterior walls and began to glow with the same white as the shield. The white glow surrounded the various pieces of the timberwolf and yanked them apart leaving it to scatter against the house, gently smoking, like its brethren.
"So that's what that reading was…" Quantum mumbled studying the data he recorded, "What have we learned today?" He asked.
"Don't put on mysterious packs, they might come with free brain surgery." Bounty quipped.
"Well, I would've gone with don't stick your head into the danger zone, but that works too. When you're ready we should keep moving out of this forest."
If there was one thing Phase Shift hated it was being exposed, and walking down the street in her eclipse armor, in Ponyville of all places, there was little she could do to be more exposed. Once again, she questioned why in the world "Gilded Skies" was sent down to Ponyville in the first place. After all, the call was only a simple mental health check, and repossession of a dangerous artifact. With the mess that Discord left behind, the guard dealt with them almost weekly, so this was nothing new.
It was at that point that she noticed that the whispers and stares that had been following her down the street had stopped. She looked up from the ground and searched for the thing that had drawn the town's attention away from her. Not surprisingly, it was an even stranger sight that greeted her. Walking down the street toward her is a pegasus with a cobalt and gold mane, her coat appeared to be white at one point, but it is heavily dirtied with mud, leaves, and red from the occasional light scratch you could hardly tell. The pegasus was giving out looks that could probably kill a manticore, seeming none too happy about her current state.
As Shift comes up on the pegasus she calls out, "Ma'am are-"
Only to be interrupted with a terse "I'm fine." The mare keeps walking and Phase spots a black pack resting on her withers. She heaves a sigh and continues on her path to question the librarian that had called in the artifact recovery team.
The young changeling nymph scrabbled against the smooth surface, trying to climb the small hill to get a better view of its domain. It tried jumping, it tried flapping it's young wings before finally it rested its hooves against the insurmountable obstacle and tried heaving itself up. To its surprise, its hooves stuck to the surface and it began walking up the wall with no more effort than walking normally. It quickly scaled the small hump and let out a victorious chirp.
Chrysalis turned her head and looked at the nymph that had been so desperately trying to climb onto her back and let out a chuckle. "Why hello there little one." She said, giving the nymph a small smile.
The small changeling let out a chirrup and nuzzled up against the queen's neck.
The moment between the queen and her subject is broken by the sound of running hooves coming from outside the nursery. A grown changeling in armor runs in and calls "My Queen!"
Chrysalis growls low in her throat and her head snaps to the intruder "You were told I was not to be disturbed!" She hisses snatching the changeling by the throat with her magic.
The changeling chokes a few times trying to speak, kicking his legs feebly. Chrysalis loosens her grip slightly allowing the soldier to take a breath, "Scouts- see- things!" he wheezes.
The queen drops him on the floor in a heap, "And pray tell, what do they see?" she says walking to the trembling 'ling, the click of her hooves echoing off the cave's walls.
"They described them as 'moving armor held together by light' my Queen."
Chrysalis's eyes narrowed, "Take me to them."
"So you mean to tell me that this "Bounty" thinks that she found a crashed alien spaceship, and she recovered the artifact from it?" Phase asks disbelievingly.
"Well, according to her it moreso attached itself to her than it being recovered by her," Twilight replied. After her run-in with the strange mare, Phase Shift had quickly located the town library and one "Twilight Sparkle" that lived inside it. According to Twilight, the artifact that the imposter had been sent in to recover had been brought in by an adventurer name "Bounty" and she had requested help removing it from her.
"And when, exactly, did you decide that this artifact was dangerous?"
"Mmm… That would have to be after we began to tamper with it and attempt to remove it from her back." Twilight replied, tapping her hoof against her chin thoughtfully.
"And I assume you were successful, based on them sending both a transport and a containment unit?" Shift said checking her notes surreptitiously.
Twilight nodded and affirmative, "It was then that the artifact demonstrated itself as being truly dangerous. Bounty began to exhibit signs of insanity, talking to nothing, telling me that she saw the alien that she saw on the ship, and getting increasingly hostile. I knocked her out with a basic sleep spell, and called in transport for both of them."
Shift shook her head, she had seen some artifacts with strange effects, but none that had driven a pony insane. "Alright, when Lieutenant Gilded Skies came to retrieve the artifact did you notice anything strange about him?"
Twilight shook her head, "Nothing that any guard wouldn't do normally no, why?"
Phase Shift rubbed her head with a hoof, 'Another dead end…' she thought. She sat down on her haunches, "The Lieutenant Gilded Skies that met with you was an imposter. During the summer sun celebration where Nightmare Moon returned, we have reason to believe that he was replaced by a changeling. The Dangerous Magical Artifact Containment unit never made it to the palace, and Bounty went missing during the attack on the wedding. We believe that the imposter diverted the DMAC into Chrysalis's clutches and we think that Bounty was captured during the subsequent invasion. She hasn't been seen since."
Twilight let out a gasp, "Why haven't we heard about this!? There should be a missing pony's report at the least!" she exclaimed.
Phase Shift let out a chuckle, "Ms. Sparkle, three percent of the Canterlot population is still missing. Bounty is just another name on the list. We didn't even get the chance to fill out a report on what she looks like before the wedding pulled all the guards on duty away. That is something I was hoping you could remedy, by the way."
Twilight's look turned downcast with the news of the missing ponies before lightening up with the news that she could help. "Of course I can tell you what she looks like, but I can do you one better." She says magicing over a sheet of paper, with a flash a white pegasus with a cobalt and gold mane appeared on it.
Phase Shift took one look at the familiar pony and facehoofed, "You have got to be kidding me." she sighed.
"What?" Twilight asked.
At that exact moment, another mare burst through the door of the library, Rarity if Twilight's description of her friend was accurate. "Twilight, you are not going to believe who I just saw go through town, heading for the train station a little bit ago!"
The rhythmic thumping of the train rolling over the rails was a soothing song to Bounty, it calmed her after the strangely quiet journey through the rest of the forest. She rested her head against the window and thought quietly for a while.
"So, what are we going to do now?"
Well, she was going to think quietly for a while if her brain leech would shut up. "You mean you don't have a plan from now on? You've kinda been running the show from the time that you strapped yourself to my back."
"Not really, no. I don't usually handle long-term planning, my specialty is the short term."
"All of this was short term for you!?"
"In the grand scheme of things? Yea, it kinda was."
Bounty thumped her head against the window, the cool glass doing nothing to stem her oncoming headache. Through gritted teeth, she asked, "So what are your end goals then O' great alien master?"
The voice in her head let out a drawn-out "Hmmmm" before going silent. Time ticked by urged on by the thumping of the car over the rails. The AI took long enough that bounty began to think that he had forgotten about her question entirely.
"You know, if you're not gonna answer the question just tell me. It's not like I can do anything about it anyway." She says exasperatedly.
There is a brief pause before Quantum answers, "No, it's not that I won't tell you, I had long term goals, and I can check a couple of them off, however it seems like there may have been more damage from that isolation loop than I thought. I can recall bits and pieces of objectives that I set, but there is a large something that remains scrambled in my memory. I cannot tell if it is relevant to your question so it is preventing me from answering your question to the fullest extent. I want to be as truthful as possible with you since you are hosting me, however unwilling you may be," he says referring to her earlier comment about a 'brain leech', "I wish for there to be some peace between us, since we may be stuck together for quite a while, and lying will not further that objective."
This time it was Bounty who let the conversation fall off, pondering what the alien had said. While she hated to admit it, he hadn't lied to her yet. While he may be bitingly sarcastic at times, he had always been straight with her. With that thought in mind, she rested her head against the window and waited to reach her destination.
Beings held together with light was a good descriptor for what walked past Chrysalis. It was a four-legged thing covered in some kind of metal plates with a pulsing white glow coming from beneath them. It seemed to be wandering aimlessly, only heading further into the tunnels. It was facing away from the queen not seeming to care about the four changelings that were following it.
"How long has it been moving through the tunnels?" the Queen asked.
"We spotted the first one about an hour ago, and since then multiple teams have spotted them all over the cave system my Queen." Her advisor replied.
Chrysalis's brow furrowed, first the escaped prisoner, now these strange creatures. "Have they shown any hostile intentions?"
"Not yet, my Queen"
Chrysalis walked over to the glowing beast, ignoring the nervous shifting of the scouts and the feeling of unease that passed through the hivemind. She got in front of it and leaned down to meet what appeared to be its eyes. "Can you speak creature?"
A hush fell over the cave as the strange thing corrected its gaze, seeming to meet the Queen's gaze. All was silent for a minute as nothing happened, "Hmmph, I thought so." Chrysalis said turning away from it. Then it finally happened, an orange light seemingly sprung from the crawler and ran up and down the body of the changeling Queen. Everyone in the cave froze watching the exchange with baited breath. As soon as the exchange started it stopped, the Queen seeming no worse for wear, and only sporting a confused look.
"Is that it?" she asked incredulously, "Hardly that interesting for a new being born of the Everfree."
The crawler sat there motionless after the brief scan. The tall queen walked back to her advisor, "Inform the other scouts that they are to keep an eye on these things, but as of now they aren't a thre-"
Then the queen seemingly vanished as, in the span of a second, the crawler let out a distorted roar and leapt at the queen bowling her over. Chrysalis was sent flying into the cave wall, hitting with a resounding crunch. Immediately, horns lit and the creature, now exuding purple light from between its plates, is slimed to the floor by multiple sickly green magic shots.
"Our Queen!" the group of changelings call simultaneously after making sure the threat is well and truly taken care of. The advisor attempts to nudge her highness to her feet only to be shoved away with a snarl as the enraged Queen wobbles to her feet.
Chrysalis spits out a blob of green blood giving a curt, "I'm fine," to her onlookers. She walks over, to her growling and screeching opponent, trying not to wince as broken chitin crackles and moves in places where it shouldn't. She gives the creature a hard stare. "I take it they haven't done this before?" the Queen asks.
"No my Queen," comes the unanimous reply.
"Then hopefully this was just an outlier," Chrysalis says, her horn lighting up and the neck of the angry beast giving a snap. The light beneath the plates gives a flash before going out entirely and the metallic pieces fell into the green slime. "You," she says pointing at her advisor, "Gather up those pieces of armor or whatever they are and take them to the scientists, it seems they will have something to study after all."
The advisor nods and begins retrieving the pieces from the slime.
"You two," she says pointing at the scouts, "Notify all of the other scouts that these things are dangerous and to keep their distance. We don't-"
The broken pieces of the crawler let out a blinding flash as the advisor grabs a larger chunk of the torso. The smaller changeling blinks the spots away as angry screeching and growling begin to echo down the tunnels.
A/n: Not dead, just really busy. I try to write when I can.