Fight the Future! On a Budget.

by eraser

Monster Hunt Gone Sideways: Arrival (December 15, 1996)

Magic Susceptibility of Humans — Brief Notes
All humans encountered so far demonstrated zero active magic abilities. Yet they proved to possess an oddly selective sensitivity to beneficial magic. The effects of healing spells and potions are accelerated manifold. If a spontaneous collective song and dance starts, all humans present will participate, which will increase their subsequent productivity for the rest of the day. The most intriguing is their ability to absorb the knowledge of pony language by practising it in the presence of ponies — they learn new words by hearing them from a pony or by seeing a written text when there's a pony within view.
The selective pressure, that caused those traits to evolve, scares me. Though Steve insists they were artificially created for some incomprehensible purpose.

The sky was wrong kind of blue, the sun was wrong shade of yellow, the green fields and forests were abnormally vibrant, yet the scene felt serenely calming. Surprisingly so. A shiny purple tree-like building rose above a town. The agents were standing on a plank platform attached to one of the longer balconies. Steely-grey disks spun above the platform centre.

When Kamran stepped on the plank connecting the platform to the balcony, a loud "BOMMM" resounded.

"Guess, this is their doorbell," Pyr commented. "Let's try to look peaceful."

"Yeah, we're just two foreign policemen searching for the lost woodsman," Kamran replied quietly. "And maybe a dozen more people."

Both put their weapons away, but were ready to pull them out any moment.

Pyr followed Kamran to the branch, stepped on the plank, and it gave another "BOMMM".

"Coming!" a young woman shouted from the "tree" trunk.

The door opened and they saw a small purple pony with a violet forelock.

Everything was wrong about this pony. The muzzle was too short, the eyes were too big, a horn stuck out of its mane, plus there were feathery wings on its sides. Its legs were too thick for its size — but wide hooves would fit the prints around the cave. And it was purple, like the reported monster. The agents were ready to grab the guns any second.

"Welcome to Equestria!" the monster said in a girly voice. "Sorry, we didn't expect you, Steve didn't tell of inviting anybody else."

With a loud pop another creature appeared out of thin air. This one looked like an S-shaped goat-headed snake with mismatched arms, legs and horns.

"OOH!!! Pinkie Pie's got the talent you don't see every year, and now we have not one, but TWO humans that can match Pinkie at her game!" With these words the creature split in two identical copies, both became pink and grew poofy Afro hair.

"Princess, would you permit me to cast a spell that would help them perceive the world deeper?" the snakes said in chorus. "This would be so much fun!" And before the pony could open her mouth, the snakes snapped their fingers.

The flash of light briefly blinded the agents. Both had a strange feeling of their skulls growing in all directions, engulfing the "tree", the town, the nearby forests, the majestic city on the side of the mountain ridge, reaching the sea on both sides of the continent and going beyond...

⌚💫⏳🌋⌛

And then it ended as abruptly as started. They were standing by the platform, the snakes disappeared and the purple pony was less happy.

"That was Discord. Please, forgive him. He meant well, although his interpersonal skills are still lacking. Whatever it was that he tried." She smiled widely and sincerely and continued: "I am Twilight Sparkle and I welcome you in Ponyville, Equestria!"

"How do you speak Farsi?" Kamran asked.

"Farsi? She speaks Russian," Pyr objected.

"This is the magic of friendship at work. We found that humans are somehow more susceptible to some of its aspects, including this," Twilight explained.

"In other words, any human thinks you speak his native language," Pyr summed it up, "right?"

"Right."

"I am Anatoliy Solovyov, but everybody calls me 'Pyroxiline' or 'Pyr'."

"I am Kamran Rezaei."

"Oh, sorry, I'm not being a proper host, come inside, let's talk over tea..." The pony turned toward the door.

"Apologies, but we are here on important business," Pyr interrupted. "Do you know anything about the twelve missing humans?"

"The ones that decided to stay here? You can see them in town. Come, I'll show you."

"Even the man from the Forest Service?" asked Kamran. "The one who never heard of you before today?"

"You are the first ones today," Twilight said with surprise. "What is your friend's name?"

Agents looked at each other puzzled.

"Do you..." Pyr started.

"No," Kamran cut.

"We did not know his name," Pyr explained. "We were to meet him this morning. But he disappeared. Leaving only a note that he followed an unfamiliar purple creature into the cave. Was this creature you?" His arm instinctively moved for the gun.

"Ah, it was probably Starlight Glimmer," Twilight visibly relaxed. "Starli-i-i-i-ght!" she shouted.

Whatever answer she expected, there was none.

"Come in, she's probably showing him the castle," Twilight headed toward the tree trunk. "Starlight! Spike!"

"No need to shout," a boyish voice replied. Another local creature emerged from the door. This time it was a small purple dragon with proportions of a toddler. "She brought another human while you were sleeping. She's showing him Ponyville."

The building was oddly empty. Surely, something as big needed a large team of janitors just to keep it clean. Besides, if "princess" was a title or some official office, there had to be a crowd of assistants and people she ruled. (Or ponies. Or whatever.) Was today some holiday? The agents clearly read these thoughts on each other's faces, but refrained from speaking with the pony in earshot. Or was "princess" a petty insult, perhaps?

Outside the labyrinthine palace they met the first human. A man in his fifties, greying hair and beard cut short, wearing loose jacket and pants out of thick cloth.

"All hail princess Twilight Sparkle!" he shouted hoarsely.

To the agents' surprise the pony blushed. Despite being covered with purple fur!

"Steve, I've told you," she said coming closer, "'Twilight' will do. Haven't we discussed it two moons ago?"

"Sure we did! But you need to look all pompous-y and princess-y, if you brought here the suits." He cast a disdainful glance at the agents. "The king is played by his retinue, as they say, and stuff like that." He made broad gestures, encompassing everything around as said retinue. "What got into you to invite them?"

Twilight inhaled to give him a proper rebuttal, but Pyr was faster:

"Neither she, nor anybody else invited us anywhere. We came seeking missing people. There's a string of weird events all over the world. People are killed by strange animals never seen before. International organizations like Interpol—" he decided not to mention X-COM yet "—investigate them. If everybody's alive here, we'd be happy to close the case and be done with it."

He didn't promise to leave them alone. Even if this place stays secret, the X-COM science team would be glad to drop everything and study them 24/7. If it's revealed to the rest of the world... He would not envy the locals. But if they don't realize that, let them stay ignorant a little longer.

"Now," continued Pyr, "what is your full name? I don't recall seeing your photos, and the list mentioned no missing Steves." Both agents produced notepads and pens.

"Just Steve," the man said through teeth. Only the presence of the pony seemed to stop him from saying something rude and leaving. Or attacking the agents. The latter would've been preferable, since it would've given a chance to restrain and threaten him. "For an e-fit add a foot of dirty hair and ten pounds of dirt. Get out your photorobots and try it. Would you recognize me then?"

"Did I hear correctly that your surname is 'Just'?" Kamran tried to defuse the situation with his 'idiot mode'. "How do you spell it? D-G-A-S-S-T?"

Twilight giggled. Even Steve smiled.

"I've seen worse mistakes when I was learning English," Kamran added with mock seriousness, making Steve chuckle.

"Anyway, call me Steve, without surnames," he said in a warmer tone. "It's no surprise I'm not on your list. Nobody cared about me. And those who did, would want me dead. Do you want to hear it?"

"Yes, we do." Kamran did want to pump him for information, but there were more pressing tasks. "But we are looking for Starlight Glimmer and the forester she brought. Have you seen them?"

"Sure, did. She and Ethan went to the marketplace. I'll show you, I've got a day off..."

There wasn't anything unusual in his sad story. Really. High school dropout, never could keep one job longer than a month or two, started drinking (Pyr suspected Steve told the story out of sequence), became a bum, lived off dumpsters. Then he got a feeling that some "evildoers" were out to get him, decided to live in the woods, camped in this cave and one night fell out of the sky into Ponyville. To his great surprise the locals didn't leave him to die, but instead brought him to the hospital and even washed him! (That surprised him the most.) Healing magic proved very effective, and he could walk the next day. Ponies were cautious about the world beyond the portal ("dingy world" as they called it), but let him invite other people, and even helped build a platform for easier access.

These days Steve was working as a handyman for some construction crew and occasionally returned to Earth to invite more of his down-on-their-luck acquaintances. He even cleaned the cave to give better first impression. The people he invited were "the worthy ones, who need it". In other words, losers like him, whom he wanted to give a second chance in life, because they didn't treat him like dirt. Most refused, but those, who made it to Ponyville, stayed.

🚶⏳👋

Magic Susceptibility of Humans — Addendum
The humans that accepted Steve's invitation may not be a representative selection. Pyroxiline and Kamran proved unaffected by songs, yet absorb language as quickly as the rest. I haven't got the chance to try other spells on them yet.

Author's Note:

The episode being revised started growing like a snowball. I hope I can finish it by the end of the week.

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

Is the human in the picture really from X-Com? I though it had better graphics than that...

[eraser]

8735362
It's from the mod, which uses OpenXcom engine, which recreates the look of the early-1990s 320x200 VGA games Mind the spelling: the 1990s version had the dash, "X-COM", while the reboot spells it "XCOM". On the plus side, drawing new sprites is much easier
This was the portrait randomly picked for Kamran.