Luna clopped lightly on the door before entering, only to pull up short. She peered at the three mares that seemed to share the bed with Kyle. "Seriously?" Her voice thick with disbelief. "You were waiting for us to release you of responsibility first, weren't you?"

Kyle half-jumped from bed to his feet. His time as a stud, however brief, was doing wonders for his physical aptitude. "Forget that, look!" He quickly made a naked sprint across the room and dug out a clearly-false unicorn horn. "They got one, and it works."

The others were rousing from the noise. Trixie was the first to reach awareness of Luna. "What are you doing here?"

Luna shook her head. "I came to see if it is time to go."

Kyle held the wand low, around his groin and adopted a look of concentration. Unseen, magic flowed. Instead of producing a rush of seed, it ran right up through the false horn which began to glow like any other unicorn's horn might. An apple laying in a bowl across the room gave a quiver before it began to lift up slowly, glowing with the same light.

The director clapped his hands together firmly. "I present to you our consolation prize."

Luna followed the apple as it slowly approached Kyle to be devoured. Her eyes snapped over to the awakened Starlight. "Are you ready?"

Starlight stretched herself luxuriously. "After a night with him? I feel like a million bits. Let's do this."

Trixie and Careful both frowned at once. Trixie said what was on both their minds. "Can't we go?"

Starlight snorted softly. "I love you, which is exactly why I know you don't want to go, either of you, to an unknown place filled with unknown dangers for an unknown reason. Stay here, both of you." She hopped down and trotted over to Kyle. "We'll be back before dinner, if things go well."

Luna nodded in agreement as she joined Starlight with Kyle, all close and prepared. "This is a journey that offers no assurances. Wish us well."

Kyle tossed the remains of the apple into a waste basket not far off. "This is where we have to go, then our life is ours to do whatever we want. Just wait a little longer."

With a bright flare and a flashing of eldritch runes, all three vanished without another word spoken.

The director and most of the operators turned towards their platform, giddy with anticipation.

"Why did this have to go from a story where we could choose things to a silly clopfic?" The objector was quickly added to the row of gagged operators.

Another was demanding coffee, loudly, but that the facility had. The smell of it drew several others to enjoy the black gold while they waited for Kyle's arrival.

Then he did.

With a distortion in the air around the platform, the shape of the three snapped into place right on target.

All eyes were on them. Finally, they could see Luna, Starlight, and Kyle in the flesh. Literally. Besides Luna's ornaments, they were all naked.

A sudden thud startled the room. One of the operators had collapsed. Others rushed to them, but it was a lost cause. A small bit of black cloth was laid over their face out of respect.

Kyle blinked softly. "Hello?"

The director cleared his throat. "Yes, hello. Sorry about that. Welcome, actually. We have so many questions, and so do you. Let's compare notes and save two people today."

Luna smiled. "This could have been far worse. Yes, let us work together. You are all humans, like Kyle, yes?" Her eyes darted from form to form. "I've never seen so many in one place before."

One of the operators sighed. "This isn't even that crowded. You should see New York on a busy day."

Starlight stepped off the platform, peering at it curiously. "You knew we were coming?"

"--we were coming?" The monitor had just stopped being blank and showed Starlight saying those very words.

Kyle's brows rose together. "You've been watching us?"

The director nodded. "You were sent with that very purpose. It was a desperate move, but these are desperate times. Force grown and implanted with more sensory equipment than any one human should hold, you're a masterpiece of modern bio-engineering."

Kyle recoiled at the news. Twice then he had been changed, but only the second time had been with his consent. Still... "So it really was my destiny, I mean is."

"In a manner of speaking." The director grabbed a labcoat and offered it to Kyle. "If you want."

Kyle did accept it and threaded a hand that still clutched a false horn through the sleeve before getting it entirely on. He didn't bother buttoning the jacket, leaving his horse dong dangling for all the world to see. "If you were watching the whole time, if that was my real purpose, why did it take this long to figure out?"

Luna nodded softly. "An excellent query, and are you aware of what troubles us in the future?"

Starlight rolled a hoof. "More importantly, can you fix it?"

The director nodded eagerly. "You've brought everything we need to figure out a solution, but you'll have to implement it yourselves. Any cure made here, in the past, will just mess things up. What has happened, has already happened. Come with me." He began to lead a grand procession, with their guests at the front and the other operators following behind.

"Watch it!" spat out Starlight as one of those operators got a hold of her tail and gave it a petting without asking permission. A flash of magic was enough to send them back a few feet before she hurried to catch up with the others.

The director brought them to a lab. "I need to take some blood samples, small ones. They'll help us both get answers. We'll see what's afflicting you and your people, and get a good look at what we need to become to save ourselves. With your leave, we'll begin."

Kyle hiked a brow. "I'm not a pony, doc. Do you need me?"

"Actually, very much, yes. You have what will become a unicorn's biology hanging off of you, at least half of it." He reached for Kyle's horn, the fake one. "May I?"

Kyle hesitated a moment before he surrendered it.

"Now, if what we witnesses is true, you have the part that produces and stores the energy required to realize quantum adjustments on a scale thought impossible." He waved the horn. "It is channeled through this device."

Starlight hiked a brow. "I have a horn. All three of us have a horn, why pick the fake one?"

"Now that's simple." He led Kyle towards a bed that had quite a few lights blinking placidly in a standby. "It's external. We can examine this far more easily than one attached to a living person. His other bits are also external. Attached, but at least easily accessed. In order to examine either of your reservoirs would require invasive surgery. Today is a day we defeat two plagues."

A rough cheer rippled through the operators, but then came the boring part.

There was no way to make romantic slow and methodical examinations. The poring over math, cellular configurations, and countless minutiae.

Luna watched it all resolutely, as if she knew something, but she didn't share.

Hours turned into days turned into weeks of effort, but that effort turned a result at long last.

With a soft hiss, the birthing chamber that had started with a fertilized human egg disgorged the life it had been directed to form. A bundle of white fuzziness was revealed. It had a horn, and wings. It was a perfect test model, displaying all three models they planned to roll out.

The little filly yawned wide and spread her little wings out before she blinked up at the room full of staring eyes.

The director smiled and gently stroked her cheek before he pressed a button with the other hand. The filly was soon asleep again. Asleep, but alive.

Luna approached on shaking legs. "So it was true..." She glanced to the doctor. "I... am next?"

And so it was, with an egg from the same mother. The royal sisters, not yet royal, were born long before the age of ponies. One would be educated as to their origin, the other would remain blissfully ignorant, until much later.

Starlight yawned from Kyle's lap. "When do we get the cure and leave? Nice place and all, but I think I'm done with it."

With the key to humanity's evolution, rather than extinction, in hand, all efforts went to studying their equine visitors. They had Starlight's entire body up on the screens, alternating between different vital organs. The director seemed sure of what went wrong, however.

He pointed at Starlight's flank. "I know these have to be here, because they already are. The way I've designed it, they're a sort of... immune response, but there's more to it." He lifted a finger. "I used your own as a template, and I've been back-engineering it. It's a masterpiece. I don't think I could have ever done it myself. Still, here it is, and here we'll go. I can't pretend to fully understand how time works, in the end. That's not important." He depressed a button on the wall beside him and a bottle of pills popped free. "All that's needed is to get it to change."

Starlight hiked a brow. "Change? As in change the picture?"

"Not exactly, a little deeper than that. An immune response that can't adapt to the disease is one waiting to fail, and it did fail. You're lucky, ours just kills us. Yours gave you time to figure it out." He offered the bottle to Starlight. "See that every citizen gets one. Every single one."

Kyle blinked at that. "Wait what? That's just one bottle."

The director patted the wall. "We're running low on supplies. Besides, you have magic, use it. We have to focus on making sure we eventually become you, instead of a forgotten memory on a dead planet."

The artificial horn was returned. Both sides had, ultimately, got what they wanted. The living humans were still doomed, but their children would not be. One pony would be raised by human hands at least.

With an intense wash of magic, Starlight took them all away from the determined, if doomed, people. They had their own people to deal with.

They appeared with a crackle back where they had started.

Careful slid from the bed. "Did something go wrong? You barely vanished before reappearing."

Starlight let out a laugh at it. "I don't usually get the aiming quite that right." In her magic, she held up the bottle of pills. "It's time to cure Equestria!" She trotted off without another word.

Luna let out a slow breath before she eagerly took in the gentler air of the world she knew. "I... need some time to myself." She raised a hoof to Kyle's back. "You have done well. Though the people of Equestria will never understand what you've done, I do. Thank you." She dipped her head, then trotted from the room.

Kyle turned to his two mares and moved to step towards them, just for his legs to give out. He collapsed to the ground.

The room had stopped, watching Kyle as he fell. Monitors spoke of several critical issues and the list was growing with alarming rapidity.

The director clenched his teeth a moment. "I can only hope your friends come through..." The room knew. Kyle had contracted the plague during his visit. If nothing was done, he would be dead shortly. A sad end for their savior.

Author's Note

Bad end?

We're not done yet.