Now, I got a lot of mail. Most of it was what everyone was used to; you know, spam. Offers of various services they thought I, as a specific person, or the facility as a whole, might want to take advantage of.

Did you know I could take out a personal loan to get my credit card debt under control?

Did you also know I'd been keeping my credit cards at $0 monthly for quite a long time? Being a noodle really reduced the urge to run up a tab.

But this one...

Director :

I will be visiting shortly to speak with you personally on delicate matters. You are not to leave the state or country until our meeting is concluded. I apologize if this interferes with any preexisting plans but must insist. Should things proceed as expected, all other business should be uninterrupted. Please have your security footage assembled and/or available (if electronic) as they will be reviewed.

Thank you,

It was on FBI letterhead, in a FBI envelope. The return address checked out. They had a phone number listed, and an email, and those checked out too. I was going to be visited by the FBI... for some reason? By the way, they don't say FBI on their letters. It's always full form; Federal Bureau of Investigation.

So I got myself a nice suit, as silly as those could look on a noodle, and was seated when the severe woman stepped into my office. Security had told me she was on the way. It wasn't like she was sneaking anywhere. She had full authority to be there. Few could, easily, stand in the way of a FBI agent in a lot of the country.

"Thank you for taking the time to see me." Not that she had left much practical choice. "You've created quite the stir in the legal community; created no small amount of work for us."

Was this about the 'new people'? "Just making sure some people that didn't ask for any of this didn't suffer for other people's actions."

"We had to investigate each and every case." She folded her arms, setting them on my desk. Her eyes were on mine, meeting my di-chromatic gaze. "Including yours."

"I can only presume positively." I had my updated identification card. The new me had been found to be the old me, updated...

"A match was determined," she agreed. "But we also began to run into other... concerns. Especially in the reports of others, and how they became new people." She frowned faintly. "What you did could easily be considered assault and battery."

"I didn't hurt them!" I said perhaps a bit offensively.

"You turned them from human to pony without their consent. If that is not physical harm..." She let that hang in the air, watching me. Judging me. "Your superiors can hide behind medical procedure and unintended consequences, but, according to reports, you acted with direct intention."

"It wasn't... my finest day..." I was tapping my fingers together, sweat beading on my face. "I'd never do anything like that--"

"I need to review the footage. Is it electronic?" I nodded. "Excellent. Please provide a private office with access to the video. We will speak again when that review is completed."

And so it was that she was given an office to work, with a door she could lock if she wanted to. I mean, not that it'd stop me if I wanted to get in there, but it was enough to keep me out. Storming in while she was working would be adding another crime to my list.

So I just got to sit there and try to pretend there wasn't an investigator just down the hallway. Hands touched my shoulders and I hopped free of my skin quite literally, leaving poor Shining Armor holding up my limp furry pelt. "You surprised me!"

"Hon... you alright?" He held out the fur covering towards me. "You're not usually so keyed up you do that."

I got myself presentable again. "There's an FBI agent digging around the security tapes. She's watching my worst day..."

"If she's any good, she's watching your good days too." He wrapped one arm around me, guiding me back to my chair. "They don't know you."

"Not sure anyone qualifies for that title, me included." I flopped back. "But I'll take that neck rub you were about to do."

So he did that, rubbing and working his furry fingers into my tight knots. Mmm, he was good at it... "Thanks..."

A knock came from my office door. Shining made himself scarce as I sat up. "It's open."

And in came the lady of the week, Miss FBI. "Are you available to continue our conversation?"

Nice of her, checking on that before we got to business. "Do join me." I smiled as brightly as I could. "Find what you were looking for?"

"Quite a bit." That didn't quite answer the question. "Madame Eri, let's be perfectly clear."

"I like clear." Look, I was nervous, alright? That was not the cunning line I had originally imagined.

"You are a biohazard." She leveled a pointer at me. "You are a conventional hazard. You are potentially a nuclear hazard. You are things we don't have official terms for, yet."

I deflated under the unkind titles. "I'm also nice and productive?"

"You are a nice and productive national security threat." She folded her arms, hands meeting and enmeshing. "Do you argue that?"

Ugh! "No..." I sagged all the more, chin thumping against the desk. "I just want to do my job. I'm a family monster, if that helps. I don't want to hurt anyone."

A twitch. She could control her expression fairly well. "You are a weapon of mass destruction. You could, if you wanted, inflict damage beyond that of any current enemy of the country, faster than any of them even dreamed, without a chance of reprisal. This cannot be allowed to continue with hopes that we can remain on the right line of your whimsy."

The part that burned me the most was that she wasn't lying. "So why haven't you... arrested me, or something?" I sat up a little. "You sound ready to hurl the largest book we have at me, but you haven't yet; why?"

"If I did, would it stick?" She inclined her head faintly at me. "Would you even arrive at any prison we decided for you? If I were to draw a service gun, would it even be effective?"

Well... no... "So... what do you have in mind?" She didn't come all that way to just... not do something. I was pretty sure of that.

"What we do with any WMD within our borders. Contain, Control, and Monitor. Eri, we cannot allow you to be a free agent." She stood up, her volume growing somehow more than I would have expected. "We have already reproduced the 'anti you' technology that can keep you from easily interfering from or towards specific places. But that's a stopgap at best. You will be assigned a handler. I suggest giving them the office I was using." She glanced in the direction of that office.

"If you have no objection, you are now United States property."

Wait... "I'm alive."

"You would not be the first living, or sapient, part of our forces."

Oh... "I'm in the Army?"

"You will not be joining that branch. You will be considered both a member and an asset of the Air Force." She began putting her things away. "You will be expected to pass their exams and training, but I have a feeling you can manage that despite your advanced age."

Hey! Well... I mean, technically, I was old to be joining the Air Force... But I was also a noodle... "If you want me to... attack some other country, I want to opt out of that ahead of time. I'm not your weapon."

"Learn the rules, play by them, and we'll be satisfied if you are safely monitored. You will be far from the first weapon of mass destruction we keep safely tucked in a bunker." She held her suitcase at her side, looking ready to go. "The training will interrupt your work, apologies for that, but after that you can resume your duties here. Between you and me, I think you're a bit of... a pervert, but a good hearted one, ma'am. You did good."

And so she left. I got a phone call not long after that with a place and time to report for my air force basic military training. I never thought I'd join the armed forces... But I decided to get into it a bit. If I was going to do it, might as well do it right. Their expressions at my noodliness wielding guns, wriggling under barbed wire, and performing other grunt activities amused me.

They tried, really hard, to break me down. That's what basic training was for, besides, well, basic training. But I could just not feel pain if I didn't wanna. I could not get tired if I didn't wanna. Having to run loops forever was, in the end, boring, not painful.

But I didn't spend all the time thumbing my nose at them. I learned some new stuff, and made some friends. I played along. Better to become an airforce member as opposed to an outlaw national security threat, I reasoned. They couldn't arrest me very easily, but they could make my life incredibly uncomfortable. They could rip down what I had built. I was immortal, a god, but what surrounded me was not. So... as their kind noodle, I behaved.

So I got to return with a fancy new badge, and my watcher. He was not just one rank above me, oh no. Several steps up, which made sense if you thought about it. The guy was being trusted with making sure a national threat was playing nice. I didn't want him to die of boredom, however. Watching me type and talk wasn't that interesting, let's be real.

My more, hm, interesting moments had already gone by. So I offered him the chance to help out around the fac--resort. I did not offer him cash, however. Would that have been bribery? Pretty damn sure soldiers are not supposed to be making money on side gigs while they were on duty...

But he didn't want to be bored either, and I was an agreeable noodle, so we started working together to keep the place working properly. I could almost forget he was a representative of the USA itself, ready to call on me if ever things got desperate enough for them to want to approach me about something.

Maybe they'd tap my shoulder if they spotted some huge planet busting rock coming towards us? That could be interesting.

Just don't bother me about stupid border squabbles...

So... yeah... that's how it worked out. Not a terrible ending, I say, for what my vote's worth. I had a part, in my resort, in my company, and in my country. It was all grander than I could have expected when I first decided to try to help things out by taking part in a clinical trial.

But it worked out in the end. 7/10? Maybe with a conditional +1 because 'you also are a god now' has to be worth at least one point, right?

I was satisfied with it, with my new family, with... most of it really.

Thanks for sticking with it this far. Am I that interesting? Must be, you're still here. I'd offer to give you a reward for getting here, but I try not to noodle across dimensions, and you're not in mine, so, sorry. Nice world though. Has some issues, but nothing a little buffing can't fix. You'd best get on that.

I'll do my part over here, but that's another story for another day. I have children to raise and a resort to manage.

Author's Note

And fin, for real! I hope that extra long ending was enjoyed.

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