Ocellus winced, taking in the skepticism and quiet plotting from the agents. They plan on fighting. If we don’t convince them not to soon. They don’t like having this conversation on someone else’s terms.
“I think you might have to come in. Make sure you tell the others not to get provoked into fighting. I don’t know what these humans want, but I think they’re just as confused as we are.”
Marie didn’t reply, but she could hear voices on the other side of the door. Good for her, figuring out how not to send every thought that pops into her head. “There, I told her. They’re coming.”
“If you say so,” Hayes said. “That didn’t look like much of anything from where we’re standing.”
“How about we talk to you two.” Mr. Smith focused on Helen as he said it, eyes flicking down to her phone and back up again. “What are you doing?”
Helen spoke slowly and clearly, mostly to the phone. “I’m in a cabin with two men, Agent Smith and Agent Hayes of the Security Service. They have the property surrounded with soldiers. We’re having a conversation.” Then she looked up. “You keep goin’. I’m just on the phone wit’ me family’s lawyer, see. Case I don’t come back. I’ve seen movies.”
“We’re here to help you, kid,” Hayes muttered, annoyed. “You’re both in terrible danger. I don’t know what this—this one told you, but she isn’t what she looks like. It’s convincing on the outside, but she didn’t fool the CAT scan. She’s not human.”
“We know that,” David said. “We would’ve told you all about it earlier, but the police were shooting at them on TV. If we’d told you what we knew, you might’ve hurt them.”
The door clicked, then squeaked open. Both agents turned to stare as Ocellus’s friends came in, walking beside each other and filling the living room with nervous, uncomfortable bodies.
“God, look at the girl,” Smith whispered. But not quiet enough that Ocellus couldn’t hear. Or Marie, poor thing. While the others looked afraid, she was on the edge of tears.
“You’re some kind of… animal trainer,” Hayes supplied, glancing back at Ocellus. “These are your… creations?”
The others laughed, a familiar enough sound that both men turned to stare. Hands moved to their belts, but neither drew a weapon.
Smolder spoke first. “Ocellus, train us? Obviously not. You found our boat. I hope you didn’t wreck it. I liked that boat…”
“It talked.”
“She talked,” Gallus corrected, glaring at them. “You two aren’t very nice, are you?”
“Yona thinks they need friendship lessons too.”
“Stay where you are!” Smith called, raising his voice a little. “Maybe you know, maybe you don’t—but this building is surrounded by her majesty’s finest. If anything happens to us, they’ll certainly take the building and all of you with it.”
“Sit down,” Marie said, glancing back at them. “They’re terrified of you, just like I was. You guys are really big, and you’ve got those claws, and…” She put out her hands. “Hi Agent Smith and Agent Hayes. I’m the girl you’re looking for.” She reached up, touching the side of her face with two fingers. “Y-yeah, I know what you’re thinking. It looks bad. It doesn’t hurt, though.”
“Alright.” Mr. Smith took a deep breath. “It is about time someone in this room start answering my questions. I want a clear explanation for exactly what happened to the child named Marie Evans. I want proof, and I don’t plan on hearing any more evasiveness or excuses.”
“You should see what I look like,” Ocellus said, hopping down from the counter. “Right now you probably think she’s the one who’s not from your planet.” She closed her eyes, concentrating… and in a few seconds, she was returned to normal. It took quite a bit longer than it had to copy Marie with a pair of hostile eyes on her.
But what had been difficult for her was obviously a terrifying shock for them. They gaped at her, fighting back their emotions only with great discipline. They have powerful minds. Why bother? Is there another tribe of humans who can read them like we read emotions?
“I’m Ocellus,” she said. “These are my friends—Smolder, Silverstream, Gallus, Sandbar, and Yona.” She paused after each name, letting the creature in question say hello.
“They can all talk,” Smith said. “You’re seeing what I’m seeing, aren’t you Hayes?”
“A girl turned into a horse-shaped bug? Yes, I’m seeing her too.”
Finally they’re confused. This entire time the two agents had overflown with confidence, making it difficult to take the situation away from them. But now…
Now she could tell them the story. To her surprise, the soldiers outside didn’t make a move on the building, knocking over walls to “rescue” these two humans inside. She could feel how intimidated they were to be in a room full of proper-sized creatures, but if they didn’t want to run…
They told their whole story. The terrible storm that brought them here entirely without meaning to—the shipwreck, and flight from the pier. The fear they had that they’d made the new creatures upset and humans might react negatively towards Equestria.
The humans in the room with them offered their own contributions where necessary, mostly through David. Marie seemed to sense their disgust with her just as Ocellus did, and she didn’t say more than a yes or no to confirm the details of her accident. What she remembered, anyway.
“And that’s how we end up here,” Ocellus finished, nearly twenty minutes later. Twenty minutes they spent without anypony getting hurt or threatening an imminent attack. “Planning to hide until Equestria could make contact with… Great Britain.” Thank you book for that name. “We didn’t plan on getting into any more trouble here. Really we… just wanted to hide until they could pick us up.”
“I hope you were taking notes,” Smith muttered to his partner—who had been taking notes, on the surface of his own little phone-thing. Every human in the world must have one of those. Maybe they’re like a unicorn’s horn. “Because that was an awful lot to take in.”
“It’s the truth!” Sandbar exclaimed—the simplest, friendliest pronouncement any of them could make. And coming from a pony, it was hard for it not to sound sincere. “All of it is. We don’t know why Equestria showed up in the ocean. But from what we’ve heard, it’s as bad there as it is here. Storms, floods…” He lowered his voice. “Drownings… Nopony wanted it to happen.”
“Quite the story,” Mr. Smith repeated, straightening. “But I hope you understand we can’t just leave you here, in this stolen house.” He glanced briefly at the sign on the wall, with the letters and the strange symbol. “Small miracle no one rented it to get away from the coast.”
“So what happens?” Smolder asked, from where she’d sprawled out on the couch. While many of the others had been afraid, she had relaxed. “You fight us now, even after we told you everything?”
“I hope not,” Hayes said. “Violence would be… a poor decision for everyone. We really do like to think of it as the last possible outcome, when all others have failed.”
“There are soldiers outside,” Gallus muttered, voice flat. “Ocellus said so.”
“Because the people of this United Kingdom might be in danger. Even now, after that… story… even if we assume for a moment that everything you’ve just told us is exactly true and our two worlds have… bumped shoulders by accident along the road. Even if that’s true, your island is rather nearer to ours than comfort would permit. We must learn about you, and prevent…” He nodded slightly towards Marie, who only slumped down into her chair, covering her head. “She’s the rub. Whatever you did… even you couldn’t say what it might do in humans. Whether it’s contagious, whether all of us aren’t already contaminated. That’s part of why we let this conversation run so long—the biohazard team had to make their way here from London.”
Ocellus tensed, turning suddenly for the front door. She reached out with her mind, and… were there more humans out there? She couldn’t tell specific people or emotions, not with an alien species whose individuals she couldn’t see. It felt like they were stronger for sure. But that might also be because they were preparing to move, not necessarily because there were more of them.
Neither option is good.
“It isn’t contagious,” Ocellus said. “It’s… a difficult process for me. If you asked me to do it to one of you right now, I wouldn’t be able. It took all the magic I had, and I don’t have enough right now. I’ve been pretending to be human so long that my supply is drying up.”
“That’s… something else that needs sorting,” Hayes added, slipping his phone away into a pocket. “Our language shouldn’t be so similar. Aliens shouldn’t talk like they’re visiting colonials. And they shouldn’t say things like ‘magic’ when they mean… whatever science is involved in all this. A problem bigger than either of us.”
“We don’t speak for the UK,” Smith said. “We can’t negotiate with you on her behalf, or with the country you purport to come from. But what we can do is this. Surrender into our custody willingly, and you will not be harmed. Some of you bear a… more than passing similarity to local animals. That will require special instruction for the lab-techs. But if your nation is peaceful, then there’s no reason you shouldn’t be returned to them once it’s ironed out.”
“We could help you,” Silverstream said, bounding a few steps closer to the humans. Close enough that both of them recoiled, eyes darting to her beak and sharp talons. “Talk to Equestria, I mean!” She pointed at Ocellus. “Our changeling friend spent time living with humans and ponies, she knows you both! If you don’t want to fight by accident, she’s the one you want.”
“I’m sure you will help,” Smith said. “By doing exactly what we say. But believe me when I say that the people of this country are our first priority. If we believe any action you take might put them in danger, we will react accordingly.”
“But we’d really rather not, for all involved,” Hayes said. “I’ve never talked to a horse before. It would be a shame if this ended badly.”
“How about you two leave a minute,” Smolder said. “And you let us talk. You can go talk to the other humans for a bit.”
“How about we watch you from the other side of the room,” Smith offered, in a tone that suggested it wasn’t going to be a discussion. “We can’t let you out of our sight, not until hazmat gets here. For us as well—if there’s anything dangerous in this house, the two of us are certainly contaminated. So you can rest easy knowing we’ll be in your company all the way to… where we’re going.”
They backed up, retreating towards the door where Helen and David were sitting. Without a word, the two humans rose to join them. Smolder eyed them suspiciously, but Ocellus glared at her until she finally gave up and shrugged.
“What do we do?” Silverstream whispered, her voice desperate and afraid. “Should we go with them?”
“Better question,” Smolder muttered. “What happens if we don’t.”
“You lose,” David said, voice flat. “There’s six of you. They know about you—know about where we are, and what your powers can do. Were you really on the phone, Helen?”
“Yeah,” she answered. “Until about… ten minutes back. Something cut me off. But my family will be looking for me.”
“There we go,” David continued. “Helen’s family is important, they won’t let her just disappear. Besides—they’re not stupid. There’s a brand new island right out there in the ocean. For all we know, it’s going to be there for the rest of forever. Best thing to do right now is be polite and learn everything they can. Haven’t hurt us yet, have they?”
“They will,” Marie whispered. “They’re terrified of me. They’re worried about themselves too. Think I might have… doomed them. To be monsters like me.”
Helen reacted instantly, leaning against her and wrapping one arm around your shoulder. “Hush with talk like that, love. You’re adorable, you ‘ent a monster. I’ll make sure you don’t disappear either.”
“I don’t think we have a choice,” Gallus said. “Think about what Twilight said. We’re supposed to not make any trouble for Equestria. Even if we could win, or maybe fly away. If we hurt them right now, it isn’t an accident.”
Smolder growled, rubbing at her cracked scale through the bandages. “Dragons aren’t much for surrendering.”
“Equestria will get us out,” Sandbar said. “Just trust the princesses, they’ll take care of it. They always do.”
Smolder rolled her eyes. But Ocellus could feel their sentiment. She didn’t need to ask her friends how they felt. Instead she turned back. “We’ll do as you say,” she said. “We surrender.”
Well, I'd call this progress. Certainly not ideal, but at least that runs both ways. The mention of lab techs makes me a bit uneasy, but I'm sure they know better than to treat fellow sapients like common animals.
Or at least, I hope so.
I'm worried with the whole,"trust us, we're the government" aspect.
I really don't like the idea that the government's first approach is to basically say, "we are arresting you". I understand that no one wants to start a war, or really make decisions above their pay grade.
Given that they have pretty clearly established that they are not only not human, but not native to the planet, as well as the concern over potential contamination, the first thing that I would have expected from their higher ups (you know that they have been talking to their bosses) would be to regard that house as a temporary Embassy and the people as representatives of a foreign government.
Ocealus should be quiet she does not know any more than they do. Has any changeling ever changed a human before?
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Maybe quarantine the house but embassy, no. They aren't ambassadors, even if they say they are. Well, not until they make contact with Equestria proper and open relations.
Trouble is with shouting at someone to arrest them, is first they have to be able to understand the words you are using, then the reasons for those words.
There you are, just trundling along trying to not get caught up in some shouting elsewhere when ZAP, youre hit with 30kV if youre lucky.
So far theyre talking, which is a good thing for delaying screwups. Hazmat crew should at least be Asbestos suits, but the Mil stuff deals with vastly more deadly compounds, Salisbury.
Which is what the lab technicians better be loking at, atmospheric and swab samples, CAT and MRI if possible. Not only for their safety, but for the students safety, they need to establish at least recieved quality baseline, so they can Ask when things change and if theres known reasons why.
Honest Guv, It was like that when I bought it.
While I still have hope that this fic will show people acting reasonably and avoid artificial cliche-driven conflict, I have a bit less of it after this chapter. Those agents were annoying. While their general behavior might still be seen as reasonable, the details of how they handled the conversation were full of pointless missteps that only served to increase tension and awkwardness.
That is such a dumb thing to say. "I have no idea what's going on. Quick, better throw out the first thing that comes to mind."
Yes, "it" did. Everybody in the room heard that, you don't need to tell them. It's also conveniently a very offensive thing to say that serves to immediately escalate tension. Is such a super duper security service agent unable to stop himself from vocalizing his surprise?
"Just in case my last outburst wasn't offensive enough, let's throw in some dumb-ass comedy duo routine in the middle of this tense situation."
Why would he say this? It's forced into the middle of a larger utterance, breaks up its flow and undermines its message. What could have sounded conciliatory and reasonable is now ominous and kind of insulting.
"The other party in this conversation is acting peacefully and showing approximately zero violent intent. I should preemptively threaten them, because that's how I roll."
Hopefully, the whole biohazard thing won't be an excuse to put the characters through a series of humiliating and degrading experiences while clipboard-wielding lab-techs tick off points of their evil government cliche checklist.
Now that the student six peacefully surrendered, maybe somebody more diplomatic-minded can show up on the government side to talk with them. Someone who'll see his or her task as understanding and communicating with intelligent beings rather than tracking down and containing threats.
Okay, to be fair to the eternally-dumb agents, this isn't the kind of thing they were trained to handle. Nobody on Earth really is.
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In this fic, certainly not. In fiction in general? Haven't come across one of those, but I'd be surprised if it hadn't been done before.
Oh, I've seen plenty of "human to changeling" fics, but none where another changeling was the cause.
Nobody said Helen wasn't smart.
Knew it! Does make me wonder just what exactly showed up on the CAT scan, though...
It would! So don't mess this up.
I worry what the heavily implied lab tests might entail, and whether or not the Young 6 and Marie would be granted the same rights to safety as any human would during the duration of such tests. I also have a fear that the temptation to bury the whole situation might be high for the agents. But at least it hasn't ended in a fight, and I remain optimistic that it still won't just yet, so there's that. And yeah, it's not like they have much other choice than to hope for the best right now.
In fairness, the biohazard aspect isn't an unfair precaution to take, not because Marie's transformation could be contagious, but because you never know what microbes the Young Six may have brought with them that are harmless for them but might not be so harmless for the humans. I mean, I'd imagine a case of pony pox probably isn't going to mix too well with unfamiliar human biology. I don't seriously think there's much risk of that considering how long they've been there now, of course, but it's still a smart precaution to make, regardless.
Here's hoping this is the first steps to good relations across the board...
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In all fairness, these are government agents who are trained to ensure safety of the people of the country they represent, not ambassadors, and while I agree they sorely lack a lot of tact, a lot of their concerns they bring up are valid things for them to consider until such time they can be ruled out. That's part of their job, after all, to think of those possibilities and be prepared to act if needed. I'd imagine that were this to play out in real life, many of these same points would still be brought up.
Is it good for diplomacy? Not entirely. But at least they didn't go in shooting, and clearly seem more interested in keeping the peace for all sides and ensure nobody is hurt, so they've got that going for them.
Twenty minutes of nobody being shot is a good twenty minutes.
It was the only viable option.
No government agent goes to work expecting a first contract scenario. (As far as I know.) I'd say these two are handling the appearance of a sextet of magical aliens and a hybridized bug-girl about as well as anyone could hope for. In some cases, it's definitely a case of falling back on training while the conscious mind is grappling with the fact that that yak just talked holy beans on toast.
That said, I really hope the students mentioned that their teacher/high-ranking government official/paramilitary problem solver knows that they're here. It's going to be hard to make them disappear when Twilight's expecting them back.
9464907 These guys make the pointlessly evil government antagonists in 'Daryl' and 'Flight of the Navigator' look like reasonable authority figures.
Okay so it didn't go as badly as I expected, only because I expected them to take one look at Marie, scream 'Xenomorph' and back out firing their pistols on full auto, but still, I am just imagining the debrief with their highly unamused superior.
"I see, so your first reaction on seeing the six aliens was to ask if the human appearing one was an animal trainer? Why didn't you just offer to put them on leashes while you were at it?"
"Who exactly was being informed when you said, 'It talked'. Clearly they already knew this, and the two of you saw it. Nice job on calling a sapient creature 'it' by the way,"
"Yes, when facing nervous alien children who are our only point of contant with a nation of magic users, I too would decide to state they look like animals and would start alluding to doing lab experiments on them."
"And having had them offer complete co-operation, you decide to threaten them, because this situation wasn't messed up enough already."
"Well, you managed _not_ to get us in a shooting war with creatures that can bench press planetary bodies, so I suppose we can call that a win."
Also, 'colonials'? I don't think any Brit has called Americans colonials other than facetiously for at least 50 years, probably more.
I am enjoying this story, but probably not for the right reasons.
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Look, as long as he's being condescending to people on the other side of the pond rather than people in front of him, I'd call it a win.
What he says here is part of this thing where everybody goes "zomg, aliens speak English with an American accent." Eventually people will figure out that Equestria is much older than the U.S. of A., and therefore it's more correct to say that Americans speak English with an equestrian accent rather than the opposite (and also, that they cribbed several city names and stripped out the adorable horsey-puns). I think Britons could derive some amusement from that.
Geez, I’m nervous now. Something tells me that the agents are spouting a load of crap and that the students and Marie are about to be shipped off to the UK’s equivalent of Area 51, but I’m putting those thoughts aside because the “Dark” tag isn’t there.
This story is amazing, by the way. Can’t wait for next week!
9468857 The trope was at it's height during the 80's:
Flight of the Navigator: "So you have this 8 year old kid who's gone through the massive trauma of having missed 8 years of his life, and take him away without a member of his family or anyone to support him, and don't even bother to hire a child psychologist or dedicated carer who's worked with traumatised children. Then you treat him like an experiment, refuse to involve him or answer any of his questions, and lie to him, then decide to keep him despite promising you would take him back, effectively kidnapping him and lying to him. Then, surprise surprise, he runs away and doesn't trust you. C'mon NASA, this is not rocket science!'
DARYL: "So, you've created a human intelligence level A.I. who's motor and mental capabilities combine the power of a super computer and self awareness. You've even sucessfully integrated this computer brain into an organic biological body, with all the massive implications that has for mind body interfacing and prosthetics. And this A.I. has been socialised and internalised American middle class values, so minimal chance of a Skynet scenario. The possibilities of his programming are endless. What do you do? Terminate the project and start over because he isn't the super-soldier you wanted. Because all generals are retarded General Ripper wannabees who's only concern is with killing things and take no interest in the larger context any technological development."
The Goonies... even if the kid who's claiming to have seen the Fratellis is normally a prankster, it's still your job to check out the possibility, cops. But then you let them get away with the sloppiest jail break in history, so it's obvious that if your brains were dynamite, you wouldn't have enough to blow your nose.
E.T; You have an alien. You have a kid he's some how bonded with. Do you, a) have trained people talk to them and learn what you can, make it clear you're trying to help them both, and ask if there's any way the U.S. government can get intouch with the rest of the alien's race and ask for help, or b) treat them like experimental subjects and simply monitor them as they appear to be dying? Add to that you have no idea if, in the case that the alien actually dies, his race won't come back to Earth and turn it into a new asteroid belt.
So from that point of view, this is par for the course, perfectly in keeping with the 'Adults are Useless', 'There are No Therapists' and 'Social Services do not Exist' tropes common to this kind of story.
And there is so much grief when one breaks.
At least the situation is being handled in a way that for now doesn't get anybody hurt and neither side wants to start a fight.