Tour of the Dead ship (private)

"Are you familiar with a tale of old about a certain earth pony that wanted to fly? It goes with him building wings of feathers and glue. Upon these wings he flew about and enjoyed the sky and all it's glory until he flew too close to the sun. In it's heat, the glue melted and the feathers burned, and down the pony fell." Zen recited with his own grin.

"Something like that happened again where I'm from, ponies wanted to overstep the boundaries of what was and they ended up dead for it. This isn't some transcendence, it's abomination level magical mutation. Though I'm not sure if this is a warning or simply stating what is to come. Either way, good luck, hehehe," he continued.

Then Zen reached out a hand which simply vanished into his pocket dimension. When he retracted it, the scythe came with it, tearing the portal open wider as the blade ripped free. As he stepped into the void space, the soldiers raised their weapons to fire incapacitating rounds at Zen, but no rounds exited the barrel. The last thing Zen did before stepping completely into the void space was another chuckle and then the opening sealed shut, before any could follow him. While everyone had been distracted with him, Zen had opened another portal under Firefox, allowing him to simply fall into the void space too.

Emerging out of a new portal next to Plasma moments later with Firefox, Zen was coughing somewhat violently, a worrying amount of blood coating his hand and splattering onto the floor. "Well, wasn't she pleasant, though I get the feeling you two knew each other before? Oh and you might want to explain on the way because we've got incoming," Zen said once his coughing fit was over and he retrieved his sword as well.

Stream was lying a little ways from a wall of destruction, body parts and falling debris scattered about haphazardly; he didn't go down without a fight. Zen untied Fox and helped him up, the latter immediately running to his side and examining the unconscious pony, saying "Reciting the story of Daedalus and Icarus wouldn't help much in that conversation, I'm not sure if that mare has finally snapped and had began talking nonsense or if she was actually right, either way that's bad news for this guy" Fox said as he hefted stream over his shoulders, wheezing "damn this he's heavy, we'll need to get him to medical to have an examination; there should be a tram station not far from here"

"Here, toss him in," Zen said cutting open a new portal with a small cut of his scythe into the void space. "No gravity inside, so there's no worry about him hitting something hard. He'll just float around until we get to medical, and this way you aren't too encumbered to defend yourself," Zen continued.

Fox looked at the portal for a moment, then looked at Zen, and put Stream through the portal, saying "I hope you're right" and put him inside. Watching as Zen closed the portal, he found Stream's cutter a few feet from where the body was. Picking it up and loading it, he said "Follow me" and began leading him to the tram.

Once they left the room, they heard "There they are!" followed by several gunshots. Fox shouted "Come on!' and began running in the opposite direction, following what the signs on the top of the doors said. Fox sealed the first door behind them and put a scrap piece of metal in the locking mechanism, jamming it shut. He said "That won't hold for long, stay close" and followed the same guide Stream had to the tram station. There he called for a tram and said "There, five minutes and our ride will be here"

"Hehehe, let's mess with them a little then since there's some time that needs killing," Zen replied setting up some defenses. First off, Zen drove the spiked pommel of his scythe into the floor so that it was sticking straight up and retrieving a faintly glowing crystal from one of his coat pockets. "Just touch this crystal to the left side of the blade and a pretty powerful force field will activate. Keep in mind though that it's both ways, nothing out, nothing in."

Then with the one sword still in hand, Zen wandered over towards the door leading to the room. Even with the metal piece jamming it shut, he wasn't satisfied. So Zen started carving a series of lines into the floor right in front of the door. With the first rune completed, he set about expanding upon it, adding in new additions, modifiers, and some resort keys.

"Alright, that should keep them busy for a bit, ehehehe," Zen said taking a step back to admire his work, just as loud pounding began from the door. "That rune there will trigger another force field kind of like my scythe if they get the door open, but it'll be pretty close to blindingly bright. And it's reflective to just have some extra fun. Hopefully it'll buy us the extra time needed."

"Unfortunately they have quite a lot more than guns-" Fox said just before the door exploded outwards, several bits cutting through the rune and the flying debris triggering the it, "so much your little rune did!" he exclaimed as he spotted a flashbang grenade being tossed into the room. He covered his ears and looked away from the grenade as it went off, the key sign being the loud BANG echoing through the room, and the flash. Turning around he fired sevreal shots into the smoke, which was responded to in kind by several soldiers screaming in pain and return fire; their pulse rifles shooting hundreds of bullets per minute, riddling the wall where Fox was with small holes. He looked at the damage and said "come on tram, where the hell are you?"

"Dang it, that shouldn't have stopped it from kicking in!" Zen yelled out as the rounds started. Then he face-palmed at the simplicity of what he could do instead. With a couple quick swings of his sword, Zen created a quick series of 4 portals, closing 2 of them as he cut them. The two that remained open were right in front of the door. The bullets flying into either portal ended up flying right back out the other portal and back at the people shooting them while anything that entered from the side Zen and Firefox were on just flew off into the void space.

With the more powerful defense set up, Zen wandered simply back to where Fox was waiting. "There, that should hold them off a little longer. In the mean time-" Zen let the statement hang as he touched the side of the scythe blade, triggering the shield around them.

"Given that the rune was damaged as it triggered would leave me to believe that the rune had run into a glitch, similar things happen to the systems aboard ships if they aren't maintained within a reasonable amount of time..." he paused as the screeching tram came to a halt at the station, he got inside and waited for Zen to climb in.

Zen didn't waste any time, deactivating the shield and removing the scythe from the floor before stepping onto the tram. So how far off is medical?" Zen asked to kill some time during the ride.

"It's about thirty minutes at full speed" he replied, sitting down at one of the chairs as the train quickly sped up. He pulled up a video called 'wreckless eating, episode 46: Pure evil 9.6' and watched...

30 minutes later

"well, that was quick, and interesting to watch" Fox said as he stood up on the slowing tram, waiting for the door to open while simultaneously checking his cutter. When the door opened he held out his hand and followed the guide through medical to the diagnostics section, saying "If you could please open up a portal for me to get Stream"

"Yeah, sure," Zen replied making a quick slash with the sword. A single portal opened, and there floating just past the threshold was Plasma's body. While Fox got to work fixing up Plasma, Zen went began securing the room, repeating the jamming procedure that Fox had previously demonstrated, and then with the knew knowledge, Zen re-carved the shielding rune into the floor in front of each of the entrances.

This time however he left out most of the modifications and simply activated them by implanting one of the magically charged gems into the symbol so the shield would be strongly reinforcing the already fairly solid doors. Then he went about setting up a blockade for the vents as well, by opening small portals in front of the vents so no little surprises could pay them a visit.

Placing Stream on one of the numerous beds, one that did not have anything rotting on it fortunately, he began undoing the armor strips and said "I'm going to need power and a medkit, there should be both in the next room, I'll get to work on getting this armor off"

"And I'll leave those portals up so you two aren't disturbed, hehehe," Zen said chuckling as he wandered off to gather the supplies. As he stepped into the other room, one of the monstrous ponies that was lying in wait sprung up and pinned him to the wall with one of it's spiked limbs. As it raised it's other limb, Zen slashed about it's waist with the glowing runes of his sword, the charged energy leaping off the blade to add to the cutting power.

Even with the energy attack severing the creature, it manged to hold itself aloft with the arm that was pinning Zen, and proceeded to stab it's free spike into the upper right of Zen's chest. Zen gasped in pain as the spike was drove deeper into him. Gritting his teeth, Zen swore under his breath as a red horizontal line cut across his eyes. The creature's yells abruptly stopped, and soon it was practically falling apart as in that moment, Zen had opened several portals in various places throughout it's body and expanded them until they cut through completely.

Free from the creature, Zen ripped the pinning spike from him and the other one that had been driven into him, still gasping in pain. Quickly, he then grabbed the supplies and went back into the medical room. "Heh, got room for one more on the operating table?" Zen asked with one arm handing over the supplies, and the other putting pressure on the chest wound.

Fox pushed one of the bodies off another bed and had him lay down on it, pulling out what looked like a very large syringe he said "looks like you got lucky, the necro that got you was hitting a bit far to the left, some biofoam should seal the wound up for now. I'll need a full medical team or better equipment on hand to do a full repair of the damage but some disinfecting and an application of the foam will do for now" He took out a large bottle of the foam and some disinfecting wipes. Pulling one out, he said "this is going to hurt a bit" and began wiping it across the wound, hearing Zen suck his breath through his teeth meant that it was working, he moved the syringe over the wound and began applying the foam, saying "I wouldn't recommend doing anything that will put strain on the foam, the seal is very good but very fragile, so for the moment stick to being behind me and Stream, if I can get him up and moving again"

Moving back over to Stream, he finished removing the armor strips and began the lengthy process of cutting the jumpsuit open to have a look at the body. After finally being able to pull it off, Fox said "Holy shit... how the hell is that even possible?"

"Heh, me stay behind? I've still got one good arm hehehe," Zen forced out between gritted teeth. He then cast a sidelong glace at the scythe, and pulled it into his pocket dimension deciding that it would be too cumbersome to keep wielding effectively. He'd just finished putting the thing away when Fox exclaimed.

"Hmm? What's up? I can't really see from here," he remarked trying to look past Fox.

"I'm looking at... something, but whatever happened to him happened quite rapidly, take a look" and with that Fox moved over to the side. What could be considered Plasma Stream would be from the neck up, but below that was a body-shaped mass of burnt, boiled and stringy flesh, his heartbeat echoing very loudly through the room. The smell of cooked flesh permeated the room as Stream's chest rose and fell, giving an indication of life, though what kind could be debated.

"...rrright, so how's he still alive?" Zen asked looking at the mess of a body with a skeptical look, like he was either expecting it to spring to life as one of the monsters, or simply stop being alive any second. "I mean hell, I'm not even sure how he got into that room. The lights went off and he bloody well disappeared, if it wasn't for the one psycho mare, I probably wouldn't have been able to find him."

"I don't know how he's still alive, it could be from that mucho magic you're using or The Marker, the latter of which would entail some sort of success on her experimentation, if it went a little sideways. The only way we can really find out is to find some anti-suppressant medications in this wing, if we can unblock those memories than we might be able to find out what happened to him. He could have been a test subject since birth for all I know" Fox said as he eyed Stream, watching him shiver slightly and move onto his side.

"Well, I do have one thing, but I can't be near it if you want to try that. It's a pretty powerful magic drain, just saps the stuff out of anything nearby," Zen commented as he contemplated retrieving the void stone.

"I'd rather not, and it might not even work or it could backfire in the worst possible way, given his luck" Fox said as he began searching the area for something that could undo a memory suppressant, mumbling "Euthasia... no, Daley? I thought that was a narcotic..."

"Well, ya got me on this one. I've never had to deal with memory suppressants. Most of that magic is all but banned, and what little research that's conducted on the topic is under a lot of supervision," Zen commented as he just continued to look at what was left of Plasma.

"Well I guess it's good that what I'm looking for is something that will flush out the enzyme responsible for blocking that part of his memories, and not magic. Epinephrine... that could come in handy later on" He took the bottle off the shelf and put it on a table near him and continued "no, no, no, no, there it is!" And pulled a bottle labelled 'Vernyne' out. Shaking the bottle he heard the liquid slosh around inside, a clear indication that the medicine is still held within. Taking a smaller syringe out, he pushed the thin needle through the rubber top and drawn out twenty cc's of the bright orange liquid, then took out the syringe and felt around for the Carotid artery, and plunged the needle in. He brought out a small amount of blood to make sure it was in a vessel and not in muscle and pushed the liquid into his neck.

Zen watched and waited as Fox worked, occasionally diverting his gaze towards the various entrances to the room to ensure that nothing was trying to sneak around his portal barriers. Seeing that nothing was being able to make it's way past the tears in dimensional space, Zen then looked back to the scene on the table to see how Plasma might be faring.

"That should eradicate any trace of known Memory suppressants, whether that will do the trick or not I have no idea. I just hope that it will, only time will tell" he replied as he looked around. Over on the left wall was a pile of resources, a suit kiosk, and a bench. Walking over, he said "man I wish I knew how to use this thing, then we could properly arm ourselves" before the ship violently tossed him and any loose objects around, most of which hit the ground, including him, Zen, and Plasma. Fox said "they activated the Shockpoint drive, what the hell are they thinking?!"

"What the hell is a Shockspace drive?" Zen replied bringing himself up to his feet.