"Why?" I coiled around the man. He looked upset. Not sure why, we were in his kitchen.

"Director!" he got out, reaching for a bouquet of flowers. Sure, they had been something more dangerous before, but I didn't feel like fighting the guy.

"That's me." I withdrew, floating in front of him. "You trust me to keep an eye on things, and I am... But you don't trust me with the truth. Time for that to change."

"This is a complete violation of protocol and trust." He scowled through his glasses at me. "Not to mention illegal."

"Because declaring living people dead is completely legal." I rolled my eyes mightily, scoring double sixes. "It's time to talk. You want me to keep things under control? I need to know what I'm controlling." I wagged a finger at him. "You might have hired me, hoping I was some soft touch princess that could keep them all mollified." I made a perfectly loud buzzer of a sound. It was neat being a living special effect. "But I'm not, I'm a chaos noodle with a sense of morality. So give it to me straight."

He glared at me a moment, likely considering how much I already knew, but I had put a card on the table. I knew more than I was scheduled to know. "How?"

"I might tell you if you tell me something," I offered with a smile, tail wagging. "Also, I'm not infectious, promise. Not a single cootie on you. If you start getting fuzz, I'll snap you out of it, promise, and I take those seriously." I could, with a little effort, flip back into Ponid heat vision. He was cold as a rock, no ponid in there.

"Wait," he blurted, his eyes going sharp, an idea? "You can undo ponid?"

"I can... do whatever I want, I think." So far, I hadn't hit a limit, a real limit. If there was a limit to noodling, I hadn't hit it. "But I don't, because I'm a decent person trying not to ruin a world by playing god."

"You... could fix it. You could make the treatment not cause ponid, and protect from covid?" He rolled a hand a little. "If you're telling the truth, and you've given little reason to suspect otherwise, you could make it protect from every disease there is."

"Probably," I admitted. "But I wouldn't do that."

"Why not?" He took a step towards me, looking angry. "You could save thousands, no, millions, eventually billions of lives. You are literally the answer to all of our questions, but 'no'?"

"I will not write the future of humanity." I crossed my arms over my chest. "If I did half of what you're suggesting, I would be. A lot of biologists would suddenly be out of a job, permanently, and when I was gone some day, humanity would be up a creek." I snapped my fingers, without taking advantage of the universe's distraction. "Think long term."

He let out a ragged breath, moving to claim a chair and sink onto it. "You've given me a lot to think about."

"And you haven't given me a thing. How about that?"

"Look." He raised a finger at me. "Imagine, if you can, you weren't what you are. We call ponid a disease, and why shouldn't we? It's communicable, reacts to immune systems, the works. But, like many diseases, there is no cure. To cure ponid would be to advancing to the point we could re-write what it means to be human." He spread his hands wide. "We're not there."

Well... crap... "Isn't that what the facility is for, to figure that out?"

"No!" he blurted almost hysterically. "Containment. That's all we can hope for. We've almost isolated out this... side effect from the treatment. We can cure a pandemic, but we don't want to cause a second in the process."

"Enough." I landed just so I could clop down a goat hoof. "I need answers, the full introduction I should have gotten when I took the job. Where'd this come from in the first place? How does that translate into ponies?" I thrust a finger at him. "It's lesson time, so start educating."

"I want to be... cared about." Silver rubbed behind her head, looking around awkwardly.

"Do you feel isolated?" asked Peter, still dressed in his hazmat suit, hardly a model for not being isolated.

"Of course I feel isolated," shouted Silver, her glasses going askew. She reached up to fiddle with them back into position. "Look, I had a girlfriend, back before the director got a hold of me."

"Did your transition end that?" he asked with obvious concern.

"Huh? No." She waved a hoof at the idea. "We broke up half a year ago... I was busy here, busy with work... And she didn't get me, and she wasn't really trying.. She... She just wanted a big strong man. I was that." She laughed suddenly, a strained noise. "If she could see me now..."

"You are not a strong man," Peter noted the obvious.

"No I'm not!" She thrust down her hooves, thumping on the soft material of the chair. "But I always was, used to be... People looked at me, they saw a big guy, a bruiser, a tough guy... Good or bad, it started there. I didn't have a choice." She smirked a little. "Tried going fat once, still big, still strong. Didn't change nothin'."

She sank against the back of her chair. "I don't want to be the big guy anymore. Ever. Is that too much?"

"You aren't that," he agreed easily. It would be hard to argue the little filly with glasses before him was a big strong man. "Does that make you happy?"

"Yes!" She leaned forward, her eyes set on his, even if glasses and hazmat visor was in the way. "I'm not large, or strong. I'm small and soft and... cute..." She sagged a bit. "I like that. I like all of that... People don't get nervous... People don't... shy away. They're not scared to argue with me like I'm gonna punch them if they say the wrong thing." She suddenly began to giggle. "Sometimes they even talk over me. Being little means being ignored sometimes, and... I think I'm alright with that."

"It's never perfect." Peter made notes idly. "Is there anything you do miss, from before?"

"Only stupid things." She smirked a little. "I used to draw things when I was... going, you know, little boy's room? God, like, so stupid, but I miss that, a little bit? I told you it was stupid..."

"You aren't stupid," he assured. "We all have to do it, you just enjoyed it in a way that didn't hurt anyone or thing. Is there a harm to that?"

"Well, no... Just can't really do that anymore, and you did ask." She rolled her eyes. "And now I have a tail."

"Is that a good thing?"

"Hay yes." She flicked her tail, curled around her bottom as it was. "It's like another arm. I can move things with it, grab things if I'm careful, like... express myself? It's like a little super power." She fiddled with her glasses nervously. "I don't have any, like, real super powers. Some ponies can fly and stuff. Some have actual magic!" She wobbled a hoof in the air. "I'm just a pony."

"Does that bother you?"

"You ask a lot of questions." Silver stuck out her tongue at Peter. "Don't you have opinions of your own?"

"We're here for you," gently noted Peter. "Not for me. Your opinions are the important ones."

"Well, sure, but you're a person too." She tilted her head faintly. "What if I want to know who I'm talking to?"

Paul set down his pen, the clipboard following it to be set on his desk gently. "Go ahead then, ask me a question."

Silver blinked owlishly, clearly surprised at the offer. "Oh! Well, um..." She tapped at her chin. "What do... you think?" She rose up, standing on the chair and doing a slow turn.

"Of you?"

"That's a question!" she noted with an extended tongue. "But, like, yes."

"I think your body reflects you more than you realize."

Silver frowned at that, flopping back to her haunches. "Whattaya mean by that?!"

"I mean you are still developing yourself, an identity." He reached for his clipboard, pen attached. "You felt trapped, stifled, but you broke free of that in quite the dramatic way. Free of that shell, you are reaching out and discovering who you are. You may not be young, physically, but you are immature, in maybe the best kind of way."

"There are good ways to be immature?" She crossed her arms over her chest, one hoof wobbling. "This I gotta hear."

"Your personality is growing and changing, and your outlook, on a lot of things, is very flexible right now." Peter shrugged softly. "People pay to try to get that loose again. I can only say to be careful, and pick good role models. You're an adult, right?"

She scowled at him. "Yeah?"

"So you know how important that can be. Pick them, instead of having them happen. Take that in your own... hooves."

She lifted her hooves into view. "Huh..."

"We're just about out of time." He made a little quick note. "But I think we've been productive. How do you feel?"

"I... think I agree." She smiled as she adjusted her glasses. "Like, you know, not... finished, but... yeah... When's the next one?"

They worked out when the next therapy session would be.

"Where is she?" Starlight trotted in, looking around. "Where is anypony? Hello?!"

"Right here." Shining came out from the back, dressed in sweat shirt and pants with a headband on. "I was just prepping for a jog. Wanna come with?"

"Tempting, but I came for Eri." She inclined her head. "In fact, after she answers me, then sure. Where's she hiding?"

Shining hiked a thumb behind himself. "She bamfed off to do something. Noodle stuff, secret noodle stuff."

Starlight's brows fell as one. "Secret noodle stuff I should be really worried about?"

"Not sure. But it's something heavy." Shining squatted down to be more on Starlight's level. "I think she's ready to start asking real questions."

"She could have asked me," whined Starlight with a roll of her eyes. "Could have made for awkward pillow talk. Speaking of that, she didn't forget our date, did she?"

"I don't think she could," chuckled Shining. "Look, between us." He gestured between them. "You're all girl, and I'm settling into the guy thing pretty well, why are you pushing her to play against her type?"

Starlight hiked a brow at him. "Pardon you? She's a little god. She's a very well mannered one, I'll grant, too good for this world, but she's still a god. She can be a he, she, it or even they if she wants, and there ain't nocreature that can tell her not to. I'm just inviting her to show what she can do, at least partially to herself."

"It's all for her benefit," agreed Shining with a heavy layer of doubt. "You get nothing out of this."

"I get to enjoy being taken on a wild hedonistic ride where the breaks may not be working the entire time, but I knew the risks going in." She waggled her brows lightly. "Speaking of that, 'they', I should suggest that. If playing with one Eri is fun, being pinned between a half dozen of them should be... fun..."

"You're a pervert."

"Takes one to know one." She stuck out her tongue at Shining. "I heard what you were doing. Not even a stallion for a week and you were already taking that pistol out f--"

Shining had grabbed her by the snout, cutting her off. "I was sick and confused, alright?"

Starlight drew her head back, smirking at the blushing stallion of a man. "Right, 'cause you never do that anymore, unlike most men ever." She rolled a hoof softly. "Tell me a few more sweet lies."

"Star, girl, you are awful." Shining rose up to his hooves, dusting off his hands. "I'm going for that run, coming or not?"

"Yeah yeah." She trailed after him even as their pace began to accelerate. "Hey, if it makes you feel better, I'd do it too. Pretty sure that's just a person thing."

"Shut up and run." And they began to jog in earnest, though it was more of a trot for Starlight, who seemed to have no particular difficulty keeping up with him, darn cheating four-legged motion.

"I want to try something." Twilight set down a paper with clearly labeled magical notes in big bold fonted letters, each letter also had a color just to be double sure they were understood. "While our magic is quite a marvel to behold, each individual spellcaster can only emit so much energy."

Autumn tilted her head. "Only so much, yeah. Makes sense. If we could make, like, infinite energy, that'd be crazy!" She threw her hooves wide. "Imagine the trouble we could get into."

"I'd rather imagine what we can actually do." She tapped at the page impatiently with a hoof. "Do you remember this spell?"

Autumn leaned in, examining it, fala-laing under her breath as if test-singing the song written. "Oh, the coloring spell!"

"I am... curious how you figured that out. It didn't appear to be memorization." She shook her head, rising to her hooves. "The goal is to color something large, at once, rather than through brushes. The energy required is too much for either of us to do, alone."

"Are we singing a duet?!" Autumn threw a leg over Twilight, drawing the unicorn in for a firm side hug. "I'm so ready! Let's do it!"

Twilight smiled awkwardly as she was shook in that firm hug of affection. "Well, yes, that is the idea. We will both cast the spell on the same target and try to harmonize. It was your idea that our magic is music, was it not?"

"Sure was, and still is." she reached up and tapped her horn. "Check out this wicked flute I have, super pretty and ready to bellow out a few sweet notes."

"Right..." Twilight inclined her head faintly. "And, like other vocalizations, we will try to harmonize, to match our pitch and notes so that the waveforms collapse into one another and produce one, larger, wave and a greater effect."

"I was ready a few sentences ago," assured Autumn, her horn glowing with readiness to sling magic. "Just tell me what I'm singing this spell at."

"Willingness is not the final requirement. We must be in perfect harmony, or the waveforms will interfere with one another instead of supporting."

Autumn shoved Twilight, hoof to her shoulder. "We won't get it right until we get it wrong a few times. Let's do it!"

Twilight smiled at her eager assistant. "You're not wrong. Alright, let's start with something that won't be missed." Her horn began to glow as she floated over a sizable, but not very valuable, basket of plastic. It was about six feet long and tall. A great bin for storing things. "Let's color this."

Autumn considered the basket as one might a fine portrait, rubbing her chin through her thick curls. "Mmm... What color are we aiming for?"

Rather than say a color, Twilight drew out a new paper and slapped it down. It was a bright bold yellow. "That."

Autumn's eyes fell to the paper, considering the color, then looking at the plastic basket and imagining it if it were that color. "Alright... Let's... color it!" She brought her hooves together, her horn glowing.

"Hold on!" Twilight thrust a hoof up. "We need some way to get in time."

Autumn tilted her head. "Huh? Go ahead, do the spell."

"But... we have no method..." Looking worried, she tried anyway, performing the magic of color.

An instant after her horn began to glow, Autumn's followed along. They began to glow all over, more than their horns, the air thickening with conjoining magic. "Yellow!" burst out Autumn with the hugest grin as they finished the spell.

A bright flash blinded them a moment, leaving Twilight rubbing her eyes with her arm before drawing it away to behold the basket. It had been colored. Not quite the same yellow, more of an orangey-yellow? Still, it had been colored. Twilight brought her hooves together. "For a first try, this is quite good!" She reached out as her magic picked up the basket, twirling it around. The color didn't go flying, for it was magic, not paint, that had done the coloring. "How did you match up with me so easily?"

"Duh?" Autumn looked confused at the idea. "I heard you start the song and joined in. You never joined in on a song someone else was singing before? It's not that hard."

"But... then you didn't do the first note, you couldn't have." Twilight inclined her head as the basket sank back to the ground. "You don't know what note I'm playing until I'm afterwards, and that's still quite the eye for magic."

"Thank you." Autumn buffed her chest, looking proud, and happy. "But you're right, I skip the first note. Just like you'd skip the first few words if you join a song being sung. Going back over it would throw the whole thing off."

"Which may be the reason for the discoloration." Twilight tapped the basket. "I can't be sure. We need a way to start and end together that doesn't have a delay in it, as remarkable as your intuition is."

"More music."

"Pardon?" Twilight hiked a brow.

"If there was a song going and we knew what beat to start our spells and follow along, we'd all be on the same page," explained Autumn, tapping her hooves along to some song only she heard. "And that's it! Easy!"

"Easy," echoed Twilight, shaking her head. "You are something else, but you may also be onto something there."

They would try again, with music.

Sunburst clicked his tongue as a pen, grasped in his magic, took slow notes. "And with the power thus created," he muttered to himself, slowly writing each letter, only to often skip back and add smaller letters between them, sometimes with arrows pointing from one to the next, or just slashing one out. "That won't work at all..."

He could make magic, but there wasn't a creature around that assured the process was simple and easy. "Too energetic," he complained, tapping at a letter. "We need..." Another letter was added. "To calm it down, control..."

If only his marefriend was around to compare notes with.

His cheeks warmed, thinking of that literally hot mare that, for some reason, wanted to be around him. "I hope she's doing alright..." He tapped at the paper with the floating pen. "She wants this spell too! Focus, Sunburst, focus..."

"Moving from here... to here..." He drew an arrow between two of the letters. "Father, I mean gather focus...." He licked his lips softly, thoughts straying to the kirin that haunted his dreams and whimsies. "I hope you're doing better than me." He jotted another letter. "And being able to test this would be so much easier..."

No, mistake! With a loud groan, he tore up the paper and threw it aside, grabbing a new sheet to start doodling on. "I will get this right, Autumn. You'll play a new song, the one you asked for." He smiled a little. "It's for you..." And he resumed his efforts, all the more invested in success.

"Looking back on it, we had this coming," admitted the man with a heavy sigh.

"But you did it anyway."

"Look, we needed a solution, fast. Yesterday fast," explained the man as he thumped a balled fist on his armrest. "This thing is tanking the economy. Not even just here. It's like we're in a global war, without the war."

"A worldwide recession, I got that." I floated in closer, watching him. "So you did something stupid to stop it."

"To try to," he agreed. "We found something, a skeleton."

I had to blink. "I'm sorry, but what skeleton did you find that could even remotely be connected to a global pandemic?!" There was absolutely no way that could end well. None. Well, it hadn't, looking back on it.

"It was an outside thing." He folded his arms, hands together on his lap. "Before my time by a few months. They discovered it had surprising genetic repair abilities, the sort that seemed powerful enough to undo attempts of a virus to damage it even in the moment."

He raised a hand, two fingers close together. "There it was, a solution to a lot of diseases, an inch away. It was a temptation too harsh to ignore."

"Bullshit," I cut in. "How did you get from 'this looks interesting' to 'let's put it in people and see what happens?!'"

"Not directly," he was quick to point out. "We aren't entirely without some manner of ethics, or common sense. We started with animal testing." He rolled his shoulders lightly. "They did not become brightly colored equines. They were healthy, strong, no negatives at all. Rats, horses, and even pigs went through the trials, and we had not even a single negative reaction. Horses made the most usable serum in the end, so they were selected to make the final product."

"So you gave me a serum made from some kind of reaction between a fossil and a horse? Nice..." I had to take a slow breath, digesting that. Maybe if they had used rats or pigs for that final serum, we would have turned into something quite a bit different... "So you moved on to human tests... and things went sideways."

"Worse." He set his hands down, pushing up to his feet. "If it only resulted in ponid and nothing else, the project would have been canned, and that would have been that. It would have been cleaner, in the end. Almost wish that was the case, sometimes, but no."

How could it be worse? Oh. It clicked... "It... really did fix some people."

"It really did fix some people," he echoed miserably. "Some of the test subjects came in with pre-existing conditions and left cured. Cured and still human. It did exactly what we had wanted it to do. We were standing on a drug that could still deliver what we had set out to do... if only for one... small... problem."

"Alright. Alright!" I threw my hands out to either side. "Alright! I get it. It's fucked up in a lot of ways, but I get it. Why aren't you telling them this?" I leveled a finger at him. "None of this explains why they still think a cure's coming for them, when I get the idea that there isn't. They're ponies, forever. Why aren't they just being told the truth?"

"Look at yourself." He gestured up and down my form. "You're... incensed, outraged. Do you think an entire facility of the same will result in anything but a lot of hurt people, hooved or not?"

I hated that he had even a kernel of a point. "You can start fixing it."

"No, you can." He put his hands on his hips. "This is literally your responsibility. You haven't been told to keep this a secret. You want to tell them? You do it, and don't mess it up. This will be on your performance review."

Oh. Oh damn...

He had told me not because I asked nicely. He told me because it had become entirely my problem. He had just divested himself of it. It was my problem how to tell them, or if they should be told. It was all on me.

Thanks. I hated it.

"Great..." With a weary sigh, I vanished back to the facility I was in charge of. Someone would have to fix the mess...

Author's Note

And the secret is revealed. This is why they're still trying. Why the tests continue. Why the secrecy. Is it a good reason?

Meanwhile, Sunburst, Autumn, and Twilight remain adorable and innocent.

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