H.A.R.M.O.N.Y

Twilight let out sigh, another day of experiments with nothing but the same results. While the results themselves were great for the company, they were becoming so redundant to the point were she began to secretly hope something would go wrong so that she could at least do something different for once.

Deciding to through the data files of all experiments that was recorded within it, seeing what new experiments she could preform using energy from the chaos emeralds and the master emerald.

'To think, those emeralds were found in an ancient echidna temple located on Angle Island.' Twilight thought to herself, 'While their names were discovered through ancient echidna text, it was only when one of the men who found them came into contact with them was it discovered that those emeralds could give power to both people and technology (being how he had robotic arms). I'm still astonished how the lead director managed to convince King Acorn to allow the Hypersonic Association for Rejuvenating Mobian Organic Needs and Youth (or H.A.R.M.O.N.Y.) to have them and conduct experiments with them.'

"I see you're as busy as ever, Twilight." A voice said, pulling the mobian unicorn out of her thoughts.

Looking towards the source of the voice, Twilight saw another mobian unicorn who was light grayish heliotrope in color and wore a lab-coat similar to hers.

"Hey Starlight." Twilight greeted the mobian unicorn now known as Starlight, "How'd your experiments go?"

"Like they usually do." Starlight responded, "The subject gains a large boost in physical abilities until the chaos energy is extracted out of them. What about you?"

"Practically the same as you." Twilight said before adding, "But out of all of them, subject 76642 seems much more accustomed to the energy than the others, being how he exhibits signs of extra speed and strength even after he is cut off from the chaos energy."

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say his body is actually keeping some of the energy we give it, instead of allowing the energy to leak out of it like the others." Starlight said, "Speaking of him, where is subject 76642 currently at?"

"He's in my lab's stasis pod." Twilight responded.

"Planning to do another experiment on him?" Starlight asked.

"Of course, when it comes to having a test subject for project chaos, he's the best one to use." Twilight responded.

"Mind if I tag along?" Starlight asked, "I'm currently on my break and I don't know what to do right now."

"Sure, I don't mind, just don't touch anything unless I ask you to." Twilight said.

After nodding in understanding, Starlight followed Twilight to her lab.

Upon entering the lab, the two mobian unicorns saw a yellow mobian pegasus wearing a lab-coat in front of a stasis pod (that was concealed by a force-field that was impossible to see through), tapping at control panel in front of it.

"Hey!" Twilight called out, "Who the heck are you!?"

Twilight's yell caused the mobian pegasus to jump before turning towards the duo.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you would come so soon!" The mobian pegasus apologized, "My name is Fluttershy, and I'm here to check subject 76642's mental state."

"Fluttershy, Fluttershy." Twilight quietly said to herself before asking the pegasus, "You're that psychologist who was hired to help keep the test subjects calm, right?"

"Oh yeah." Starlight said, "Word has it that you have the ability to speak to others through their thoughts. Is that true?"

"That's right, due to several test subjects becoming aggressive as of late, I was hired in hopes of calming them and keeping them calm during your experiments." Fluttershy said.

"Now that you mention it, some test subjects have been showing increased signs of anger and aggression lately." Starlight said, "And whenever the chaos energy exits their bodies, it comes out all dark and negative, which earned the name, dark chaos energy."

"Before we get too sidetracked, I think I'll prep subject 76642." Twilight said before making her way towards the stasis pod's control panel.

After typing some commands, the force-field powered down, revealing the blue mobian hedgehog within.
(Ignore the text in the image)

(Imagine he's wearing his gloves, which are currently concealed, and shoes, the pod is filled with water, and he has a air mask on his muzzle).

"So that's subject 76642." Fluttershy said to herself, "He looks like any other mobian I've ever met."

"He looks like any other mobian, but he's usually quiet and while he does interact with the other subjects extremely well, he tends to keep to himself." Twilight said.

"Is he shy?" Fluttershy asked.

"It's more 'I'd rather be alone' type of tends to himself." Starlight said, "But he will interact with others if necessary."

"Before we get too distracted, I suppose you should tell Subject 76642 that we're about to start testing." Twilight said to Fluttershy.

"I'll try my best." Fluttershy said before turning towards Subject 76642.

Closing her eyes, Fluttershy concentrated for a moment before suddenly opening her eyes again, only her eyes were glowing white now.

Fluttershy found herself in a dark void, with nothing but darkness as far as she can see.

Although she was nervous, Fluttershy walked around for awhile, but she stopped in her tracks when she heard a voice say, "So you people have decided to raid my mind as well, huh?"

Confused, Fluttershy responded by saying, "I don't know what you're talking about, I've only come to tell you that they're about to start some tests and that you should be ready."

"How can I be so sure I could trust you?" The voice asked, "After everything you people have done to me, I know you'll say just about anything to make me put my guard down!"

Not liking the direction the conversation was going, Fluttershy cautiously said, "I can't speak for everyone else, but I assure you that I mean no harm to you. I only want to help you in any way I can."

Everything was silent for a moment until Subject 76642 appeared before Fluttershy (but was facing away from her).

"...I don't know what you're saying is true, BUT, I'll take it into consideration." Subject 76642 said coldly, "The only thing is, if you go back on your word, don't expect me to give you a second chance."

Although she was hesitant, Fluttershy said, "I promise."

"Good." Subject 76642 simply said before adding, "Now, I'd appreciate it if you can get out of my head now."

Nodding in understanding, Fluttershy closed her eyes before suddenly being enveloped in a bright light.

The glow in Fluttershy's eyes began to fade away until she blinked (her eyes turning back to normal when she did so).

"He's ready." Fluttershy said, turning towards Twilight when she said so.

"Good." Twilight said before typing a few commands on the stasis pod's control panel, "Attaching control collar now."

As Twilight said that, a robotic arm holding what appeared to be a bit of black metal entered the stasis pod before lowering towards Subject 76642's neck. Once there, the arm put the black metal against Subject 76642's neck, causing the metal to expand around his neck and allowing the robotic arm to detract.

"Control collar appears to be operational." Starlight said as she monitored Twilight's process on a nearby computer.

"Good." Twilight simply said before typing some more commands and saying, "Now to deactivate the restraints and to drain all of the water out of the stasis pod."

With that said, the metal clamps that were holding Subject 76642's arms, legs, and tail in place opened before retreating into the stasis pod itself, allowing his arms to steadily fall to his sides. After that, the water began to slowly drop as it was being pumped out of the stasis pod (with the air mask removing itself off Subject 76642's mussel and retreating into the stasis pod).

Satisfied with what she saw, Twilight said as she types in more commands, "The only thing to do now is to open the stasis pod and allow the control collar to do the rest."

After typing in the last command, the stasis pod let out a hiss as it began to open (doing so by retreating into the floor).

With the stasis pod opened completely, a beep could be heard coming from the control collar, followed by Subject 76642 suddenly opening his eyes, slowly straightening himself after doing so.

"Subject 76642, it's time for your daily experiments." Twilight said as she took out a tablet out of her lab coat, "You already know the drill, let's get to the testing area and get started."

Instead of answering, Subject 76642 let out a humf before walking off, having a distasteful frown on his face as he did so.

"Shouldn't he wait for you to lead him?" Fluttershy asked.

"No need to worry, we let out subjects go to the testing area themselves so they don't feel pressured to do so if we were to accompany them." Starlight explained.

"And there's no need to worry about him doing anything bad while he's on his way." Twilight added, "He knows exactly what would happen to him should he choose to disobey us."

"And what would that be?" Fluttershy asked.

"There's no need to concern yourself about that at the moment." Twilight replied, "For now, we should catch up with Subject 76642."

Although she didn't like the response she was given, Fluttershy nodded before following Twilight and Starlight out of the lab.

The trip to the testing area was uneventful, the only thing that was worth mentioning about the trip (to Fluttershy that is) was seeing other scientists work with their respective test subjects.

Upon reaching the doors to the training area, the trio saw Subject 76642 leaning against a nearby wall with his arms crossed, staring at them with an expression that basically said, "What took you three so long?!"

Ignoring the stare, Twilight approached a control panel that was besides the door before typing in a code, which caused the panel to let out a beep before opening the door.

Not wasting any time, Subject 76642 stood up straight before making his way through the door, prompting the trio to follow him.

Once inside, Fluttershy saw that the room was filled with cube-shaped machines that she couldn't even guess what their purpose was. Out of all of them however, the one that stood out the most was what appeared to be a giant ray gun that was in the ceiling.

"W-What is that thing?" Fluttershy asked, intimidated by the large device.

"That's the chaos infuser." Starlight responded, "It's a device that allows us to infuse chaos energy into our test subjects using chaos energy we've siphoned out of the chaos emeralds and the master emerald."

"How do you direct the chaos energy into your subjects without accidentally infusing energy into yourselves?" Fluttershy asked.

A small smirk formed on Twilight's face before the mobian unicorn proudly explained, "Well, that's when the control collars come into play. You see, originally, we used to put our subjects into a machine that's like a stasis pod, only it infused them with a large amount of chaos energy that would slowly exit their bodies as time went on, but most of our earlier subjects weren't able to control themselves with all of the energy within themselves and would go out of control. Fortunately, with the help of some of my first test subjects, I was able to create the control collar. The collar itself helps stabilize the chaos energy inside our test subjects while also posing as a magnet for chaos energy, allowing us to continue testing for as long as we want."

"Although, due to how several subjects turning chaos energy into dark chaos energy, we now retract the chaos energy out of the subjects bodies before infusing them again every fifteen minutes." Starlight added, "And should a subject produce dark chaos energy, all testing on that subject is to be put on hold until it's assured that the subject has been calmed."

While keeping what Starlight said in mind, Fluttershy asked, "If they help stabilize the chaos energy within the test subjects, why are they called control collars?"

"They also serve as restraints by allowing us to paralyze the wearer should a test subject try to attack any of the researchers." Twilight responded, "When I had the lead director look at the schematics, he said he added a few changes to improve it's performance. Although he didn't say what those changes were."

Fluttershy thought that sounded suspicious, but decided to keep quiet about it for now.

Just then, the group heard footsteps making their way towards them. Upon turning towards the source, they saw a pink mobian hedgehog who was being followed by a light yellowish-grey unicorn who wore a lab coat that was similar to the ones Twilight and Starlight wore.

The hedgehog wore a red dress, red boots that had a white stripe down the middle, white gloves, and large rings on her wrists, she also had a control collar around her neck and wore a depressed expression on her face.

"Moondancer, I see you've brought subject 269 for testing." Twilight said.

"I was planning to do so earlier, but I had few issues that I had to take care of." Moondancer said.

"What kind of issues?" Starlight asked.

"Having to filter this out of the main chaos tank." Moondancer replied as she pulled out a small glass capsule that was full of what appeared to be black colored energy.

"Dark chaos energy?!" Twilight and Starlight both said in shock.

"How did that end up in the main chaos tank?!?" Starlight asked.

Moondancer let out a irritated sigh before responding, "Apparently, Tixie didn't completely separate the dark chaos energy when she transferred the chaos energy she used back into the main tank. And because I was the closest person who had certification to operate the main tank, I had to spend the last hour filtering every bit of chaos energy just to make sure no dark chaos energy was left uncollected."

"Sheesh, talk about a workload." Starlight said.

"Don't worry, the lead director found out about this and put Trixie on dark duty for a month." Moondancer said.

Hearing this made Twilight and Starlight shiver.

"While I understand it's out of pure irony, putting Trixie on dark duty seems a little harsh." Twilight said.

"At least it beats being fired." Moondancer said, making the other two mobian unicorns nod in agreement.

As the three mobian unicorns had their conversation, Fluttershy watched as subject 269 slowly make her way to subject 76642 until she stopped right in front of him. The two mobian hedgehogs stared at each other for a moment before subject 76642 uncrossed his arms and spreaded them apart like he was offering a hug.

Almost immediately, subject 269 hugged subject 76642 and stuffed her face into his shoulder, where tears began to stream from her eyes. Deciding to comfort her, the male mobian hedgehog returned the embrace with one arm as he began to pat her on the head, almost as if he was trying to tell her that everything was going to be okay.

The two mobian hedgehogs remained like that for half a minute before they separated, with tears no longer escaping subject 269's eyes.

Subject 269 smiled at subject 76642 before giving him another hug, prompting the blue hedgehog to return the embrace before they quickly separated again.

Although it was hard to tell, Fluttershy swore she saw a small smile form on subject 76642's face during the second embrace.

"Anyway, we should get started on our experiments." Twilight said before pulling out her tablet and began typing in some commands.

Suddenly, sparks began to form on the tip of the chaos infuser before spreading throughout the whole machine.

"Commencing charging sequence." Twilight said before typing in one last command that made all the sparks build up at the chaos infuser's tip, creating a large ball of energy.

The ball of energy grew in size for a moment before suddenly shooting two beams at subject 76642 and subject 269 (which the two of them making no attempt to dodge the beams).

When the beams hit the subjects, they were surrounded by a green aura for a moment before it retreated into their bodies.

"Looks like everything went off with a hitch." Twilight said, "Now we can begin the experiments."

"I was thinking the same thing." Moondancer said before pulling out her own tablet and typed in some commands.

Once she entered the last command, the machines in the room let out a hiss before they began to expand and shift (think of it like transformers whenever that change from their vehicle forms to their robot fprms and vice versa), until some of the machines took the appearance of workout equipment.

"Workout equipment?" Fluttershy asked, clearly confused about the machines.

"The main thing we test here is how chaos energy helps inhances a mobian's physical abilities." Starlight said, "And the workout equipment is the best and easiest way to do just that."

"Of course, the equipment is much more strenuous that those found in normal gyms." Moondancer added.

"We should get started already." Twilight spoke up, "We've already spent too much time explaining things, it would be best if we didn't get off schedule too much."

Seeing that Twilight had a point, Starlight and Moondancer looked towards the two subjects and gestured them to make their way to one of machines, prompting them to do just that while Fluttershy watched.

The testing itself was fairly basic as far as Fluttershy could tell. The three mobian unicorns recorded how much they could lift, how fast they could run, how much stamina and endurance that had, etc. (Although Fluttershy was surprised that subject 76642 was able to run 15,345.4 miles per hour. She was surprised even more when she was told that he could run at half that speed when he doesn't have chaos energy infused himself)

After fifteen minutes of testing later, the two subjects stopped what they were doing and stood underneath the chaos infuser.

"Alright you two, it's been fifteen minutes, are you ready for the chaos extraction?" Starlight asked.

Subject 269 responded with a nervous nod while subject 76642 made a face that said, 'what do you think?'"

With confirmation to proceed, Twilight typed in a few commands on her tablet, causing sparks of form on the chaos infuser. But instead of building up energy, it made a trail of sparks between it and that two subjects before all of the chaos energy within them was extracted out of them and absorbed into the machine.

"Looks like they didn't produce any dark chaos energy." Twilight said, "That means we can reinfuse them gain."

With that said, Twilight typed in a few commands on her tablet, only for read text to appear on the screen that said, "Warning! Chaos Extraction is still in progress. Do you wish to proceed?

Confused by this, Twilight typed in "yes," which made energy form on the tip of the chaos infuser.

However, before the chaos infuser was done charging, Moondancer let out a yelp when she felt something jump in her lab-coat before hearing the sound of glass shattering.

Looking towards the source, Moondancer was horrified when she saw that the glass capsule of dark chaos energy was what made the noise, especially when she saw that dark chaos energy get sucked into the chaos infuser.

Acting quickly, Moondancer typed in a command to prevent the subjects from behind infused with the now corrupted batch of chaos energy, but found that she was only able to prevent subject 269 from being affected.

"Twilight!" Moondancer exclaimed, making the mare in question jump in surprise, "The chaos infuser absorbed the dark chaos energy I had! Turn it off now!!!"

Upon hearing that, Twilight tried to stop the chaos infuser as fast as she could but was too late as the machine shot a beam of dark chaos energy at subject 76642.

When the beam made contact, subject 76642 began to scream in pain before he began to trash around, destroying some machines in the process.

As Twilight tried to make the chaos infuser stop, Fluttershy tried to link her mind with subject 76642, attempting to help calm him down.

When the connection was made however, all Fluttershy heard was subject 76642 scream, 'IT HURTS! MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!!!'

After a few more moments, Twilight managed to turn the chaos infuser off, making the beam disappear.

However, the damage was already done as dark chaos energy sparked around subject 76642's body, making his quills sharper while making quills form on his wrists, ankles, shoulders, upper legs, and the ends of his muzzle.

Acting quickly, Twilight set the chaos infuser to extraction mode and extracted the dark chaos energy out of subject 76642.

Once all the dark energy was out of his body, subject 76642's body collapsed onto the floor, prompting subject 269 to run by his side with much concern on her face.

"What are his vitals?" Starlight asked Twilight.

Twilight took a glance at her tablet before saying, "He's alive. While is heart rate is high, it isn't life threatening."

Just then, several mobians in hazard suits came into the room with a stretcher.

"A large amount of dark chaos energy was detected here, which subject produced it." asked one of the suited mobians.

"He didn't produce it, but subject 76642 was accidentally infused with dark chaos energy," Moondancer said before adding, "but we already extracted it out of him."

"That's all we needed to hear." The suited mobian said before subject 76642 was placed on the stretcher and carried out of the room, "We'll check if the infusion had any negative side effects. You will be informed once they are done."

With that said, the suited mobian made his way out of the room, leaving Fluttershy, subject 269, and the three mobian unicorns in the room.

"So...What do we do now?" Starlight asked.

"Obviously we'll have to postpone testing until subject 76642 is declared okay." Twilight said as she began to make her way out of the room, "Let's just hope it doesn't take too long."

Deciding to follow Twilight's example, the other four mobians followed her out of the room, unsure as to what they should do next.

That night, we find Twilight, Starlight, and Fluttershy in Twilight's lab as they watched subject 76642 While he was in his stasis pod (aside from all the quills, he was declared okay and was placed back in Twilight's lab).

"Poor subject 76642, that experience was absolutely terrible." Fluttershy said.

"I'll say." Starlight said, "That was the first time he came into contact with dark chaos energy. And considering that it was infused into him, he's lucky that it didn't negatively effect him in any way. By the way, have you tried talking with him yet?"

"I have, but he doesn't respond." Fluttershy said, "No matter how much I call out, he won't say anything."

"I'm not an expert on the subject, but maybe he needs to rest mentally before you try talking to him again." Twilight said, "Anyway, I don't know about the two of you, but I think I've had excitement for today. I'm going to call it day and go home."

While they were concerned about subject 76642, they couldn't help but agree with Twilight, which led to the trio making their way out of the lab.

As they left, Twilight thought about how the dark chaos energy altered subject 76642's body and was intrigued about it.

'It certainly is interesting.' Twilight thought to herself, 'I think I'll look into it tomorrow.'