A tale now woven, of darkest ink,
A tale of things, more than you think,
Trust questioned, and form to change
Upon now this tale, one so strange
bring not the scared, the weak, the weary
To hear this tale of change most eerie...
“Hurry up, wingding, we have a convertee waiting for that serum.” Foxfire asked of her partner for the day, Wind Scribe. Shaking her head to get her electric blue mane out of her eyes, the unicorn glanced up at the clock out of habit.
“Name calling is hardly fitting for a pony of your station, Foxy. Besides, I have your, rather, his serum right here.” Wind Scribe shook the potion gently at his co-worker, the pegasus closing the locker in which it and its mates were kept. He brushed a lock of blonde mane out of his eyes. “We’re both overdue for manecuts...” Wind Scribe sighed. “I honestly wonder why they have us doing this, though. We’re trainers, not potion technicians.”
“Can’t be helped, Scribe. the humans all caught a nasty bout of feather flu.” Foxfire thought for a moment. “Well, they just called it ‘the flu’ but it sure seemed the same to me. And the conversions must go on! Can’t afford a single day’s closure, not this close to Rejection.”
“No kidding. That’s some scary stuff, there. If it’s human, it’s just gone...” Wind Scribe shuddered. “I wish there was something more we could have done to help.”
“Well, we’ve done all we can, at this point. The rest is up to them to get to bureaus as quickly as possible.” Foxfire led the way from the potion storage area, taking a direct route to the ponification room assigned to Carlton, their current patient. “Now, come on, we need to get this over quickly, got more to take care of. We’ve already gone to being open twenty-four hours a day, and I don’t know about you, but I absolutely hate the night shift.” Foxfire groaned, “On top of it, we’re not even an hour into it yet.” She glared at the enemy, the hallway clock, in passing.
Luna was having fun. Since it would soon be in her own domain, she had been busy forging a connection with the Earth’s moon, growing familiar with the course it was supposed to take. Much rode on maintaining the orbit of this particular sphere. She continued on her learning course. One day, she’d visit the orb itself, but for now, she was merely content, even happy, to learn all she could.
There was magic in moonlight.
“Carlton! We have your pony juice!” Foxfire grinned as she burst through the door, holding it open for the pegasus following her. Carlton, already changed into a paper gown, looked up, relieved.
“Foxy, please don’t call it that. That just sounds... awful.” Wind Scribe shook his head. The newfoal wasn’t coming into ponyisms natural, but instead tried to force them. The results seldom worked. “I’m sorry, Carlton, please forgive my companion. but yes, here it is...” Wind Scribe turned, presenting the flask to Foxfire, who levitated it over to Carlton. Foxfire paused.
“Say, Windy, does this look right to you?” Foxfire held the potion up to the light. “Seems a little, I dunno, clear. And, maybe, a little... dull?”
“It’s fine, Foxfire, potion is potion. How can something be clear and dull? It still stinks of bad grape, it’s still purple. Just give it to him.” Wind Scribe turned to Carlton. “Once again, I apologize for her...”
“It’s no problem, Wind Scribe. I’m just anxious to get this over with.” Carlton smiled to the pegasus. He’d put off ponification too long, and had gotten some severe magic burn on his right forearm. The blackened scar had never healed, and his arm still wouldn’t work right to this day. However, if what he’d been told was true, he would come out of ponification in perfect health. He’d be a pony, but at this point, it was pony or charcoal. He chose pony.
Foxfire shrugged and levitated the potion over to Carlton, carefully shifting her field to the top of the flask and away from his hand, to prevent further pain, even if any damage would be restored during the process. Carlton took it and gulped.
“And this... it works fast?” Carlton asked of Wind Scribe.
“That it does. In fact, I advise laying down as soon as you finish swallowing. Some silly fillies try to pull of some noble ‘One last phrase as a human’ and wind up falling face-first on the floor. Certain ponies find it funny-”
“Absolutely hilarious,” interrupted Foxfire.
“Ahem. I, however, believe you’d be much better off to just get on with it, as it were. so, if you would...” Wind Scribe waved a hoof at the potion in Carlton’s hand, which had already begun to warm from the contact.
“Oh, right. Um, bottom’s up, then.” Carlton inhaled, then took the stopper off the flask and guzzled the ponification serum. Once more he smiled, then fell over to his right side, landing on the pillow placed for just such an occasion. Foxfire caught the flask in a quick lighting of her horn, surrounding it in the bright blue glow.
Foxfire and Wind Scribe nodded at each other, then turned towards carlton and started to wait.
And wait. And wait. And wait. Nothing was happening.
Finally, Carlton awoke, and was plainly confused. “Uh... aren’t I supposed to be a pony?”
Foxfire stared at Wind Scribe, who could do nothing but stare back. Foxfire levitated the flask up to eye level. “That’s odd... I’m not detecting any magic from the flask. I’m sorry, Carlton, I don’t think the one Wind Scribe brought had been charged yet...”
“That... yes, that must have been the case...” Wind Scribe nodded, his ears betraying nervousness that neither the human nor newfoal caught on to. “I’m afraid, however, that was the last in our sector’s supply... We’re expecting a fresh batch shortly, so, if you’d want to wait, we could squeeze you in as that batch’s first.”
“Yeah..yeah, that sounds good, Scribe. Thanks. Will, um, will I be ok from drinking that stuff?” Carlton asked nervous, rubbing at his badly-scarred arm.
“Oh, yes, of course. Without a magical charge, everything else will just be purged by your body by natural means. I had good grades in biology, before I, er, dropped out and went pony.” Foxfire hoped Carlton didn't think she was bragging.
Carlton reached out and scratched Foxfire behind the ear. The way she hung her tongue out and nearly went limp proved that it wasn’t too much of an imposition. Carlton and Wind Scribe laughed.
“I swear, Carlton, newfoals have the funniest reaction to some of the strangest things. Come now, I’ll show you around. It’s part of the time slot, anyway, so we might as well.” Wind Scribe waited as Carlton shrugged back into his clothes, then led him out of the room.
Foxfire, having regained her senses, started cleaning up when a stray thought hit her. “Wait, we had a full supply for the night, and Carlton was only tonight’s second conversion. Why wouldn’t we have plenty of serum?”
Carlton sat alone on the roof, enjoying a light midsummer night’s breeze. His scar itched and ached, something he wasn’t unused to whenever he was around as much magic as a bureau full of ponies put out.
That is, until the full moon silently slipped out from behind a fog bank.
Carlton’s scar began to glow in the light, a pain pulsing through the arm unlike any he’d felt from it before, as it electrodes had been shoved into the wound and connected to a powerline. Carlton stared down at his arm, clenched in pain, and screamed as small white hairs began to sprout from the old wound.
“Wind Scribe!” screamed Foxfire into the nearly empty hallway. “Get your be-winged flank in here!” Foxfire paced angrily back and forth in front of the cabinet that should have held a full night’s worth of potion, but instead held... whatever the darkened gunk was.
Wind Scribe slunk into the room. “You, uh, called, Foxy?”
“Don’t you “Foxy” me, Wind Scribe. What is this?” Foxfire pointed a hoof at the cabinet.
“Our, um, ponification serum supply. All of it, tonight’s supply.” Wind Scribe shuffled from hoof to hoof.
“This isn’t what you gave me to administer to Carlton.”
“Ok, look, I can explain-”
“You’d better.” She had been a student before she’d become a newfoal, but she currently outranked Wind Scribe within the Bureau thanks to her education, not to mention her own natural intellect.
“Ok, look, If we didn’t try, we’d be a whole night behind, and with Rejection Day-”
“Wrong! We’d just have to get into the stores a little early and make sure we had an extra day’s worth backordered. What’d you do to the one you gave me?” Foxfire had begun pacing again, the only thing keeping her anger in check.
“I, um... I poured some of that into it, to make it look right.” Wind Scribe pointed at a half-empty vial of transparent liquid.
“What... what’s that doing up here?” Foxfire read the label, then read it again. She recognized it. One of her old professors, a virologist of some renown, had once attempted to see if he could create a humanification serum for no reason other than to see if he could. Doctor Splein had failed and laughed it off, sending the resulting tincture to be destroyed.
The label’s address read correctly. Before this bureau had been a Bureau, it had been a disposal lab. Somehow, this one vial had escaped that fate.
“Wind Scribe, alert security, and find Carlton. You find him now.”
The trio, having taken code names for their dread work, had followed the grey unicorn out of the bureau in which he had either worked or converted. It didn’t matter to the three, but Grave, Scythe, and Cloak of the Human Liberation Front had found their next victim. They followed the unicorn around a corner and into a blind alley. Perfect.
Scythe, the fastest of the three, could wait no longer, and flew towards the unicorn, crashing into him and slamming the dark-grey maned pony into a wall. The scarred man kicked the unicorn once, then stepped back beside his comrades. Cloak lit his cigarette, which briefly lit the rest of the alley. Grave strode forward, mighty field-hardened muscles causing the very ground to shake beneath his large boots.
“One more for the Reaper.” Grave lifted his foot, intending to stomp the unicorn beneath, but met only a field of white. The unicorn’s horn was lit, and it was growling.
“Growling? Definitely a newfoal. Well, good, I’d hate to think we’d ended an innocent Equestrian,” muttered Cloak. Scythe, a garish scar across his throat, laughed mutely, a jagged hiss the only noise.
The unicorn’s magic field faded, his new reserves weak. Grave laughed.
“Goodbye.”
“Well said,” the grey unicorn replied. The last conscious image Grave had was of a grey foreleg with a patch of white.
“You son of a... Scythe, get the Glock!” called Cloak, but he was too late. between the shock of the unicorn clocking Grave and the time it took to turn to Scythe, the unicorn was already upon him. Scythe looked down the sights of the pistol, but to his surprise, saw nothing. The unicorn was simply gone. Scythe turned slowly, looking for his intended target. A can rattled behind him and he spun.
There was nothing there.
Scythe could hear Cloak getting up behind him, he backed up to his compatriot, giving him a look.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m ok. Little monster bit me, though.”
They had almost fallen behind by a day on their ponification schedule after all, as the search for Carlton had taken up their time, but their section’s scheduled ponifications had been off loaded evenly to the other clinics sharing the building, so all was well.
Save, of course, that nopony could find Carlton.
Old Pushbroom had finished up his last hallway of the night. He looked forward, as always, to the sunshine warming his old bones when he traveled back to his apartment, and opened the janitor’s closet to put away his cart until the next shift.
He hadn’t expected to find a naked man curled up in the corner, dead asleep.
Carlton professed no knowledge of how he wound up in the janitor’s closet, but he did feel like he could really use some food in his system. Wind Scribe and Foxfire joined him, despite their exhaustion.
“..and the funniest part was this odd dream I had. First I thought it was one of those Conversion dreams you guys talk about, but instead of the Princesses, it was three guys trying to beat me up. I don’t really remember much more than that.” Carlton ate more of his cereal.
“I’m just glad we found you. I was really worried about, um, everything, but you seem fine. We’ve got you scheduled to ponify at the top of the hour.” Foxfire shot a smile at Carlton. Wind Scribe just ate quietly.
Carlton’s ponification, with proper, genuine potion, went ahead as scheduled, and he had his conversion dream. Foxfire stood back, admiring the grey-coated unicorn. “Wow, you came out looking goooooood, Carlton! Although that spot where your scar was doesn’t match the rest of your coat.”
“It’s ok, I kind of like it. Serves as a nice reminder of who I was, once...” Carlton didn’t feel the itch on his arm- or, rather, his foreleg- anymore. If anything, that was enough in his mind to justify ponification, nevermind surviving Rejection!
Grave and Scythe fell backwards that evening, eyes wide in fear. Cloak had started screaming and writhing on the ground, and now their partner was a... a four-hooved, yellow-coated thing. It stood there atop the rooftop, framed by the full moon. It pointed its horn skyward and called into the night.
“Neeeeeeeeeeeeeigh!!”
Whence come the cries of passions dark,
and lies belittle the trusting heart,
The scarred beast rises on hooves of grey,
When moon’s glow trumps the light of day.
Promise now, be scared of night,
For lies there magic in moonlight.
