Tour of the Dead ship (private)

"It certainly has it's advantages" he said as he opened the door, only to be met with one of the things that have a split skull. It let out a rather weird, high-pitched scream and threw it's arm on the ground, destroying itself and throwing the two into the back wall. Stream let out a groan and said "Right, those things love to put themselves in front of doors"

"Well, don't they just suck," Zen replied after a few groans himself and standing up. He looked around a little bit, finding his scythe that had lodged itself into the wall behind them. With a few jerks, he managed to pull the weapon from the surface and resettle it on his shoulder. "Ugh, any idea how hard they have to hit that arm to trigger the explosion?" He asked wondering what he could do to keep it from happening again.

"Given that I would be able to set it off just by stomping on it, probably not much, so I'd recommend against using that thing near one. Had it been a little farther away I'd have cut off that little bomb bag and use it as a pretty useful grenade" Stream replied as he went through the door again, little bits of the creature dripping off the walls and ceiling

"Just curious if I were to cut it off, would the impact with the ground detonate it," Zen remarked as he continued along. "Let's just get this done, I don't care for this freaking helmet."

"It's not that sensitive, but it does come close" he replied as he held out his hand and followed the little blue line to a door, with the words "PRIMARY VENTILATION SYSTEM" above it, stream said "I really hope this thing is small" and opened the door, regretting what he said in a heartbeat.

"...Well, that's probably going to be a problem," Zen remarked as he looked into the room as well.

Inside was a wall of flesh, three holes in the thing opened up to reveal tentacles as thick as stream, and a maw that could easily swallow a dozen ponies. The thing gave an eardrum-bustingly loud roar as Stream gulped and said "Now would be a good time to use that contact beam"

"Then here, I've got a couple other things I'd rather try," Zen replied as he swung the scythe, creating a quick pair of portals. One to his side and the other to Plasma's side. Just past the opening and floating in the void space was the weapon. With the portal open, Zen closed the one next to him and set about his own idea's.

With the next swing of his scythe, Zen created a new pair of portals, this time expanding outwards from the the center of one of the tentacles until it completely severed the limb. Satisfied with that, Zen charged up the runes on his scythe to launch a blade of magic at the wall itself, but the condensed energy didn't seem to have any noticeable effect.

Stream took the gun out of the portal and aimed it for one of the tentacles, right at a glowing yellow pustule he guessed was still weak. Firing his first shot he had missed and blew a small hole in the wall, on his second shot he had hit the tentacle but a little high, taking a chunk out of it. His third shot hit the mark and the creature roared in pain as the severed limb floated around, unfortunately for Stream, another tentacle took it's place and quickly grabbed him, tossing him into the air and using him as a hammer, before it began dragging him into the thing's maw.

"Hold on Stream!" Zen yelled out as he bounded off towards the held pony. In retaliation, it swung Plasma about still trying to use him as a hammer, slamming into Zen, just as planned. Zen latched onto Plasma and let the runes on the other side of his scythe activate, creating a bubble shaped shield around the both of them.

Shifting the weapon to one hand, Zen reached out his other hand which disappeared into the void of his pocket dimension, and proceeded to swing it down. As his hand descended, it pulled a sickle sword from the space in a cutting motion to begin hacking away at the tentacle. "Feel free to pitch in at any point, as he kept hacking.

"I'd love to, but this thing won't stop shaking me and I dropped the Contact Beam!" Stream replied as he pulled out his cutter and tried aiming for the postule on this tentacle, most of his shots missing and the ones that did hit were not powerful enough to sever it quickly.

"Then here!" Zen yelled as he stopped hacking the tentacle, and cut open a new pair of portals, one above them and the other below the Contact Beam so Plasma could easily reach through and grab it. With that open, Zen went back to hacking at the limb, working though about half of it by this point. His other hand still busy holding the scythe that was maintaining the bubble shield.

Stream grabbed the Contact Beam and aimed, the last shot in the gun hit it's mark and blew the tentacle in half. The creature roared out in pain as Stream got the last of the tentacle off him and they backed away from it. At this point Stream noticed a small thing in it's mouth, a few seconds before it started spitting chunks of meat at them. Stream held one of them in his kinesis and began shooting them back at it, making sure to aim for the mouth. The first two he had shot hit a second one that it spat at him, but the fifth hit it's mark and the thing recoiled, roaring out in major pain. He shouted "Take those things and shoot it back into the mouth, but keep your distance!" It had regained it's stance and two new tentacles sprouted from it, this time it grabbed Zen where his scythe was, including his hand, and had another grab his other hand. Stream exclaimed "shit!" and began the process of reloading the device, the large amounts of steam coming out of the fins blocking his view for a moment.

"Heh, they'll have to do better than that," Zen replied as the tentacle's wrapped around his limbs moments after he canceled the shield. Just as the tentacles' started to drag him closer, two smaller portals opened and spread out from the center of the tentacles, severing them apart near where they grabbed him.

Now free from the limbs, Zen began spinning his scythe in rapid rotations while the runes glowed with the building magical energy. Blade after blade of magic was then launched at the creatures mouth, all aimed with the accuracy of years worth of practice.

Instinctively, the creature closed it's mouth before the blades hit, the shots bouncing off the things tough exterior with about as much effectiveness as sharp rocks that exploded on contact. Stream looked at him and said "I don't think anything you've got will be able to get to it without having to be extremely close" he finished reloading the Contact Beam and pulled down the trigger, charging up a shot, waiting for it to open it's mouth. He did not have to wait long. Once the barrage had ended it revealed the glowing pustule in it's mouth which got a direct hit from the contact beam, rupturing the organ and causing the thing to screech in pain, and give one final roar before it expired. Stream held out his hand and said "thanks" but that's when he noticed the items floating around the room began shifting towards the now dead creature. He looked towards it and saw that it had begun to fall apart, allowing the fan blades it was caught around to begin trying to spin again, and that's when he heard "Obstruction being cleared, please vacate the area"

"Fuck..." is all he said

"One quick escape tunnel made to order and coming right up," Zen said without much hesitation. The Scythe swung in a quick slash to open a pair of portals back out of the room. Zen jumped though and all but drug Plasma with him. Once though, Zen closed the portals so they wouldn't be pulled back in. "There we go, what's next on the agenda engineer?"

"We cleared the ventilation system, and all the ADS cannons are back online" he listed before pulling up comms with Fox, asking "done here, what's next?"

"I don't know about you, but I'm going to find out how and why the Military found us"

"Where did they dock?"

"They docked over at the flight deck"

"I'll meet you in the lounge then"

"Roger that. Firefox, out"

"And there's your answer, we're headed back up to the flight lounge, and the air should be sufficiently circulated to be breathable again" Stream said as he unfolded his helmet, heading back to the elevator.

Zen didn't reply until his helmet was off, and once it was, the first thing from him was an exaggerated sigh. "Oh man that's better," he continued setting the hat back onto his head and moving to follow along with the scythe on his shoulder.

"So wait, there's military? Oh that's going to go well," he remarked recalling on past experiences. "Well, at least wanted posters don't tend to cross dimensions well."

"That's if they're in a talking mood, frankly with what's been happening over the past few years, it wouldn't surprise me if they're here to scrub the ship instead of rescue us" Stream said as he entered the elevator, his rivet gun out.

"Hehehe, if it comes to that, up for playing the part of a stowaway?" Zen asked with a smirk and he followed along. "So long as I can see their ship, I can get us on it relatively safely." He continued as they walked. He still held one sword in his main hand while the scythe held in his off hand rested on his shoulder.

"If you insist, though since the ship is on a docking collar outside nowhere near any windows and there's legions of troops and automated defenses in the way, I'd say good luck if it were possible, if they start shooting than go crazy" As the elevator opened, two guards just started walking in. They saw the two and said "Clarke, and whoever you are, put down your weapons and come with us" Stream looked over at Zen and shrugged, then tossed his rivet gun at them.

Zen was sure to let the scythe and sword fall outside of the elevator, but did drop them. "Hehehe, and here I was already coming up with a few idea's how'd we could sneak into this thing, but nothing like an escort eh?" He said with a sly grin before moving to follow the guards. "Let's see just how far down the rabbit hole we go," he continued still grinning.

As they lead them down to the flight lounge, they found Firefox sitting at one of the benches, tied up, saying "mmph, I'll see to it that you'll get an official reprimand for assaulting a superior officer!"

"shut up, we don't work for the military" and the guard swiftly kicked him in the stomach. He then turned around and shot the two escorts for Stream and Zen, the former saying "woah woah woah, what's going on here?"

"And here we thought you'd have figured it out by now, we're not with any of the government sectors and we aren't sanctioned by any of them"

"Oh, of course, you're Unitologists, worshiping the marker like it's the holy grail or the Ark of the Covenant. You just don't want to accept the fact that the marker doesn't bring you back to life as how you perceive it. I saw my whole team get slaughtered by those things back in here"

"Yes, I was there too"

"Huh?" Stream turned around and faced another one of his members, though with her attire and the mad smile on her face, he found that rather hard to believe. "You too"

"Yes Stream, though I've always been one from the start"

"Why? Why did you bring us here?"

"Isn't it obvious? You're a special case among the other tests Stream, you don't perceive the marker signal as noise, but rather as codes and blueprints"

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"We used your brain to build the marker that the USG Constellation found, and might I add that the memory suppressants we gave you were highly effective at keeping the signal at bay"

"What?!"

"Stream, you can't even begin to understand your value to our project"

"Oh, I can guess how valuable this 'project' of yours is"

"You do? I'm surprised, but since you already have a clue, I imagine your friend here doesn't, do you?"

"Barely a one," Zen replied with a simple carefree smile that all but screamed ignorance. Then the expression shifted to one that would rival the worst of manic glee. The corners turning up in an bright and wide smile that fully revealed the pointed teeth that made up his jaw line. His eyes going wide and about as open as they could while the gold hourglass pupils were almost lost the in sudden sea of white surrounding them.

"But I don't need too many to form an opinion, and one that's already formed about you is that you are going to die before I leave this place, hehehe," he continued with a closed mouth chuckle. Then just as quickly as the sanity stressing expression formed, it fled when Zen looked over to Plasma. "Just let me know when you're ready to leave and we'll be gone, hehehe."

The intimidating display did not phase her in the way he had expected, instead of looking frightened, she had smiled wider, saying "So, you're not from around here are you? No matter, everyone has their time of expiration, yours will come eventually; but it's up to The Marker on who it's from"

The lights quickly went out, the soldiers exclaiming their surprise before the mare shouted "The main power conduits must have gone out, give it a minute to reroute.", they waited, and waited, and waited, but the lights did not come on. The soldiers looked around the room for a moment and turned on their flashlights, lighting the area in swaths of light, but they found no trace of Plasma Stream. One of the soldiers said "Hey, where did Stream go?"

"I don't know, he may have escaped, look for his RIG" the mare from before brought up a map of sorts and found a blinking blue light one level above them, but the signal was very poor. She said "take teams two and three and bring him back, alive"

"Yes ma'am" and with that the commander signalled the other two teams and headed out the door. She turned to face Zen and said "you have a cool party trick, but none of the other Oracles would hesitate to cut you down after that display. You're dead weight in the Church's eye, but you might prove useful to them once I analyze your DNA structure, and it might even allow for true transcendance of ponykind. The Markers create the base virus, but their methods are rough, unclean, and very ugly, the Necromorphs are side-effects of the virus. If I can secure a sample of the virus the Church would be able to modify it to work on living populations too, without the mindlessness and appearence of these creatures"