My Little Pony: Infections Are Deadly

...Only I know the code..."

The wet sound of meat being smashed and crushed. A blur of images. Daylight. Panicked shouts and the thud of boots, almost drowned out by wailing alarms.

"All hands on deck! All hands on deck! Intruder alert!"

A monster, easily twenty feet tall, squaring off against a black shelled humanoid creature. The roar of planes and the sharp crack of firearms filled the air, followed by the dull thump of bullets cracking into flesh.

"...All available support to Citadel..."

The roar of engines and great rolling explosions. The screams of a beast in pain, and the dull slurping sound of something burrowing through flesh.

"...Father Device has been activated..."

A panicked rush, the rough feeling of ropes, the noise and lift of something heavy moving though the air.

...Speed...

...Noise...

...Light...

...Heat...

...

PAIN!!!

PAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAIN!

...Hurt...

...Hungry...

Hunt. Hunt. Find. Hunt. Consume. Hunt. Find Meat. Consume Meat...

...Hungry...

Sgt.Silver Star was not in a good mood. Ever since reports of an unknown creature inhabiting the Everfree forest, Princess Celestia had sent him and his squad to look for it. They weren’t to leave until they found it, or proved that it did not exist. So he and his squad have been in this forest for over a week now.

One of the members of his squad joked around about finding a mythical creature in this forest, maybe a human. He dismissed that possibility as impossible, humans are just myths. They have never existed, and if they had, they were extinct now.

Currently they where resting at their camp site, but soon stopped when they heard a sound to the north.

"Anypony else here that?" One of guards asked.

"Yeah." Another guard replied replied.

As he said that statement, a red and black tentacle shot out of the woods and stabbed one of the guards through the chest. It then started to drag him into the direction where it was coming from as he screamed in pain.

"It’s here!" Silver Star yelled.

As Silver Star said that, everypony grabbed their weapons; crossbows, spears and swords.

As the unicorn guards charged spells, the other guards used the weapons they grabbed to damage it.

The weapons remained unnoticed to the creature, along with the fact that it was being hurt. The unicorns fired spell after spell, which did damage, but not enough to slow it down.

As the creature began to somehow consume the guards, the wounds on it seemed to disappear as well...

2 minutes later...

Sgt.Silver Star was terrified, the creature had eaten his entire squad, and he was the last one left. As the creature moved toward him he kept a sturdy face. If he was going to die, he was going to die strong, with honor. As the creature began to pull him in he felt his insides burning, but did not scream in pain like his comrades.

To him it would feel like 3 seconds, to Alex it would feel like an eternity.

Sgt.Silver Star died.

He had already rebuilt his shape, adopting the usual six foot two human form. Pale skin, blue eyes, an unbuttoned, flared, collared shirt and a grey, stained sweatshirt. Over this was his favorite jacket, with a red tribal design on the back.

Dirt scraped under his faux leather shoes, and Alex stared at the sky as he looked at the memories that he took from the guards. To his disgust, he had a starring role in the most recent.

Taking their lives had left Alex with an encyclopedia of knowledge, all about the land of Equestria. Alex still marveled at how the consumption of his victims left him with all of their accumulated memories. It was always useful.

Looking at the most recent memories, Alex came to a decision. If he was going to survive here, he needed to hide and recover his strength. Ponyville was best for that.

The guards were worthless as a disguise, he would need to find a new one.

Alex got down on his hands and knees, stretching in preparation for the shape shifting to come. Creating a new disguise that held up under suspicion when he had only the form of one pony to work on was going to be hard, phenomenally so.

And so, with a wet slurping noise, Alex compressed his form and became one of the guards.

His form was way too unpleasant. Alex weighed in at almost three tons, and all of the guards are far too small for that. Alex felt a terrible cramping pain all over his body as he sat there as a pony.

He needed size.

One of the guards had seen an Earth Pony nearly twice the size of any other once upon a time. Alex did not like the idea of switching to another species so soon, but the idea of size still compelled him, and there were ways around his problem. So he flexed, and the 'guard' grew nearly one foot, just an inch shorter than the large red pony with the apple cutie mark.

A few small changes in the facial structure and dimensions of the 'guard's' skeleton, and no pony would think that Alex was the same pony who went missing in Everfree; the hips and shoulders widened, the snout became slightly thicker and lower, the eyes came a few millimeters together, the horn disappeared and wings grew on his back.

Looking in a nearby puddle, Alex was satisfied with his work. He now looked like an unusually large and bulky pegasus stallion, and he wasn’t too bad on the eyes, according to the memories.

Now for the colour of his fur; Alex decided on a dark grey colour, with a long black mane and tail. But that was not that practical, was it? Alex remembered the many different ponies guards had seen. Pink hair, blue hair, purple hair, red, orange, blue, green; colour after colour after colour.

Alex would stand out, and that was unacceptable for him. So Alex switched the baby blue of his fur for light brown, with a warm chestnut mane and tail, making his hair slightly shorter by a few centimeters.

And finally, the Cutie Mark...

Alex knew six different languages, and could speak them all fluently. He had sixteen degrees in twelve fields of science. Not sixteen degrees over twelve fields, sixteen degrees for each one; not to mention certificates, masters, doctorates, and basic experience.

Biology, radiology, mechanics, you name it, he knew it.

He was an expert marksman, he was one of the best drivers; an expert in the operation of armoured vehicles, and was one of the best helicopter pilots as well. He had extreme athletic ability, and could sing surprisingly well for a genetic abomination.

“So what is my ‘cutie mark’ going to be...?” Alex mused “What is Alex good at? Not the composite Alex, but the proper Alex? Biology...”

Alex looked though his stolen memories for anything relating to biology in Equestria.

“Earth ponies... Earth ponies had a magical connection to the land, pegasi did not.” Alex smiled a bit too wide than what was normal for a pony, “But there are exceptions...”

Alex could make his plan work; and so, mind made up, Alex set out to make his new, fake Cutie Mark that was coming into view on each of his flanks: A strand of DNA, because he is a genetic abomination capable of mutating DNA as if it was a toy.

He could make this work.

He would make this work.