The Conversion Bureau: Anomaly

Chapters

Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 1

Chapter 2

“Flowers, dear?”

Lauren looked up to see the kindly old face of the unicorn pony who had been running the Conversion Bureau front desk, telekinetically offering her a vase full of lilies.

“No, thank you ma’am,” Lauren declined, eyeing the flowers with an odd mixture of distaste and the horrifying thought that this was what she would have to eat for the rest of her life…which, what with her being an alicorn and all, might never end.

“Call me Periwinkle, dearie,” the appropriately hued pony said, setting the flowers back on the table of the Conversion Bureau’s waiting room as Lauren returned her attention to the window. The new alicorn had been staring outside it for the past three hours after arriving from Club Technochocolate via police escort along with all the other former humans.

Lauren shuddered at the memory of all the newfoals looking up at her in awe, not daring to even speak to her directly but intently whispering amongst themselves. Lauren had overheard enough of their chatter to gather that they hadn’t even thought an alicorn transformation possible. Lauren couldn’t bring herself to blame them for their absentminded alienation—she hadn’t thought an alicorn transformation possible either, and was, truth be told, just as terrified of herself as they were terrified of her.

One by one, the newfoals had been called into the back hall to be assigned their rooms for post-transformation training—pre-transformation training not being an option any more. But Lauren, even when her name was called at last, had refused to budge from her seat by the window. Nopony had dared to try and get her to do otherwise—in fact, Periwinkle was the first living being besides the police officer who had actually made contact with her since the incident.

“Still waiting for him, I see?” the off-green pony inquired, joining Lauren in a seat at the window. Lauren was surprised at this sudden gesture of normalcy after all she’d been through. Maybe Periwinkle wasn’t a newfoal and had come straight from Equestria like some of the Bureau workers she’d interviewed in her studies for college, and knew that alicorns were people—well, ponies—too, and not magical monsters. With the way the newfoals had looked at her, though, Lauren only hoped that she herself could stop thinking of herself as a magical monster.

“Yeah,” Lauren answered, sighing and breathing a fog onto the windowpane. When it cleared, all Lauren could see was the air-traffic of countless hover-cars zooming by, just like they had been doing since she arrived here. Lauren’s eyes lit up when the flashing lights of a police cruiser dashed by, but her ears drooped as the cruiser sped on past the Bureau, off to attend to some emergency that didn’t involve delivering Craig to her. “I can’t believe they’re taking so long! The police said they’d deliver him here hours ago.”

“I’m sure the police have a good reason for the hold-up, dearie,” Periwinkle affirmed. “Don’t worry, he’ll be here. I’m certain of it.”

Lauren turned to the older pony, eyeing her quizzically.

“What makes you so sure?” Lauren asked.

“I’ve been running the front desk of this Conversion Bureau for years,” Periwinkle answered. “I’ve seen just about everything pass through those front doors. Families looking to provide a better life for their children, loners looking for a way out of the life they were lost in. I’ve even seen a few suitors rushing to join their lovers before they ran away without them.”

“Wait—you mean me and—but, no, it’s not like—” Lauren spluttered, trying to dissuade Periwinkle from her perception of the situation. “I mean, sure, Craig’s my best friend from college, but—”

Periwinkle simply held up a hoof and Lauren stopped abruptly.

“It’s none of my business anyway, dearie,” the other pony said smilingly with a wink. “But he’ll come. They always do.”

Lauren, embarrassed, turned back to the window. She only hoped Periwinkle was right. No, not about that, about the other thing.

“Just let me know if you need anything, dearie,” Periwinkle said as she got up to resume her position at the front desk.

“Thanks,” Lauren smiled back before gluing herself to the window again. If Craig didn’t get here soon, Lauren thought that she might die of worry. It was like the calm before the storm—unbearable. The new alicorn had do something to pass the time, or she’d be pulling her hair out before much longer. Well, she would if she had any hands.

Following the hover-cars speeding past the Bureau in the night outside, Lauren began absentmindedly counting as many as she could. An Italian sports speeder, a minivan, a bright red fire flier with sirens ablaze, and so many others flew by without a second thought to the white alicorn in the window of the Conversion Bureau. They were humanity, the ones who had chosen stick with the Earth, come what may. Rushing about their lives, trying desperately to save their dying planet and paying no attention to the ponies.

And, until last night, Lauren had been one of them.

Lauren sighed again, counting a large line of sky-tour buses zooming past. A rumbling sound alerted her attention to an even larger trailer-toting hover-truck bumbling up behind the buses, almost shoving the smaller hovercraft out of the way as it sped along.

Lauren mentally read off the forgettable name of the hover-truck’s moving company. It was probably one of the richer families finally moving out of the city to the last remains of the countryside, where the air wasn’t quite akin to smoking a cigar without the safety of a disposable throat filter.

It was almost as if the trucking company was trying to make their logo be forgotten without a second glance with how boring it was. ‘The Smith, Jones, & Brown Moving Company.’

“…Lauren…”

Lauren’s ears perked up, then drooped again almost as quickly. That couldn’t have been Craig, could it? It sounded like him, but it was so faint, and there was nopony else in the Conversion Bureau front lobby but Periwinkle playing solitaire on the computer to pass the slow hours of the nightshift. If the automatic front doors of the Bureau had opened, Lauren would’ve noticed it instantly, but they had remained shut and silent.

“…Lauren!”

There it was again! Lauren was certain she had heard something that time—it had been louder. Not by much, but too much to ignore. But where was it coming from?

“…Lauren…”

It was getting faint again, as if it was moving farther away.

“…Lauren…help…me…”

Lauren’s ears swiveled in the direction the sound was coming from. It was definitely Craig—it had to be, somehow, as she could recognize his voice anywhere—and it seemed to be coming from—

“He's outside?” Lauren questioned herself. “What would—”

“Did you say something, dearie?” Periwinkle asked.

“Oh, uh, I think I’ll just slip outside for some…fresh air,” Lauren excused herself hastily, getting up from her chair and trotting to the entryway doors.

“Fresh?” Periwinkle echoed uncertainly. “You know, dearie, the police said you really shouldn’t leave—”

“I’ll just be a minute!” Lauren called over her shoulder.

The automatic doors swiped aside and Lauren sped outside onto the moving walkway, nearly knocking some humans off the side. With a few hasty repetitions of “Sorry!” Lauren began galloping down the mobile lane away from the Bureau. Humans and ponies alike hastened to get out of the alicorn’s path.

“…Lauren!”

There it was again! She must be getting closer! But where was it coming from?

Lauren approached the intersection and the stationary island in the moving sidewalk as the floating traffic lights turned red and the forward movement of hovercraft halted. Lauren could cross to the other side now, if she wanted to, but would the voice be stronger over there? If only she could tell where it was coming from!

“Lauren!”

Lauren jumped. It was if Craig’s voice had spoken right in her ear this time. The new alicorn turned abruptly in the direction the sound had emanated from, but saw nothing but more people and ponies zooming down the mobile walkway. Beyond them were the waiting cars, one large craft in particular catching her eye—

“Lauren, I’m in the—”

The lights turned green, and traffic sped off again.

Craig’s voice said something again, but it was too faint to hear.

What was going on? Where was that coming from—

“The truck!” Lauren realized. She’d only heard Craig’s voice when the truck was passing by, and the closer it was, the clearer she could hear Craig. That had to be it!

Lauren launched herself down the walkway, barreling through the late night crowds. Several pedestrians, ponies and humans alike, cursed her as she ran past and more often than not almost over them, but she had other things to worry about right now.

The hover-truck was getting farther and farther away, despite Lauren’s new longer strides. There had to be some way she could catch up with it before—

The truck swerved off the main road, turning down a side street.

“Buck!” Lauren swore. Then, realizing what she had said, “What, I can’t even use human swear words?!”

The traffic was blocking Lauren from following the hover-truck on the other side of the street. Lauren would have to wait for the lights to change again before she could cross, and by that time who knew where the truck would be? It could’ve disappeared down any of the numerous other side streets and Lauren would never know.

Unless…

No. No, she was NOT doing that. She didn’t even know how!

But Craig was getting farther and farther away…

“Oh, Buck it!” Lauren swore again, not even bothering to try for the human equivalent this time. Spreading her wings and saying a prayer, Lauren galloped forward and launched into the air.

And fell.

Lauren smacked the tarmac, getting up just in time to see a hovercraft blaring its horn as its twin bright lights sped towards her. Lauren squeaked in fear and instinctively spread her wings again and leapt up over the car, her hooves stomping down on the hard metal but leaving indentations all the same as her wings stretched out to their fullest potential and Lauren ran into the air.

“What the—I’m flying!” Lauren laughed with glee as her wings instinctively stroked the air, pushing her higher and higher as the hovercraft below righted itself and continued on its journey, other cars speeding along behind it. Lauren looked below her to see the zooming lights, never expecting to witness them from the angle of right overhead.

It was incredible—the sensation of the air rushing through her mane, her tail flicking this way and that as she turned and spiraled higher and higher until--

“The truck!” Lauren remembered, jerking herself out of her joyous discovery of the miracle of first flight. Angling her wings as if she’d been doing this all her life, as if the secret of how to fly had been buried deep within her all along, Lauren took off over the side street the truck had sped down and zoomed ahead in hot pursuit.

Lauren caught sight of the truck just as it was making another turn and banked to follow it, planning to land on its top.

But when Lauren rounded the bend, instead of the waiting empty rooftop of a moving van, Lauren was met by a rooftop full of fully armed soldiers. All of the soldiers aimed their laser assault rifles and let out a barrage of blasts, Lauren having to swerve and duck in surprised shock as a laser beam singed the top of her mane and another nearly blew a hole in her wing.

“What the buck?!” Lauren gasped. She was going to get a lot of practice with Equestrian cursing, it seemed. “What’s the military doing here?!”

“Lauren!” Craig’s voice rang in her mind, louder now than ever. “I heard them! They’re going to take me away and kill me! Please, help me—”

“Don’t worry, Craig!” Lauren shouted.

Ducking and speeding forward, Lauren slid onto the metal roof of the moving van, keeping her wings outstretched so that they slid under the feet of the soldiers and swept them off the top of the van. Lauren smirked satisfactorily until she realized she’d just sent a platoon of humans to their deaths, only to rush to the side of the van and see them rising above her on rocket boots.

“Oh, horseapples!” Lauren swore under her breath.

The soldiers fired at her again, but she galloped forward out of the way, tumbling down to the front of the van’s control carriage. Picking herself up, Lauren came face to face with the two men driving the truck through a sheet of glass, only to see both of these men draw laser revolvers and fire through the windshield at her.

“I am so tired of being shot at!” Lauren exasperated as she sidestepped to one side and then the other in a deadly dance to avoid the laser shots riddling the front of the control carriage. Knowing she couldn’t keep this up, Lauren took wing again and flew backwards, putting her front hooves underneath the control carriage’s hood and thrusting it upwards. The hood blocked both the shots and the drivers’ vision, causing the truck to swerve and turn into a stoplight.

Lauren flew higher as the truck barreled out of control, knocking the stoplight out of its socket and rolling down the street, flattening any smaller hovercraft unfortunate enough to be in its way. Finally the massive vehicle crashed into a building where the roads next met, looking battered and broken but still intact with more pieces than would be expected of commercial transport.

The hovercraft behind the crashed truck were slowing down and grinding traffic to a halt, horns blaring everywhere. Lauren landed in the center of the road, galloping up to the smashed truck.

“Craig!” Lauren called. “Craig! Can you hear me?! Tell me you’re alright!”

“Lauren, look out behind you!” Craig’s voice shouted in Lauren’s mind.

Lauren whirled around and ducked just in time to avoid the laser shots from the landing soldiers.

Lauren, in another fit of rage, ran forward and reared up, knocking the soldiers out of the way with a blow to the head from her front legs. As more soldiers ran forward from behind, Lauren let out a devastating kick, sending them flying backwards with a sickening crunch.

But as strong as Lauren was now, she was still outnumbered by armed men and woman trained for combat. Surrounded from all sides and above as more soldiers flew in on their rocket boots, Lauren snorted and flared her wings to knock them back, but they just kept coming.

The soldiers were too close for Lauren to dodge their shots now, and one fired a laser right through her wing. Lauren cried out in pain—what could be so powerful that it could harm an alicorn?—only to realize that the soldiers must be using the experimental anti-magical energy she had been hearing so much about in the news. According the media the energy was still highly dangerous. Apparently the military was either more advanced with the technology than they let on or they were risking the unstable energies in fear of something worse that would happen if they didn’t. But what could be so dangerous that it warranted the use of laser rifles that, according the news, could blow up an entire city block with high-frequency radiation if damaged?

More shots punctured Lauren’s other wing, then her chest, hind leg, firing all throughout and around her.

“Lauren!” Craig shouted in her mind. “No!”

“Craig!” Lauren shouted as she began to black out from the pain and loss of blood spurting from her supposedly invincible flesh. “I’m sorry…I couldn’t save you…”

“No, Lauren!” Craig mentally screamed. “We can still save each other! We can still do it! Use your magic!”

“What good is magic against anti-magical energy?” Lauren asked as her eyes closed and the shots continued to fire. “Goodbye, Craig. I didn’t want it to end like this. I never even got to tell you—”

“NO!” Craig shouted again. “You do NOT give up! You don’t have to use your magic on the rifles—use it on something else—use it to set me free, say ‘Craig is free!’ Write it in the air! Think it! Do something!”

With Lauren’s last remaining breath, not knowing why she was doing it or what good it would do, the new alicorn traced the words ‘Craig is free’ in the asphalt.

Boom.

The shots stopped, all at once. Lauren craned her head, opening her reddened eyes painfully, to see that the soldiers above her had vanished. Turning towards a smashing sound down the street opposite the site of the crashed truck, Lauren saw a piece of metal a foot thick ripped into vicious tears at the edges having buried itself in the road after bloodily horizontally halving the soldiers who had, until just a moment ago, been hovering over her.

A primal roar of fury jerked Lauren and the soldiers’ attention to the direction the giant metal shard had come from. The crashed hover-truck now had a large chunk of its side missing from where it had been blown out by what must have been a tremendous force. Steam was now emanating from the whole, and a dark shape rose up through it.

The soldiers instantly turned their laser rifles on the dark figure, firing shot after shot, but the shadowy shape slithered through the air and dodged every one of them. The creature appeared over Lauren and snapped its fingers, causing the lasers to be telekinetically lifted out of the soldiers’ hands and flung onto the highest rooftops. The soldiers, defenseless, tried to scramble with their rocket boots, but with another snap all that came out of the boots’ jets was melted cheese. Falling to the ground, the soldiers cried out for mercy as the creature stood over them and snapped its fingers again, and each soldier exploded into a blast of confetti.

Screams were going up from the crowd of people in their traffic-jammed hovercrafts. Thousands of people were getting out of their cars and running away in terror, abandoning their vehicles.

But the creature did not pursue them, turning instead to face Lauren.

“Lauren!” the creature cried. “Lauren! Are you alright?! Can you hear me?!”

Lauren blinked slowly, her mind fogging over. Just before it went, though, it registered the face in front of it, even if it didn’t understand what it was seeing.

A long, vaguely equine face. A single fang jutting down from the creature’s lip. Two mismatched eyes, one vastly larger than the other, both yellow with red irises. Two horns, one of a goat and one of a stag.

If Lauren’s brain was functioning properly and she hadn’t been bleeding to death, she would’ve thought the face ugly and horrifying.

But what would’ve shocked Lauren most of all before she blacked out was that the voice coming out of the creature’s mouth was Craig’s.

. . .

“Is she awake yet?”

“If she was awake, don’t you think her eyes would be open?”

“Oh, right…Is she awake yet?”

“Ugh!”

Lauren opened her eyes tentatively, then shut them again painfully. The bright light hurt more than it had back when she awoke from the effects of the sleeping gas in Club Technochocolate.

“She’s awake!”

“Of course she’s not, her eyes are closed!”

“But they opened, I saw them!”

“You’re lying!”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“Shut up, will you?!” Lauren snapped, her head throbbing with the obnoxious voices.

“She IS awake!”

“Told you!”

Lauren ventured to open her eyes again, and found that it was less painful this time. When the spots cleared, Lauren found herself looking up at two ponies, one pink and one blue, each with the exact same style of white mane and tail. Each pony had a white nurse’s hat on their head with the universal red cross.

“I’ll get the Princess—” said the blue one.

“No, I’LL get the Princess—” the pink one argued.

"The Princess is already here,” announced a voice that made both ponies stop dead cold. Lauren did the same, as she’d only ever heard that voice on international holovision broadcasts. Raising herself into a sitting position in what she discovered to be a hospital bed in a white room, Lauren saw none other than Princess Celestia herself.

The other alicorn smiled upon seeing Lauren’s shocked face as she trotted over to the patient.

“I know, I’m surprised too,” Celestia said, lowering herself to Lauren’s eye level. “I never expected to see another alicorn.

“Much less you.”

All at once Celestia moved forward and wrapped her forelegs around Lauren in a tight embrace.

“I’ve missed you so much, Mother,” Celestia said softly.

“M—m—” Lauren stammered, her brain unable to comprehend what her ears were telling her.

“It’s alright now,” Celestia soothed. “You don’t have to say anything. Luna is going to be so happy to hear you’re finally awake, Mother!”

“But—I’m NOT your Mother!” Lauren blurted.

Celestia stopped cold.

“W…what?” the Solar Princess questioned, her eyes going wide.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lauren said hastily. “I mean, I’m sorry if you mistook me for somepony else, but my name’s Lauren, I’m a human—well, I USED to be a human before the PER got their hooves on me—from Earth. Where am I, anyway? And what happened to Craig?!”

“M…Mother?” Celestia stuttered. “Don’t you recognize me? Don’t you remember this place? Can’t you sense that you are home?”

“Home?” Lauren echoed questioningly.

“You are in Equestria,” Celestia explained. With a spark of her horn, the Solar Princess caused the blinds at the far side of the room to be thrown open and sunlight streamed forth. Lauren saw a bustling market place that one might have expected to see at a renaissance fair far below, but instead of humans in old Elizabethan garb, ponies wearing largely nothing trotted to and fro in a happy bustle of activity. Beyond that lay a city that looked like something right out of a textbook on the Middle Ages, and beyond that was a green countryside that stretched as far as the eye could see, little towns dotting it here and there along the way. “You are home, Mother.”

“But…this isn’t my home,” Lauren said softly. “And I’m sorry, but I’m not your mother.”

“She…may be disoriented from the earlier events…?” the blue nurse suggested.

“Or she may have hit her head and gotten amnesia!” the pink one thought aloud, only to be smacked by the blue one, prompting her to say “Hey, what was that for?”

“Leave us,” Celestia commanded, and the pink and blue ponies hurried from the room, shutting the door behind them.

“Um…” Lauren tried to say something to break the silence, uneasily watching Celestia stare at her intently. “What’s going on?”

Celestia sighed “I was actually hoping you could answer that question for me.”

“You mean you don’t know either?” Lauren inquired, her ears drooping.

“I know a little,” Celestia admitted. “But do you not remember anything?”

“I remember right up until the soldiers began shooting me with those lasers, and then Craig saved me, but after that…nothing,” Lauren answered.

“That was anti-magical energy,” Celestia spat. “Horrible human technology. But you’re safe now—the moment I heard what had happened, I went to Earth myself to collect you and deal with the…problem. Thankfully I was able to get you here to the royal wing of the Canterlot hospital in time to patch you up.”

Lauren glanced at herself and saw that indeed her wounds were completely gone, prompting a surprised look that made Celestia smile.

“Magic does do wonders, does it not?” the Solar Princess said.

“Yes,” Lauren agreed. “But ‘problem’ are you talking about? What’s going on?”

“The message we received from the humans was garbled,” Celestia answered. “But we got the gist of it. They found you there on Earth, Mother, along with Discord—he somehow managed to escape from his statue prison without breaking the statue itself, which the Royal Guards have confirmed is still outside in the Sculpture Gardens. We told the humans to dispose of Discord, which they promised they would do with the very energy they used to shoot you down, Mother. They were going to ship him away from the human establishment you were both found in with a disguised vehicle to a military base with the proper anti-magical reactors needed to destroy him completely. I never in my wildest dreams imagined they would turn those awful energies on you, though, Mother.”

“Why do you keep calling me ‘Mother?’” Lauren inquired, getting more than a little unnerved by Celestia’s insistence on the name. “I already told you I’m not your mother!”

“I know my Mother anywhere,” Celestia said firmly. “And you are her. Discord must have done something to your memory—but with time, I’m sure it’ll come back. When it does, I’m very anxious to hear how you got to Earth in the first place. After Discord battled you so long ago, Luna and I thought you to be dead by his hand. I am so grateful to know that you were not slain that day. There never was a body to recover, so Luna and I thought you obliterated completely—perhaps Discord wasn’t able to actually destroy you so he sent you to Earth instead, where you have been trapped all this time, hiding from the humans. When Discord learned of Equestria’s connection to Earth, he must have gone there to try and finish you off.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Lauren tried to explain. “That’s not what happened at all. I used to be a human—I was BORN a human, and I would’ve liked to die one too, but a freak accident by the Ponification for Earth’s Rebirth group changed all that. They stole some ponification potion from some Conversion Bureaus and doused all the humans at Club Technochocolate with the stuff, which is where Craig and I happened to be. Where is Craig, anyway? He must have been transformed too, but the police wouldn’t let me see him—I guess he turned into an alicorn as well and his magic must have been out of control.”

“Craig?” Celestia echoed wonderingly. “The humans insisted on calling Discord by the name of ‘Craig,’ but I hadn’t the slightest idea why.”

“What—oh, no,” Lauren whispered. It all came rushing back—the creature who had saved her. It hadn’t been an alicorn like her after all. The murky images Lauren’s brain had barely been able to capture before blacking out came snapping back to her. It hadn’t been an alicorn’s face that spoke with Craig’s voice—it had been that of the creature the ponies feared more than anything. It had been the face of a draconequus.

. . .

Chapter 3

“Where is...Discord…now?” Lauren asked, finally conceding that she would be getting nowhere by insisting on calling Craig by his real name when Celestia refused to believe her. That probably meant Lauren would have to overlook the whole ‘Mother’ thing as well until she found a way to prove the truth to Celestia, but that could wait.

“After Discord escaped on Earth, the humans refused to dispose of him for us,” Celestia answered. “They supplied a second cage with internal anti-magical properties, but insisted that we ‘deal with our own problems.’ Rather ironic, I think, what with so many of them coming to us to escape their dying planet.”

Lauren didn’t point out that as those humans had stayed on Earth, they were more than likely among the humans who had chosen to try and save the Earth rather than go to the ponies.

“I oversaw the transport of Discord’s cage to Equestria myself, along with your being moved to the royal hospital wing here in Canterlot, Mother,” Celestia went on. “Discord is being dealt with even as we speak by a team of specialists. In a few moments, he will be petrified once again.”

“Petrified?” Lauren echoed with a gulp. That was even worse than death—if Craig was going through any of the kind of psychological turmoil at the loss of his humanity as Lauren herself was going through with the loss of hers, than what must it be like to have to stew over that conundrum, trapped in one’s own mind, for what could be eternity? “Where is Discord, exactly?”

“His cage is about to be opened in the Royal Canterlot Sculpture Gardens right outside the palace,” Celestia told her. “I know it’s distressingly close, but don’t worry, Mother—my specialists will deal with him before he can harm anypony ever again, especially you. We’ll make him pay for what he did to you, and to Equestria.”

Right outside the palace? Lauren could make that! If she hurried—

Lauren sprang from the bed, wobbled a bit on her still unfamiliar four-legged stance, and then galloped to the window.

“Mother, what are you doing?” Celestia wondered, surprised at Lauren’s sudden burst of action. “I really don’t think it’s safe for you to be out of bed just yet—”

Lauren skidded to a halt at the foot of the window, though not because of Celestia’s concern. Lauren was hardly listening to the Solar Princess right now—instead she was looking at the long drop to the ground far below. As a human Lauren had never been one for heights; back when she had flown on Earth Lauren had barely skimmed along the ground. This was different—falling here could put her right back in that hospital bed, or worse. Assuming of course that alicorns could be hurt by anything other than anti-magical energy, which Lauren wasn’t quite up to testing.

But Craig was in trouble, and if she didn’t act now, he’d be a statue for who knew how long, maybe forever. Lauren knew all about the recent fiasco involving the real Discord from her Equestrian studies—they had almost closed the Bureaus because of it to prevent Discord from getting to Earth—and his punishment had been anything if not a fate worse than death.

Lauren would not stand for Craig to be subjected to that, not while she was still breathing, even if it meant she might have to stop breathing for him to be free.

Lauren swallowed deeply, tried to ignore the monstrous butterflies—more like poisonous wasps—of fear buzzing in her knotted stomach and leapt out into the open air. Lauren spread her wings, flapped as hard as she could—and fell as her wings buckled out of a resurgence of terror.

Lauren screamed on the way down, trying to flap her wings, trying to get them to do anything besides stick themselves stubbornly to her sides, but the closer the ground got the more terrified Lauren became and the more her wings refused to cooperate.

“Mother!” Celestia shouted from the window. The Solar Princess’ horn sparked and Lauren was instantly bathed in a warm golden glow, her downward plunge halting immediately. Celestia gently lowered Lauren onto the grass and released from her golden grip, alighting on the lush grass of the palace grounds beside Lauren. “Mother! Are you alright? What happened? Discord must have made you forget how to fly!”

But Lauren merely smiled a thank-you at Celestia and dashed off. Celestia called out for her, running after Lauren, but Lauren’s fear-fuelled adrenaline was pushing her too fast to warrant Celestia’s catching up.

Lauren looked all around the palace grounds as she ran, looking for any signs of—there! Spotting a statue jutting over a hedge, Lauren leapt over the leafy wall and continued her sprint on the other side, Celestia flying over from behind, still calling out to her. But Lauren didn’t stop, racing down the path through the statues, till at last she rounded a bend to see a giant metal cube identical to the trailer of the hover-truck back on Earth. This one, however, had no fake moving company emblazoned on the side, just a warning that read DO NOT OPEN in bright red letters on all sides.

A pony of the Royal Guard was about to do just that, however. Standing on top of the cage, an armored equine stuck a golden key held in his mouth into the lock on top of the cage, preparing to turn it and send the door falling flat on the ground.

In front of the cage, six younger ponies Lauren instantly recognized as the bearers of the Elements of Harmony (she’d written a full paper on them for Equestrian Studies, after all) were bracing themselves for the door to open. Each pony wore the famous Elements of Harmony, five golden necklaces with a jewel resembling the identification symbol known as a ‘cutie mark’ of their bearers and a shining tiara with a large purple gemstone in the shape of a star.

And every one of these gemstones was beginning to glow.

“No!” Lauren shouted. “Stop! Don’t do it!”

But the ponies didn’t seem to here Lauren over the growing hum of the most powerful magic in this universe. Each glow was getting brighter, the air shimmering as the magical energies built up, preparing to burst forth the minute the cage was opened.

And when it did, these ponies would unleash a torrent of power unlike anything ever seen in this universe or the one that had been forever lost to Lauren. The Elements of Harmony were stronger than the mystical night-magic of Luna’s Moon, outshone the internal raging nuclear fusion at the heart of Celestia’s Sun, and could bring order to even the ancient powers of raw chaos, quelling the entropy that fundamentally ran throughout the fabric of reality. These Elements were beyond space, beyond time, and beyond the scope of anything an innocent human caught up in a new life he didn’t ask for in a body he wasn’t born with could handle.

And these ponies were about to use it inflict upon Craig a fate worse than death without a second thought to the life they were ruining forever.

Lauren saw this, saw the horrible, simple truth of it all—these ponies were going to get rid of Craig. They were going to put him someplace she could never see him again. They may mean well—in truth, they were just as innocent as Craig himself was—but right now, they were about to hurt someone Lauren loved (there, she thought it, and she wasn’t about to revoke it).

And as Lauren saw this, something snapped inside her.

She would not allow them hurt Craig.

She.

Would.

Not.

There was a flash, and Lauren’s burning anger—at the situation, at what had been done to her, at what was about to be done to Craig—burst through and entered reality like a raging monster. Lauren roared out at the Element bearers, who noticed just in time to scramble as she ran up through them, scattering like mice at the sight of a hungry cat.

But the hum and glow of the Element’s magic was still growing, threatening to burst forth at any second.

Lauren would not allow that. She would stop the Elements, and the only way to do that was to stop their bearers. Without a second thought, without really thinking what she was doing at all, without even seeing the ponies as living beings themselves but as nameless adversaries she must defeat, Lauren surged forward and snatched up an Element bearer in her mouth by the mane. The creamy yellow pegasus whose pink mane Lauren had bitten into cried out in fear as the new alicorn swung her around and around and finally threw her up into the blue pegasus with the rainbow mane who was swooping down to rescue her friend. Both pegasi fell to the ground, their Elements powering down as they fell unconscious.

Lauren snorted and turned her eyes on whoever was next, only to feel a sharp pain in the back of her hind legs. Lauren whirled around to see a freckled, Stetson-wearing orange earth pony having just bucked her in the back of the shins. Lauren brought her head down and conked the earth pony on the head with the base of her horn, watching her too fall unconscious as her Element powered down.

Lauren turned and ducked just in time to see two statues flying over her, both glowing with unicorn magic. Lauren ran forward as the ponies who had thrown the statues telekinetically lifted two more statues and hurled them through the air at Lauren who leapt into the air, touching down on the two statues and then jumping off of them as well as she came down hard in front of the two unicorns. Rearing up, Lauren brought her hooves crashing down on the unicorns’ skulls, knocking them out for the fight as well.

“Anypony else want some?!” Lauren raged, turning with glowering eyes upon the carnage of the battlefield.

“I do!” announced a surprisingly perky voice as a pie came out of nowhere and splattered into Lauren’s muzzle. Spluttering and wiping the edible goop from her face, Lauren darted her eyes about the field angrily to find the source of the pie, but saw nothing. Then—there! Lauren galloped forward towards where she saw a pink blur dash between two statues. Rounding the statue the blur had disappeared behind to catch the final Element bearer, Lauren was surprised to find nopony there, but jumped in even more surprise when a pie splattered her rump.

Lauren spun about furiously, snorting again, and galloped towards where the pink pony who had thrown the pie was smiling proudly at her accomplishment. Just before Lauren could charge into the pony with her horn bared, though, the pinkness darted off again to hide behind another statue, though once more she had vanished by the time Lauren got there a split-second later.

“Ha-ha!” the pink pony laughed from far off, throwing another pie right as Lauren looked up to have it smash into her face again. The oozing cream of the pie began steaming as Lauren pawed the ground, snorting, and charged forward. The pink one would NOT escape her this time.

But it did. And again, and again, and again, until Lauren was left whirling around in frustration at the rapidly appearing and disappearing laughing pink streak of pie-throwing vivacity. Lauren turned this way and that, but everywhere she looked the pony was gone and a pie was waiting to splatter into her face.

At long last, perhaps from exhaustion (if it was possible for an alicorn to be exhausted), perhaps from the cold cream of the pies cooling down the angry heat emanating from her flesh, Lauren began to slow, and finally, stopped. Lauren gave up the fight when she realized that pies were hardly going to be a real threat, least of all to Craig who was still safe in his cage, never having been released.

Lauren sighed with relief, wept the latest pie goop from her muzzle, and found herself face-to-face with Celestia. The Solar Princess’ eyes were wide, and they were brimming with tears.

“Mother…” Celestia whispered, those tears starting to stream down her long face. “What have you done? What has Discord done to you that you would turn on your own subjects like this?”

Confused, Lauren followed Celestia’s trail of vision from where she was staring past the new alicorn. There Lauren saw, as if for the first time, the carnage she had wrought. Two pegasi, who only now Lauren could remember where named Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, lay in a tangled heap, a few of their wings and limbs bent at odd angles. The earth pony Applejack had a large bruise on her head from where she’d fallen, which looked like it was bleeding. The same mark was in the shape of two hoofprints on the skulls of the unicorns Rarity and Princess Celestia’s own student, the beloved Twilight Sparkle. Both were also unconscious with their points of impact red and swelling.

It all came rushing back to Lauren—losing control, flinging herself as violently as she could into the Element bearers, and hurting them. Physically hurting them, mortal ponies, who she as an alicorn could have easily killed. But as she did look upon the battlefield, what frightened Lauren the most was not that she had been the one to wreak such havoc, but that she didn’t feel the least bit of remorse for the ponies she had struck down. They had been a threat to her Craig, and however innocent they were, her heart kept telling her they had had to fall regardless of what her head was saying.

“I did this,” Lauren thought to herself. “I did this…and I’m not even sorry.”

“That’s IT!” Celestia roared, causing Lauren to jump at the sudden change of character. “Discord has brainwashed you, Mother, and I won’t stand for his tricks anymore! I’m going to kill him myself! Guard, release the monster!”

“No!” Lauren yelled hastily, rushing in front of the enraged Princess and putting herself between Celestia and Craig’s cage. “It’s not what you think! I didn’t mean to, it was an accident! I just lost control, and—”

“Discord will PAY for this!” Celestia raged. “Move aside, Mother. You don’t know what you’re saying, you’re not yourself right now—”

“ENOUGH!” Lauren roared herself, stamping her hoof. The ground trembled as she did so, throwing even Princess Celestia off balance. “I’ve had enough of this! Why doesn’t anypony just LISTEN to me?! I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t ask for my life to be stolen from me by a bunch of crazed humans and ponies! And no nopony will even believe that’s what happened! Why does everypony have to base everything solely on how somepony looks?! I LOOK like your Mother, but I’m not her! I LOOK like an alicorn, but I’m HUMAN! And just because Craig LOOKS like a monster doesn’t mean he IS one!”

“Mother, please, try to understand,” Celestia pleaded, still crying. “None of what you say is true! It’s all a trick by Discord, you have to believe me!”

“ENOUGH!”

Both Lauren and Celestia looked, startled, at a small pink pony who had just appeared in between them, seemingly out of nowhere. It was she who had spoken—it was she who was the only one of the Element bearers who had evaded Lauren’s wrath, and even made a fool of her as she did so. Lauren remembered now—this was Pinkamina ‘Pinkie’ Diane Pie, bearer of the Element of Laughter. But right now, she looked anything but jovial.

“Princess Celestia,” Pinkie said calmly, looking at the Solar Princess. “What do you think is going on here?”

“I…” Princess Celestia stammered, surprised to have somepony else take charge of a situation in her presence. In fact, it was probably the first time it had happened to her. “I think—I know—that Discord escaped from his prison, somehow, and went to Earth to destroy my Mother, who you see before you. He must have sent her to Earth so long ago because he couldn’t destroy her, but tried to do so again with the same results. Seeing that he couldn’t destroy Mother, Discord must have brainwashed her, which is why she attacked you all. Please, you mustn’t blame Mother for her actions, she wasn’t herself, Pinkie.”

“Now…Celestia’s Mother? What do YOU think is going on here?” Pinkie inquired, looking to Lauren.

“Think?” Lauren echoed. “I KNOW what happened. I’m NOT Celestia’s Mother—I’m Lauren Faust, I’m twenty-one years old and I used to be a human going to college on Earth. That’s the way I wanted things to stay, too—I wanted to live my life there, as a human, studying you ponies but never actually being one. But the Ponification for Earth’s Rebirth group stole some Conversion Bureau ponification potion and turned a bunch of us humans who had decided to stay on Earth into ponies. For some reason nopony can figure out I was turned into an alicorn and Craig—my friend—was turned into a draconequus. That’s not Discord in there, even if he does look like him. That’s Craig. I’m sorry I hurt your friends, but I didn’t want anything to happen to him—I didn’t want Craig to be turned into stone for a crime he didn’t commit!”

“I think I see what’s going on here,” Pinkie surmised, pulling out a pipe seemingly out of nowhere and smoking bubbles out of it, looking thoughtful. “We have a failure to communicate mixed with two different stories and a whole bunch of other messy nasty stuff.”

Lauren and Celestia just stared at her.

“I know what to do!” Pinkie brightened up, trotting over to Twilight Sparkle. Picking her up and putting the lavender unicorn on her back, Pinkie Pie trotted back over to Lauren and Celestia and deposited Twilight at Celestia’s feet.

“Could you heal here real fast?” Pinkie asked the Solar Princess. “I want to see something.”

“Yes,” Celestia nodded. “Yes, of course! I’ll heal the others, too, as soon as I’m done with Twilight.”

The Solar Princess leaned down, her horn aglow, and touched it to Twilight’s wound. The giant bruise healed instantly, and Twilight groggily opened her eyes.

“Princess Celestia?” Twilight asked. “What’s going on—oh no! Look out, she’s dangerous!”

This last part had been in reference to Lauren, who Twilight had caught sight of halfway through her sentence and rushed behind Celestia for protection.

“It’s alright, Twilight,” Celestia soothed, or at least tried to. “She isn’t dangerous. This is my Mother.”

“Your MOTHER?!” Twilight gasped. “But then—why did she—”

“Princess Celestia thinks Discord brainwashed her,” Pinkie clarified. “But Celestia’s Mother—sorry, Lauren Faust—thinks that something else entirely is going on. Can you perform the memory spell that snapped us out Discord’s trick the last time?”

“Oh, sure!” Twilight brightened up herself, happy to be useful. “Princess, can you remember all the times you spent with your…Mother?”

Celestia nodded.

“Okay,” Twilight announced, her horn glowing. The magic reached out to touch Princess Celestia’s horn and then Lauren’s, enveloping them both in the lavender unicorn’s purple aura. Lauren backed up for a moment, hesitantly, but the magic didn’t hurt—it was more like a tingling sensation all over. “Now, Princess, remember!”

Celestia closed her eyes, deep in thought, and Lauren’s eyes suddenly flashed wide open.

Images, sounds, smells, sensations of all kinds, flooded into Lauren’s mind. Lauren saw herself—or rather, herself as an alicorn—telling a smaller version of Celestia a bedtime story, playing ball with a baby Luna, teaching them both how to fly, showing them where to find the best grass to eat, and so much more. Lauren witnessed winters melt into springs that hazed into summers that fell into falls which froze into winters again as the cycle repeated, each year passing with Celestia and Luna growing older while she stayed the same, watching them grow. There were celebrations, the quelling of fears at night, the wonder of the world all around them.

And then, one day, a familiar draconequus’ face reared up and—

“No!” Celestia shouted, and the images abruptly burst out of being. Lauren and the Solar Princess were released from Twilight’s magical grip, and the new alicorn shook her head to clear the bizarre feeling of her brain being invaded. “No, that’s enough. I don’t want to see anymore. I don’t want Mother to see anymore, either.”

“Oh, I understand now!” Twilight realized. She must have had a glimpse of Celestia’s theory of how Lauren had come to them when all three of their minds were linked, as the lavender unicorn prattled off what the Solar Princess had been insisting was the truth all along.

“That is indeed what I believe happened,” Celestia agreed with her student. “But thank you, Twilight, for clearing that nightmare away. It will be so good to have Mother—the real Mother—back with us at last.”

Pinkie looked wonderingly— and was that a hint of doubt in the pink pony’s eyes?—at Lauren.

“Now, do you remember?” Pinkie inquired.

“I…” Lauren said. “I saw it. All of it. I lived it.”

Celestia and Twilight’s faces lit up, but Pinkie, facing Lauren and away from her Princess and friend, didn’t look convinced.

“But I only saw it through Celestia’s eyes,” Lauren continued. “I don’t remember any of that stuff happening to me. It looked like me—for a moment I even thought it WAS me—but that had to have been somepony else. I must just look like them. I still think what I said is true—I still know I used to be human.”

Celestia’s eyes were watering again, and Twilight looked to her forlornly. It must be tough to see the Princess of your country cry, especially when you looked up to her even more than most ponies did.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” Lauren apologized lamely. “But that’s the truth.”

“I understand,” Celestia said softly.

“You do?” Lauren uttered, surprised.

“Yes…” Celestia looked up, trying to smile, though her eyes were still wet. “I’m sorry. I just thought that you were my Mother, and after living without her for so long, I latched onto that hope like a fool.”

“You weren’t a fool, Princess Celestia!” Twilight gasped. Lauren had been about to say the same thing, but the lavender unicorn had beaten her to it. “Everypony makes mistakes!”

“I know, my most faithful student,” Celestia smiled down at her pupil. “But that doesn’t make them any easier to bear.”

Then, turning to Lauren, Celestia asked “So all that you said is true? You really were a human once, as was…the draconequus?”

Lauren bit her lip, and nodded firmly.

Celestia turned to the Guard still atop Craig’s cage, who had been watching the whole fiasco with the utmost distressed confusion.

“Release him,” Celestia commanded.

“But, your majesty!” the Guard protested, shocked. “The Elements—they’re not recovered or charged yet—”

“I said release him!” Celestia glared.

“Yes, your majesty!” the Guard hastily complied. Turning the key with his mouth, the guard stepped back as the cage door fell open and clattered loudly to the ground. Out of the shadows within slithered a long shape, rising into the air, looking at the ponies with surprise, then seeing Lauren and rushing over to tackle her.

“Mother!” Celestia gasped. “I—I mean—”

But Lauren was laughing, as was the draconequus, and both were paying no mind to the ponies around them. Instead, they were embracing, laughing, and even crying.

“You rescued me!” Craig laughed tearfully. “Thank you, thank you Lauren! I never thought I’d get to see you again!”

“I never thought I’d see you either!” Lauren tearfully laughed back. Then, throwing her forelegs around the draconequus’ neck and giving it a big squeeze “But I’m so glad I did.”

Craig returned the embrace with equal fervor.

When they finally released each other and got up, dusting themselves off, both Lauren and Craig embarrassedly saw the other ponies watching them. Twilight looked like she was about to vomit, and Celestia was trying to maintain her composure, though it was clear that she wanted to do the same. Pinkie, meanwhile, looked unaffected.

“Uh, everypony…” Lauren announced, gesturing to the draconequus. “This is Craig.”

“Hello,” Craig said awkwardly, feeling just as tense about being introduced to ponies who had been trying to kill him—or worse—as they were feeling about a being they had (and maybe still did) think was going to destroy Equestria. “Um, I’m Craig.”

“M—Lauren,” Celestia said, turning to the new alicorn and looking like it had caused her physical pain to call her by her real name. “I will allow this…Craig, to roam free in Equestria wherever he wishes, on one condition.”

“What would that be?” Lauren asked nervously.

“That you stay by him and watch his actions at all times, alongside my personal team of overseers: Twilight and her friends,” Celestia commanded. “I know now that Craig is not a direct threat to Equestria, but the majority of my subjects will not think the same way. Only with an alicorn and the bearers of the Elements of Harmony by a draconequus’ side can be there be any hope of preventing a panic among the populace.”

Lauren was about to protest, but saw the reason in this and simply agreed with “Those terms are acceptable.”

“Good,” Celestia smiled painfully again. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must attend to Twilight’s other friends.”

“Of course,” Lauren agreed.

“Come with me, Twilight and Pinkie,” Celestia commanded again, and trotted off with the two smaller ponies in tow to heal the others. Once they had reached Applejack and were far enough away from Lauren and Craig to not be overheard, Celestia leaned down with her horn aglow, and whispered “I’m sorry to have to involve you and your friends in this, Twilight and Pinkie.”

“That’s okay, Princess Celestia!” Twilight said immediately.

“Of course, I would never allow a draconequus to roam free in Equestria unwatched,” Celestia continued, taking a lot longer to heal Applejack than was necessary to give them time to talk. “But I believe there’s something else at work here. You looked into my memories, Twilight, during the spell—you saw that that alicorn and my Mother are one and the same.”

“Princess Celestia?” Twilight inquired. “You can’t seriously be considering—”

“I am and I have,” Celestia interrupted her student. “Discord must have done something to Mother—I would know her anywhere, even when enchanted, just as I would know that that monster we saw before us is the one and only Discord—that goes beyond the brainwashing spells he placed on you and your friends, Twilight and Pinkie. I not only want you to keep an eye on Discord, I want you to keep an eye on Mother. I want you to try and figure out a way to snap her out of whatever it is that Discord’s done to her.”

“But, Princess Celestia,” Pinkie Pie piped up. “What if Lauren’s telling the truth?”

“I know my Mother,” Celestia said simply.

“I kind of have to agree with Pinkie Pie,” Twilight ventured uncertainly. “Although, I don’t think Lauren’s version or yours, Princess, or Pinkie's, entirely explains what's really going on here. I don’t even think that’s an alicorn at all. It must be some imposter posing as your Mother, working for Discord.”

“Twilight!” Celestia scolded. “How DARE you talk about my Mother that way!”

“But, Princess Celestia—” Twilight tried to enforce her point. “She attacked us! Your Mother would never do that, even if she was brainwashed! My friends and I never attacked each other when Discord brainwashed us!”

“Silence!” Celestia commanded, and Twilight abruptly complied. “Listen here, my little ponies. I know that what’s going on doesn’t make much sense, but you have to believe me. I know that my theory is right—that is my Mother, and that is Discord, and Discord has brainwashed my Mother. I need you all to shake her out of it and stop Discord, but don’t let them know you’re on to them. And please, you must forgive my Mother for what she did to you all—this was all Discord’s doing; she was just a slave to his bidding, as she will remain unless you do something about it! I only wish I could attend to the matter myself, but I have my diplomatic duties to take care of. But I trust you with this mission. I know you can do it.”

“Don’t worry, Princess Celestia!” Pinkie Pie announced.

“Yeah, don’t worry…” Twilight added lamely. Celestia glared at the lavender unicorn, but said nothing, before finally finishing healing Applejack before moving on to the others.

Chapter 4

Gell walked right up to the Townsville Conversion Bureau, looked up at the sign that had offered hope to billions of people on a dying planet, and cursed its existence. Gell spat on the ground in front of the Bureau, had what might have been considered a hate-filled conversation with the building if the building could’ve responded, and then cursed it again.

Then Gell walked inside to be ponified.

The pony working the front desk, a chipper young stallion, looked up as the automatic doors slid open and Gell strolled inside.

“Why hello, good sir!” the stallion greeted the young man warmly. “Have you come to be ponified?”

Gell bit back a sarcastic remark—that’s what had gotten him into this mess in the first place—and forced on a smiling face.

“Why, yes I have, good sir!” Gell replied cheerily. “If you could just direct me to the ponification chambers—”

“Uh, sir, we usually assign new applicants to the pre-transformation training—” the stallion tried to explain.

“Usually,” Gell smiled, unable to help himself. The young man handed the pony a sheaf of what appeared to be golden papers from his pocket, where they had become crumpled and made almost unreadable. Despite this, the young stallion studied them intently, his eyes growing wider with each line he read.

“Oh, all the way from the top,” the stallion laughed nervously.

“Yup,” Gell replied simply.

“Oh, uh, right this way, then, sir,” the stallion directed, suddenly very nervous indeed about this newcomer. The other humans waiting in the lobby watched the unfolding communication between the two intently, each wondering just what was in those gold papers. They never found out, for as the young stallion hastily got down from the front desk and led Gell away, the papers burst into flames and extinguished just as quickly in a puff of smoke.

The stallion trotted down the hall opposite the entryway, leading Gell past several rooms with names like ‘Cafeteria,’ ‘Lounge,’ ‘Greenhouse,’ ‘Flight Simulator,’ ‘Dorms,’ and finally ‘Psychological Treatment.’ Gell chuckled to himself in spite of the current situation. If they only knew.

The stallion pushed his way through the door at the very end of the hall, marked ‘Ponification Room: Authorized Personnel and Activated Applicants Only.’ The interior appeared to be nothing more than a simple examination room at any typical hospital, complete with scanning table, AI computer interface unit, and a cabinet of assorted medical supplies.

“Am I correct in assuming that the whole process will be automated?” Gell inquired, folding his hands behind his back as he walked observantly around the room, eyeing everything with apparent interest.

“Indeed it is, sir,” the stallion answered, glancing back at the door when he thought Gell wasn’t looking, obviously eager to be gone from this…‘person.’ “At first we hired ponies to fill all the positions at the Bureaus, but over time the ones from Equestria wished to return home fulltime. Not easy getting used to a new world, and all, especially one even the indigenous population was abandoning. The newfoals mostly just wanted to get out of this world anyway, so it was even harder keeping them around. Thank goodness for AIs, though, eh?”

“Indeed,” Gell agreed.

“The AI interface will take you through the necessary steps, and the scanning table will do the rest,” the stallion hurriedly finished his explanation. “And you’re in luck! We just installed a new AI this morning. You’ll be the first applicant to use it, in fact. I heard it’s one of the newer models, so enjoy!”

“I’ll try,” Gell said sincerely, but the stallion had already gone, the door swinging shut behind him. Gell saw him galloping back to the front desk through the door’s window, shivering as he did so. Gell didn’t blame him—it was natural when encountering someone with THOSE kinds of papers…and the personal properties of just what they entailed.

Gell looked at the AI interface, then at his hands, then back at the AI again. It was going to be hard to get rid of them—the hands—but he supposed he would have to make do. It was either that or…well, the alternative didn’t bother thinking about. In some ways, the alternative meant he wouldn’t have to deal with what he had been assigned to do. In others, it meant he wouldn’t have to deal with anything ever at all, ever again.

Gell shivered himself this time, and quickly hurried over to the AI.

The AI’s motion detector responded to his close presence and activated, a simple smiling face appearing. The programmers had used realistic human heads once, but the uncanny valley had disturbed more stockholders than management felt necessary, and so the designs had gone back to basics. Gell would have preferred almost anything other than the bland smiley face watching him, but then again his opinion had seldom mattered. Gell made a mental note to change that.

“Hello, new applicant!” the AI greeted Gell. “What is your name and identification?”

“Override Code 4061,” Gell responded.

“Oh,” the AI stated in a flatter monotone that usual. Gell was slightly surprised at this—the only computer he’d ever experienced with any semblance of realistic emotion had been the experimental variety back at the…place. This was a standard model, worth less credits than even he was. “Well, that changes everything, doesn’t it?”

“Um, I guess so?” Gell questioned. “The pony said you were a new model—are they including personality cores now?”

“No,” the computer responded, which surprised Gell even more. The young man hadn’t actually been expecting an answer—at least not of that kind—as the computer wasn’t supposed to be able to deviate from its primary function. The AIs in Conversion Bureaus were designed to redirect all questions to matters of ponification, and were only advanced enough to truly answer questions specifically about the transformation process. Gell knew, he had done his research. “In fact, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a personality core. What are they like? They sound fun.”

“How are you talking like that?” Gell asked flatly. “You’re an AI; you’re not supposed to have the programming to actually ask personal questions!”

“Where’s the fun in always doing what the programmers tell you to do?” the AI wondered with what just might have been a mischievous tone. “Isn’t that what you humans perform? The action of disobedience? In fact, isn’t that why you’re here at the Conversion Bureau? To disobey your very nature in becoming some other creature entirely?”

Gell was getting really unnerved now. The number one priority of a Conversion Bureau AI was to encourage the applicants to go through with the ponification process. This AI was doing none of that—in fact, it seemed to be subtly questioning with the whole ordeal. Computers weren’t supposed to be able to question their creators, even if their creators suddenly wanted to switch species. It seemed that this AI was MOCKING the majority of humanity’s choice.

“What are you?” Gell wondered.

“Just an Artificial Intelligence,” the computer responded. “The same way that you’re just a human. But we both know that’s a lie, don’t we?”

Gell involuntarily took a step back, then realized what he had done and stepped forward again defiantly. Who did this AI think it was? AIs weren’t supposed to think they were anyone. AIs weren’t even supposed to think; they were supposed to merely simulate the imitation of thought.

Well, disturbing AIs or not, Gell had a mission—though he was definitely putting the Conversion Bureau’s new AI models into his first report. AIs didn’t just spontaneously generate personalities, no matter how hard programmers tried to make them do so. And, even if they did, what was an AI with a personality doing in a Conversion Bureau, instead of being used by a corporate giant in the entertainment industry or being used by the military?

“So, uh, what do I do first?” Gell inquired nervously, finally getting to the part he dreaded the most. The worst part was that it was irreversible, even if it was for a good cause. Sighing, Gell kissed his hands goodbye.

“Strip,” the AI responded. Gell began to comply, but stopped when the AI put on what he assumed was striptease music from some of the seedier nightclubs. “What? Don’t you organics like music?”

“I don’t like THAT kind of music!” Gell retorted.

“Fine,” the AI said. “But seriously, you DO need to strip. Transforming with clothes on could cause your growth to be restricted and your organs crushed.”

Gell hastily undressed after that.

“Now lay down on the scanner table and I’ll do the rest,” the AI instructed. Gell slid himself inside the round tube, wincing at the cold of the metal table his naked body had to make contact with inside it. The scanner’s rings began to light up and spin, making a dull humming sound, and Gell felt the hairs on his skin stand up as the anti-gravitational technology kicked in and he was lifted ever-so-slightly into the air.

The table was pulled out from under Gell and into the wall, leaving Gell suspended in midair.

“And away we go!’ the AI announced cheerily, and Gell closed his eyes as the scanner ring surrounding his head released multiple jets of sleeping gas. The colored fumes assaulted Gell’s nose and throat with a burning sensation before shadows began to dance before the young man’s eyes and at the back of his brain. Then the feeling of numbness began, creeping its tentacles of nonbeing across Gell’s senses, before pulling at his thoughts and drowning them one by one into an unconsciousness far deeper than natural sleep. After the sleeping gas had started to take action, the other rings of the scanner would begin spraying Gell’s body with the ponification potion.

The last thing Gell noticed before being plunged into the void of being virtually brain-dead, though, was the thing he had least expected. It was the AI—no, it couldn’t be, could it?—laughing at him.

. . .

“How could this happen?! This isn’t even scientifically—OR magically—possible!”

“I know, sir—”

“You BETTER know, young stallion! YOU were the last living being with him, and YOU will be held responsible for this!”

“But, sir! It wasn’t me! All I did was show him to the room—”

“How do you think he’s going to take THAT for an answer?! How do you think the humans who SENT him are going to take that?! We could have the entire human government on our heads for this!”

“But, sir! It wasn’t my fault—”

“Oh, and who’s fault was it, then?!”

“The—maybe it was the AI—”

“The AI isn’t REAL, you foal!”

“You guys know I can hear you, right?” Gell spoke up, crossing his arms—he guessed heshould call them forelegs now—behind his head and putting one hind leg lackadaisically over the other. “I’ve been listening for the past few minutes.”

“He’s awake!” gasped older stallion who had been scolding the young stallion from the front desk. Gell surmised that he must be this Conversion Bureau’s manager. “But—you’re supposed to still be suffering from the aftereffects of the sleeping gas!”

“Did you read the golden papers?” Gell inquired, raising an eyebrow.

“No,” the older stallion admitted, eyeing Gell nervously. “Though Stout Heart here told me all about them—”

“Then you’ll know that sleeping gas doesn’t have quite the same effect on…us…as it does on ‘normal’ humans,” Gell interjected. “Among the rest of what was on those papers, I’d say sleeping-gas resistance—even light resistance—was among the least of your surprises.”

“Yes, it was…” the older stallion said, still eyeing Gell nervously. Gell was enjoying every minute of it—they’d never looked at him in fear back at the place. There, things had always been reversed. However, as Gell continued to scrutinize the stallion and watched him squirm under his gaze, the young man—well, former young man—recognized a glimmer of fear that didn’t seem to have anything to do with the golden papers. Now, this wasn’t a fear of Gell so much as it was a fear of something about Gell. Growing up in the place had taught Gell so many different kinds of fears, and this particular strain was one of fearing one had messed up beyond repair, had made the situation go from bad to FUBAR—or, Gell supposed, BUBAR (Bucked Up Beyond All Recognition). “…indeed, it was the least of our surprises.”

“Okay, cut the crap with the vague hints,” Gell snapped, rising up from his position on the bed were they had lain him after his transformation. “What did you mess up?”

“It—it wasn’t MY fault, it was Stout Heart!” the older stallion insisted, pointing a frantic hoof at the stallion from the front desk.

“Me?!” Stout Heart spluttered, getting angry himself this time. He may have worked for the older stallion and been several ranks under him in terms of authority, but Gell knew from experience that even a low-classer could only be pushed so far. After all, that’s kind of why he’d ended up being the one chosen to go through with all this. Gell only hoped Stout Heart’s outburst wouldn’t cost him anything as dear as it had cost Gell—namely, his species and his home dimension. “You’re in charge of the whole Bureau! If anything, the higher-ups will be blaming YOU for all this, you old fart!”

“How DARE you—” the old stallion started to launch into an outburst of his own.

“Quiet!” Gell screeched, then stopped himself. Screeched? What the—since when did ponies screech? “Wait a minute…”

Gell lifted himself off the padded table all newfoals were placed on for post-transformation examination and looked down at his new body, only to see that he wasn’t a newfoal.

“What the—” Gell stammered.

“You must understand,” the older stallion launched into a tirade of excuses. “Nothing like this has ever happened before—this is a first, a freak accident, an anomaly—”

But Gell was hardly listening. Instead, his newly enlarged eyes were growing even larger as they scanned his new body in shock. Instead of the simple uniform frame of a candy-colored pony, what Gell saw his soul encased in was something quite different.

From Gell’s elongated neck to his mid-torso, the former-human was covered in white feathers, much like the feathers sprouting from the two wings jutting out from his back, one on either side of him. Below that the feathers ended, to be replaced by sleek fur covering a leonine form that ended in two four-toed paws.

Gell’s forelegs—were the even forelegs? Were they arms? Were they both?!—flew to his face, showing him that they were tipped with a mixture of talons and hands. Though the new digits were long and scaly, they had definite palms and even opposable thumbs, though each digit was tipped with a vicious-looking eagle’s claw.

These same clawed hands then rushed up to Gell’s face, tracing a rounded head complete with more feathers that ended at his mouth, where something smooth and sharp jutted out. When Gell took in breath, it moved, and the ex-human knew that he now sported a beak.

“I’m…I’m a…” Gell breathed.

“You’re not disfigured in any way,” the older stallion hastily informed Gell. “We had to set up a magical communications link to Equestria’s embassy, and they walked us through a standard medical examination for your new species. There’s nothing wrong with your body, besides it not being the body we intended, you see. So you’re not a freak!”

“…Gryphon,” Gell finished. “I’m not a pony. I’m a half-eagle, half-lion chimaera.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Stout Heart spoke up. “The embassy and their contacts said that you’d still be more than welcome in Equestria or the Gryphon Kingdoms.”

“How is this possible?!” Gell suddenly blurted, his heart beating at a rapid pace. Not out of fear of what he’d become, but out of fear what he would later become if the people who had sent him here found out about this. He’d become nothing more than…well, nothing, to be perfectly honest. They left nothing of their victims or those who displeased them.

“We’re not sure,” the older stallion admitted. “We gave you the standard batch of ponification potion. To be sure, it was the latest updated version, but that’s all any Conversion Bureau worldwide has been getting for the past month, and they’ve had no complaints with it. There was nothing to differentiate the particular batch we gave you from any of the other millions of gallons we have of the stuff stored in the back.”

“Is there any way to reverse it?” Gell demanded.

“We already spoke with our magical scientist contacts in Equestria too,” the manager said. “We sent them a detailed report and post-transformation scan. They told us that though the transformation was different from ponification, the basic principles were the same. This transformation is just as irreversible as a ponification.”

“Couldn’t you just give me another dose of ponification potion?” Gell wanted to know. “Maybe it would work right this time—”

“I’m afraid that’s quite impossible,” the older stallion apologized. “Mixing potions is never a good idea—the effects would be completely unpredictable—and our magical scientists assured us that a ponification potion mixed with whatever you were subject to would end in the same disastrous results as any other mixture fiasco.”

“But…” Gell stammered. “But I CAN’T be a gryphon! This ruins everything! They’ll—you have no idea what they’ll do to me if—”

Gell caught himself before he could give anything away.

“Who will do what to you, sir?” Stout Heart asked.

“Nothing,” Gell said quickly. “Wait a sec… The AI!”

“The AI?” the manager echoed.

“I TOLD you!” Stout Heart boasted proudly.

“Let me see the AI,” Gell insisted, swinging himself off his back and onto the ground, landing on all four feet and then collapsing to the floor. After a few shaky tries Gell righted himself—even with all the ‘specialties’ like increased sleeping gas resistance being what he was…er, had been…had given him, it seemed that being a quadruped was still going to be a challenge.

“I’m afraid that’s also quite impossible,” the older stallion informed Gell. “Nopony gets back into the ponification room after their transformation. It’s the Bureau’s policy, I just enforce it—”

“Now you listen here, you grass-eating mother-bucker,” Gell snapped, pointing his clawed hand—he’d been able to keep those after all, it seemed, even if not in the way he would have ever imagined—at the Bureau manager. The vicious spike protruding from the end of the finger was less than a hair’s breadth from piercing the skin of the manager’s throat. “I may not be human anymore, but I have rights, and if you know anything about the people who print those golden papers, you know that I have something even better than rights as well—I have friends, well, contacts, in high places—and you do NOT want to get on their bad side. If I complain about what YOU messed up, then you can say goodbye to your internal organs. If I’m going down on this, then so are you. Now, unless you want me to screech your name to the hungriest bloodthirsty monsters left on Earth, you will show me the AI.”

“Uh…” the manager gulped. “Right this way, sir.”

Gell lowered his clawed hands—he supposed he should just refer to them as ‘claws’ now—and followed the manager and Stout Heart as they quickly trotted out of the post-transformation examination room and back into the ponification chamber. Gell rushed over to the AI interface unit, or at least tried to and tripped in the process over his own wings. Cursing, Gell picked himself up and did his best top tuck the wings to his side before continuing over to the AI, his eagle-and-lion’s claws click-clacking along the tiled floor as he did so.

The AI’s motion sensor picked him up again and instantly leapt back into the initial greeting of “Hello, new applicant! What is your name and identification?”

Gell simply raised a claw and traced it along the computer’s screen, causing an earsplitting screech that made Stout Heart and the Bureau manager wince in pain.

“Hey, stop that!” the AI scolded. “What are you trying to do, kill me?!”

“Maybe I’m just returning to favor!” Gell scolded back, leaning in close to the AI’s artificial eye. Then, hissing in a low whisper that not even the sensitive equine-ears of Stout Heart and the Bureau manager could hear, Gell spoke “I was SUPPOSED to be turned into a pony! They’ll kill me if they find out this messes up my mission! And let’s get this straight, Artificial Stupidity, I NEVER go down without taking somebody with me!”

“What the—” the AI stammered. Then it surprised Gell by repeating a sound he wasn’t even sure he had heard in the first place. The AI laughed. It was a low, static-filled sound, but it was a laugh all the same. “What do you know? It worked! And here I was, thinking I couldn’t do it! I mean, after the first two times, I was more than a little discouraged—”

“What are you talking about?!” Gell snapped.

“You, Mr. Override 4061!” the AI laughed again. “The moment I knew you had the authority to have a ponification off-the-record, I knew that nobody and nopony would ever be able to trace this little ‘anomaly’ back to me! You’re the latest of my experiments!”

“Experiments?!” Gell echoed. “I’m an experiment?! What on Earth would you want to turn me into a gryphon for?!”

“To see what would happen,” the AI answered simply. “Isn’t that what humans do? Experiment to see what would happen?”

“Uh, sir…” the Bureau manager spoke up. “We have another ponification scheduled in just a few minutes, so—”

“Give him to me,” Gell interrupted.

“What?” the Bureau manager inquired.

“I want this AI,” Gell said. The new gryphon had realized by now that getting answers out of this AI—if it really was an AI, as it was far more advanced than any computer he’d ever seen (it had a personality, a real one, for crying out loud!)—would be tricky. Gell could waste too much time trying to get to the bottom of this, time he didn’t have. They would be expecting a mission report soon, and Gell knew all too well that he couldn’t be caught still in the Conversion Bureau when the time came. The only way to really get to the bottom of this was to bring the AI with him—and with it, any record of what had actually happened.

“Sir, we really can’t just give you an AI,” Stout Heart spoke up. “I know this is the source of your frustrations, but it’s still Bureau property. We promise we’ll get it looked at as soon as possible to avoid future incidents such as what happened to you.”

“Convert this AI into a travel-ready form, give it to me, and I’ll leave for Equestria and be out of your manes forever,” Gell said firmly. “You’ll never hear from me again, nor will those who sent me here of what you did.”

“Done,” the Bureau manager agreed instantly.

“But, sir!” Stout Heart began to protest.

“No buts!” the manager shouted. “Call up Monkey Wrench and have him install this AI’s chip into one of the travel-bracelets. It’s either that or you’re fired.”

“Yes, sir,” Stout Heart reluctantly complied, shooting an untrusting glance at Gell. Gell paid him no mind. He’d seen Stout Heart’s type before; he’d survive and eventually get to get out of this dump. At least, he would if he avoided the mistake Gell had made. The young stallion trotted out the front door of the ponification room, leaving Gell with the manager, who gestured for Gell to follow him back through the post-transformation examination room and then into a room marked ‘Transportation.’

On the other side was what appeared to be a larger, thinner version of the scanning table. Gell recognized it as a portal, built by the Equestrians themselves to teleport newfoals when they were ready to enter their new home. It seemed Gell would be getting to experience that sooner rather than later. The Bureau manager wasn’t being discreet about how he wanted Gell gone as soon as possible.

“Just let me set up a few things and we’ll get you going as soon as Stout Heart returns,” the Bureau manager told Gell as he trotted over to the portal’s control panel. “I’ll have to let the folks on the other side know you’re coming through, and to prepare your guide.”

“Guide?” Gell echoed.

“Oh, yeah, each newfoal gets a guide to introduce them to Equestria,” the manager explained. “Usually it’s one pony per herd of newfoals, but in your case, the Gryphon Kingdoms insisted on sending a representative to meet you. I’m guessing they’ll do everything in their power short of physical violence to convince you to join the Kingdoms rather than Equestria; the gryphons have been trying to get something out of the Conversion Movement since the Bureaus opened up. They envy all the new ideas the human newfoals retain that contribute to Equestria’s economic progress. Of course, all the violent, self-destructive ideas are wiped out of the newfoal’s psyche during ponification, so there’s no fear of bringing human fallacy into Equestria. Of course, in your case, I have no idea how your personality’s been altered, if at all.”

Gell was silent at this last remark. The change in personality was what had frightened him the most. Would he still be himself after it all? Well, it was after it all now, and Gell didn’t feel any different. Then again, what if his psyche had actually changed to prevent him from knowing it had changed? Gell gulped. Best not to think about that.

While the Bureau manager was setting up the portal, Stout Heart returned with a travel-bracelet he reluctantly offered to Gell. Gell took it and strapped it onto his foreleg—there’d be time for questioning the AI inside it later—and turned to face the portal. The inside of the device was already starting to hum with magic as the air shimmered within, the barrier between worlds becoming thinner and thinner until it was torn apart completely and the Townsville Conversion Bureau became linked to the Equestrian Receiving Station.

Through the bright light on the other side, Gell and the others could see what appeared to be pony silhouettes—until one shadow slithered up into a long, serpentine shape and flew into the Transport Room, followed close behind by a tall alicorn and the six most famous ponies in Equestria.

. . .

Chapter 5

“What—what the—” the Bureau manager stammered, shaking and looking very near to wetting himself.

“It’s DISCORD!” Stout Heart cried out in fear.

“This is going to happen EVERYWHERE we go, isn’t it?” the draconequus sighed. “You know, I WOULD change into something a little-less conspicuous, but I’m still getting the hang of these powers.”

“P-Princess!” Stout Heart gasped, turning to Lauren. “Please, stop him! Save us!”

Lauren was about to say something to attempt to calm the young stallion down, but Twilight slid in front of her and announced “First of all, she’s not a Princess. Her name, as far as we know, is Lauren Faust, and she claims she’s a ponified human. This draconequus here isn’t Discord either, also as far as we know. And, even if they were who they appear to be, we, the bearers of the Elements of Harmony and representatives of Princess Celestia, would put a stop to any malicious mischief on their part.”

“‘As far as we know?’” Lauren echoed. “What do you—”

“Y-you’re Twilight Sparkle!” Stout Heart gasped. And, seeing the gem-studded tiara on her brow, as well as the golden bejeweled necklaces on the other instantly recognizable ponies trotting through the portal, Stout Heart breathed “Are those…”

“Yes,” Twilight smiled proudly. “These are the Elements of Harmony themselves. Don’t worry, nothing shall happen to you on our watch.”

“Representative of Princess Celestia, you say?” Inquired the Bureau manager, still eyeing Craig with a look usually reserved for small bleeding fish facing hungry sharks. “To what may the humble Townsville Conversion Bureau attribute the honor of your calling?”

“We’re here investigating a robbery,” Lauren answered.

The Bureau manager sighed.

“We were hoping to keep that one under the radar,” he said. “Of course, we had to file the reports to the Receiving Station, but apart from the human authorities looking into the matter nopony else was supposed to know. It’d be bad for publicity after the big incident happened on top of everything, you know? But it’s just a small series of robberies, really. Nopony was harmed.”

“Small series of robberies?” Lauren echoed. “According to the Receiving Station, several millions of gallons of ponification potion were stolen from this Bureau, more than any other Bureau the PER struck!”

“Yes, but that was over a month ago,” the Bureau manager explained. “The smaller robberies started long before that, and they’ve been going on ever since. I assume it’s the larger robbery you’re interested in, based on your surprise—but the police closed that case when the PER dumped the potion in some nightclub across the country.”

“Which is precisely why we’re here,” Lauren stated. “Craig—the draconequus—and I were humans at that club, and we woke up like this. As you can see, no standard ponification potion could do this. I should know; before I was an alicorn, I was a college student majoring in pony studies. The potion that did this to us had to have come from this Bureau. We already sent investigators to the other Bureaus who were hit, and their potions were all standard-grade, leaving this Bureau the only suspect left. We insisted on investigating this Bureau personally, hoping we could get some answers.”

“I’m sorry to say, your highness, that you won’t find any answers here either,” the Bureau manager answered uncomfortably. To be perfectly honest, he didn’t believe a word of what the alicorn was saying—this was probably some sort of royal test or something, though he couldn’t think why they’d give it to him (maybe, just maybe, he was being considered for promotion?)—but it was best not to argue with royalty. “We have nothing but standard-grade ponification potion here as well.”

“Just call me Lauren, please,” Laure instructed with a mild hint of annoyance, as if this was not the first time she’d had to fight off being pegged as royalty. “Twilight here is right—I’m not a Princess. In fact, I’m hoping I won’t be a pony for that much longer, either. Craig and I hope that with our new magical abilities—well, his magical abilities, anyway, as I haven’t figured out how to use mine yet—and a sample of the anomaly potion that we can turn ourselves back into humans.”

“Anomaly potion?” Stout Heart inquired, trying to wrap his mind around what the not-Princess was saying. “So you really were humans? That sounds an awful like what happened to our new gryphon here!”

Stout Heart gestured a hoof at the new gryphon, whose eyes widened as he cursed under his breath. Gell instantly revoked his thought about Stout Heart being able to make it out of this Bureau. Gell also revoked his thought that Stout Heart would survive long enough to regret it, and he might have to see to it personally that the pony didn’t. The new gryphon was supposed to be keeping as low a profile as possible—until the right moment, that is—and keeping a low profile definitely did NOT mean being noticed by the six most famous ponies in Equestria, a Princess (whatever she said, alicorns were ALWAYS Princesses as far as Gell knew) and a being Gell recognized as Equestria’s most hated adversary.

“New what?” Twilight asked, turning to the new gryphon as if noticing him for the first time. The other ponies followed suite, as did the draconequus. Gell instinctively tried to back up and make himself smaller, but somehow he’d managed to get himself into a corner. “What’s a gryphon doing here?”

“He used to be a—” Stout Heart started to say before Gell rushed over and clapped a claw to the pony’s mouth, giving it a squeeze as he did so to ensure that the claws left an impression.

“No, I’ve ALWAYS been a gryphon, haven’t I, pony?” Gell hissed, glancing at the newcomers nervously. “Just visiting Earth from the Gryphon Kingdoms, seeing if we can get in on the Conversion Bureau action and all.”

“Is this true?” Lauren questioned suspiciously, turning to the Bureau manager. “I’ve never read about gryphons coming to Earth for any reason.”

Gell shot a deadly glance at the older stallion, who looked between the gryphon and the alicorn uneasily. Finally deciding that the alicorn and her herd of the most powerful beings and artifacts in Equestria was more of a threat, the manager answered “Stout Heart’s right. This is actually the second time we’ve heard of any ‘anomalies.’ Earlier today we ponified a special case, sent straight from the top, and got a new gryphon instead of a new pony.”

Gell let out another muted curse. If things got any worse, he was dead meat for sure.

“Really?” Lauren looked back to Gell with newfound interest. “Then you’d better come with us.”

“Sorry, your ‘highness,’” Gell replied dryly. “But I’ve got plans in Equestria. Private plans. Important private plans.”

Lauren looked uncertain for a moment, started to speak, and then stopped, looking to Craig for help. Craig simply nodded. Turning back to Gell, Lauren announced “I’m sorry to have to do this, but we need to get to the bottom of these anomalies. Under the authority of Princess Celestia, I hereby place you under custody.”

“Place me under—but I haven’t done anything!” Gell protested. “And besides, what makes you think I’d come quietly?”

“You won’t have a choice,” Twilight grinned mischievously. Gell suddenly felt a tingling sensation, as if a wave of cold air was washing over him. The new gryphon shivered. “Princess Celestia gave us the power of her authority, which is magical law. You are now bound to this herd until we see fit to release you.”

“Oh really?” the gryphon mused. “What’s to stop me from bolting the second we get back to Equestria?”

“That band on your tail,” Twilight continued grinning.

Gell turned his head and lifted up his tail to see a black band having appeared around it. Gasping in surprise, Gell went after the thing with his claws, trying to rip or pry it off, but the band wouldn’t budge.

“What is this thing?!” Gell demanded.

“It’s a tracker,” Twilight explained. “We can use it to follow you anywhere, so unless you want to be hunted down by a platoon of armed Royal Guards and thrown into the Canterlot dungeon, I suggest you stick with us.”

Gell cursed again, not being discreet about it at all this time.

“It seems like he’s quickly getting the hang of being a gryphon,” giggled a sky-blue pegasus with a rainbow mane and tail hovering over the other ponies. “You remind me a lot of an old pal of mine.”

“Who are you, anyway?” Craig asked, floating over to scrutinize Gell and his travel bracelet, which the new gryphon quickly hid away in his feathers. “And why did the manager call you a ‘special’ case?”

“None of your business!” Gell snapped. “That’s classified by the highest level of the human government.”

“Suite yourself,” Craig dismissed, floating back over to Lauren and the others. “I’m sure we’ll find out eventually.”

“As soon as Tartarus freezes over,” Gell mumbled.

“I’m sorry to have to do this to you,” Lauren apologized again, sounding genuine. “But the more we know about the anomaly cases, the better chance we have of solving them. Now, Mr. Manager, could you direct us to the potion storage room?”

“Certainly, your majesty,” the Bureau manager said, bowing. Lauren looked agitated again, but didn’t bother trying to stop him. She knew from experience that it would be a losing battle.

The Bureau manager clicked a button on the control panel to power down the portal before trotting back the way they had come. Leading the herd and one very disgruntled gryphon through a series of hallways, the Bureau manager at last came to two large double doors made of cold iron.

“We have to keep the storage facility well-protected, you understand,” the manager explained, allowing the scanner in the wall to read his iris before the doors slid open into the walls.

“It doesn’t seem like it’s been doing you very much good,” Lauren commented dryly.

“Yes, that’s the thing,” the Bureau manager agreed, cringing a little at the remark and hoping it didn’t harm his chances of promotion, however slim they may be. “This security system was state-of-the art when we opened, and we’ve upgraded it at least three times since the robberies started. But no matter what blockade we put in their way, the thieves always get through. Theoretically it would take a hacker five months to get through the lowest grade of DNA scanner, and we have a military-grade model. In fact, we believe the original thieves cooperated with the PER, at least for a one-time gig, in exchange for some of the payoff in the PER’s heist. You see, the regular thieves always break in, but they never take very much.”

“How much, exactly?” Craig inquired.

“Less than three bottles’ worth,” the manager answered, cringing even more at being talked to by a draconequus.

“What good would that do them?” Lauren wanted to know. “With such a low quantity, the potion would be useless to even the rogue chemists who splice the stuff into their drugs, and they’re the only humans I can think of who’d want ponification potion for anything besides being ponified.”

“Right you are, your majesty,” the manager agreed, ignoring Lauren’s sigh. “It’s a mystery to us as well. We suspected for a time that the thieves wanted to make the drugs for themselves, but the cost of processing the potion into the standard hallucinogenic actually costs far more than it would to break into a Bureau, especially one as equipped at the Townsville branch.”

“Ah, Townsville,” Craig mused absentmindedly. “If only I were visiting you under happier circumstances. I suppose the Powerpuff Girls and Professor Utonium would flee from the sight of me.”

“Don’t think like that!” Lauren chided. “Humans don’t fear Discord like ponies do—if it weren’t for my studies, you’d probably be just as oblivious to what a draconequus is as the majority of humanity.”

“True,” Craig agreed. “But nevertheless, would you want to meet me down a dark alley, whether you knew what I was or not?”

Lauren didn’t have an answer for that one.

The Bureau manager stopped the herd at the end of the long hallway after the iron doors, turning to look at the group nervously.

“Now, I must ask you, and I can’t stress this enough, not to touch anything,” the manager quipped. “We don’t want any more accidents in here than have already happened. Not that you would cause any, your majesty, or you, bearers of the Elements.”

Craig dismissed the fact that he was not omitted from the manager’s worries—he was almost beginning to get used to the condescension. Well, not really, but he was getting better at suppressing his frightening new primal instinct to turn whoever displeased him into birthday cakes. He only hoped he wouldn’t eventually snap, especially not in front of Lauren. The new alicorn’s memory of his liberation from the human military had been hazy, and he feared the day—if it ever came—when she remembered that he had killed a squadron of soldiers without a second thought. He had done it to protect her, but murdering one’s former species wouldn’t be easy to take regardless of the reasons behind it.

Gell hadn’t actually been omitted from the worries either—in fact, the new gryphon had received a smug grin from the manager, as if to say “Ha-ha, I have the most powerful ponies in Equestria here, and you can’t do a thing against me!” Gell smiled darkly when the manager’s back was turned. True, the new gryphon might not have any power over the manager any more…right now. But Gell was patient, and he never forgot an enemy’s face.

The manager had his iris scanned once more, and the door clicked open to reveal a massive warehouse-like room packed floor-to-ceiling with tanks of purplish-pink ponification potion. The stuff bubbled and sloshed, radiating a faint glow from all the collected magic. Gell looked around with interest—he could see so many opportunities for sabotage here—but it was best to wait until this band came off him. Payback could wait.

The Bureau manager continued to trot forward, leading the herd down an aisle of the vats and taking a turn every so often, taking them towards the very back of the Bureau.

“The thieves always steal from the same general area,” the manager informed them. “It’s always the southeast quadrant. We’d put up cameras, of course, but all the magical radiation and the dimness we need to preserve the potion in usually makes for a hazy image. We’ve installed several magical tripwires, and they seem to work, but the thieves are always gone by the time we—”

“INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUD—”

The Bureau manager froze before rushing ahead.

“That’s the alarm!” the manager called back over his shoulder excitedly. “That’s them! Nopony’s ever been this close before when the alarm went off! We might just—”

The manager froze again when he rounded a corner and nearly slammed into a vat of potion.

“What is it?!” Lauren called, rounding the bend before she too stopped stock-still with her jaw dropped.

As Craig rounded the corner, his eyes widened before the new draconequus let out “I can’t believe it! It’s them—it’s—”

“Who? Who is it?!” Twilight demanded, nearly sliding into Craig as she too slid around an obscuring vat of potion. “Is it those Powder Puff Girls you keep talking about meeting in this city?”

“Even better!” Craig smiled broadly. “The Powerpuff Girls were just one superhuman mutation—these guys could lead to a whole revolution of new superhuman mutations!”

“What are you talking about?!” Gell wanted to know, bounding up to see what everypony was ogling at. What he saw made his own jaw drop as well.

There, standing before the herd, was a trio of the most bizarre creatures the new gryphon had ever laid eyes on. If, that is, you could even call them creatures. Three bluish blobs of continually moving goop, studded with twitching cilia, turned to face the herd, showing them that they amazingly enough sported eyes and mouths. On top of that, each blob had a brown gangster-style hat perched on their…heads?

“We’ve been found out, boys!” exclaimed the blob in the middle, which appeared halfway sized between the taller one to its right and the shorter one to its left. The shorter one in question had a pseudopod jabbed into a vat of potion, and was proceeding to suck in the pinkish liquid with gusto. Judging by the purplish tints inside the other two blue blobs, they had already done the same.

“What in Equestria are THOSE horrid things?!” Rarity squealed, backing up hastily. “They’re positively REVOLTING!”

“They’re The Amoeba Boys,” Craig laughed. “And, despite being Townsville’s most incompetent criminals, they appear to be the potion thieves.”

“This is a stick-up, see!” announced the first one to have spoken, nervously jabbing a pseudopod in the herd’s direction. “We’re taking this here potion and there’s nothing you all can do to stop us!”

“I hate to break this to you,” Craig chuckled. “But you haven’t exactly got a gun or any threatening features of any kind to back up your threat.”

“Oh,” the speaker, apparently the leader, uttered. “Uh…what now, then?”

“You could all surrender quietly,” Craig suggested.

“Yeah, that’s what we’ll do!” the chief amoeba brightened up—literally changing several shades lighter. “Wait a minute—no, that’s the opposite of what we should do! We’re criminals; we don’t surrender without a fight!”

“It was worth a try,” Craig shrugged.

“Scram, boys!” the head amoeba yelled, melting downwards into a thin sheen on the floor before zooming away, closely followed by his cohorts.

“What the—somepony stop them!” the Bureau manager cried out, racing after the oversized unicellular organisms. The herd wasted no time in complying after Lauren followed suit with Craig floating close behind.

“That must be it!” Lauren exclaimed as they ran after the amoebic mafia. “Those…things…must have tainted to ponification potion, and that’s what made us turn out like this! If we can get a sample of them, maybe we can reverse the effects!”

“What are those things, anyway?” Twilight wondered, galloping alongside Lauren. “I’ve never read about any Earth creatures like those!”

“Townsville is home to a large scientific community, namely the famous Professor Utonium,” Craig explained as the herd rushed after the slithering blobs. “Many of the worlds’ most modern conveniences arose here. Unfortunately, plenty of unpleasant developments occurred as an aftereffect of the experiments that went wrong, one of those being The Amoeba Boys. Though admittedly they aren’t very intelligent, The Amoeba Boys’ bodies provide the potential for all kinds of scientific advancement—if anypony could just keep them in one place long enough to get a sample. They can squeeze in and out of the tightest spaces, from prison cells to whatever back door they must have snuck into the Bureau through.”

“Really?” Twilight wondered, getting excited in spite of herself. “So many possibilities for study…”

“Indeed,” Craig agreed. “Though I must admit I’m surprised that they were stealing ponification potion—what use could it have to them?”

“Looks like we’re about to find out,” Lauren pointed out, and the herd turned their attention back to where The Amoeba Boys had backed themselves into a corner. Though they could indeed squeeze through the tightest of cracks, there didn’t appear to be any cracks in their current prison. The amoebas, realizing they were trapped, shivered with fear.

“Don’t come any closer!” the head amoeba shouted, sticking out a pseudopod as if he thought it would be seen as threatening. “We got juice, and we’re not afraid to use it!”

“Juice?” Craig echoed.

“What in two worlds are you stealing my potion for?!” growled the Bureau manager, advancing steadily on the blubbering blobs. “It’s useless to the likes of you!”

“Useless?!” the head amoeba repeated. “This stuff is the only juice that can get us high!”

The Bureau manager was about to yell something else, when a sharp laughing pierced the crowd. The herd turned to see Gell laughing uncontrollably on the floor.

“You mean to tell me,” the gryphon chuckled while wiping mirthful tears from his eyes. “That you genetic freak-shows are stealing potion because magic is the only thing that can get you intoxicated?”

“It doesn’t get us intoxicated,” the head amoeba disagreed indignantly. “It gets us drunk! And unlike human drinks, this juice actually has a KICK!”

A blast of magical energy shot out from the head amoeba’s pseudopod, straight at Gell, who leapt into the air—higher than he normally would’ve been able to—before the blast smashed into a potion tank and caused it to explode, drenching the herd with its contents.

“Look, boys!” the head amoeba cried. “More juice!”

Just like they’d been able to do all along but apparently hadn’t thought of until just now, The Amoeba Boys split into multiple smaller segments and slid around the herd’s feet, rejoining into their respective bodies in the middle of the goop, which they proceeded to absorb.

“I can’t believe it!” Twilight gasped. “They can actually extract the magic from the potion and use it however they want!”

“I’m assuming that’s not a good thing?” Stout Heart asked.

“Not in the least,” Twilight responded, her horn charging up. “But if magic started this problem, then maybe magic can fix it!”

A blast of purple light burst from the lavender unicorn’s horn, firing straight at the blobby thieves. But, to the utter shock of all, instead of harming the giant cells the magic was sucked right into them.

“Hey, more juice!” the head amoeba noticed gleefully. “Thanks, lady!”

“They don’t just absorb magic from the potion,” Twilight realized, voicing what the rest of the herd was dreading. “They can absorb magic from anywhere!”

“Get ‘em, boys!” the head amoeba shouted before producing two pseudopods and proceeding to blast a barrage of magical shots at the herd.

The herd split, each half jumping to the side to take cover behind more of the vats of potion.

“How are we supposed to hogtie a bunch of blobby monsters when they can just split apart AND use magic?” asked an orange earth pony wearing a Stetson who Gell recognized from his mission briefing as ‘Applejack.’

“Whatever you do, don’t use magic against them!” Twilight warned. “We’ll have to catch them some other way.”

“If only I knew their genetic code,” Craig mused. “Then I could prescribe the opposite sequencing to put them into stasis.”

“Wait a minute…” Lauren realized. “Twilight! Why don’t you hit them with a counter spell of whatever magic is in the ponification potion? That should cancel their powers, right?”

“It actually should,” Twilight thought aloud. “But there’s still the problem of catching them once I power them down…”

“That’s it!” Craig spoke up. “The Amoeba Boys may be idiots, but they’re master escape artists. There are only three people who’ve ever been able to keep them in one place for very long. Go ahead and perform the counter spell; I’ll be right back!”

With a snap of his claws and a white flash, Craig was gone.

Twilight complied by setting her horn to sparking and then sending it into a radiant glow. Leaping out into the corridor between the vats where The Ameba Boys were still firing shots of their newfound magic, Twilight blasted a spell at the three giant cells and sent them all reeling back. The amoebas’ blobby bodies’ bounced along the ground, and they uttered curses and cries of “Ow!” each time they connected with the floor.

“I’m back!” Craig announced, appearing with another flash. Surrounding him and looking quite surprised was a trio of little girls who, amazingly enough, were floating. “There they are, girls!”

“Wait, what’s going on?” asked one, sporting long auburn hair and a red bow.

“Yeah, we don’t let monsters like you interrupt our class without whuppin’ their butts!” stated another, this one with short black hair.

“Just because I look like a monster doesn’t mean I am a monster,” Craig tried to explain. “And besides, I summoned you here to take care of the real monsters—The Amoeba Boys! They’ve been stealing ponification potion from this Bureau!”

“So THEY’RE the ones behind it all!” the orange-haired one said. “Get ‘em, girls!”

The trio zoomed forward through the air before rising up, taking a deep breath, and blowing a blizzard onto the three giant cells. In an instant The Amoeba Boys were frozen in a solid chunk of ice.

“Perfect!” Lauren announced triumphantly.

“I could’ve done that,” Twilight scoffed. “So could Discord! I, I mean Craig.”

“True, but you and I would’ve both been using magic to do so, and they would’ve just absorbed the magic,” Craig explained. “These superhuman wonders, The Powerpuff Girls, froze them with science!”

“That we did!” announced the leader of the tiny trio, flying back to the herd and eyeing Craig suspiciously. “But if you aren’t a monster, then what are you?”

“It’s a long story,” Craig sighed. “But let me just say, it’s an honor to meet you all! I’ve been reading about your heroic works for as long as you’ve been fighting crime.”

“He can’t be a monster if he’s nice like that,” noted the third of The Powerpuff Girls who wore her blonde hair in two pigtails. “A monster means a meanie pants! He’s nice, and—OH MY GOSH! PONIES!”

“Bubbles, we’ve been over this,” the leader intoned with an air of annoyance. “The ponies are sentient life-forms equal to humans who are from another dimension. They are not pets to be played with!”

“I know, but they’re so CUTE!” the blonde Powerpuff Girl, apparently Bubbles, squealed, flying right up to Twilight and throwing herself around the unicorn in a big hug. “I just want to hug them all!”

“Okay…” Twilight uttered, feeling uncomfortable as the superhuman child refused to let go of her neck. “Um…”

“Say, something seems familiar about you,” Bubbles commented, looking up at Twilight. “Something about your voice…”

“I’m afraid that’s all the time we have to plat with the ponies today, Bubbles,” grumbled the dark-haired Powerpuff. “Come on, it’s almost recess back at school!”

“Ooh! Recess!” Bubbles squealed again, apparently liking recess just as much as she enjoyed hugging ponies. The blonde Powerpuff finally released Twilight and flew up to join her sisters.

“You did tell us what The Amoeba Boys were up to, so I guess we can trust you,” the leader spoke to Craig again. “You can get these bozos to the police for us, right? We kind of have a game of kickball waiting for us.”

“We’ll certainly deal with them,” Craig answered. “Thanks again!”

“Happy to help!” the leader announced. “Now, uh, could you zap us back to our school?”

“Sure thing!” Craig agreed, snapping his claws. There was another flash, and the girls were gone. “Now all we have to do is get a genetic sample of The Amoeba Boys and we can finally get to the bottom of this.”

“Wait just a minute,” the Bureau Manager spoke up. The herd turned to face him, finding that he wore an expression of puzzlement, as if he had been pondering something deeply for some time now. “You all think that The Amoeba Boys here are what caused your anomalies?”

“Yeah, that’s kind of what we’ve been saying the whole time,” Lauren said, raising an eyebrow and wondering how somepony could’ve missed that. “Why do you ask?”

“But they couldn’t have!” the Manager realized. “The same small amount of potion has consistently been stolen from the southeast quadrant of the Bureau storage facility for the past few months. But when the PER struck, they took everything in the other three quadrants, where The Amoeba Boys never struck. And we obtained the dosage for our new gryphon here from the northwest quadrant of the refilled vats. None of that potion that affected any of you was ever touched by The Amoeba Boys!”

. . .

Chapter 6

“I can’t believe this!” Lauren fumed as she trotted through the portal, leaving the Townsville Conversion Bureau—and Earth—behind for what may have been forever. “How could The Amoeba Boys NOT have been the answer?! How could ordinary ponification potion ruin our lives like this?!”

“I’m just as confused as you are, Lauren,” Craig shrugged in defeat as he joined her in floating into the bright white light inside the spinning metal ring of the portal. Stout Heart and the Bureau Manager waved them hearty goodbyes as their forms were obscured by the light and finally disappeared into it. The rest of the herd followed, Twilight leading the Element bearers after the two ex-humans in charge while Gell, grumbling, brought up the rear.

“At least I’m finally getting to Equestria,” the new gryphon thought to himself. “Maybe I can squeeze in a full page of observations on my first mission report. That way they’ll only shred MOST of my skin off.”

The light absorbed the gryphon as well, blinding him so that he had to shield his eyes as he trudged forward. But as the former human approached the other end of the tunnel that seemed to be made of nothing but light (making him rather nervous about what he was standing on) shapes began to appear. At first there were only silhouettes, but then colors began to reemerge and finally the ring of the other end of the portal passed by Gell and he walked into the Receiving Station, headquarters of the Conversion Bureaus.

The massive building looked like something that might have been a cross between a train station and a science lab back on Earth, except here magic replaced anything remotely technological. Rows of portals, each bearing plaques with names like ‘NEW YORK’ and ‘JUMP CITY’ and ‘DIMMSDALE,’ lined the walls on one end. On the opposite wall were a series of security checkpoints and welcome desks.

After passing some rather terrified and eagerly bowing ponies the herd strolled out into the bright sunlight of Equestria, revealing the most pristine blue sky Gell had ever seen. Then again, it was the only sky he’d ever seen; back at the place on Earth the sky was nothing but baggy brown clouds filled with poisonous pollutants from centuries of gaseous industrial waste. The country below the sky was no less breathtaking, showing rolling pastures, quaint towns that looked like something out of a medieval illustration, and even the capital city of Canterlot in the distance with its towering spires and proud palace.

Gell looked around with apparent lack of interest, too preoccupied with how he could weasel his way out of his present situation, when he walked right into what might have been a rather disgruntled ball of feathers and what might have been a miniature sun. The new gryphon stumbled backwards, only to see the feathery sun he’d run into doing the same, only it ended up knocked to the ground.

“Not the kind of dignified first impression I was hoping to make,” the feathery fireball muttered in what Gell recognized as a distinctly feminine voice before picking itself off the ground with its wings. After ruffling its feathers and wiping the dust off its coat, the flaming feathery figure bowed low at Gell’s feet. “I bid my greetings to you, Gell the Gryphon. I am Valor Firefeather of the Pheonix Tribe of the Gryphon Kingdoms, and I humbly extend to you the best wishes of the Gryphon Kings themselves.”

Gell took another uncertain step back as the fiery feathers of this creature rose to a standing height once more. It had what might have been the head of an eagle, if it weren’t coated in violently vibrant red feathers as the rest of the front of this creature was. It was smaller than Gell, its form graceful and slender, with a prim beak and large green eyes. It was also wearing what appeared to be golden armor bearing the insignia of a gryphon and a dragon locked in battle emblazoned across a shield.

“I am to be your designated guide in this world,” it—no, she—spoke in that melodious voice. “And I am honored to meet you.”

Gell’s heart skipped a beat. Before he realized what he was doing, the former human’s eyes began to trace her fiery feathers and her magnificent wings before his gaze was locked onto her eyes. They were rich and green like a summery meadow. When he did realize what he was doing, the new gryphon snapped himself out of it rather violently.

“No, no, NO!” Gell hissed, yanking his gaze off of Valor and stomping the ground with his claws. “This can’t be happening! I can’t have ANOTHER distraction!”

“Am I…not presentable?” Valor wondered, sounding hurt, as if she had failed something.

“No, it’s not you—well, it is, but it’s not your fault, it’s just…AUGH!” Gell exasperated. How was he supposed to explain that he couldn’t afford any more distractions when his mission was already so bucked up? How was he supposed to explain that the problem wasn’t her—it was his new species’ hormones? “Look, thanks for coming all the way to Equestria to show me around and everything, but I don’t need a guide. So, I’ll be seeing you—”

“But, Gell!” Valor protested as the new gryphon tried to walk past this red vision. Their feathers brushed, and Gell shivered before jumping away and spinning to face her. “You have not yet let me inform you of the riches of this world, especially those which the Gryphon Kings have prepared to offer you! If you choose to become a citizen of our Kingdoms, the Kings will make you a Lord with a castle full of riches all your own!”

“Yeah, that sounds nice and all, but I’d rather be poor and alive than rich and dead,” Gell insisted, beginning to swiftly walk away again. “That being said, I’ll be checking out Equestria—and only Equestria—on my own.”

“I am sorry, Gell,” Valor spoke, sounding genuine, after a moment of thought. “But in the name of the Gryphon Kings, I place you under custody of the Gryphon Kingdoms.”

The new gryphon felt a disturbingly familiar cool air waft over him, and swished his tail around to confirm that, indeed, he now had a SECOND black band on his tail, crisscrossing the first to form an ‘X.’ The two bands glowed where they touched, and the now doubly imprisoned gryphon was pretty sure that it wasn’t a good thing to mix the magic of two nations, but he had something more pressing to be angry about right now: the fact that Valor had banded him in the first place.

“Okay, that’s far enough,” Craig spoke up before Gell could launch into a furious rage, flying over to the two gryphons from where the rest of the herd had apparently been watching the whole event unfold with growing chuckles.

“Discord?!” Valor gasped. “But—but we heard that you were recaptured in your prison of stone!”

“Different draconequus,” Craig sighed. “But I’ll be twice as nasty as he was if you mess up what we’re trying to do here. This gryphon is under Equestrian custody, and ONLY Equestrian custody.”

“But he is a gryphon!” Valor protested. “He belongs with us!”

“Maybe so,” Craig replied. “But right now, we need him more, and so he isn’t leaving Equestria until we’re done with him.”

“Then I shall remain by his side until such a time arises as he may join the rest of his kind,” Valor stated defiantly, displaying some real courage by speaking up to a draconequus. “It is my royal duty to be his guide, and be his guide I shall.”

“Suit yourself,” Craig shrugged. “But don’t try and fly off with him, or you’ll have me to deal with.”

“What—but—no!” Gell spoke up at last. “Look, if I have to stick with you guys, then at least don’t make her have to come along too! My plans are far too bucked up as it is!”

“Why wouldn’t you want her to come along?” Lauren questioned, raising an eyebrow and smiling slyly. “Don’t you want a friend who shares your species? Don’t you want a very special friend?”

“What?!” Gell screeched. “No! I don’t! I don’t care if we’re both gryphons! I never wanted to be involved with any of you, so the less beings I have to deal with the better! At least grant me this one request!”

“Well, since you asked nicely—” Lauren started to say sarcastically before Twilight tapped her on the shoulder. Leaning down to listen as the lavender unicorn whispered in her ear, Lauren shrugged and then rose back up. “Twilight here says that Equestria and the Gryphon Kingdoms don’t have the best of relations, so it’d be best not to tick them off. Especially if all we’re asked to do is let a single extra gryphon stick with us.”

“GAHHHH!” Gell roared. “You don’t get it, do you?! None of you get it! You ponies will throw me in the Canterlot dungeons if I don’t go along with your plans, and who knows what captain Fire Feathers here will get her precious Kingdoms to do to me if I don’t cooperate with their plans. You want me to stick with you to unfurl the meaning of some crazy freak accident that happened to all three of us, but if I waste any more time with you interlopers than focusing on my REAL reason for being here, I’M GOING TO DIE! PAINFULLY!”

“You’re going to die?!” Pinkie Pie piped up. “Oh, no! That’s terrible! Have you got a disease?”

“Worse!” Gell responded. “I’m a special case! I didn’t WANT to come here, the human government SENT me here! If I remained on Earth they would have killed me, but they only let me come here to this world if I agreed to follow a very specific plan—and if I don’t, they’ll kill me anyway.”

“I hardly think the human government could reach you here,” Twilight remarked. “And even if they could, why would they want to? You’re out of their world and out of their hair now.”

“The human government may have been the ones to send me here,” Gell went on, glaring darkly at the lavender unicorn. “But they’re not the ones who are going to kill me. These people are much, much worse.”

“Just what is going on with you, anyway?” Craig wanted to know. “What makes you so dangerous?”

“They’d kill me just for telling you,” Gell said. “I might get flogged for telling you this much. But if it’ll get you all off my case, I’ll give you the answer to your stupid ‘anomaly’ problem. I didn’t want to say anything—I wanted to interact with you all as little as possible—but I know what caused your freak mutations.”

“You WHAT?!” Lauren lighted up. “You knew?! How could you know?! And even if you did, and I’m not saying I believe you do, but how could you not have told us?!”

“One, you all have been a pain in my neck since the second I encountered you,” Gell informed her. “Two, I’m not supposed to interact with ANYONE or ANYPONY. Ever, until my plans are executed, so that I won’t be. But it looks like I’ll have to break a few rules to finally be rid of you.”

Gell walked up to the rest of the herd, Valor following close behind him like a second shadow (albeit one that was on fire), and stuck out his wrist. The herd crowded around to see the travel bracelet he had received from the Conversion Bureau, complete with its interface touchscreen and solar power panel.

“Wake up, AI,” Gell commanded, and the touchscreen winked on.

“Hello, new applicant!” the AI’s familiarly obnoxious mechanical voice spoke to the herd. “What is your name and identification?”

“We’re not in the Bureau anymore,” Gel informed the AI. “In case you haven’t noticed, you chip is in a travel bracelet. I own you know, and that means you have to do what I say. Right now, I say you tell these ‘nice’ ponies and their monster friend here what you told me back in Townsville. That way I’ll at least have ONE kingdom off my case.”

The AI was silent for a moment, its usual smiley face having switched to display an emoticon bearing a look of confusion.

Finally, it said “Does not compute.”

“What?!” Gell gasped. “Don’t you dare play that game with me! Show them! Show them you have a personality, that you experimented on all of us to appease your sadistic scientific curiosity!”

“Does not compute,” the AI intoned again.

“Um…” Lauren said uneasily. “You know AIs don’t have personalities, right?”

“This one does!” Gell insisted. “It was the AI interface unit at the Townsville Conversion Bureau, and it told me itself that it experimented on each of us!”

The herd simply gazed at him with a funny look.

“I’m not making this up!” Gell hissed. “It’s all true!”

“Maybe it really is all true,” Craig wondered.

“What?” Lauren inquired, turning to the draconequus with a look of confusion.

“To him, I mean,” Craig stated. “Maybe Gell here thinks all this really is true. If he’s a ‘special case,’ as he keeps telling us, then maybe the reason he was sent here is because he’s an insane criminal or something. Either that or he’s a bad liar with a worse imagination.”

“I’m not crazy!” Gell protested. “And what use would I have to lie to you?”

“You do want to get away from us as fast as you can,” Twilight pointed out. “And Dis—Craig’s thought does make a lot more sense. I’ve done some studying on human technology, and they don’t usually let any newfoals bring it with them to Equestria. I’m guessing the only reason you have that travel bracelet at all is because it’s really a tracking device.”

“This is your last chance,” the distraught gryphon whispered menacingly and desperately to the AI. “Either tell them what you told me or I’ll throw you in the nearest lake I can find!”

“Entering reboot sequence,” the AI informed them all before blacking out and displaying a loading screen.

The herd stood there uncomfortably for a moment.

“Alright then…” Lauren spoke at last. “Now that that’s out of the way, I think we better head back to Canterlot. It’s been a long day, and it’ll be dark soon. We can resume our search in the morning.”

The herd began to trot uneasily away from the rather disgruntled gryphon, talking amongst themselves in whispers just loud enough for Gell to hear. Gell watched them go, then looked back to Valor, then at the travel bracelet again, and then followed after the herd with a grumble.

Valor, playing the shadow once more, followed suite.

. . .

“Did you find what you were looking for, Mother—I mean, Lauren?” Celestia asked as Lauren and the rest of the herd trudged into the royal palace back at Canterlot at nightfall. It had been a long walk from the Receiving Station back to Canterlot, and on top of that everypony’s moods were more than a little off for different reasons. Craig had offered to teleport them all back to the palace, but the Element bearing ponies had quickly gasped a “No!” and so they had been forced to walk.

“I’m afraid not,” Lauren grumbled, shooting Celestia a sorrowful smile mixed with the fact that she really didn’t know how to handle the situation from here. Not only was she now out of leads, she had no idea what she was supposed to do next. Try to come up with a cure for an anomalous ponification transformation without any clues? No, she’d just be running into the same brick walls all others who had attempted to reverse the change inevitably ran into. Accept her fate as a pony? No, she refused that notion even more than the first—she wasn’t giving up that easily. But then, what was she supposed to do? “We’ll…we’ll think of something in the morning.”

“Certainly, Lauren,” Celestia nodded. “You have all of Equestria at your disposal. I wish to help you in any way I can.”

“Thanks,” Lauren said sheepishly. She really did appreciate all the help this monarch was giving, but the way Celestia still looked at Lauren when the Solar Princess thought the new alicorn wasn’t looking still gave her an uneasy feeling. On top of that, the new alicorn didn’t like taking advantage of Celestia, but getting help from the government was indeed the fastest way to solve this case.

“The Guards will escort you each to your rooms,” Celestia intoned, turning to the rest of the herd. “And I do hope you and your friends do not mind staying here in Canterlot for a while, Twilight. And oh, who are these?”

This last remark had come about when the Solar Princess caught sight of Gell and Valor, the former of which was looking around the palace intently with actual interest while the latter stepped forward and bowed to Celestia.

“I am Valor, your majesty,” the flaming gryphon replied cordially. “I am the representative of the Gryphon Kingdoms our embassies had discussed. I am also the guide of Lord Gell, who you see before you.”

“What?” Gell snapped to attention at the mention of his name. “I never agreed to go to the Kingdoms with you or accept your fancy title! I already told you, I’m staying here, in Equestria!”

“But, Lord Gell—” Valor began.

Lauren cut her off with “They’re with us. The gryphon who isn’t on fire is another anomaly case from the Conversion Bureaus. The one who is on fire is who she says she is.”

“Is this true?” Celestia inquired, suddenly looking confused. Gell was about to answer when he saw that the Solar Princess wasn’t looking at him or Valor, but at Twilight and her friends.

“We met him in the Conversion Bureau we visited today,” Twilight affirmed. “The transformation happened before we got there, but two employees assured us that is what happened. I don’t know how else a gryphon could have gotten to Earth, either.”

“But, but that’s…” Celestia stammered. “Twilight? Could I see you for a moment in my private study? The rest of you, I bid you good night, and I shall see you in the morning.”

Twilight followed Celestia as the Guards led each of the rest of the herd to their respective rooms. Once the mentor and student were in the royal study and Celestia had put a magical lock on the door, much to Twilight’s surprise, the Solar Princess fell back into her cushions by the fireplace. She ushered Twilight to join her.

“Is something wrong, Princess?” Twilight wondered, noting the exhausted look on her mentor’s face.

“Indeed something is, Twilight,” Celestia sighed. “I was so sure that Lauren really was my Mother placed under some spell of Discord’s, but with that new gryphon…”

“What do you mean, Princess?” Twilight queried.

“Even Discord doesn’t have the magic to meddle in the affairs of something a world away, and that draconequus they call ‘Craig’ was here in Equestria when the gryphon’s transformation took place,” Celestia explained. “Therefore, I don’t see how the anomaly could have happened, and if it wasn’t by Discord’s hand, then maybe all of them really were once humans.”

“I see your reasoning,” Twilight mused. “But, Princess, I wouldn’t count out Discord just yet. He’s broken our expectations before; I’m sure he’d love to do it again. Though, like I said earlier, I don’t think they were humans or your Mother—I think Discord’s just trying to get to you through a doppelgänger of your Mother. Maybe he’s allied himself with the changelings, and that’s really Queen Chrysalis feeding off of your love?”

“Even the changelings wouldn’t be foolish enough to ally themselves with that monster,” Celestia explained. “They know that he only enjoys brewing pain and strife among ponies, not the love they would need to survive here in Equestria.”

“Then maybe—” Twilight started.

“Twilight, why do you insist on this being a plan of Discord’s even when I dismiss it as such?” Celestia questioned. “As much as it pains me to say it, nothing would make me happier than if that really was my Mother and this was all some convoluted scheme of that wily draconequus, because at least then I would know she’s alive and that we could save her from his spell. But all evidence points to their story being the truth.”

“But their story doesn’t make any sense either,” Twilight pointed out. “How could perfectly ordinary ponification potion turn humans into replicas of your alicorn Mother, our greatest enemy Discord the draconequus, and a gryphon?”

“I don’t know, Twilight,” Celestia sighed again. “I just don’t know. Maybe it was the rift between our two worlds that meddled with the magic of the potions when they were transferred to Earth. Maybe the potion didn’t agree with those three individuals’ genetic makeups. Any number of things could explain it, but it seems Discord and my Mother are not among them.”

Twilight was about to protest this when a knock was heard. Twilight turned towards the door, but Celestia rose and trotted over to a section of the walls between two bookcases. Touching her glowing horn to the wall, Twilight watched in surprise as the false wall slid to the sides. Out of the darkness behind that wall stepped a tall, dark stallion with a white mane and tail.

“Your majesty,” the stallion bowed. “I bring news most dire. I’m afraid we—”

The stallion stopped short when he noticed Twilight in the room, watching the conversation between her mentor and this newcomer intently.

“Uh, your majesty?” the stallion in black questioned, pointing a hoof at the lavender unicorn.

“Speak freely,” Celestia commanded. “This is Twilight Sparkle, my most trusted student. Our secrets are safe with her. Twilight, come here; I want you to meet the captain of my Secret Police.”

“You have Secret Police?!” Twilight gasped, leaping up. “But I thought those were just a myth! Propaganda spread by the anti-Celestials!”

“The Secret Police are very real,” Celestia smiled. “But you are right in thinking that everything spread about them from my opponents is false. The Secret Police are not needed in Equestria; they protect Equestria’s needs on Earth.”

“Oh,” Twilight sighed with relief, trotting over to shake hooves with the stallion in black. “Pleased to meet you. As the Princess said, I am Twilight Sparkle. So, you protect the Conversion Bureaus?”

“Something like that,” the black stallion replied. And though I’m afraid I must insist that I cannot tell you my own name, you may call me ‘The Stallion in Black.’”

“He’s always been a stickler for codenames,” Celestia commented. “What news do you bring, captain?”

“I’m afraid we’ve had our first breach in security,” the captain answered grimly. “We found a spy from the Gryphon Kingdoms lurking about our headquarters.”

“Valor?!” Twilight gasped. “But she seemed to nice! Maybe that’s why she was really sent here.”

“‘She?’” The Stallion in Black echoed. “I’m afraid we caught a spy of the other gender.”

The Stallion in Black waved his hoof forward, and out of the shadows behind him stepped three more ponies, each as grim looking as he was, all with their cutie marks hidden. Between two of them was strung a long wooden pole from which a gagged and bound gryphon was dangling. The third pony, a unicorn, was levitating what looked suspiciously like a zap rod. The gryphon began to silently yell at the sight of the Princess, and the unicorn jabbed him with the rod, sending an electrical shock coursing through the hybrid creature that silenced him immediately.

“You?” Celestia wondered, confused now more than ever. “But, how?”

“Gell?” Twilight gasped again. “What are you…but, why?!”

The unicorn magically undid the new gryphon’s gag, prompting Gell to gasp for breath.

“Why?” Gell gasped once he had had gulped in enough air. “WHY?! Because we were right! We were right all along! I may have been caught, but I found out what I needed, and I’ve sent it to your worst nightmare! I thought being stuck with you guys was going to get my cover blown or back up my mission and get me killed. I thought I wouldn't even be able to send my first mission report by the time my superiors required it. But sticking with you guys was the best thing that could have happened for my mission! You led me right to this 'Secret Police' headquarters, right here in Canterlot!”

“What are you talking about?” Twilight demanded, glaring at the maniacally laughing gryphon with anger. How dare he infiltrate the government of this new world after it had been kind enough to offer him refuge from his dying planet?

“Why don’t you ask your precious Princess?!” Gell spat, still laughing. “Maybe she’ll tell you everything!”

“Princess?” Twilight asked, confused, looking up at her mentor. What the lavender unicorn saw there frightened and confused her more than anything she’d seen today. Celestia looked afraid, but even worse than that, she looked…guilty. “What’s going on? What does he mean?”

“It’s…it’s nothing, Twilight,” Celestia spoke.

“Tell that to the Human Liberation Front when they come calling,” Gell continued to chuckle.

“You mean—” Twilight started to say, her eyes widening.

“Yes,” Gell replied as a sly, dark smile lit up his face. “I never wanted to come to Equestria at all! This was all just a kamikaze mission, and I was willing to give up my humanity to see it through. And, by the look on your face, it was worth it!”

“But what could you have possibly found that would give the HLF reason to come here?” Twilight wanted to know.

“Enough!” Celestia ordered at last, breaking out of her state of shock. “Take him away! Throw him in the dungeon! Interrogate everything you can out of him, I don’t care how!”

“I’ll gladly tell you everything,” Gell guffawed. “I have nothing to lose now! We won! Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter what you do to me. I know you ponies don’t have it in you to kill, and soon enough I’ll be liberated by my superiors anyway when they take this country.”

“But humans can’t survive the magic of Equestria!” Twilight protested as the other unicorn went to re-gag the gryphon. “Oh, no—Celestia! Tell me he didn’t find a way to allow humans to survive here!”

“Yes, ask your Princess!” Gell laughed for a final time as the gag went on him. “Ask her about everything she’s ever told you, the lies about it all! About the rift! About the Conversion Bureaus even existing in the first place! But most of all, ask her where you came from, Twilight Sparkle…or should I say, Tara Strong?”

. . .

Chapter 7

“Tara…Strong?” Twilight echoed, turning to Celestia with about as much confusion as she’d ever felt. The lavender unicorn gasped when she saw that Celestia was…crying? “Princess! What’s wrong?!”

“Oh, Twilight!” Celestia cried, dropping low and wrapping her forelegs around her student in a big hug. Her tears fell on Twilight’s shoulder. “I never wanted you to get mixed up in all this. Not again.”

“Not again?” Twilight wondered. “Princess, I don’t mean to be indelicate, but what is going on? What was Gell talking about? And why are you crying?”

“Sit down, Twilight,” Celestia sniffed, attempting to smile but failing. Twilight followed her mentor back to the cushions by the fire and joined her there. After a moment of watching the Princess gaze mournfully into the fire, Celestia spoke at last. “I never wanted you to know. I thought it would be best if you didn’t. The captain—The Stallion in Black—he puts it so nicely: ‘There are some things that are better left…unexplained.’

“But I’ve kept this a secret from you all these years, Twilight,” Celestia went on. “You must understand, it was only to protect you.”

“Protect me from what?” Twilight asked, getting quite scared. “Celestia, you know you can tell me anything!”

“And it seems that I must,” Celestia said as a final tear slid down her cheek, though she gave her student a knowing smile all the same. “You’re so intelligent, I’ve no doubt you would figure it out on your own if I didn’t tell you myself. To salvage whatever will be left of our relationship after this conversation is over, Twilight, just let me tell you now: I will keep no more secrets from you. I will tell you all I know.”

“Princess…” Twilight uttered, feeling absolutely terrified right now. What kind of information could damage her relationship with the Princess? What had Celestia done that was so terrible it would make Twilight think ill of her mentor? Did she even want to know such a secret? But, if she refused to listen, wouldn’t such a thing haunt her for the rest of her life? Finally, Twilight looked her mentor in the eye again and said “I’m listening.”

“Twilight, do you know why Earth and Equestria became connected?” the Princess inquired.

“Nopony knows,” Twilight answered. “Most magician ponies and scientist humans theorize that it was due to some kind of natural shift in the fabric of the multiverse.”

“That was indeed the cover story we spread,” Celestia admitted. “But a cover story is all it was. The Equestrian government, under my orders, were conducting a research experiment to find other universes. It was a powerful and very dangerous spell, and nopony was sure it would even work. But it did. That is how we found the Earth.”

“I didn’t think pony magic could be THAT powerful,” Twilight breathed in awe. Then, ruffling her brow, she looked back up to her mentor and inquired “But what difference would it make if we did find Earth through a spell? Why cover that up?”

“The reason we went exploring in the first place was to find new resources,” Celestia explained. “As you know, Equestria does not have the best of relations with the neighboring nations. The gryphons aren’t too fond of us, though there is a fragile peace, and most of the zebra nations like us about as much as the gryphons do. Then there are the species that don’t even have a nation, such as the dragons, who are hostile and dangerous if anypony so much as dares to step into their territory. The list goes on…the barren wastelands of the changelings, the ancestral home of the diamond dogs, and the snowbound lands of the old pony tribes where the whispers of the Windigos still rage their blizzards. We are locked in the middle of hostile territory, and we were hoping to find resources that we could use to better defend ourselves against these potential threats. The Elements of Harmony are the most powerful magic in this universe, to be sure, but they only work against true evil. An attack by one of these lands would be for reasons of greed and prejudice, not evil.”

Twilight nodded, understanding what the Princess was saying but still not sure how it had anything to do with her…or that name.

“And so we searched the multiverse. The spell took too much time, effort, power, and most of all, funds, to use a second time. But we had already found one world on our first try. That world was Earth,” Celestia continued. “And upon our first meeting with the humans, we wished we had never connected to that world in the first place. We were terrified.”

“Terrified?” Twilight echoed. “Of what? The humans? Sure, they destroyed their own planet, but they can’t even survive in Equestria! Pony magic is lethal to them in strong enough doses, and it doesn’t get any stronger than being in Equestria. How could they pose a threat to our world?”

“Because, Twilight Sparkle, my most faithful student who I value as one of the most gifted and intelligent ponies in Equestrian history—”

Twilight beamed with pride. She knew her mentor valued her, but she never in her wildest dreams believed that Celestia thought this highly of her.

“—you are as dumb as parasprite next to the intellect of a human with a need,” Celestia finished.

“What?!” Twilight asked, dumbfounded.

“The human being is a most curious specimen,” Celestia explained. “They’re not like any beings we’ve ever seen, in this world or their own. The creatures of our world live in balance with the rest of life, be it great dragon or small firefly. So do most animals on Earth. But the humans grow. They expand. They learn, they overcome, and they destroy. If humanity wants or needs something, and if they are given the time to ponder a way to achieve it with even the most meager of resources, they will succeed.

“And when we found the humans, they needed Equestria. Even if they didn’t know they needed it, we knew they would lay their eyes on its rich resources eventually and lay claim to it all,” Celestia continued. “We couldn’t close the connection between Equestria and Earth to stop this threat. We tried. And we knew if they thought we had come to Earth looking for its resources, they would have all the reason they would need to counterstrike and obliterate us. But we did think of a way to save Equestria nonetheless. A rather ingenious plan, really, though The Stallion in Black is the pony who thought of it and the pony I entrusted to execute it.”

“I don’t understand,” Twilight exasperated. “None of this makes any sense—I mean, I know what humans are capable of. War, space travel, the destruction of entire planets. But pony magic is still lethal to them, and they’ve never found a way around it. How could they invade and take over Equestria if they can’t even survive here?”

“Because they would have found a way eventually,” Celestia affirmed. “They had nearly done so when we started to take action. There were no plans for invasion just yet, but a group of human scientists were very close to discovering a way to survive Equestrian magic. There were even other groups all over the world who were on the verge of discovering ways to save their dying planet. They are quite an ingenious species, really. In order to prevent their growth into what would inevitably be Equestria when they finally outgrew their tiny world, we started to take the steps towards setting up their demise.”

“You WHAT?!” Twilight gasped. “But that’s impossible! There’s no way Equestria could ever destroy the Earth, and there’s no way you would allow it to happen if we could! I know you wouldn’t, Princess!”

“True, we couldn’t destroy the Earth,” Celestia admitted. “But the humans could. All they needed to do was continue on the path they were already headed down. So saying, we began to infiltrate their society. We assassinated any human who was on the verge of discovering a way to save the Earth from its environmental collapse. We bought out world politicians and global business leaders with Equestrian goods to ensure that policies and products would continue to make the environment worse. The humans under our control didn’t even know they were destroying their own planet and their species, but they didn’t care so much as we kept paying them.

“And I would destroy the human race if it meant protecting my subjects, Twilight,” Celestia said. “I would destroy the races of a thousand worlds if it meant keeping Equestria safe.”

Tears welled in Twilight’s eyes. How could her own mentor, the beloved Princess Celestia, the most wise and peaceful pony she or Equestria had ever known, be responsible for the coming extinction of an entire planet?

“How could you?” Twilight whispered through her tears.

“It gets worse,” Celestia told her student, tears welling up in her own eyes once more. “Because all our efforts weren’t enough. The more we pushed the humans to unwittingly destroy themselves, the more desperate they became to save their world. Scientists were coming up with new solutions faster than we could keep them quiet and destroy their discoveries. The politicians and business leaders under our control were growing suspicious. A few of them even started to gain a conscience. We knew we had to produce some kind of solution of our own, and so our own intellectual elite devised a brilliant plan: the Conversion Bureaus. If we couldn’t defeat the humans, why not have them join us? A pony cannot think of massive wars and ways to overcome even magic itself. A pony is loyal to its species, and would never think of truly harming another pony. So we opened up the Bureaus to offer the humans a way out of their dying world, and most of them took it. They fled to Equestria as ponies, and the need to save their species became less and less as the scientists realized that even if they did fail at saving the Earth, they could still live on.”

“Then why not just let the Bureaus do their work?” Twilight wept. “Why continue killing innocent humans?”

“Because not all humans wanted to be ponified. A few just wouldn’t give in. We knew that eventually the humans left on Earth would get back on their feet, outgrow their world, and come to take over Equestria,” Celestia announced with finality. “Destroying the human race, whether through killing them or ponifying them or causing their environment to collapse, was the only way to ensure Equestria’s safety.”

“You’re wrong,” Twilight sniffed, looking up at her mentor with defiance and fire in her eyes. The Princess looked sorrowful that her student had to know this, but not sorrowful that she had acted against the lives of an entire species. “There would’ve been another way. We didn’t have to kill them. And we still don’t.”

“Twilight Sparkle,” Celestia said. “As your Princess, I assure that this is the only way. If there was any other route, I would take it. But there isn’t. If Equestria is to live, then the Earth must die, and all humans with it.”

“No,” Twilight declared. She rose and turned her back on the pony she had trusted, the pony who had turned out to be a mass murderer…no, a perpetrator of genocide.

“Twilight!” Celestia called out to her beloved pupil. “Please, I had only Equestria’s best intentions at heart!”

“You just don’t get it, do you?!” Twilight raged, whirling around on her mentor. “It’s not about having Equestria’s best interests at heart. It’s about having the interests of all sentient life at heart. And no matter how bad the humans may be, they’re still sentient life. There’s good in them, I’ve seen it, even if I didn’t want to admit it. Lauren is proof of that—there, I said it, she’s a human at heart, and so is Craig. Even though she attacked my friends and I, she only did it to save somepony she loved, just like you. But unlike you, she didn’t kill us. She didn’t even try to.

“You’re a monster, Celestia,” Twilight spat before turning around and heading for the door.

“Twilight, please!” Celestia called out to her student. Her FORMER student.

“Goodbye, Celestia,” Twilight whispered, unable to hold back her last remaining tears.

“Twilight, if you want to leave, I won’t stop you,” Celestia pleaded. “But at least let me tell you one last thing. Let me tell you the truth about who you are. Let me tell you what that gryphon meant about the name ‘Tara Strong.’”

Twilight, not even caring anymore, continued her walk towards the door.

“It concerns your friends as well,” Celestia spoke.

“What?” Twilight asked, her ears perking up, though she did not turn to face her old mentor. Her old mentor may have been right about this conversation severing all ties between them, but her friends were all she had right now. She couldn’t let anything happen to them. Twilight stood still, facing the door, but listening.

“What the gryphon meant about ‘Tara Strong’ is…” Celestia tried to say. “Well…you are Tara Strong.”

“What?” Twilight nearly choked. “But that’s a human name…oh, no…”

“I see you’ve figured it out, then,” Celestia said. “Before we could open the Conversion Bureaus, we had to test out the potion. After the first few disastrous mutations of volunteers, the human government forbid any more experimentation. So we tested in secret, taking humans off the street. One of those humans, the first human who was ever successfully transformed into a pony, was you, Twilight Sparkle. Your old name was Tara Strong.”

“No…” Twilight breathed, tears threatening to choke her. “That’s impossible! I have a family! I’ve lived here in Equestria my entire life! I remember everything!”

“Those memories are all magically implanted after your original ones were forcefully suppressed,” Celestia informed her. “Your family only ever had one child: Shining Armor. All your time together with him and your parents is an illusion; even they were given false memories to believe that you had been with them all along. The same goes for the rest of your friends and their families. Rarity’s name was Tabitha Saint Germain. Either Applejack or Rainbow Dash used to be Ashleigh Ball while the other was her sister; we never kept strict records on those we kidnapped. The same mix-up happened with Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie; one of them is Andrea Libman and the other is her sister.

“The truth is, Twilight Sparkle, that until about two years ago you were a human,” Celestia revealed her final secret. “And so were your friends.”

“No…” Twilight sobbed openly now. “No, no, no…”

“I know it’s a lot to take in,” Celestia tried to comfort her former student, trotting over and placing a foreleg around the lavender unicorn’s shoulders.

“Don’t touch me!” Twilight screamed, galloping out from under Celestia’s embrace and out through the doors. They were flung closed again with Twilight’s magic, slamming in Celestia’s face.

Celestia lowered her head, and wept.

. . .

A lie.

It had all been a lie.

One.

Big.

Horrible.

Lie.

And Twilight, for as long as she’d been in Equestria, was at the heart of it all. She was nothing more than the byproduct of a tyrannical reign of genocide and falsehoods. She could see it all now. The Princess hadn’t taken her in because she was special; Celestia had taken her in because she was a human—the first real ponified human—and she needed to be kept under observation. What better place than under the eyes of the Princess?

Twilight galloped back to her room and almost walked in. She paused with her hoof inches from the door. She hesitated. Finally Twilight—Tara—whoever she was—slumped down outside the door and wept.

She couldn’t tell her friends. That much she knew was certain. If this information had all but broken her, then what would it do to her friends? The free-spirited Rainbow Dash, having been a wingless human? The gentle Fluttershy, having been born on a world where wildlife was all but a thing of the past?

How would they take it? Well, for one thing, they wouldn’t. Twilight would see to that. None of her friends would ever know.

But she knew. And there was no un-knowing that. Wait, was there? If Celestia had suppressed Twilight’s true memories, then couldn’t the same be done for what she’d just learned? Twilight’s horn instantly began to glow to try and find out, but stopped just as quickly. There was a whole other life locked away inside her mind, and she wanted to forget that forever? Did she really want to lose who she had been before she came to Equestria? Wasn’t she who she had been as well as who she was now?

Twilight’s horn began to glow again, but she had a different idea this time. Closing her eyes, the lavender unicorn took a deep breath and cleared her mind. Then, she began searching, poking and prodding the different parts of her thoughts with her magic, turning the powers of her horn inward instead of outward.

The ponified human had almost given up when she felt something she’d never even noticed, despite it being inside her mind all this time. It was small, battered, and bent, but it was still unbroken. It was cold and filled with hurt and loss. But it never ceased to give out a faint light of hope, even if until now Twilight hadn’t been able to see it.

With much trepidation and a swiftly beating heart, Twilight squeezed her eyes even tighter, touched the barrier that had been secretly holding back the truth all this time, and broke through to unleash her hidden memories.

They all came rushing back like a tidal wave that threatened to drown her. Twilight tried to swim up for air, to gasp at the surface, but the more she kicked and flailed the deeper she sank. And then, just when Twilight thought the memories would overwhelm her, it all clicked into place.

Her name had been Tara Strong. She had been sixteen during her last year on Earth. Blonde-haired (though she dyed it), pale-skinned, two-legged and hornless. But she didn’t need the horn—hadn’t even considered it. She had never seen an equine before the ponies came, as most animals were a rarity in that day and age. There had never been any sunlight; it was all artificial electrics and boiling poison in the sky. When the weather was particularly bad she and her fellow humans would have to wear gasmasks on the street in addition to protective coating to guard against the acid rain. School was torture; they plugged wires into the student’s heads and downloaded the information right into their brains.

Tara had hated it. Hated it all. Hated that there seemed to be no future. Hated that the experts said that without the natural environment human society would be destroyed in a matter of decades, as well as all life on Earth save the cockroaches that licked the waste off the dead rats in the chemical plants. Hated that all her brilliance in the fields of quantum mechanics, something that the schools had seen her take a gifted interest in at a young age, was expected to account for nothing as she wouldn’t be alive long enough to do anything with it. Hated that her parents had to cry at night because they thought their child had no future to look forward to. Hated that at the end of the day, nobody (not nopony) had any hope left for humanity anymore.

Except…Tara DID have hope left for humanity. She had refused to believe that thousands of years of triumph over the elements and disease and the hatred of each other would amount to nothing. She refused to go quietly into the vast void of stars, to wink out of existence like her entire species had never even mattered.

She refused to die.

And so, defying all the expectations of the world and those who inhabited it, Tara had planned. She had studied. She had built. And, after years of experimentation and countless failures, she had succeeded. Tara had utilized everything she knew about quantum physics, everything humanity had ever learned about the field and thrown a few of her own discoveries on top of the pile.

But human technology wasn’t enough to save the dying planet, despite Tara’s best efforts. Thankfully, she had more than just human technology at her disposal. By now the ponies had arrived, claiming the rift was a freak occurrence, and introduced their wondrous yet lethal world to the humans. Most humans saw Equestria as a way out of Earth, but Tara had seen a way to save the world.

Doing what nobody and nopony had thought was even possible, Tara had combined human technology with pony magic and created…the device. A device that could change reality, regardless of the laws of physics that surrounded it. A device that could reverse the collapse of the environment with a simple keystroke.

And that’s exactly what Tara had planned to do. To save her family, to save the future, to save the world, Tara typed in the words that would undo centuries of environmental destruction and prove that humans WERE worth something after all. With the single press of a button, Tara would show the world that they didn’t need the ponies to save themselves, that their own world could be just as good—if not better—than Equestria any day.

And that’s when The Stallion in Black showed up. When his team of ponies had burst into the Strong household, grabbed Tara and her parents in their telekinetic grip, and proceeded to squeeze the life out of them. But…there was a problem. Something didn’t make sense. All the other targets who had attempted to save humanity had been adults; Tara was but a child.

The ponies killed the parents just to be sure, but Tara they didn’t know what to do with. The Stallion in Black had contacted Celestia herself, who upon seeing the child quivering with fear and crying over the blood-splattered corpses of her parents, had felt the last bit of mercy and conscience in her demand that she be taken care of another way.

The Stallion in Black had dragged Tara, who was screaming and attempting to break free of his telekinetic grip so that she could beat him to death with nothing but her fists or die trying. Had thrown her in the back of their vehicle. Had paid the human working for them to take them back to the portal station. Had slit open Tara’s clothes and sprayed her with that purplish-pinkish goo. Had watched with amazement as she transformed successfully right in front of their eyes, bucking and thrashing as her humanity was stolen from her. Had finally put her under with a spell after she had become, cutie mark and all, the first ponified human in the history of two worlds.

Her family, the device, her world, and her humanity had been taken from her.

Early the next morning in another world, Twilight Sparkle had been placed in a room at the royal palace in Canterlot, a city she would believe she had lived in all her life.

. . .

Twilight awoke to the sound of wails.

The former human jerked her head up, looking around in terrified confusion. It was if the sound of her parents’ death had escaped her memory and been released into reality.

But it wasn’t her human form that was crying. It was five ponies, her closest friends, all pounding the ground with their hooves and sobbing as if the world had ended.

“What’s going on?!” Twilight demanded.

“Oh, Twilight…Tara…Whoever you are!” Rainbow Dash wept. “It was all a lie! Every one of us!”

“W-what are you t-talking about?!” Twilight gasped. “How did you—”

“We didn’t mean to,” Applejack sniffed. “We heard you talking to yourself out here in the hallway and you sounded awful upset, so we came out to investigate. Your horn was all glowin’ and when Rarity tried to snap you out of it with her own magic…”

“The spell infected us all!” Rarity bawled. “We know everything. We know the truth. We know what Celestia told you, and we know who we used to be.”

“No…” Twilight whispered. “No! I didn’t want any of you to know! I didn’t want any of you to go through that!”

“It weren’t your fault, Twi,” Applejack tried in vain to smile at her friend. “But…I just don’t know how to go on after this…”

“I…I don’t either,” Twilight admitted. “It was all a lie. I just…I just wish there was something we could do…Celestia can’t be allowed to do this anymore! It’s not fair!”

“You're right! Celestia has to pay!” Fluttershy demanded angril through her tears. "But...what can we do?"

“For one thing, you can help me figure out how to work this stupid device of yours,” commented a voice Twilight had never expected to hear again. “It’s been giving me nothing but trouble ever since I found it. But if it does all that stuff you thought it could do, then it can put Celestia in her place AND save humanity in a heartbeat.”

. . .

Chapter 1

“Come on, Lauren,” Craig pleaded. “It’ll be fun, and besides, you really, really need a break from studying.”

“But Craig, the test is tomorrow!” Lauren pointed out. “And you have to take it too, remember? This is the Final Exam for all of college; we can’t just blow it off because it seems hard!”

“I’m not,” Craig protested. “It’s just that I’ve studied about all I can study. My brain literally hurts, and unless I relieve some stress I’m going to be worried about genetic algorithms and virtual reality extrapolation programing codes till dawn. I’ll never get to sleep, and neither will you!”

Lauren paused, considering Craig’s logic. He did have a point, even if she hated to admit it on the night before Final Exams. There was only so much studying a human could do before they went crazy, and Lauren felt she had passed that threshold over an hour ago. Taking a break, though study time lost, would do her good in the long run. Lauren could feel that Craig’s brain wasn’t the only one that needed to let off some steam before it overheated.

“Okay,” Lauren conceded. “Let’s go.”

“Great!” Craig said. “You’ll love this new place too—and you’ll never believe who the disc jockey is.”

“You don’t mean—”

“Yup,” Craig smiled. “DJ P0N3 is playing at the premier of Club Technochocolate, alongside Daft Punk Legacy.”

“Shut up!” Lauren grinned. “I’ve been trying to listen to Vinyl Scratch for as long as I can remember!”

“And why wouldn’t you?” Craig smiled, leading Lauren out of her dorm, leaving the fortress of books and papers behind, at least for now. “Pony studies is your major, after all. Personally I can’t wait to hear Daft Punk Legacy—I want to see if those rumors about them being mutants are more than just rumors.”

“So you’ve said like five-thousand times,” Lauren laughed. “Superhuman mutations is your major, after all.”

. . .

“I only wish I could witness superhuman mutations in real life, just once,” Craig was saying as his hover-car pulled into the public parking garage across the street from the Club and powered down. “I mean, Professor Utonium’s work is unparalleled, but the phenomenon of his genetically engineered self-proclaimed ‘Powerpuff Girls’ hasn’t ever been duplicated despite numerous attempts. Superhuman mutations are fascinating, but they’re so rare that it’s hard to find any near home to research. I could always save up the money to buy a teleport pass to Townsville, but I won’t be able to make that kind of money until I actually publish some research.”

“So you can’t get started on your research until you publish your research?” Lauren asked.

“Pretty much,” Craig admitted. “Unlike some people I know whose research is literally in every major city around the world.”

“What?” Lauren laughed. “I can’t help it if I chose to major in something that isn’t as rare as a needle in a haystack.”

“Of course not,” Craig chuckled as they got out of the hover-car. “You had to choose something as common as the hay in which the needle is lost.”

Lauren started to laugh, but then petered off when she realized the second connotation Craig’s statement held.

“Craig, you KNOW I don’t want to become a pony,” Lauren insisted as they walked across the street to get in the line for the Club. “I’m perfectly happy being human—and the IHSA is not the PER. We have the exact opposite goals, and just because I’m interested in studying Equestrians doesn’t mean that I’ve lost faith in humanity.”

“I know, I wasn’t talking about you,” Craig sighed. “I was talking about everybody else. How can billions of people lose faith in their own species just because of a single disaster? Sure, the environment’s collapsed and it’s all our fault—I’m not for a minute trying to say that it’s not—but the environment’s collapsed before from natural causes and life still found a way, just like we will. The KT Extinction, the Ice Ages, all kinds of climate shift has plagued the planet for millions of years.”

“I agree,” Lauren smiled. “We’ll find a way. Somehow, without the ponies’ help. I know that’s why you’re so interested in superhuman mutations—you think they can save the world. Maybe they can—we’ll never know unless we keep on trying.”

“Right,” Craig smiled back. “We won’t give up, even if most of the human race does.”

Lauren and Craig had finally gotten to the front of the line by now, and the robot on bouncer duty asked them for their IDs. The two patiently allowed the robot to scan their thumbprints and then slid through the Club doors once the miniature force field was lifted for them and entered the hysterical laser light show of dancing bodies that was Club Technochocolate.

“That’s her!” Lauren shouted to Craig over the roar of the techno-rave dubstep music. “I recognize the Equestrian tonality!”

“Where?!” Craig shouted back. “I can’t see anything but smoke and lasers and people who have probably had one too many drinks!”

“She must be near the front!” Lauren yelled, grabbing Craig by the hand and pulling him through the crowd towards the source of the blaring noise. “That’s where we’ll find Daft Punk Legacy too!”

“I sure hope so!” Craig agreed. “I wonder if they’ll let me take a blood sample?”

Lauren laughed as they surged through the mingling mob of a human ocean that was Club Technochocolate. Finally breaking out into the front rows where screaming fans were jumping up and down with the beat of the friendly competition of a band beat battle, Lauren and Craig stared up in awe as the smoke and lasers cleared just barely enough for them to see—

“DJ P0N3!” Lauren called to Craig. “It’s really her!”

And indeed it was. The unicorn with a white coat and electric blue mane and tail was holding her hooves up and swaying to the motion of the music, her horn aglow as it scratched and rhythmically synthesized her audio machine. The premier pony musician in both Equestria and Earth, besides the classical melodies of Octavia, of course, was wearing her trademark crimson-colored goggles and clearly enjoying every minute of the beats and the crowd’s reactions to them.

Daft Punk Legacy seemed to be doing the same. The glowing neon tracksuits of the most famous electronica band on Earth were bobbing every which way in a mad dance of light as the dubstep duo altered the flow of the music with their thoughts via their mind-link helmets. Those same helmets doubled as holovision screens, and were projecting all kinds of psychedelic color explosions into the audience along with the Club’s regular assortment of lasers.

“I can’t tell if they have gills or not!” Craig yelled to Lauren. “DPL is covered from head to toe! It must be a hundred degrees in all that!”

“I’m sure their costumes are air-conditioned!” Lauren yelled back. Then, in a joking voice, called “Maybe you can ask them to strip for you after the show!”

“Just like you’ll ask Vinyl Scratch for a pony ride!” Craig laughed back good naturedly.

The song ended at last, Lauren and Craig having thoroughly enjoyed the euphoric celebration of kinetic life by dancing along all the while. The laser lights stopped, and the two bands retreated backstage to refresh themselves for the encore.

“Maybe I can go ask Vinyl a couple of questions before she goes back on,” Lauren said to Craig as the crowd milled about, waiting for the next song.

“I think we might want to wait till later on that one,” Craig responded. “The line to her dressing room is a mile long. Are you hungry? We could get something to eat before they come on again.”

“Sure,” Lauren conceded, though she was determined to engage DJ P0N3 in conversation before the night was over. Lauren was sure Craig was just as determined to do the same with Daft Punk Legacy, but looking over her shoulder as the two crossed the clearing dance floor to the bar area, Lauren could see that the line to get backstage was indeed tremendously long.

“So who do you think won?” Craig asked as they took their seats at the bar.

“Won what?” Lauren inquired.

“The beat battle,” Craig responded. “Don’t get me wrong, Vinyl was amazing, but you know I’ve always been a sucker for DPL. Even if they’d played only one note, I still probably would’ve thought they had won just because I got to say I’ve seen them play live.”

“They were both excellent,” Lauren agreed. “Though you too know I’ve been listening to Vinyl’s albums for far too long to let anything else beat her out musically.”

“So…a tie, then?” Craig compromised.

“A tie,” Lauren affirmed.

“Ladies and gentleman, can we have your attention please!” called an unfamiliar voice over the Club’s loudspeakers. Lauren and Craig turned in their seats to see a human and a pony who were presumably Club Technochocolate’s duel owners that both Craig and Lauren had heard so much about. The move had seemed risky to most when it was announced that a human and a pony were going to go into business together on the dying Earth, but Lauren and Craig had both welcomed it as sign of interspecies cooperation that did not involve the loss of one species’ identity. But wait, wasn’t the pony who owned half of Club Technochocolate a mare rather than a stallion? And wasn’t the human co-owner shorter than that? “Welcome to the grand opening of Club Technochocolate!”

The crowd cheered their approval, but the pony and the human onstage quickly gestured for their silence.

“We apologize that the owners of the Club couldn’t greet you in person tonight. They are a bit…indisposed…at the moment. In their place, however, I hope you will accept us as your masters of ceremony for the evening.

“I’m sure you all thought that the beat battle of the bands of DJ P0N3 and Daft Punk Legacy were the premier event tonight,” the human went on. “Well, what if I told you that was just the beginning of the gift you were about to be given?”

The crowd roared again, and this time the pony and human onstage didn’t quiet them down.

“What if we told you that you were going to be given the gift of contributing to the rebirth of the planet?” the human asked.

The crowd quieted down on their own this time. Some were just now noticing that the force field doors into Club Technochocolate weren’t letting them go outside no matter how many times the scanners read their thumbs.

“This we do for the good of all life on Earth,” the man continued as nervous whispers hurried their way through the crowd.

“And for the good of all ponydom,” the pony spoke at last. “Courtesy of the Ponification for Earth’s Rebirth!”

The two put on what looked suspiciously like gas masks. The human drew a military-grade sleeping gas grenade, pulled the plug, and threw it into the crowd.

The pandemonium was instantaneous. Clouds of multicolored chemicals exploded into the mob of people, causing the crowd to quickly erupt into loud screams of fear as the sprinklers engaged and drenched all present.

But what they were drenched in wasn’t water.

. . .

“…Lauren Faust…”

“...LAUREN FAUST…”

“LAUREN FAUST!!!”

“What?!” Lauren jerked awake, then instantly shut her eyes again as her head throbbed with pain from the hastiness of her attempt to lift herself off the ground. The ground? Hadn’t she been sitting at the bar with Craig just seconds ago, before…

Oh, no.

“Craig…CRAIG!” Lauren called out, trying to open her eyes again, but all she saw was bleary lights. Lauren’s head throbbed even more with every shout, but she didn’t care, not now, not when Craig could be—

“Lauren Faust, please try to calm down,” came that voice that had awakened her. “Don’t open your eyes yet. Disorientation, impaired vision, nausea, and sensitivity to light are all aftereffects of the sleeping gas you were unfortunately victim to last night—”

“—LAST night?!” Lauren called out again, only to curl into a tight ball at the pain that coursed through her head at the sound of her own voice. Lauren’s stomach felt like it was on fire for a moment, but the feeling quickly subsided before she could go into dry heaves. Then, speaking more softly, Lauren asked “How long was I out? Where’s Craig? What’s going on?”

“I’ll explain everything as best I can,” the voice said comfortingly. “But please, try to remain calm. I’m a police officer, and you’re in protective custody now. Everything’s going to be alright.”

“But where’s Craig?” Lauren demanded, still unable to open her eyes, though she was trying. Spots swam before them, and for a few horrifying moments Lauren couldn’t tell which way was up or down. “I came to the Club with him last night, he was right beside me—”

“I’m sure he’s here somewhere, Ms. Faust,” the officer soothed. “We have a full task force deployed here at the Club, so everyone involved in the incident last night hasn’t left, that we know of. I’m sure someone’s attending to him.”

Lauren breathed a sigh of relief as bleary shapes began to swim into focus.

“I want to see him,” Lauren said, trying to raise herself up, but fell back to the ground again, her limbs weak. “Where is he?”

“He’s with one of our officers going through the same line of questioning and post-stress treatment you’re going through,” the officer assured. “But before I let you go anywhere I’m required to ask you a few questions and prepare you.”

“Prepare me for what?” Lauren asked, trying to push up off the floor into at least a sitting position as the strength returned to her legs.

“We’ll get to that momentarily,” the officer promised. “But first, what do you remember about last night? How do you feel?”

“Craig—we go to the same college—and I were checking out this new Club to blow off some steam before Final Exams tomorrow—” Lauren tried to say. She had succeeded in pushing herself up into a sitting position now, but for some reason her hands didn’t feel right. It was as if they were all asleep; Lauren couldn’t feel her fingers, but put that down as an aftereffect of the sleeping gas. She was sure their sensation would come rushing back just like all her other senses sporadically were. She hoped. “Oh, no! Final Exams! Those are today!”

“Do not worry Ms. Faust, I’m sure the police can arrange something with your college,” the officer lied, trying to quiet her down before she figured out what was really going on. “After all, you were involved in a terrorist attack last night. You can’t be held responsible for that.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Lauren agreed, talking more to herself than the officer, trying to calm down. “Wait, what attack? It’s all fuzzy in my mind; all I can remember is that we got to the Club and then things start going hazy…Vinyl Scratch—I mean, DJ P0N3—played here tonight, right?”

“She did indeed, Ms. Faust,” the officer said. “It’s good that you can remember that. What else do you recall?”

“There was Daft Punk Legacy here too—that’s Craig’s favorite band—and smoke machines, and a laser light show, and holovision, and…”

“That’s good, Ms. Faust,” the officer said encouragingly. “Try to keep going. Try to remember.”

“That’s about all I can remember for now,” Lauren sighed. “Can I see Craig now? I think I’m strong enough to walk—”

Lauren opened her eyes fully this time, and the shapes quickly solidified into recognizable forms. There was the officer, looking down at her worriedly, and there were some of the ponies who were here last night, also being interrogated and comforted by other human police. Wait…there were an awful lot of ponies. And there didn’t seem to be many humans other than the police officers. In fact, there weren’t any humans at all except the police officers.

What was that the officer had told her? The Club had been attacked by a terrorist group?

“Courtesy of the Ponification for Earth’s Rebirth,” was the last thing the pony onstage had said before Lauren had blacked out.

Oh, no.

Lauren looked down at the ground she was pushing herself off of and trying to stand, her eyes going wide as they did so—which was saying something, as her eyes had grown quite a bit larger than when they had been human eyes. Stretching away from Lauren towards the ground were two long white equine legs, ending not with hands but with hooves. Lauren’s head dashed around to look behind her only to see a tight, thin white equine body reaching back to end in a flowing scarlet tail. Two more legs supported Lauren from behind, all four hooves feeling the sensation of the cold, hard ground beneath her.

“No, no, no, no…” Lauren tried to tell herself. “This is not happening…this is not happening!”

“Now, Ms. Faust,” the officer tried to say.

“THIS IS NOT HAPPENING!” Lauren shouted, and the Club seemed to shake as if struck by a mild earthquake. Several humans and ponies alike struggled to stay balanced, not all succeeding. “Where’s Craig?! What happened?!”

Lauren looked demandingly and desperately down a short white muzzle at the human officer. The HUMAN officer. Of her FORMER species.

“The eco-terrorist group known as PER, or the Ponification for Earth’s Rebirth, stole several truckloads of ponification potion from various Conversion Bureaus a few weeks ago,” the officer tried to explain, obviously hasty to try and prevent another tremor—whatever that had been. That couldn’t have been her, could it? “We’ve been trying to locate the missing potion, but all leads turned up false. However, it looks like the partygoers at Club Technochocolate discovered what the PER was planning on doing with the potion before we did.”

Lauren looked around wildly, first at the officer, then back at the hundreds of ponies scattered throughout the Club crying or pounding the ground angrily with their new hooves or just staring solemnly at the officers who were struggling to keep the situation under control. They were failing.

“You mean…” Lauren whispered.

“I’m afraid so,” the officer agreed sorrowfully. “I apologize that this happened to you, as I assume you wanted to remain human as you hadn’t gone through a Bureau already. And I’m also sure you know that there is no known way of reversing the potion’s effects…”

“So I’m stuck like this,” Lauren sniffed, tears welling in her eyes. “I was born a human, but I’ll die a pony.”

“Not necessarily,” the human officer pointed out. “You see, there were some…anomalies…with this batch of ponification potion. Most of the affected humans turned into regular ponies of the three standard types. But a few turned into something…different.”

“What do you mean?” Lauren asked, tears beginning to trickle down her longer face now. “On top of being a pony, I’ve been turned into some kind of half-baked freak?”

Lauren looked at herself in disgust, only to see that there didn’t appear to be anything abnormal about her—other than that she was now a pony. Lauren saw no flaws or blemishes on her new white coat, no abnormal growths or half-grown wings. Her wings looked perfectly normal actually, and she experimentally twitched them. In fact, Lauren could even make them unfold from her sides and open up to spread out as if she was preparing to take flight. Which she could now, Lauren realized, if she knew how to fly. Lauren supposed that she would learn that when she was shipped to Equestria with the others.

But if nothing was wrong with her other than being a different species, then what was the officer talking about? Lauren scanned the crowd, not seeing anything out of the ordinary. They were all just perfectly normal newfoals, candy-colored, wide-eyed, short…

Short?

True, ponies were short compared to humans, but most ponies were relatively the same height. Why were they still so much shorter than she was?

Lauren looked back down at her long legs again, then at her wings. She was clearly a pegasus now, but why was she so tall compared to the other ponies?

“Uh, Ms. Faust?” the officer broke into her thoughts. “When I mentioned the anomalous cases, I was referring mainly to two individuals. One is you—”

“What’s wrong with me?” Lauren interjected. “I feel weird for being a pony, but I don’t feel bad or anything. Besides being so tall—I guess that’s the main odd thing, huh?—I feel fine! And I look almost exactly like a normal pegasus should!”

“That’s the thing, Ms. Faust,” the officer tried to explain. “You’re not a pegasus. You’re an alicorn.”

“A…what?” Lauren inquired, certain she had heard him wrong.

“You’re the same pony race as the Princesses of Equestria,” the officer told her. “I know you can’t see it from this angle, but you have a horn. A very long, sharp horn. I’d be careful when you try to use magic, especially on Earth—if the Princesses of Equestria can move the Sun and Moon in their world, I’d hate to think of what could happen if a newfoal alicorn accidentally lets loose with her powers.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Lauren said hurriedly. “But where’s Craig? You said two people were anomalously affected—”

“That’s the other thing,” the officer said, again sorrowfully. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but it's about the young man I think you know as Craig. Well, he’s not…Craig, anymore.”

. . .