The Potion

Chapter 5

The Potion

“Alrighty,” crackled a voice through the strange object lying in front of Applejack’s hooves. “If ya want to save your sham you're going to have to listen to me very carefully.” It was difficult to place where the stallion’s accent was from. The dancing lilt of his speech pattern was completely foreign to the orange mare.

“Are ya sure this thing is gonna work?” She stammered, holding the cool glass vial in front of her face, and peering through it's ice blue contents.

“A’course I'm sure! That glass is full of distilled magic. That's fierce powerful stuff there. If you would just shut you mouth and listen, I could teach ya how to use it, that way we can keep your friend from being a red stain on the concrete.”

Applejack’s legs were wobbly rubber bands, and her mouth was in a drought. “Okay. What now then?” She asked.

“Take the bottle over to her body.”

Beneath the farm pony was the mangled body of Rainbow Dash, blood and various other bodily fluids pooling in dark puddles all around. “I'm already there.”

“Well good for you.” There was a short pause and the stallion let out a brief cough. “Next what you're going to have to do is open the bottle.”

Applejack closed her teeth around the angular glass stopper and popped open the strange container. “Umkay,” she slurred through the vial in her mouth.

“Now you're sure she’s still alive and kicking?”

“Alive I think… Kickin’, definitely not.” Suddenly the mare found herself drowning in chills.

“Good nex—” he stopped himself. “I mean not good… Rotten in fact!”

“I get your point.”

“Anyway. The next thing you should do is spread the liquid as much as you can around the victim’s body.”

Applejack took a deep breath and looked at her twitching companion. “So I just gotta rub it around?”

“Yes, now would ya hurry it up already? Sitting around and blathering isn't keeping anyone alive now is it?”

The blue liquid trickled out in a slow sappy goop. It collected in a large gelatinous puddle on top of Rainbow’s stained fur and crawled across her body. “ here goes nothin’." Applejack pushed her hooves down into the sticky mess and smeared it across the pony’s stomach like a fancy shampoo. After a few moments, it seemed to react with something. Minuscule fizzy bubbles rose to the top and popped with a popcorn crackle. The color of the whole soupy potion went from translucent blue to an opaque purple. “What now?”

"Well this is the part where we wait. Speaking that your friend was in flitters, it's a fuckin’ crapshoot as to whether this is gunna to work or not.”

The tired farmer swayed backwards and toppled over onto her rump. “Is that what this place is like?”

“You mean that splicer?” There was a static-distorted chuckle from the radio’s speaker. “Bird that's only the tip of the iceberg down here.”

“Then what happened?” Applejack shot up from the ground when she heard Rarity speak. “How did things get this way?” Her voice was strained; it was the sound of one’s vocal chords fighting back against their host.

“ADAM happened.”

Rarity produced a storm of blinks. “What now?”

“ADAM. The result of a bloody spell gone diabolically wrong. It's a powerful magic drug produced by what we call the “little sisters”.”

“Alright slow down sugarcube,” said Applejack. “What are you talking about little sisters?”

“A scientist we call Mother Goose first created them. When she found out that a dock worker's injury was mysteriously healed by a large sea slug, she set out on capturing one. Sure enough she got ahold of the bugger, and when she started running tests on it, what she found was astounding. It produced some sort of magic energy that could heal almost any wound you put it on. She called it ADAM.” The stallion sighed, and his voice grew tired. “Unfortunately she wasn't able to find any more of ‘em. The one slug wasn't enough to produce a viable business, so she tried to replicate the results by other means. After years of fiddling around, the git finally did it. She was able to turn ponies into ADAM factories. There was a catch, several actually, but the first was that the spell didn't work on most ponies. The only ones that it had any effect on were very young fillies. Apparently that was no object for Mother Goose. She decided that all she had to do was start an orphanage. Then came the little sisters… Anyway let's stop acting the maggot and get back to work. I'll fill ya in more later. How's she doin’?”

“Well she's…” Applejack turned her head back to where she thought her companion lay, but in the place of the soaking pony was something else, a bubbly blob of blue fizz. “She's doin somethin’”

“What? What's happening!?” cried the voice on the radio.

“She's bubbling away,” mumbled Rarity as she moved a few steps closer to the scene.

“Well that's queer…”

“What!? Is something wrong?” Rarity screeched.

“To be honest I wouldn't be able to tell ya one way or another,” admitted the stallion. “Normally you administer the potion orally, but considering what happened to her…”

“So ya don't know what yer doin’?”

“Hey missy, don't go giving me any cheek. Your friend was dead, and I'm just tryin’ to help—”

“Mostly dead,” Rarity cut him off.

“What?”

“You said she was dead. She was just mostly dead.”

“Whatever the fuck she was I don't give a—”

Rarity once again took the conversation into her own hooves. “That's another thing. Do you think you could cut down on the lewdness? Some of us don't appreciate that kind of language.”

The stallion sighed. “Look. If the process
worked, the mostly dead one should be turnin’ to ash any second.”

As if on cue, the quaking pile of sludge burst and shattered into a rain of soft blue ashes. The floor stains, and everything around them, disappeared without a trace leaving nothing but clean tile.

“Well that's done,” Applejack said. “What now?”

“Down the the stairs there is something we like to call a Vita Chamber. Anypony who comes in contact with one of those potions has a special connection ‘em. I'm no unicorn, so I won't let on that I know shite about magic. But one thing I do know for certain is: those Vita Chambers bring ponies back to life.”

Rarity’s innards suddenly twisted themselves into acrobatic knots in her lower body. “Do you mean, like a zombie?”

The Stallion chuckled. “ No, nothing like that. You'll see; she'll be fine.”

***

Air forced its way into Rainbow Dash’s lungs, expelling the scathing fire that set her neurons ablaze. A blinding blue supernova invaded her eyes, and further broke apart her scattered thoughts. What had happened?

As the light dimmed and the whirring sounds quieted, Rainbow began to regain memory of the previous hour. Her eyes grew wide. She slapped a hoof to her neck. All there? But it just… How?

After her brutal revelation, Rainbow Dash made another discovery. What am I doing in a tube? Rainbow wasn't typically claustrophobic, but the glass cylinder she was encased in made her flail her tired legs in an attempt to escape. It was no use; she had no energy. The mare sighed and slouched back onto the cool tube wall. Her eyelids quickly became lead, and her thoughts receded into white fuzz. However just as she began to drift off, the walls of her casing opened by themselves.

“Rainbow Dash!” echoed the welcome country drawl of Applejack.

“Oh man,” mumbled Rainbow. “ I sure am happy to hear your voice.” She opened her eyes and threw her head forward. “ how did I get here?”

“The fella on the radio had us coat yer body with a blue potion, and ya came back to life!”

Rainbow opened her mouth, but somehow found herself speechless. “...What?”

Applejack blushed and cleared her throat “Howsabout I have him do the explainin’? Come on, he's up the stairs talkin’ to Rarity.”

***

“The name is Silver River, and I'm the stallion who just saved your hide.” said the calm voice through the grainy brown box.

“You're the one who sent the atlas too?” interrogated the polychromatic pegasus.

“Aye.”

“I don't mean to sound rude, Mister River, but would you mind telling us what this is all about?” Rarity asked.

“Ponies are always trying to get out of the city, but not often does anypony voluntarily enter. That's why it was a great shock when we found your siblings had made their way down here. After the news hit me, I knew I needed to find their next of kin as quickly as possible before something awful happened to the poor dears. Finding you three wasn't too hard; you've all made quite the names for yourselves as the Elements Of Harmony.”

“It's mighty nice that you want to help us out and all, but how are we supposed to find our family down here?” Applejack glanced over at the mess of blood and bullet holes from their splicer conferentation.

“I assume you're worried about the splicers. Don't worry; with a little ADAM, you should be able to handle them. The Big Daddies are what you should be worried about… As for where to find the darlings, I have a few leads as to their last known whereabouts. T—”

“I beg your pardon?” Applejack interrupted. “‘With a little ADAM’? Didn't you say that stuff was bad news?

“You fuckin’ bet it's bad! Turned the whole damn city arseways. Regardless if you want to fight those beasts you're gunna have to fight fire with fire, or lightning with lightning as the case may be.”

“Are you suggesting that we too should use this ADAM substance?” Rarity inquired, her legs wobbling.

“All three of you? No. We can't have you all running around as bloody Adam addicted splicers now can we? One of you, however, we can keep under control.”

“If one of us has to do it, it's going to be me!” shouted Rainbow Dash as she slammed a hoof to her chest. “ I can't have my friends taking any weird drugs without me making sure it safe first.”

“Well…” Silver River stopped. The room went dead. Not an echo could be heard. “ADAM does have some effect on pegasi, but nothing particularly useful. If we want to use its power to full worth we have no choice... but to use the unicorn.”

“Woah woah WOAH!” Rainbow cried. “There is NO way I'm going to let you do that to Rarity!”

Silver laughed. “Suit yourself. But I'm telling ya: if you don't have somepony who knows how to use plasmids, you ain't lasting long down here.”

“Well then I guess we're gonna have to wing it, eh Rarity?” Applejack gave her friend a hearty smack on the back.

“No.” Rarity whispered.

“What?”

“I said no.” Rarity turned her face upward to look at Applejack. Her eyes were wet with fresh tears like morning dew. “If this is what must be done to save them, I am going to do it!”

“Rarity, you don't have—”

The quivering white pony interrupted Rainbow Dash. “Yes I do! I must do it! I must do it for her! Do you understand me? Please…” A small dew droplet fell from the eye of the wilting flower. “Let me do this. Let me be the brave one for once. You two are always so strong and fearless. Let me play the hero for one moment… Please.”

“Well there ain't much arguin’ with that. What about you Rainbow?”

Rainbow Dash nodded.

“So,” came the soothing voice of Silver River. “You're in agreement then?”

Rarity sucked in a deep breath. “Yes I am… I mean, Yes we are!”

“Grand. The security bot from earlier should be resting in the rubble somewhere. As well as the Vita vial we gave to the blue one, I also stocked the machine with an ADAM syringe and an Electro Bolt plasmid. That should get ya started.”

Applejack dashed over the the helicopter machine, that was now sitting atop a pile of broken concrete, and quickly grabbed the two bottles. “Are ya sure about this, sugarcube?”
M
Rarity gave her a piercing glare.

“Alright, just be careful.”

The massive syringe full of a deep blood red liquid rested in Rarity’s hooves. It was intimidating to say the very least, and bone chillingly terrifying to say the most. Rarity didn't enjoy shots to begin with, who does, but she could tell this one was going to be a real doozy. There's no point in drawing it out I suppose.

There was a loud squelch as the thick needle dove into Rarity's vein. Soon the liquid flooded inside. The feeling of the concoction invading her body was like that of millions of enraged hornets stabbing away at the walls of her blood vessels. Rarity shrieked; she was beginning to lose grip on her body. Her legs and her tail and her chest and her eyes all began to disobey her. Everything twitched in a mad flurry of blurred visions and buzzing thoughts.

“Steady now!” rang the distorted shouting voice of Silver River. “Your genetic code is being rewritten! Just hold on, and everything will be fine!”

Rarity held one leg in front of her face. Long spider trails of iridescent blue fanned out along the entirety of the appendage. She was pumped full of electricity. “Wha- what did you do to me? I can't feel my—”

Fwump!

Rarity toppled to the ground. The room around her was a cyclone of misshapen forms and peculiar new colors. She was sure that everypony was trying to speak to her, but all she heard was a slow-mo garble of mind numbing echoes. Soon her mind couldn't stand it anymore.

She went out cold.