Love Songs and Tooth Picks

Chapters

Days one through two and a half:The hell did I drink?
Day two continued: Gas stations.
Day three: Something.
Night three: More Something
Day four: Performance
Day five: She did what what in the who now?
Day five: That song sucked anyways.
Day six: Equivalent
Day Seven: My sleeping habits kind of suck
Day eight: Well, Hello.
Night eight: Heights
Night eight continued

Days one through two and a half:The hell did I drink?

Day one: May 1st

I hated my room mate, despite him being my best friend, I always had. He would leave before the crack of dawn, and return well after I'm asleep. He would always be loud and rambunctious with whatever skank he had brought home that night, and then he would brag about it as I banged on the wall to get him to shut up. Some nights he would go all through the night, leaving me sleepless. April 30th had been one of those nights.

I heard my alarm clock go off before I ever fell asleep. Guess I'm not working today then. By 'work' I meant playing music in the park and hoping some kind soul would drop a few coins in the raggedy violin case near by. It wasn't all bad, mind you. In fact, some days it was very good. Often on a bright, sunshiney day I could accumulate upwards of three hundred dollars in just a few hours, of course, I would slip the bulk of it under my hat. Only ever having a few dozen coins in there made me look more unappreciated.

I rolled out of bed, only to get stuck in my wrapped up comforter, landing face first on hard wood with an echoing 'Thunk!'

"Hey Lenny, you doing alright man? Sounded kind of painful." I heard his ear cracking voice come from through the wall. Oh, how I have always hated that tone of his. He would constantly ride my ass about dental hygeine every morning and night, Brush longer he would say Trust me on that, I'm a dentist! It gets pretty annoying after living with it for three years.

"I'm fine... Just saying good morning to the floor, with my face." He laughed loudly, apparently loud enough to wake up the girl he plowed the night before. I heard a muffled argument, something about a rebound and something about a roofy I think it was, who cares.

I managed to make my way into the kitchen before this new girl stormed out of the apartment, carrying half of her clothes. I made my self a cup of coffee and sat down to read the paper. The only thing about the news that ever really caught my eye was the fact that it gave me an excuse to avoid conversations in mornings. I noticed Johnny walk into the room, somehow already dressed for work. He looked at me. "Did we keep you up last night?" I nodded. "Sorry man, you know what blue eyes do to me. Tell ya what, I'll take off work early and we can both go get a drink, on me. Sound fair?" I nodded again, sipping my coffee.

No matter what I might say about Johnny Silvertooth, he was a good friend and had a good income. Good friends mean friendly gestures, good incomes mean really enjoyable friendly gestures. When my parents threw me out after I dropped out of college, he was more than willing to let me stay with him. In fact, he celebrated the idea with a party. I only remember about five minutes of that party, up until the strippers arrived. I didn't notice he had left for work, until I decided to do the very same.

I returned to my room and got dressed in a simple dark blue jeans, sandals, white dress shirt and black fedora. It was a peculiar outfit, yes, but peculiar draws attention, attention draws money. I looked around for a bit, eventually finding my phone and keys under an old pizza box. I still, to this day, don't remember eating pizza in that room, not once. I've long since learned it was not to question the strange little things I do unconsciously. Finding the rest of the things I would need was the easy part, all in the locked chest in my closet. It was locked because I refuse to ever trust my drunken self with actual valuables, so I keep the key in a smaller case that is designed to only open after passing a breathalyzer test for drunkenness.

Opening the chest, I saw my most prized possessions in this world. My grandfather's violin and my lucky necklace were inside of it, among other various knickknacks from over the years. One thing in particular I did not remember putting there, was a gift box wrapped in mint green paper with a white ribbon bow. Curiously, I picked it up, it was no bigger than my laptop; though a good bit taller, it was about the same width and length. I looked at the name tag and it read 'Save it for later, - A friend'

There was a burning itch in the back of my mind to just tear into it. To discover what hidden secrets someone would leave me. To bask in the glorious wonder of discovering who knew of my semi-hidden chest. To beat that someone senseless for going into it.

I sighed with a glance at the clock at the wall. I'll be late, can't let anyone see me setting up. Have to be playing at sunrise. It was a bit of a habit of mine, to greet the world every morning with a cheerful and jaunty tune. Getting people up and moving to a song was my purpose in life, nothing ever brought me greater joy than the time a crying woman walked past me and heard me playing an improvised tune on a cloudy day. She had stopped and listened for a bit before I picked up the rhythm and we both broke into dance. I never did learn her name, barely remember her face even. We never exchanged a single word. What I do remember, was that she had looked like she was on the edge of deciding if life was worth living when I first saw her. When she left a few hours later, it was with smiling eyes and a skip in her step. Doing things like that are what make life worth living for me.

The mere fact that it can be done is reason enough to try, but to actually do it? I was happier than a clopper in an equestrian whore house, just knowing that I did that for someone else. I suppose that is a rather odd comparison to use, it's one of the many I had picked up from Johnny. He was a die hard fan of the show 'My little Pony Friendship is Magic' back when it was on the air. I had watched it with him every now and then on rainy days, but I never really got into it myself. If you were to walk into Johnny's room at any given time, you could instantaneously see about thirty posters of usually very graphic pony-based material. Even his bed spread was a custom made on designed to look like the purple unicorn and the blue pegasus were in an intimate position. I, personally, found it disturbing that he sleeps under that.

Anywho, back to what I was saying before I derailed myself.

I grabbed the Violin and slid an old portable white dry-erase board and some markers from behind the chest. The park was just across the street, so I didn't bother getting a ride. When I got there I made my way to my usual spot, where one of the stone-paved walkways made a circle around a lone, grand old oak tree. I sat down on a nearby bench and selected a marker from my pocket at random and began doodling.

After a few minutes, the first peaks of light were beginning to appear over the horizon. I breathed a deep breath and set aside the white board. It now read "I hope you have a fine day today- Lenny Love Song " Under that I decided to add a small "(Donations would be appreciated!)" I grinned my approval and withdrew my violin.

I was sitting on the park bench with my back to the Oak Tree, tuning the strings on the old violin, when I heard a pair of footsteps approaching. I thought nothing of it until I heard a soft. "Uhh, Hello?" I turned to see a familiar face, the very one who had made me fall in love with the Art of Song all over again.

"How do you do miss? I'm afraid I'm not quite tuned properly yet, my ears seem to be off this morning."

"I'm doing... well. Much better than last time I saw you, I'm afraid I failed to introduce myself last time, my name is Ruth."

"It's a pleasure to meet you Ruth, " I said with a chuckle "My name is Lenny, Lenny Love Song"

I noticed her blushing a little as she smiled. "Ah, but thats just the name I put on the sign, easier to remember. My real name is Lyle Strongheart. It's a bit too 'brave heart-ish' for my liking. So I go with Lenny instead. What can I get for ya ma'am?" I had returned to tuning as I spoke, albeit much quieter.

"Well, you see... The thing is... " She seemed shy. "I run a small candy shop across town, it's a depressing little neighborhood and I was wondering if I could pay you to come play outside my shop? You know, to help with the atmosphere."

I looked her dead in the eyes. "Absolutely not."

"Huh?" She looked like she was about to tear up."

"I refuse to take payment in something I will happily do for free!" I said with a smirk. "Where might this shop be located? I can go fetch my car in be there within the hour!"

She looked confused, to say the least, until she realised what I had meant. "Oh! Sure! Uhh, can I just write the address on the corner of your white board there? It's a little long to memorize."

"Have at it."

When she was done, she just nodded her head and walked off through the park. I called after her "I'll meet you there tomorrow at sun up!" She waved her hand lightly in the air and gave a thumbs up in confirmation as she rounded a turn into the more forested part of the park. What an interesting person...

I decided that that day's tune would be a lively one. It ended up being a song of anticipation and excitement, a massive contrast to my usually calm style.

It was nearly 6pm when my phone went off, alerting me of a phone call. I picked it up and answered with my usual swag-filled "Yellow?"

"You. Me. Bar. Now. Drunk. Get."

"Sure, I'll drive ya home Johnny, if ya grab me some whiskey while your there."

"Right, see ya in a few man, just bring a car. I ain't wanna walk."

"yeah yeah, I know, give me a minute, gotta pack up."

"Have you ever thought so hard about not thinking?" This is when I hung up on him. His drunkenness had reached the stage of 'Drunken philosopher' and his only cure was a good nights rest, followed by a powerful hangover.

I walked into the bar and immediately spotted Johnny. He was dancing a jig on a small circular table. This left me two options.

A) Be a good friend and help him down before he hurt himself

B)Wait for him to slip, and laugh my ass off.

I chose B, waited it out, and walked up to him. "How drunk are you Johnny?"

"Drunk enough to get tattoo'd and not remember doing it!" He pulled his pants leg up to his thigh and revealed a large, old timey hour glass.

"Okay, time to go home then."

"I WANT A PET TOASTER!" He exclaimed, his weight suddenly falling onto my shoulder.

I dragged him to the bar tender. "Sup Phil, you got his keys?"

"Aye, 'ere they are lad."

"Thanks again for agreeing to not sell anything to him before he hands em over."

"The fewer drunks on the road, the better. You're sober right?"

"Only until I get home. I've had a great day, and I'm gonna end it in style."

The burly Phil let out a strong laugh and pulls a few keys on a ring out from under the counter. "You just be sure not to delve into that stuff until yer home, alright?" He was gesturing towards the fresh bottle of Jack Daniel's in Johnny's hand.

"As much as I'd like to, I'm no idiot. Can barely afford the car, don't need tickets too."

Phil leaned over the counter towards me. His old, wrinkled face and deep, gruff tone set an everlasting aura of a sagely presence when he was in the room. In his eyes there was always a deep understanding in every situation. You could figure it out by looking at him, this guy knew his shit. "Just be careful then, there is a strange feeling in the air tonight. Something old, something dangerous. Do me a favor and don't follow any strangers, read any old books out loud, or anything of the sort. "

I gave a light chuckle. "Alright Phil, I'll see you later then. Let me know if ever ya need a livelier atmosphere."

"Will do lad, will do." I gave a laugh, and dragged the semi-awake Johnny back to his car and drove us home.

I eventually managed to drag the poor drunken sob into our apartment, and the first thing that either of us notice is two boxes on the counter. One was wrapped in a pale blue paper, where the other was in the same green I had seen earlier; it wasn’t the same box though. In between the two sat an envelope. I let the drunkard collapse to the floor and I opened it up. It contained a lone piece of paper that read “I forgot these earlier, go ahead and open your other ones first.”

Weird… who in the hell?

“Wuzzah?” The drunken fool hanging from my shoulder said.

“Looks like two presents, one for you, one for me.”

“Makes sense” How in the hell the drunk out of his mind dumb ass that had been drooling on the floor figured this out before me? I still don't know. “It’s our birthday after all.”

I looked over at the calendar over the sink. “Well, I’ll be damned! It is!”

“You forgot didn’t you?”

“Maybe…”

“That’s what I’m here for! *hiccup*”

“Go home Gate, your drunk.”

“I aint home already?” He spun around dizzily looking at the ceiling. Dumb ass

“No, you’re on the moon.”

“Wha? Celestia I’m sorry, I don’t wanna live here for a thousand years!” He had actually gotten a little teary eyed after that. I facepalmed.

I went back into my room and fetched the first box that had been in my chest, I set it on the kitchen counter. “That letter said something about us both finding boxes earlier, you find yours yet?”

“Oh, you mean that thing that was in my glove box? I put it in the fridge.”

“Why did you put a present in the refrigerator?”

“I didn't want it to melt.” I shook my head and got it out, it was wrapped the same as his other one but in size it was about the same size as a football, yet rectangular. I set it on the counter with the others and looked towards the slowly sobering Johnny. “Hey, who do you think they’re from?”

“Hell if I know, probably some creep. Who else would know it was both of our birthday’s?” My eyes suddenly went wide. “You forgot didn't you.”

“Yeah… ”

“Dude, I just reminded you not but ten minutes ago! You have terrible memory issues.”

“ I'm sorry, who are you?” I got a friendly punch in the arm as he laughed. “So, do we open them?”

“I don't see why not. The letter said to open the first two first.”

“Why not? What if some terrorist is sending us bombs that go off when we open them? What if it’s a device that sprays the plague in our faces as soon as we look inside? What if-“

“You are just being paranoid again.”

“I’m never paranoid! Everyone just wants to get me!”

He rolled his eyes and looked at his packages. “Still though, should probably open the 2nd ones first, just in case.” He reached for the second one but was stopped by a disgusting black beetle landing on the package. We both always hated bugs, especially black ones.

It’s not that we are racist, we both just really dislike bugs. Black bugs are just a little (a lot) more gross (gut wrenchingly horrendous) than the rest. Okay, so we are both bug-racists. Deal with it.

He instead reached for the first package he had received, the one that he put in the fridge. As he slowly pulled the ribbon apart, millions of scenarios were playing through in my head. I eventually decided on the most likely, he had planted all four and was messing with me. The ribbon fell apart around the carefully wrapped package, the paper around it soon followed. His marvelously skilled hands were gently pulling seams to their unfolded position, the concentration he had was nearly palpable in the air. It had always amazed me, watching him work like that. It was as if all time stood still, and all movement ceased; everything waited for each of his carefully planned movements.

I had once asked him how he did it, and the only response I got was him asking how I manage to let my fingers dance on the strings of any instrument I touch. He had said that it was like a waltz between masters who had nothing left in life but to dance to the rhythm of their own feet.

The wrapping paper was gone , revealing a boring brown box, he could see inside, but I could not. “YES! IT IS JUST WHAT I’VE ALWAYS WANTED! THANK YOU SO MUCH MYSTERIOUS STRANGER!!!” He pulled out a strange little plush animal. I recognized it as a pony from that TV show, but something was off about it. “LOOK! LOOK HEART LOOK! I GOT A LYRA PLUSHIE!” He was quite literally rubbing it in my face.

And then I noticed the hole. I nearly choked on air when I saw it, purely out of surprise. Once I caught my breath, I looked him dead in the eye. “Is that some kind of… clop thing?”

“Some kind of- what? No, no no no no no! Eww! It’s a plush little Lyra Heartstrings puppet!” He stuck one hand up the thing’s rump and made faces at it, pretending to talk to it. “Some brony back during season 2 I think made the first one, a lot of people thought exactly what you did. Some bought it as a gag gift, and eventually they got mass produced for a short time. These are so rare now… I wonder where it came from.” I grew weary of listening to his pony talk, so I walked over to where my first present lay.

I took none of the time or care in unwrapping that Johnny had. I just tore into it. Opening the box, I saw something surprising. It was a small, hand held harp, a lyre. I had never played on personally, but I was ecstatic at the thought of learning to. I took it out of the box and attentively plucked a few strings. Johnny looked over at it and me with wide, horrified eyes. “What’s wrong Johnny?”

“Your eyes… they just changed colors for a moment, they were… some kind of mix between hazel and green.”

“Dude, my eyes are brown, dark brown.”

“Well, they are now, but a little lighter…” I walked over to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I looked into my own eyes and saw them widen in surprise. My eyes had somehow managed to pale themselves into a light brown. Johnny walked into the bathroom and stood beside me in the mirror. He handed me the lyre.

“Play the lyre like before, see if it happens again.” I took the thing with a shaky hand. I was a tad nervous to even touch the strings, but my hand did it anyways. Before I knew it, a calm sonata was sounding out. The sound gently rolling up to our ears, while our eyes were wide and blood shot in horror. My eyes were golden in the mirror, glowing a pale yellow.

I immediately threw the thing into the living room, it landed gently on the couch. My eyes went back to the light brown from before.

“Johnny… What the fuck was that?!”

“I… think we should open the other presents now.”

“No way man, we need to get out of here, someone is fucking with us and they are seriously good at it. I need to –“ I had started to ramble on quietly under my breath, each word more shaky and uncertain than the last. Johnny just slapped me across the face.

The shock of it was more than enough to snap me back to normal. “Thanks, bro. I really needed that.”

“I could tell, I might need one here in a minute myself.” I laughed a little at what I thought had been a joke. His cold blue eyes said otherwise. Wait, Johnny’s eyes weren’t blue.

“Johnny…”

“Huh?”

“Mirror.”

“What?”

“Look in the mirror.” He did, and then gasped. He reeled back, crashing through the bathroom door and into the other room.

“What in the fuckery is going on?!”

“Let’s open those other presents Johnny.”

“Yeah… okay.”

We walked into the kitchen and looked to the two, ominous rectangles on the counter. Both were wrapped in the same patterns as before, it was obvious which was meant for whom. I grabbed mine first, “Let’s just open them at the same time.” He shook his head in agreement and grabbed his own. “On three…”

We both tore into them shouting “THREE!” simultaneously.

Each box seemed to house a number of small, pocket sized books. We emptied them out onto the coffee table before looking at what books they were. Under the books, small envelopes floated out. Neither envelope was labeled, but each had a picture of pony on the front. One was Lyra, and the other was a blue unicorn I didn’t know the name of. “Lyra and Colgate… two unicorns. One plays the lyre, the other is a dentist. I think you are right, somepony is seriously fucking with us.”

“Told ya.” I reached over and grabbed the Lyra envelope, it was obviously meant for me. I opened it up and saw a small folded letter in side.

‘Dear “Lenny LoveSong”, seeing as that is what you call yourself.

You are going to experience some big changes, savor what you have while you can. You won’t be seeing me or hearing from me again, but I will be watching.

Signed ~C’

I read it aloud several times before Johnny grabbed the other letter.

‘Dear “Johnny SilverTooth”, at least your name can pass for normal.

I imagine “Lenny” Is going to be freaking out soon, do try and keep him from hurting himself, please. Enjoy the books, they will be more useful than you might think.

Signed ~C’

He read his to himself, and told me what it said after. “What’s so bad about the name Lenny?! Whoever this ‘C’ is, I’m going to kick his ass!”

“Calm down Lenny, just calm down. We need to stay as serious as we can right now.”

“SERIOUS? I AM PLENTY FUCKING SERIOUS FOR BOTH OF US! IF ANYTHING, YOU ARE NOT BEING SERI-” I received another painful slap across the face. Rubbing it to sooth the sting, I smiled. “Thanks.”

“Mm-hmm.” He nodded.

“So, what do you think is with all the little books?”

“Dunno, maybe we should read the titles?”

“Good idea.”

It turns out, the books ranged from a variety of subjects. They covered things such as equine anatomy, taking care of horses, general health things related to all things horse. Johnny’s eyes were wide as saucers the entire time, I imagine mine were as well but I didn’t want to look in a mirror right now. As we dug through the stacks of small, pocket-sized books, I found one with a rather unusual title “Unicorn magic for beginners.” I held it up in the air, “Hey Johnny, the hell you think this is?”

He swiped it from my hands, with a mannick grin. “Don’t you see?”

“Uhh what?”

“We are not long for this world, old chap!”

“Pardon?”

“WE’RE GOING TO BECOME PONIES!” His voice sounded cracked, a little mannick. I gave him a quick slap across the face. Although apparently, I did so a tad too hard. He fell to the floor unconscious, still smiling like a pedophile running a daycare.

I backed away slowly and made my way to the kitchen yet again. “I need a damn drink.”

---Several hours, and a half a bottle of Jack Daniels later…---

I rolled around on the side walk, laughing at the sight of my golden eyes in the mirror-like reflection on the window of a close store. Some one approached me. “Hey buddy, you alright?”

“Never better! My eyes just turned colors as I watched!”

“Dude, you're drunk. Go home.”

“HOME IS WHERE THE CREEPY CRAWLIES ARE!”

“Right then, see you later then Heart.”

“All right, see you around, Twinkle.” The stranger and I both started to walk in separate directions when we both turned completely around. We looked each other in the eyes, his eyes were a crystally, inhumanly clear blue. “Did you just call me Heart?”

“Did you just call me Twinkle?”

“Today… wouldn't happen to be your birthday, would it?”

“H-How did you know?”

“Did you receive two packages today? No identification on them besides the creepy letter signed ‘C’?”

“Are you C?” He started stepping backwards.

“No, no not at all. I got two packages too. So did my roommate. It’s both of our birthdays, and we both have gained a new eye color today.” A sobering thought. “And I assume you did as well, because he and I have both been calling each other ‘Gate’ and ‘Heart’. I assume you realize, that is incredibly weird. And you just called me Heart without me ever telling you my name at all. And I suddenly am calling you Twinkle, without a thought about it? I don't t believe in coincidences.”

The poor guy was terrified, but frozen in place. “So, Twinkle, what did you do to make your eyes change?”

"I was just sort of hanging out with some old friends when suddenly someone said 'I thought your eyes were green?' I looked around for a mirror, and was just now in the process of running home."

I heard another set of footsteps approaching, and fast. "LENNY! PROBLEM! HELP! NOW!"

Turning my head, I saw Johnny sprinting straight for me. A very large mass of bugs were chasing him. Mine and Twinkle's eyes both went wide. "That him?" I nodded. "You guys too?" I nodded again.

We all were sprinting madly down the road, desperately seeking refuge from this horrid swarm. We were running out of energy, I could tell by the sound of errant panting from either side of me. I decided to waste some breath by talking.

"If... We... can get... under...water..." I huffed between breaths. "We ... should ... be fine!"

"Nice, idea Lenny. Why are you just now saying this?" I heard from behind me and to the right.

"Because... Pool... ahead..."

"The public pool? It's closed at this hour!"

"We've... all... got... running... starts... fence.... just... obstac-.... obstacle."

Almost as I said it, the 10-foot high fence came into view. I heard Johnny start really breathing heavily as he sprinted ahead of Twinkle and I. He jumped a few feet away from it, managed to hit the fence about half way up it. Twinkle followed suit. I, however, am in far worse shape. I couldn't even muster a jump until I ran square into the fence. The bugs were seconds away, so I scrambled to my feet.

I was just reaching the top of the fence when I could hear that gods-forsaken buzzing getting close. "Hurry up Lenny!" "Come on Heart!" I was hearing them from inside the pool. I pushed every ounce of energy I had left into it and kicked off the top of the fence, I felt the bugs start biting me mid-air, but I landed squarely in the middle of the pool. The bugs were very close, the buzzing was almost a roar.

We all ducked our heads under with the deepest breaths we could take. I blacked out immediately.

---==---

Day two: May 2nd:

I woke to the sound of ambulance sirens, along with a banging on my chest. I coughed up some water and rolled over, groaning. "Euhhh... What the hell did I drink last night?"

I looked to the kind person who had given me CPR. "Phil? Holy shit, Phil? How in the what?!"

"I was on my way home when I saw you three running into the pool. Clever move, jumping in the pool. Wonder what was with those bugs."

"I don't know, but where are Johnny and Twinkle?"

"If by Twinkle, you mean that other guy with weird eyes, he woke up about an hour ago, he had to hurry home and seemed fine. The first police officer managed to get Johnny awake with CPR a few minutes ago, he asked me to do it for you while he got you an ambulance."

"Wait, police ? Ambulance? I wasn't aware that running for my life was a crime."

"No, but the guy also saw you jumping in, it was quite the ruckus, he had come in to arrest you once the bugs were gone, he assumed you lot were vandals. Once he realised you were all floating in the pool, he called an ambulance immediately after getting someone (me) to make sure you didn't die."

"Ah, " I scratched the back of my head. "Well, shit. Thanks man."

"Not a problem lad. Now then, let's go find Johnny."

It turns out Johnny was in the bathroom stall near the pool, of all things he could possibly be doing... He was brushing his teeth.

I snuck up behind him. "Pssst. *buzzbuzz* " He jumped a good foot in the air at that. Well worth the laugh I managed to get for myself.

"What the hell Lenny?"

"What the hell? Dude, What the hell was with those bugs?! I thought I was gonna die!"

Paul chimed in from outside. "You did! Your heart stopped twice."

"Right, see? point proven!"

"Calm down, we're both fine now, even if covered in assloads of bug bites. Don't get me started on the itch ." As soon as he said the words, I was suddenly aware of a burning itch on every exposed inch of my body.

"Fuuuuuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck itchy!" I ran outside and rubbed my bare back against the brick wall. "Ahhhh..... so much better."

Johnny poked his head outside and looked at my odd behaviour. "Dude, really? Your covered in bug bites, and you scratch on a wall? Really dude? Really?"

"Shut up..." I panted. "Feels... good. At least I didn't just survive near-death by bugs, only to brush my dang teeth."

He looked at me with a grimace. "Your fingers are doing your weird hand thing again. I don't want to hear a damn thing from you about odd behaviour!"

"Huh?" I looked down at my misbehaving appendages. "Stop that." I told them, they didn't listen. "Stop!" They still didn't. I decided to sit on them, but they kept twitching underneath my weight. "ARGH! I can't stop my hands from doing it! How many times have I asked you not to point things like this out to me?!" It was an old habit, one that had been there since before I even learned to play. I learned to ignore it myself, it stopped eventually after a few minutes, but when someone points it out, I can't make myself stop until the song my hand's are playing manages to reach my ears. Seeing as how there was nothing around that was musical, my hands just kept twitching furiously.

"Let's just get home, you can fix your... thing when we get there."

I put my hands in my pockets and shouted to Paul. "HEY PAUL! Wheres my shirt?"

"Cop guy cut it off to prevent restricted air flow, it was stuck on your pants button so we couldn't slip it off."

"Joy. Guess I'm walking home shirtless. "

"Ohhh no you're not lad, You had water in your lungs for nearly two hours. You should be dead right now, your going to that hospital."

"Oh come on .... Hospitals smell so ... sterile." Right under bugs, hospitals have always been my biggest fear, every time I go to one (even the first time) I end up in pain and/or tears.

"Quit being a pussy Lenny, your going."

"Alright alright."

The ambulance arrived and the EMT was amazed at the fact that I had survived. He had honestly expected me to be dead when he got there. People don't just hold a lung full of water for two hours and walk away from it. Paul and Johnny made him agree to take me to the emergency room, for the bug bites if anything. I looked out the ambulance's rear windows and saw the sun starting to rise. Damn it, sorry Ruth. I sighed.

"You alright?" The EMT asked.

"Yeah, just supposed to be somewhere right now. Some girl heard me playing my violin yesterday, invited me over to her store this morning to help cheer the area up. I told her I'd be there at sun up, but I guess that isn't happening today."

"Ouch. Hmm, you look kind of familiar. You perform in the park right?" I nodded.

"Lyle Strongheart, AKA Lenny Love song, the destroyer of bad days and the harbinger of a good time, at your service." I had said that with a bit more sarcasm than intended, but he still laughed.

"Guess that explains the tattoos on your legs."

"Huh?"

"Oh, I noticed them earlier when I was checking all of those bug bites."

"But I don't have any tattoos, never had the cajones."

"Guess someone decided otherwise while you were out of it. There are definitely two harp things on your legs. Look for yourself." He turned around, facing the wall of the ambulance to give me some privacy. I slipped my pants down to my knees once he couldn't see. Sure as sugar, there were two stylized cartoonish lyre's on my legs. Oh hell, he better not have been right. If he was right, I am so going to murder him in the face.

Pulling my pants back up, I sighed again. "Yeah, I guess someone did."

I was faintly aware of the endless buzzing in the back of my mind, as I was wheeled into the awful place that was referred to as a place of healing. That dreadful place, was the local hospital. It was never very busy, as I lived in a rather small town. The only times anyone ever came here was for legitimate emergencies, such as missing limbs. That is the reason I assumed that people were looking at me so oddly when I was being wheeled into the ER. I was placed in a bed, in a room; and was left to stew in my thoughts.

Why did I agree to come here?

Why did I pass out in the pool?

Why were those bugs chasing Johnny?

Hey, who’s that?

A doctor walked in, and introduced himself as some name that I only remember made him sound like he should be a plumber. Fixing pipes, kicking turtles, eating mushrooms, and saving a princess, that’s all I remember about that guy’s name. “So then, I see that you had quite the night.” Typical doctor talk, he was infuriatingly understating the fact that I should be dead right now.

“Hmm, yes, quite the night it was.”

“Might I ask, the report had said you were covered scalp-to-toe in a myriad of different bug bite welts, was that a lie?”

“What? No, of course not! Look at me!” I gestured towards my still bare chest with my hands, once they were in sight I stopped breathing for a moment. “Whoa. Okay, I was a walking welt last time I looked, okay? Is this normal at all?”

“The report also said you had water in your lungs for at least two hours.”

“I was running from a swarm of bugs, jumped into a public pool as they caught up to me, Ducked my head until they went away. Next thing I know, I’m waking up without a shirt on. My back was incredibly itchy, I ended up scratching it on a freaking brick wall.”

“I’m going to just take a look at your eyes for a moment, do you mind taking those contacts off?” He reached into a pocket and withdrew a small flash light.

“I don’t wear contacts, used to wear glasses as a kid though, junked ‘em cause they made me look lame.”

“Listen, I don’t have time for games sir, please just take off the colored contacts.”

“OH! That’s what you meant. Yeah, these aren’t contacts. Actual colors here. I don’t know how to explain it either, but halfway through last night some things happened and I ended up with golden eyes. Kinda makes me want to go play my n64 if anything.”

I saw him scribble some things down on his note pad, probably that I was a nutter of some sort. Jack ass. “So, when did that happen?”

“About 10pm I think? I don’t know. I had started drinking that night, got to celebrate my birthday somehow, right? My roommate and I walked into the kitchen, we started goofing around, he pointed out the weird color, I went to the bathroom and looked. Lo and behold, new eye color. I looked at him and pointed out that his had gone from green to blue.”

“This happened to your roommate as well?”

“Yeah, don’t know his story about it though. At first I thought I was drunk enough for him to be seriously messing with me. Ol’ Jack has that effect sometimes.”

I finally managed to get a light laugh out of this piece of stone. “So, where is he? This seems like the kind of thing you go to a hospital for.”

“Ah, well. After I had left him passed out in the living room, I went outside for a walk. Next thing I know, he and I are being chased by an amorphous black cloud of bugs, you know the rest.”

“Right, right… Here, fill this out and I’ll be back soon.” He handed me some forms, general hospital ‘We want to stalk you until you die, and then charge you for it,’ kind of rubbish.

One thing caught my attention, on the name line. I had written ‘Lyra Heartstrings’ in curly, feminine script. I did a double take at it, and just scribbled it out, writing the proper name next to it in the margin. I was only half way done with the form, when a nurse came into the room.

“Mr. Strongheart? Your family is here to pick you up.”

“What? Noone even knows I’m in here except for Johnny.”

“Go. Now.” I could have sworn her eyes went green for a moment, and her voice was laced with venom, so I scrambled out of the bed.

“Alright alright, can you at least point me towards the exit? I’ve been kind of out of it this morning.”

“Certainly, Mr. Strongheart, right this way.” She grabbed my shoulder and led me out and into the lobby.

“Wait, when did I ever tell you my name? No one ever picked that form up…” My eyes went wide at the realization.

“Just go, if you know what’s good for you. There are eyes everywhere, Mr. Strongheart. You cannot avoid their gaze.”

I shivered at the thought, and obediently followed. If ever I was to get a chance at getting some answers, I’d have to at least know who is making me ask the questions.

We exited the hospital door, and my eyes immediately found a black limo, door open and waiting.

“Here’s your ride, sir.” She said, and then a little quieter “Get in.”

I sighed, and reluctantly obeyed. The windows were tinted, and there were no lights inside the limo, I could tell that other people were here though. Their breathing was audible. I counted five others, two seated on the same side as me, three on the other. Two frightened heartbeats, three calm.

Since when can I hear this well? My fingers started fidgeting on their own accord again.

The door closed as soon as I was seated, and the lights turned on to a dull yellow glow.

I looked to my left and saw Johnny and Twinkle sitting on the same seat as I. Across from us sat a woman with dull blue hair and bright green eyes, and two very large men in suits. Bodyguards, I assumed. No one spoke until we were moving.

“H-hey Heart… your hands are doing that thing again.”

“Screw you, Gate,” Was my only response.

The woman across from us cleared her throat loudly, silencing the oncoming bickering. “I assume the three of you have some questions?”

Twinkle spoke up. “Of course we do! What the fuck is going on?! Who the fuck are you?! Why the fuck is my hair pink?!” I had to look again to confirm that last one. I laughed at what I saw. “Shut up Heart, at least I don’t reek of mint leaves.”

“I’d rather smell like mint than like tooth paste. Why do I smell like mint though?” I sniffed my hand, she was right. Johnny punched me in the leg, right over where the lyre was.

“There is nothing wrong with the scent of toothpaste, it is one of cleanliness and hygiene.”

“Yeah, but why you smell like it?”

“Because I do, it’s better than strawberry shortcake over there.”

Twinkle had his head in his hands, poor guy was worse off than both of us combined.

The guard on the woman’s left whispered in her ear. “Ma’am, the changes are accelerating. Maybe the swarm was too much?” My eyes shot wide.

“Silence, you idiot! The green one has skilled ears!” She hissed back.

“The green one? There is nothing green about me, lady.” I said calmly.

Johnny reached over and brushed my hair down into my field of vision. It was a light sea green, with some paler bits mixed in the middle.

And I could never see my hair without a mirror before now, it was too short.

“Uhh, guys. What the fuck?”

Johnny coughed. I looked at him, his hair was blue, darker than the lady’s hair, about the same pale blue as his eyes. “Okay, Johnny, you can tell them to let us out now, and you can stop this over-played prank. It’s getting really creepy now.”

He chuckled a bit. “That’s what I said to Twinkle earlier.”

I looked over to the pink haired mass of misfortune. I saw the glimmer of a tear fall from his face and to the floor, twinkling in the dull light. “My name isn’t Twinkle, it’s Sam.” There was an awkward silence for a few minutes. My hands were dying for a song to be played.

“Look, wherever we are going, can we stop by our apartment first? I’ve got to get something to cure this twitch. I can’t focus on a damn thing until then.”

The woman nodded, and the limo came to a stop in seconds. I couldn’t see out through the tinted windows, so I thought it was a red light until the door opened. The light flooded in and was nearly blinding. I clenched my eyes shut and moved my hands in front of them. “AGH! BRIGHT!”

“Go get the lyre, and come right back down.” She looked to the guard on her left and whispered “Make sure he’s quick.”

“Ya know, whispering really has no purpose, I can hear you as clear as day.”

She groaned a bit. “Just go already, fool.”

“Yeesh, there is no need to be rude, we can all be civilized here.”

The guard picked me up by the arm and dragged me out of the limo. We walked up the stairs to our apartment, he motioned for me to go in. I stopped when I saw another black beetle on the doorknob.

“No way, I’ve dealt with enough bugs today, you kill it.” He just growled and swatted it away.

I went in, got the lyre off the couch, and had an idea. I ran to my room and grabbed a random t-shirt from the closet. While I was there, I slipped a pocket knife into my pocket, just in case.

“Hurry up in there!” I heard him shout from outside.

“I’m working on it, I can’t find the thing!” I also took the time to use the restroom, because I had the idiotic urge to piss off these people. I was always impatient for impatient people’s attittudes...

He and I made our way back to the limo, and to one very impatient looking woman. Wonder what’s up her ass. “I'm baaaaack, I know you missed my glorious visage, I apologize for depriving you of this beauty.” The guard slammed me back into my seat, rather forcefully I might add. “Rude.”

“ You'd best stay your tongue child, just play the thing.”

“So long as you guys are forcing me to do ANYTHING, I am going to make it as hard for you as possible, I promise.” The woman snarled at me, showing some rather pointy teeth. I complied with her so called request, calming my frantic twitching as my hands let loose the flood gates on a quiet, eerie tune. She could use a dentist.

The limo started off again, and so did the woman’s annoying voice. “I assume that the two of you, “ she pointed at Sam and Johnny. “are smart enough to realize that I am ‘C’. I am not so sure about the green one’s intellect quite yet. He seems to be quite the fool.”

I opened my mouth in mock shock as Johnny replied. “Yeah, kind of figured that out a long time ago, and yeah, Lenny is an idiot.” I punched him in the arm. “So, let’s get down to business. Who the hell are you, what the hell is going on, all that good stuff. You can figure out what’s confusing us.”

She relaxed her face, returning to a neutral expression. “Very well, you need only call me ‘C’. I have another name, but it carries too many negative connotations.”

“I hear that!” I interjected with a smirk.

“Of course you do, fool. I am speaking, am I not?” I sighed in defeat. She needs to learn to spot a joke. “As you have more than likely realized, what is happening to you is not normal.” No shit, Sherlock. “I know the blue one has an inkling of who I am, and I ask you to speak nothing of it. Beyond what you know, I eventually became rather regretful, burdened by a starving hive. Many of my people starved within weeks, the hunts were relentless. Many of our foes fell to our revenge, and many more of my people left the Hive, to simply replace one of the dead foes, abandoning their former lives. You three were under the latter category, and due to a certain beast that threatens to wipe out all life, much of that threatened life found it’s way into this world. However, we were forced into this hideous beastial forms and lives. Those of us still within the Hive maintained our memories and souls, as we were not the primary targets of that beast. You three however, had forsaken your place in the Hive and traded your once-glorious abilities and bodies for a simple life of your own. I never understood why, until recently. This world, this nation promotes free thought and self-expression, something the Hive had no use for. I do not blame you three for leaving, but it is time we all returned to our individual forms. The spell that sent us to this world is weakening, and will soon be no more.”

Johnny decided to speak during the pause. “So you are saying that we are all former-changelings, and were sent to this world by… ?”

“I do not know the Beast’s name, simply his actions. He wreaked havoc upon all things, toying upon the very fabric of time and space.”

“Discord.”

Day two continued: Gas stations.

It was then, that I decided to point out the elephant in the room. “Prove it.”

C looked at me, “Excuse me?”

“Prove just one damn thing you are telling us, and I might believe you. All that I know for certain, is that our hair and eyes have been changing. I don’t know who in the hell you are. I do not know who in the fuck you think I am. What I do know, is that I am me, and there is not a damn thing you can say that will change that. No matter what in the hell I look like, I AM ME!” I looked the woman dead in the eyes.

“I don’t care what you want. I don’t care what you need. I am me, and I am staying that way.”

Everyone was breathless until she smiled smugly. The guard on the left reached into his jacket, I reached for my lyre without realizing it. He started to draw something from it, but I drew my lyre first.

Melodious notes began to flow, and everyone was staring at me with wide eyes. I blinked once, and the world around me took on a different appearance. Individual colors of the world dimmed, yet the colors of everyone in the world sharpened. I started to see a form of aura glowing around each person. Johnny’s was flowing downwards from his head, colored a sharp blue. Sam’s was emanating from his chest, spiraling around his being in a pale red. The woman and the guards were green, starting from their disgustingly pointy teeth.

The melody accelerated; and for the first time in my life, the song started in my mind as opposed to my fingers. One word echoed throughout my thoughts, with each of its repetitions I could see a dull green wave flowing a long with the sound. I focused my vision onto my captors. For a moment, I almost thought I saw C say something, but all I could hear was heartbeats, breathing, and my song. I began to hum lightly to its rhythm. C actually smiled, almost happily. This infuriated me, my face twisted into a roaring, silent scream.

I looked over to Johnny and Sam, they were still staring wide-eyed at me, jaws dropped. I looked each of them in the eye for just a moment, and they realized my message, plugging their ears with their fingers. I looked back to C and her goons, and uttered a single word.

"Lullaby."

The effect was immediate as the word left my tongue, the green waves I had been seeing converted themselves into pale mint-green spikes, flowing directly into their ears. All three of them looked scared for a moment, but then each fell to the floor silently. I stumbled in the same downward direction for a moment, but Johnny caught me.

“Come on, we need to get out of here.” He looked over his shoulder. “Sam, can you get the door? I’ll get Lenny.”

Sam pressed his weight against the door and pushed once to test it’s resistance. He took a step back towards the other one, as his eyes began to glow pink. He charged. The door flew out into the street, with Sam on top of it. He bounced off and into the grass along the road. Johnny grabbed my exhausted form tightly, and said “On three, I want you to curl into a ball, as tight as you can.” I nodded meekly in response.

“THREE!” He shouted, throwing me out of the speeding limo.

I hit the grass hard, feeling my entire body crack and pop in unison. It hurt like a bitch. I blacked out again.

---Day 2 continued; late afternoon.---

The next time my eyes opened, was in a heavily wooded forest. I looked around and saw Johnny and Sam talking to one another, sitting on a log with their backs to me. I saw that they were in a rather intense debate, but I was too groggy to make the words out. And then I saw their tails.

My hand reached its way down to my own, my eyes shot wide immediately. “Fuck.”

Johnny turned his head, “Oh, look who’s back from the dead. Come on over here.” His voice sounded a little off.

I tried to get up, but everything hurt too bad to move much. “Can’t move much, you come here, what are you two talking about over there?”

“What do you think?” Sam shot back. “What the hell was that thing in the limo that you did?!”

“I don’t know, but it was exhausting as fuck. What time is it?”

Sam pulled his phone out of his pocket, and tried to check the time, but when he looked at it he saw the entire thing cracked in half down the middle. “Damn it, anyone got a watch?”

Johnny perked up a bit, “Hang on, let me check mine.” He stuck one hand into his right pocket, paused for a moment, and stuck his other hand in the left. He searched every pocket he had before groaning in disappointment. “I left it in back at the apartment, crap.”

I laughed a little, only to wince at a pain in my forehead. It wasn’t quite a head ache, more like a bruise covering my entire head. “So, where are we?”

Sam looked straight up, and stuck his tongue out in the air. It was a little longer than what would be passable as human. He tasted the air for just a moment, and looked back at me. “32.7 kilometers south by south-west of town, don’t ask me how I know that. And also, don’t ask me how I thought to taste the air.”

I grinned a little, trying not to laugh. “Well, don’t ask me how I did that thing back there.”

I saw Johnny sigh a little. “Why don’t I get to do anything weird or cool?”

I laughed again, hurting myself. Once I caught my breath, I glanced at him. “Because you keep making me laugh, it hurts fucker. Stop.”

“Sorry, can’t help it.” We sat for a moment, them on a log facing me, me with my back against a tree facing them. “So, Sam, what do you do for a living?”

He rubbed his chin for a moment, and shook his head. His pink curly hair shook too, Poor, poor, Twinkle. At least Gate and I get semi-gender neutral colors. “I am-err, was an engineer. Well, was going to be at least, after I got kicked out of college the only job I could get was as a mechanic, fixing cars for cheap cash. What about you two?”

“I’m a dentist, through and through. Fixing teeth is what I do.”

“Heh, you rhymed. I’m technically jobless. I just play my violin in the park, people give me money for it. It pays my half of the rent.”

“You barely pay a fourth of the rent.”

“I try!”

“Whatever man, I don’t particularly think that matters much at this point. Look at us, multi-colored freaks with tails.”

“I’d rather be a freak with a tail, than a freak with a tail and with an obsession over dental hygiene.” I smiled meekly, awaiting the incoming shit storm.

“Ordinarily, I would kick your ass for that, but I kind of did earlier, what with, the whole me throwing you out of a speeding vehicle and what not.”

Sam coughed a little. “So then, you two obviously know each other well enough. Might I suggest we get a move on? If those … things from earlier come looking for us, they’ll be looking in the woods first. We’re only 153 meters from where they last saw us, it would be an easy find.”

“How do you know the exact distance?” I asked curiously.

“How did you knock them out by playing a song?”

We both stopped talking for a moment, then Johnny smiled. He jumped in the air and shouted “MAGIC! Let’s just call it magic! So then, I agree with Twinkle, we should really get moving.”

“I really don’t think I can, it hurts to even laugh. My forehead is fucking killing me.” Both of them looked at me.

“That splitting, pinching, yet stabbing feeling at the base of your hair line,” Sam said, “us too, quit whining. Let’s go.”

“But it’s so farrrrr….” I started to whine, more for my own amusement than out of legitimate laziness.

“Shut the hell up Heart.” Johnny threw a small pebble at me. “Quit being such a pussy and get up.”

“Fiiiine.”

The walk was long and arduous, but signs of civilization began reappearing. We started along a road, when I heard a car approaching at a deafening volume, and I fell to the ground, clenching my ears flat against my head tightly.

Wait, ears? Clenching? Flat? What?

Once the painful noise passed, I put my hand to my head. Through the silky smooth of my hair, I felt that my ears were fuzzy, pointed, and pivoting towards any noise I heard. Gate looked at me with a questioning gaze. “Hey Lenny, you alright back… there…” He trailed off when he saw me clenching my ears in my hands. His own hands reached upwards to his head, and towards his new pair of light blue ears. There was silence for a moment, save for the sound of Twinkle still walking.

“FUUUCK!”

I winced, Twinkle jumped in the air, falling forwards in surprise at the shout. He turned around and saw us both inspecting our new ears. He just looked at us and deadpanned. “Seriously, how far is this going to go?” He didn’t bother inspecting his own white ears, he just kept walking. “Come on, we might be able to pass this off as a cosplay costume if we just act nonchalantly. There is a gas station forty two meters past this upcoming hill.”

I sighed, and rose to my feet. “Yeah, good point. We should at least try and phone a cab or something. All of this walking is getting incredibly boring.” My hands started twitching again. “Did you happen to bring that lyre with you when you jumped out Gate?”

He looked at me, “Why would I do that?” I just rose my hands for him to see why. “Lenny, your eyes are glowing green again.”

I blinked a few times, and colors started sharpening once more. “Oh come on, what is it this time, possessedhands? What do you want from me?!” I felt a sharp pain in the back of my head and I fell forwards. I went to rub the back of my head, but found something stuck in my hair. I tried to pull it out, but ended up shouting “AHFUCKGETITOUTWHATISIT?” You know, they say hindsight is always 20-20, I shouldn’t of tried a jerking pull to remove something stuck in my hair. It really hurt.

Gate, unlike me, was laughing his ass off. “Dude, your lyre just came out of nowhere, how the hell did it get stuck in your hair?” He walked behind me. “Weird. How did that even get here?”

I just grumbled. “Magic… fuck magic.” That asshat wouldn’t stop laughing. We followed Twinkle, who was a good quarter mile ahead of us by this point.

We approached the gas station, when Johnny stopped. “Guys, we should hide our tails. Ears can be passed off as cosplay, but the tails are obviously real to anyone who looks closely enough.” My tail twitched, it was a weird feeling. I suppose a better way of saying it was that my tail flicked in annoyance.

“I guess you’re right, how are we gonna do this?” Sam rubbed his chin.

“I guess we’ll just have to stick it down a pants leg.” Johnny’s constant forethought was seriously getting annoying.

“I’ll go first then.” I slipped behind the nearest tree that was thick enough, and took my pants off. What I saw was rather shocking, to say the least. I was starting to grow fur, mint green fur. It was nary but a patch, starting at and including the lyre marking. “FUCK!”

Johnny came running up. “What is it? What happened?” He would have asked more questions, but he stopped talking and immediately turned around when he saw my pants were not on.

I pulled my pants back up, careful to slide the tail down my left pants leg. It was quite possibly the most uncomfortable thing you can imagine. I walked back to the others, refusing to make eye contact with Gate. “That was awkward.” He said quietly under his breath.

“Never speak of it again.”

“Huh? You heard that?”

“Dude, these ears are fucking OP. I can hear your heartbeats if I want to.” His eyes went a little wide at that, I can’t blame him. It was a rather disturbing thought to me as well.

Sam walked off behind the tree, and ever quietly returned. On the way back to us, his walk looked stiff and unnatural. I leaned over to Gate and whispered. “Is that what it looks like when I walk?” He nodded. “Jeez.” He went off to the tree himself.

“This is the most annoying thing I have dealt with in my entire life.”

“What the tail? It’s not too horribly bad, not a preferred situation, but it is bearable.”

“No, not the tail, though I agree with you on that. What I meant, was the eyes.”

“What about them?”

“My eyes are probably as good as your ears are. Everything within my field of vision, every crack between the wings of a fly, every seam between leaf and stem, every individual bit of hair on your head; I can see it all in incredible detail.”

“Whoa, neat.”

“Not neat, it’s annoying as hell, I’m getting a head ache from focusing on too many details at once.”

“Well, at least you can close your eyes. I can’t close my ears. When that car drove by earlier I honestly thought the noise was going to kill me…”

“…And that was a hybrid, a quiet one I might even.” Sam added.

I just groaned “So glad this road is unused.”

“I agree, I hate this pink ass hair.”

Gate walked back over to us with an awkard look on his face, “So… Fur.”

We both just nodded and walked across the road and towards the gas station. It was a raggedy old place, very run down, but it’s owners seemed to still care about outward apperances. It was clean, if you ignore the layer of dust over everything but the one car in the lot. Well, it was clean in my eyes, but I heard Twinkle gag a little. We made our way through the door, I gained a slight smile when I heard the pleasant bell ringing when the door opened. An old man sat at the counter, his beard and hair reaching his shoulders. He reminded me of Gandalf.

“What can I get for you, ladies?”

Twinkle whispered without turning his head, he knew I would hear it. “Did I just hear him right?” I nodded. Gate, ever the logical had already designed a story for the man.

“Hello there sir, our car broke down about 5 miles out, do you mind if we use your phone to call a cab?”

“Certainly, go right ahead.” He gestured towards a phone in the back of the store. Johnny walked over to it and started dialing. Sam just wandered the store. “Hey, uh, you do know that you have that harp thing in your hair, right?” he said, looking towards me.

I face palmed. “Don’t remind me…”

“I could… help you get it out if you’d like.” My eyes shot wide and my mind went on overdrive-paranoia again and I backed away slowly.

There is something awfully rapey about this guy…

"Look, it's fine where it is, guy."

"I don't like your tone, little lady." He walked over to the door, and locked it. Oh fuck. He approached me rather quickly, taking me by surprise. He grabbed my shirt with both hands and tore it clean in two. Oh fuck he's strong. "Flat chested eh? I can still work with that. Come here little lady!" He said whilst tackling me to the floor. He grabbed my arms in one hand and forced them behind my head. He sniffed the air a few times. "Hmmm you smell like mints." He licked his lips and ran his tongue from my stomach to my neck. "Taste like mints too. This is going to be refreshing."

I shivered at his touch. "I'm a guy, stop calling me little lady..."

He opened his eyes a little wider. "I don't mind, you look like a lady, you are little." He licked me again. "Mmm"

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!" I screamed while flailing under his weight.

"I'm working on it! My belt buckle is stubborn!" He said with a smile. I could feel the warmth of his breath on my exposed chest. I panicked a bit more.

I managed to knee him in the groin hard enough for his grip on my arms to loosen. Somehow, I managed to scramble away from the beast of a man. I took off through the store, nearly barrelling into Twinkle, who turned out to be in the middle of stealing bottled water. "TWINKLE! RUN! SALESCLERK! RAPIST! SHIT!"

"Wha-" He was interupted by a rag appearing over his mouth, held in a hand that came from nowhere. He fell, but was caught and gently set down by the hulk of a man who tore my shirt. I ran again, but slipped on the smooth tiles. He was on top of me in no time. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth, waiting for it to be over.

His breathing slowed, and he fell to the floor next to me, unconscious. "What?"

I looked up to see Gate standing over him with a shocked expression. "Well, that just worked."

"What?"

Gate leaned down and pulled a needle out of the side of the man's shoulder. "Everything went blue for a second and I saw a needle on the counter, glowing a bit more than everything else. I grabbed in and followed a sort of glowing trail on the floor. When I saw him on top of you, I felt a warmth come from the needle, and saw a glowing spot on his shoulder, I put two and two together, and he fell over."

I blinked a few times as I stood up. "Well, guess you get something neat too."

"Neat."

"Yup, Neat."

"So why is Twinkle on the floor?"

"Oh, he chloroformed her saying something about saving her for later." His eyes went wide.

"You just called him 'her' ... twice."

"Weird. So how long until the ride gets here? I don't want that guy getting back up."

"Oh! Phil is on his way, shouldn't be more than 15 minutes."

"Cool, did you tell him about all of the ... uh... stuff?"

"Not quite."

The next 15 minutes passed rather dully. I got hungry, started grabbing some snacks off the shelves. Johnny shot me a dirty look at stealing. "Dude, he just tried to rape me, he tore my shirt to peices, he chloroformed Twinkle. I think he owes us a few dollars worth of snacks."

I bit into the beef jerky I had acquired by slightly not-legal means, and immediately vomited.

"You alright Heart?"

Once I caught my breath, "What the hell is that stuff?"

He picked it up, and investigated the package. "It's just regular beef jerky."

"IT TASTES LIKE HELL!"

He took a bite, only to join me in my opinion.

Several moments passed with nothing but the sound of he and I both shivering. There was a tapping on the window, and I saw Phil wearing a hoodie with the hood drawn. Sunglasses hid most of his face, but he still had that familiar cocky smile.

"PHIL! THANK GOD! The door is locked! Can you break it?" Gate looked to me and rolled his eyes.

"You saw where he put the keys right? Just go get them."

"The keys are in his underwear."

Gate paused for a moment, "PHIL! CAN YOU BREAK THE DOOR?"

He gestured, miming out that he couldn't hear us. I rolled my eyes and took a running jump start towards the window, crashing through. (Like a boss) I got my self up, dusted off a few stray shards of glass and looked at Phil. "Can you break the door, we are kinda locked in."

He stared me in the eye until I facepalmed. "Right, window."

We rode off into town in Phils car, sleeping Twinkle in tow. "So, Phil... Never seen ya in a hoodie before, same goes for the shades." I saw him smile in the rearview mirror.

He reached up and took the shades and hood off. His hair was now in a bit of a buzzcut, and was a light amber. His eyes were a vivid red. His ears had ascended and grown fur, much like my own had. Looking at me in the mirror, he said "Heh, I thought mine were weird. Gold, green, blue, pink? I can deal with red eyes for that. "

"Oh shut up, your eyes were probably red from -other- things first."

"I haven't smoked in a good week, so you are wrong."

Johnny looked at him closely. "Let me guess, you've got a dumbbell on your thighs? Tail between them?"

"Aye, I do lass."

"Why does your accent suddenly sound forced? It used to be much more natural sounding."

"Ah, ever since the thigh thing my voice has been weird. You all sound different too. If I didn't know any better, I'd assume the lot of you were female."

Johnny had a look on his face, the very one he always got when he had a really mean idea. "Hey Snow, think you can beat me in a drink-off?"

His eyes widened, and he slammed his fists onto the car horn. He flexed all his muscles at once and screamed "YYYEAAAHHH!!!!" He huffed for a moment, and returned to normal. "Sorry, I have no idea where that came from."

"Heh, nice one Johnny."

We were still driving around when Twinkle woke up. At first he seemed groggy, but then a little panicky. And then he started screaming. "WHAT'S GOING ON? WHO'S CAR IS THIS? WHO IS THAT GUY? WHY DOES HE HAVE EARS TOO? WHERE IS THE RAPIST? WHY WAS I ASLEEP? WHY IS HEART NOT WEARING A SHIRT?"

"Calm down Twinkle, thats just Phil. He's a friend of ours. This is his car, Gate knocked out the rapist after he knocked you out and tore my shirt up. As for the reason why he have ears kinda like ours? I assume it's a similar reason to whyever we have ears like ours."

Twinkle studied him for a moment. "But he is still clearly masculine. That isn't fair!"

"Hey, you just admitted you are feminine, as you were whining like a girl. Don't hate on me for being awesome." That was a very un-like Phil thing to say.

The car came to a stop, at a red light. In the lane next to us was a black limo.

Day three: Something.

Twinkle, Gate, and I all looked out the window and gasped in unison.

"What? You guys act like you've never seen a limo before." Phil/Snow said casually.

We all immediately ducked out of sight, just in case C was looking our way. I didn't think she would be, but then again, she said she had eyes everywhere. None of us wanted to test if 'everywhere' included thirty feet away from her. I looked forward to the driver seat. "Get away from the limo, as far as you can as fast as you can!"

"What for?"

"We'll explain later, just get away from that limo now! And try to not draw it's attention..."

The red light turned green, we turned left, limo turned right.

We were to soon arrive at Phil's house, when something occurred to him. "Wait, so you three get to be unicorns? That is unfair as hell, I don't want to open things with my mouth!"

Twinkle actually laughed, for a change. "Well, I suppose there is an upside to this after all!"

I groaned. "I'd rather fly. Easier to get around, unicorns have to practice and become skilled with magic first. Pegasi just fly away, natural as walking."

Johnny grinned. "Snowflake can't fly for crap though."

Phil looked at him suspiciously. "Who is snowflake?"

"The pony you are turning into. He's a gigantic hulking muscle bound pegasus that constantly yells 'YEAAAH!' He's nicknamed roid rage, on account of the large muscles but tiny wings. Don't get the wrong idea, he can still fly, he's just not that great."

Twinkle looked over to him. "What about me? Who is it you think I'm turning into?"

"A sparsely mentioned background character that gets even less recognition than the the rest of us. She actually got a few speaking roles, but no one ever remembers them. Her name was Twinkleshine."

His head fell into his hands again. "Of course her name is Twinkleshine, First the stars, then the eyes, suddenly pink, now this? Twinkleshine? That's just not even fair."

Snow just grinned and laughed at her misfortune. I had never known him to laugh at anyone else, just like I had never known Gate to be a voice of reason. Was I the only one not losing my self in this?

What if they I am losing my self too?

What if I am slowly changing, and just not seeing it?

What if-

Wait.

"Lyra Heartstrings, Colgate, and Twinkleshine are all females." My hands clenched at the side of my head. Everyone else stopped conversation and stared at me. "I refuse to change genders... not until I can get rid of my v-card."

Paul swerved a little, other angry drivers honked at us. "You're a ?"

"Yeah"

Johnny just nudged me in the arm. "Should of taken me up on that time I offered to buy you a hooker to forget about that chick that dumped you. What was her name?"

"I don't even know anymore, but I need to find myself a lay, and fast. I don't know how long that particular change is going to take, but I don't want to wait for it!"

Paul laughed. "I could let you meet my neighbor. She's a bit of a ... freak. She'll see your tail and ears and just bend right over."

"I'm not so sure that's a good idea, she sounds like she's loaded with STD's. I don't know if human diseases transmit over to a semi-equine body." Johnny was actually contemplating that thought, weirdo.

"Ahh, screw you and screw your logic Johnny. I can't let myself not know how it feels before I might never get the chance again. Don't say it's a bad idea, because you do it every other night!"

"Well, that's not entirely true. My pattern was broken by the past two nights. If it were true, I'd be getting some tonight, and I don't see that in the foreseeable future."

Paul started laughing his ass off again. "You two just solved your own problems!" He pulled over to a small building on the side of a lesser used road. I assumed it was his house. "You two can have the spare bedroom, Twinkle can have mine, I'll hit the couch. See ya in the morning!" He got out of the car and casually whistled a tune as he walked inside.

He and I were blushing furiously, Twinkle got a chuckle and got out of the car and followed Snow in. "Gate? Why do you have thinky face? Please tell me that's not thinky face. I hate when you get thinky face!" His expression remained unchanged. "Oh come on! I just avoided getting raped! I'm not about to bang my best friend!"

He just slid over to the door and opened it. "Let's just get inside."

---==Asleep==---

A cave

A family

A forest

A friend

A love

A loss

A loser

A winner

I find myself laying in a bed, staring into a darkened room. After a moment, I feel light headed and my chest hurts. I hear a voice to my left, but can't quite tell what it's saying.

"-mit, get Snow! He knows CPR!" is all I could make out.

After a few seconds, I feel my airways opening and being forcibly filled with the breath of another person. This continues for what seems like an eternity, until there is a pause. Another eternity later, and it resumes. Four times this happens before I realise something. Shouldn't I be breathing? Breathing is something you are suppose to do, right?

My lungs rapidly expand, feeling as though my chest is going to split open outwards. My ability to see slowly came back to me as my brain received fresh oxygen. I shot upwards, sitting straight up.

One more, slightly less long eternity passes. "What just happened?" A voice flowed from my own mouth, but that wasn't my voice.

"Oh good! you're able to talk!" Another voice, this one from my right. "Just lie down, take deep breaths." I feel a hand push me gently back down.

I was painfully aware of the two bright pairs lights shining down into my face, they were just bright circles blurring out the silhouettes of three figures looming over me. "Could someone turn those lights out?" Two of the figures turned towards one another and the lights faded. The one on my left speaks.

"Oh, thank god you're okay Heart! We were so worried!"

"Who is 'we'?" I ask wearily.

"It's us, Gate, Twinkle, and Snow"

"Colgate? Twinkleshine? Snowflake?" My vision was starting to clear up a little more, colors became a thing.

The blob with blue hair and leaned in and I think it hugged me. I heard sobbing from the blob, right around my shoulder area. I just kept staring at the pinkish blob until something of a pale, lightish cyan obscured my view. Something long, a hand perhaps, extended from the palest blob and wiped my mane out of my eyes.

Wait, mane?

I don't have a mane. I have hair. I'm a human, not some animal...

Shapes became a thing again, the blobs each became faces. Familiar faces. Things start making sense again.

"Why wasn't I breathing?"

Gate pulled back from the hug, she had a tear streaming down her left cheek. "After last night... we both just passed out. When I woke up, it was to the glowing of your horn as you weaved your lyre out of your mane. A sort of eight note melody suddenly played, and you seized up and stopped. Your flailing caused me to slam into the floor, enough noise to get them Twinkle to come running. She's the one who noticed you weren't breathing. I called for Snow and he came to help get you breathing again."

I looked over to the red-eyed, smiling savior of mine. "Thanks, yet again it seems like- wait. " I looked back to Gate. "Horn?"

"You're becoming a unicorn, remember? Twinkle and I have them too." Gate took a few steps around the room, but it didn't sound right. It didn't sound right at all. That wasn't the sound of feet on wood, that was the sound of hooves.

My first reaction was to look down towards where my feet should be, there was a blanket in the way. Three things were missing. I didn't see the familiar bulge of feet, nor did I see another familiar bulge that usually accompanies waking up. I sighed deeply at the realization.

At Least I got to try something close once...

Apparently, my disdain was visible. Snow threw an arm over my shoulder in a friendly manner. "Well, look at the bright side! You got to enjoy it while you had it! Based off of the noise you were making last night, you REALLY enjoyed it!" I blushed, he laughed at it. "Awww! Heart is blushing! Somepony take a picture!"

I looked him dead in his cold, unassuming eyes. "If you dare point a camera at this, I will rip your testicles out and beat you to death with them." He just kept smiling and walked out of the room, with a clop echoing his every step. I just shook my head. "I have hooves now don't I..." Twinkle nodded. "That noise is going to be agonizing. within hours."

Gate's eyes had a sudden shine in them. "You could try socks..."

Twinkle was shaking her head furiously, but I ignored it. "Sure, I don't see why not."

We all sat around the dining room table in Snow's house. Now that I had a moment to actually look around, I realized it was quite the nice place. Moderately decorated, in a contemporary manner.Simple lighting, simple color scheme, this looked more like the home of a hipster, not the drunken pipe smoking scottish bar tender I had known for so many years.

Twinkle approached, with four bowls of lettuce floating behind her. Her horn was glowing a dull pink, as were the bowls. "Consider this breakfast, seeing as how we can't chew much else at the moment." She must of spotted the stunned look on my face. "It's just magic, really not hard so long as you don't think about it. Thinking about it makes it illogically challenging to understand. If you just do it, it happens. Kind of like balancing on hooves, and moving your tail. It seems unfamiliar, just give it no extra thought and pretend it's normal."

I heard a very light ruffling of feathers off and to my right. Snow seemed bothered by the fact that here soon, he probably won't be able to prepare his own food without weeks of practice. "Do you really have to flaunt something that some of us don't have? That's how racism get's started you know."

Twinkle sat down and tried her best to grab a fork. She did not succeed in her efforts. Grumbling, she just did it with levitation. Snow just grumbled something rather offensive under his breath.

Once she was done sating her appetite, Gate stood up. "Alllllrighty then! Today's agenda!" She pulled a pen and notepad from thin air. Unicorns... how the fuck do they work? "We are going to need to get to Twinkle's place and ours at least once before the end of the day. We all need to get our own things together. I for one, need my tooth brush, and I'm certain you both have some things you need on a daily basis."

I nodded in agreement. "Can't just leave my grandpa's violin lying around. I'll also need some clothes."

Twinkle tilted her head a bit. "Why would you need clothes? Ponies don't wear clothes, they have their fur."

"I don't trust Gate being near me while I'm naked. Also, hooves are loud. I don't like loud, thick socks will help."

Snow and Gate shared a "YYYEAAAHHH!" and a fist bump. Twinkle just looked at me and sighed.

"Socks? Really? You DO realise you are playing right into a common clopper fetish, right?"

"Wait, what? Seriously? How is that even a thing?"

Gate seemed all too eager to explain. "Clothes make ponies somehow more attractive."

"What? How? That makes no logical sense at all! That completely defies reason!" I got up and started pacing the room.

Colgate got a sly grin. His horn started to glow palely, as did my swishing tail. Within seconds, I was on my face. "Hah! I did magic!"

"You are going to pay for that..." I grumbled through my teeth.

"What are you gonna do Heart? Play me a song? We all know you can't replicate that intentionally." He walked over too me and offered a hand to help me up.

Instead, I yanked him down next to me. "No, Just gonna give you a taste of your own medicine." I said as I stood. I started to walk back to the table, but I felt a yank on my tail and I fell forward again.

"Stop that!" I pushed his hand away with a thought.

"You know you enjoy the physical contact I give you."

Snow was laughing his flank off as always, so I just pulled his chair out from under him. His face hit the table head on, and he stopped laughing. He glared at me, red eyes seemed like they pierced clear into my soul. I shivered under his suddenly haunting gaze. "S-sorry about that... " I managed to stammer.

He just stood up, without breaking eye contact. His hand raised to his head. He scratched the back of it. "Hah, you got me. Not bad. I gotta take a piss." He just walked down the hallway to the bathroom. His palpable anger faded to a more content state in a matter of seconds.

Gate was getting back up. "Damn, no wonder they call him Roid Rage."

The drive to Twinkle's place of residence was rather uneventful. None of us spoke other than Twinkle's giving directions. Nothing interesting to say about it. Nothing interesting at all. There was not even a strange tune popping into my head like normally when I got bored. In fact, I got so bored that I got my Lyre out.

Gate looked at me funny, funnier than usual. (His usual being a face that says 'Why does your breath smell so bad? When was the last time you brushed? You know, the dentist face.) "I didn't see you bring that with us when we left."

"Dunno, magic I guess. I just sort of wanted to play it." His funny face went blank.

I raise my lyre slightly to the side of my torso, and let my magic hold it there. My hands tapped a rhythm on my knee, and a few strings sounded themselves off.

A song began to form in everyone's ears.

Clouds formed over head. They were rapidly getting dark, until a crack of thunder shattered a nearby tree. Snow had to slam the breaks on to avoid colliding with a storm of wooden shrapnel. He turned around, eyes wide. "Play it again. Now." His tone was commanding, yet pleading. I complied, and he sighed loudly. "The moment you played that, everything just felt contradictory. Like everything that felt right just did a one eighty and shot itself in the dick."

"Dude, really? Must be your innate connection to the weather as a pegasi then. I'm kind of surprised that Heart could even do that." Gate was getting thinky face again. "Hey Heart! See if you can remember the song of the sun!"

"Are you high? Seriously, what the hell are you smoking? Even if it was my playing that started and stopped that storm, which it couldn't of been, playing the song of the sun couldn't possibly do a thing. This world spins on it's own accord. If I even some how COULD fuck with that, imagine the hell it would cause for every human everywhere, to suddenly have night fade into day at noon. Can you imagine the havock?"

"Song of time then?"

"No."

"Epona's song?"

We all paused for a moment. "I wonder what that would even do?"

Snow looked at me in the rearview mirror. "Probably just really get our attention. Maybe it'll get the attention of an actual horse? Maybe your songs themselves aren't the magical thing, but instead you just pump your intents up with magic and let it surf across the sound waves to take effect."

"That would make sense, but it doesn't explain the storm. I didn't intend for that."

"Let's just play it off as sheer coincidence then. Come on, my house is only a few blocks from here. Someone is definitely going to investigate a random, solitary bolt of lightning. We don't need anyone posting pictures of weird pony people on the internet." Gate, ever the voice of reason, said.

Snow coughed loudly. "That... is a good point."

"Snoooow, what did you doo?" I groaned accusingly.

"I might have been vlogging about this whole thing. Since before it started. I might have upwards of two thousand daily viewers." He grinned sheepishly, while the rest of us just facepalmed. "Hey! We aren't the only ones you know! There are literally hundreds of others I know of who are dealing with the exact same kind of stuff! I honestly don't see how it isn't on the news yet."

"Wait, turn on the radio to that one station that only has talk shows." I said.

When he did, we all gained a bit more practice in looking incredibly surprised.

Night three: More Something

"Welcome, chillllldren to K.I.L.L.I.T. RADIO!"

"Today we are talking about this latest internet craze, you either know someone doing it, or have heard of it. Everyone remembers BRONIES right? Those creepy adult fans of My little pony friendship is magic? Well, some of them seem to be using various CGI and editing to make themselves look like they are actually turning INTO ponies! I for one, know nothing of the topic beyond that, so call right on in with questions, comments, or just call in to tell us all how stupid you think I am. You know the drill folks!"

The radio DJ stopped talking as a few commercials started to play. No one in the car said a word as we waited for him to come back on with his first caller.

"So then, caller, what is your view on this whole situation?"

"Well, two days ago I zoned out for a bit, only to later realize that I had berry marks on either of my legs. I assumed that someone ink'd me while I was out of it, to f**k with me on my birthday, so I went and tried to get them removed. The guy at the parlor ended up trying to kick me out, saying I had to be fucking with him or something. Nothing worked to get them off! So I went about my day until yesterday I realised I was walking on my tip toes, and it was uncomfortable to do otherwise. I took a nap, and woke up with a mother f***ing tail! I walked into my bathroom and boom! mother f***ing pony ears on my head. As you can imagine, it was surreal as hell, so I just went to bed. Today I woke up with god dang hooves for feet, and that's just the start of what's been fucking with me today. MY D**K IS GONE! I've got an endless craving for wine, and purple f***ing fur is rapidly covering my legs. I literally had to get someone else's help to dial this number, I can't quite use my fingers right anymore. My 'view' on the whole situation is that this is the worst week of my 25 year old life! " The caller stopped his rant to pant loudly into his phone, before slamming down on the receiver and hanging up.

"Well, everybody... It looks like the one common thing between everyone who is supposedly 'dealing' with this is that their 25th birthday was on May 1st. My producer is telling me to change the topic, so here is the weather!

Snow shut the radio off as we all sat in silence yet again.

"So, it looks like someone is turning into Berry Punch somewhere near here." Gate said, rubbing her chin.

"Berry who?" I asked.

"Berry Punch, essentially the town drunkard for Ponyville. I had honestly expected that to be who snow would have ended up becoming, seeing as how he's a bartender."

"Well, I don't particularly mind the free mass-muscle build up that's happening."

"What do you mean?"

"As of last week I had trouble bench pressing 150 pounds." He pulled the car over to a curb and turned it off. "Watch this."

He got out of the car and walked to the front. He ducked down out of our line of sight, so we all just looked at each other. The car began tilting, first a little, then a lot. Soon, we were almost vertical and we heard a shout from outside of the car.

"YYYYEEEAAAHHHH! FUCK GRAVITY! I'M A GOD DANG PEGASUS! GRAVITY AINT GOT NOTHING ON ME, BITCHES!"

"Yeah, that's nice, mind putting the car down? I'm about to lose my lunch!" Twinkle was almost greener than my fur.

"Fine fine fine, wimps." He just dropped the car, letting it fall on it's own weight. Once it was inside I gave him quite the glare.

"You know, that is a wonderful way to ruin your suspension."

"You are kidding me right? At this rate I won't need a car for very long! What part of 'I'm a god dang pegasus' didn't you hear?" He laughed again. "So, Twinkle, where is your house?"

"Jus-Just a few more houses down. It's the brown one on the left." Snow decided to start whistling an improvised tune as he drove.

As we pulled into the drive way, Twinkle immediately jumped out of the passenger seat and onto her knees on the ground. The sound of her wrenching was enough to make me sick to my own stomach, but I managed to choke it back down.

Once she was done, she just walked inside. I looked at Snow. "Do us all a favor, and let Twinkle stay on the ground? That was disgusting."

He just grinned smugly. "Wimps." He leaned his seat back a bit and reclined with his hooves on the dashboard. Putting his freakishly muscular arms behind his head, he started snoring. It took only seconds for me to realize that Gate was out cold as well.

Rolling my eyes, I got out of the car and walked up to Twinkle's open door. "Hey! Twinkle! You need any help with anything? Those two are out cold."

A pink covered head leaned into view from a nearby window. "Nah! Just gimme a second. I'm almost done."

"Alrighty then man." I started to turn around, but thought better of it. "Hey! Mind if I use your bathroom real fast?"

I heard a faint shout from across the house. "Yeah! Its upstairs, first door on the left, help yourself."

The instant I opened the door, my nostrils were assaulted with a powerful scent. It took me a moment to realise what the smell was, but by time I did, I spotted Twinkle spraying deodorant on herself nearby. "Really? That stuff smells like piss! What are you doing?"

"I'd rather smell like urine than strawberries." She shrugged, and walked outside. "Lock the door on your way out, please."

"Alrighty." I looked over to a nearby stair case, and then down at my own clunky hooves. I was having trouble even walking with them, stairs were going to suck.

I was right, they did. I fell eleven times and gave up and just crawled up them. The bathroom was clean, but working my new machinery downstairs proved as challenging as the stairs. Going back down the stairs was a simple, straightforward manner, straight into the floor at least.

I got back into the car and received three confused looks. "Whats with the black eye?"

"Your stairs are very solid, Twinkle." This elicited a round of laughter for everyone but me. Jerks.

The drive back to my apartment consisted of little chatter. Snow already knew where Gate and I lived, from driving us home on the occasion where we both got a bit too tipsy, so there wasn't even directions being spoken. It was rather awkward.

When we got there, Gate practically sprinted inside. I was a bit more casual about getting out of the car, but still in a hurry. If there was one thing that I was determined to make sure of, is that I had my possessions. When I got to the apartment I saw Gate standing outside the door. "Uhh Gate? What are you staring at?" His finger slowly lifted, pointing at the doorknob.

There sat a lone, blue eyed, black beetle. It stared up at us, unmoving. "B-b-bug. Big... bug..."

"I-I'll go get Snow." Gate sprinted back outside, leaving me with this beast.

It just stared at me in all of it's horrific maliciousness, until a certain muscle-bound maniac came running down the hall, roaring like a freight train. "WHAT IS IT? WHAT'S WRONG? WHO'S SCARING YOU TWO?"

I just pointed at the bug. He looked at it, and then at me, and then at Gate. "Seriously? You two are this scared of a tiny little beetle?"

We nodded in unison, he shook his head. A lone, massive hand grabbed the doorknob and the beetle at once. He tightened his grip, and crushed both with a sickening crunch. "There, it's dead. Now I need my nap, if you don't mind." He walked back outside, leaving Gate and I looking after him.

"Dude, he showed that bug who's boss." I nodded my head at that and we went inside.

My first stop, was my bedroom. I grabbed an old messenger bag and set it on my bed. Let's see here... what will I bring. I opened up my closet and withdrew an old black hoodie, it was a bit too small for me before all of this started, but judging by how I had been gradually decreasing in overall size... I would rather have a too-big thing I can still technically wear, as opposed to nothing.

I threw the hoodie on to see that I was right, it was too big. I left it on anyways, and grabbed several pairs of socks and stuffed them in the bag. There was still a little more room for things, so I grabbed stack of blank sheet music and two pens, because you never know when an idea will hit you. Slinging the bag over one shoulder, and my violin case over the other, I said good bye to my bedroom for what very well may have been the last time.

I walked into the living room and saw something rather disgusting. Gate was sitting on the couch, playing with the Lyra Plushie. By 'playing with' I do not mean he was using it as a puppet.

"Oh, oh god dude, really? You seriously kept that?"

He nodded eagerly. "And I'm going to keep keeping it. It's great for holding a toothbrush." I could have sworn I heard him think Among other things...

"That is just gross Gate, I don't know if I should hurl or hit you."

"What's so bad about it?"

I gave him my best 'are you fucking kidding me?' face "It's a plushie that looks like how I will. That is just creepy man! Imagine if I had a Colgate plushie, and was putting things in it."

"You already put things -IN- me, so we're even on that."

I facepalmed and walked over to the kitchen. "Just get some things together and meet me in the car." I grabbed a bottle of water and walked outside to the car. Snow was sitting on the hood, watching the clouds, and Twinkle was listening to the radio.

Snow looked over at me, wearing that same cocky ass grin he always has. "Dude, what's with you? You look like you just saw a ghost."

I just nodded. "Gate has a Lyra Heartstrings Plushie. "

"That's creepy."

"And it has a ...hole in the back.."

"Oh... ew..."

"Yeah, I'm just going to try my best and forget about it."

It was several minutes before Gate made his way back out to meet us, duffel bag over one shoulder. She was wearing a simple white t-shirt and basketball shorts. The shorts must of had a hole in the back of some form, I assumed because her tail was swishing as she walked.

"Ready to go when you guys are." We all just looked at her for a minute. "What? Is there something on my face?"

"No, you are the one who's been coming up with the plan, I assumed you would know what to do next."

"I dunno, how about we try and get away from town, maybe into the forest or something?"

"No way, I don't care if I'm turning into some flying horse thing, I'm not living like some animal."

"Well, I have no idea then." Gate looked over at me. "You got any ideas?"

"My only idea right now is to try and not let it be widely known that I'm turning into a pony. God knows the government is probably going to start rounding up pony-people and quarantine us or something. Maybe they'll start doing weird experiments or some crap like that."

Snow got a good laugh at that. "Hey, if we're lucky, maybe they'll send us off to area 51 and we can meet all the aliens!"

I grumbled and looked away. "Hey, all I'm saying is that they are going to try SOMETHING, and it's probably in our best interest to not be around when they do."

Gate had thinky face again. "She does make a good point. There isn't a chance in hell that everyone is going to just let this happen and then pretend it didn't."

"Uhh... I suppose you two are right. But where should we hide until this blows over?"

Twinkle seemed to have woken up without anyone noticing. "My grandpa built a bomb bunker out in the mountains, we could go there. He showed me once when I was a kid, it might still be unoccupied."

"Yeah, but bunkers usually have ladders to get in and out. Stairs are hard enough with hooves, I don't want to try climbing a ladder once we lose our hands."

She just nodded. "Good point."

Snow got off the hood of the car and stretched a little. "Well, we could just go back to my place for the time being, instead of sitting out here on the side of the road."

"I like that idea." I said.

We drove back to Snow's house, while Twinkle scanned the radio for any more news. Apparently nothing was known about the event other than what we already know form personal experience.

We pulled into Snow's driveway and were about to get out until we saw the car doors were still locked.

"Uhh, you gonnna let us out, Snow?"

"I just realised something, I can't flick the switch for the door locks. My fingers are just sort of all bleh"

"Now that I think of it, how were you even driving with hooves?" Gate said.

"I don't even know! I was just doing it, now that I'm thinking of it, it makes no sense!"

I just groaned. "If you don't unlock the door, I'm going to bust the window out."

"NO! NO NO! I CAN GET IT, JUST HANG ON! Don't hurt my baby! I just paid her off last month!"

It was several minutes until he gave up the useless attempt at using his hands to do things. Eventually, he decided to just use his mouth. Disgusting, who knows what's touched that thing. I can't believe he just put his mouth on it.

Once we were all out, we stumbled one by one into the house. "Am I the only one having trouble walking?" Twinkle had said.

"Nope, I think itll be best if we all just go to sleep." I looked over at a clock on the wall, it was nearly 6pm.

"It's a bit early for that, don't you think Heart?"

"A tad, but I'm tired and going to sleep anyways. If I wake up in another compromising position with any of you," I glared at Gate, "The nearest person is getting a hoof to the chin." That earned me three funny looks, as I hobbled into the guest bedroom.

Day four: Performance

I was on my way to the boutique, and saw an all too familiar beast fly in through one of the windows. I hear shouting, and a commotion inside, but then nothing. I tear my way through the door, to see the grinning beast waiting on me. "DISCORD! What did you do with Rarity?!"

He was picking at one claw with another. "Hmph, you are unimportant. Begone." He flicked a bit of his claw at me, and when it hit, everything went black.

---==May 4==---

I blinked the sleep wearily out of my eyes, and the world faded into view around me. Everything was green, the same uniform green orb greeted my eyes in every direction. The orb felt heavy, as if I was lifting it. I decided to blink again, and once I did the orb vanished.

The blankets around me fell from their spherical position and enveloped me. For a moment, I thought I was being attacked by some beast. Once I realised how foolish that was, I started feeling around for the edge of the blankets. Finding them, I flung them off, letting my lungs fill with fresh air.

I tried to roll out of bed and stand, only to fall flat on my face. "Hi floor, good morning." I said, quietly to the annoyingly solid wood.

I heard a voice from another room, "Hey! Heart! You just greeting the floor again?"

"Yeah." I shouted back.

"Wait until you try to stand!" Why would she say that? I wondered.

I went to press one hand to the floor to push my self upright, but found a green hoof where my hand should have been. Curiously, I decided to lick it. I still don't know why I did that, and I still regret doing it. "ARGH! MY HOOF TASTES LIKE-" I cut myself off. What exactly was that taste? I licked it again. "MY HOOF TASTES LIKE RAW MINT LEAVES!"

I heard Gate's voice outside the bedroom door. "Why the hell are you tasting your hoof?" The door opened to reveal a light blue unicorn, with an hourglass cutie mark and two-toned hair.

"Gate? Is that you?"

"Yeah, haven't seen yourself yet have you Heart?"

"No, but why would I need to?" A small hand mirror floated into view, enveloped in a light blue glow. I looked at it, and looking back at me was a pale green unicorn with golden eyes and a sea-green mane. I stuck my tongue out, it stuck it's tongue out. I brushed my hair to the side with one hoof, it brushed it's mane aside with one hoof. I blinked, it blinked. That was a reflection of me. "Well... " I just blinked a few more times.

Gate chuckled a little. "Yeah."

"And the other two?"

"Yep. Try and stand up."

"Do I have to?"

"Yes."

I grumbled a bit and pushed all of my hooves against the floor. Slowly but surely, I was gaining height. Thirty seconds later, I was a full three feet tall. "I did it!" I was actually kind of pleased with myself, I never did have the best track record with standing.

"Now try to walk."

My mind went entirely blank for a moment. "How? I imagine it'll come naturally once I manage it, but I've never once attempted quadrupedal movement."

"Like this." Gate walked into the room, and started prancing back in forth in front of me, smiling.

"Show off. Explain."

"Front left hoof, back right hoof, reverse and repeat and reverse and repeat."

"Sounds simple enough." I raise my front left, planted firmly forward. I tried my back right hoof, only to fall flat on my face once I lifted it. "Note to self, don't put weight on a hoof before moving it."

"I'll just leave you to it then." She started to walk back out of the room.

"No! I need help with this, how did you figure it out?"

"I just repeated what I know from the show."

"Show off."

"Want to see more showing off?"

"No."

"Too bad." Her horn started glowing blue again, and I felt myself leave the ground. "Come on, it's time for breakfast." I rolled my eyes as I was levitated through the doorway and towards the kitchen.

I was set down near a bowl of salad on the floor. A white unicorn with a pink mane and tail was lying on her stomach near a window, bowl of salad in front of her. An incredibly muscular white pegasus had his face inside of a bowl pressed against the fridge. Mine was a simple salad, just lettuce and carrot shavings in a bowl in the middle of the living room. There was nothing special about it, but that first bite tasted like the single greatest thing I had ever bitten into. "Oh sweet baby cheezus that is good." I moaned through my teeth.

"Isn't it? I did absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, I guess pony tongues really like salad." Twinkle said.

I nodded, and happily chewed down the rest of the leafy treat.

The next thirty minutes consisted primarily of me learning to walk. 'Tis a rather silly thought, I'll admit, but it had to be done. Everyone else was already an expert at it, apparently I woke up nearly an hour after them. I eventually managed to perform what looked more like a parody of a pony walking drunkenly, so I considered that an acceptable level of skill and sat on the couch.

Without thinking, I made a nearby remote float over to me and turn the TV on and to the news channel. As it turns out, there were more ponies than one would have thought. The first thing I saw on the news was a video someone had shot from a cell phone of two pegasi chasing each other back and forth across some skyscrapers. The news reporter blabbered on some spiel about something before showing a live video feed of some pink unicorn standing at a very familiar tree in a very familiar park.

My eyes immediately shot wide. Ruth? I went and got my violin. I had started to leave, but Gate stopped me at the door. "Where are you going?"

"Park, theres somepony I need to see."

Gate looked me in the eyes for a moment, before sighing. "Just be careful, alright?" He stepped aside and I stormed out onto the road.

The sound of hooves on cement filled my pained ears as I pressed myself to go faster. The instrument floating behind me seemed to be possessed, following me on its own accord. I was running faster than I ever thought I could. I approached a silver car that was going down the same road as me, and I slowed to not pass it up.

The driver of the car didn't notice me at first, so I pulled a pebble off of the road and tossed it at his window. He did a double take when he saw me. I nodded and tossed another pebble at the window, he rolled it down.

"Hey! Guy! How fast are we going right now?!" I shouted towards him.

He looked at his speedometer in his car. "Thirty seven miles per hour! What the fuck are you?!"

"I'm a unicorn, can you point me towards the park?"

"Two miles up the road, take a left and there it is."

"Thanks guy!"

I pulled away from his window and poured the speed back on, leaving him in my dust. Two miles, She's just two miles away.

I came into the turn, and saw familiar territory once more, there were news vans everywhere. They apparently all wanted a shot of the mysterious unicorn. I was moving too fast to stop, so I just focused my eyes on the wall of vans.

I calmed my breathing, and let loose a large translucent orb of energy move forward in front of me, pushing everything to the side.The sound of screeching tires filled the air as I pushed a path through, moving everything out of my way with my magic. I received many a frightened glances, and many more cameras pointed at me. I didn't care though. I had to get to Ruth.

I finally managed to get off of the road, my hooves felt better on grass but I didn't slow down. The Old Oak was just a few minutes away on foot. At a full gallop, it didn't take me but thirty seconds to work my way there.

I forced myself to slow down once the tree was in sight. There were reporters, bystanders, even a few policemen standing in a wide circle around it, making a haphazard chorus of noise loud enough to drown out my approach. The line of people was just ten seconds away, and unmoving. I couldn't stop, there was no time. Five seconds away. Three seconds away.

Two...

One...

My horn flashed another flare up of emerald light and everyone in my way found themselves floating in the air. It was incredibly draining, but I made myself do it. There were a lot of shocked and terrified faces looking down as I passed under them.

Panting heavily, I finally reached the tree. The light pink unicorn was curled up between two of the larger gnarled roots. At a glance, one would have assumed her to be asleep; but I saw her shivering, I saw her crying. She wasn't asleep, she was terrified. Poor thing.

Once I caught my breath, I placed my instrument on my favorite old raggedy bench. For the briefest moments, I considered not playing at all; but I couldn't think the proper words to comfort the pink unicorn. I decided to fall back on an old, comforting tune.

I withdrew the violin with my magic, It felt strange, gripping at my regular holding position using magic instead of physically touching it. I drew the bow, and motioned for the crowd to fall silent. Thankfully, many of them understood and the noise died down considerably.

My bow met the strings and I cleared my throat. My hoof found a rock, and It started tapping.

Gods, I wish I had a flute right now

I sang out. "Her breath began to speak, as she stood right in front of me." I looked at the pink unicorn, she was looking back up at me. "The colour of her eyes Were the colour of insanity." I twirled back to face my audience. "Crushed beneath her wave Like a ship, I could not reach her shore." I paused for a moment, seeing that several of the on lookers were singing along. "Were all just dancers, ON THE DEVILS DANCE FLOOR! Well, swing a little more, little more o'er the merry-o." I turned back to the now-standing pink unicorn. "Swing a little more, a little more next to me. Swing a little more, little more o'er the merry-o. Swing a little more, on the devils dance floor. "

"Pressed against her face, I could feel her insecurity. Her mothered been a drunk And her father was obscurity. But nothinever came From a life that was a simple one. So pull yourself together girl, and have a little fun!" Nearly half the crowd was singing along. "Well, she took me by the hand I could see she was a fiery one. He legs ran all the way up to heaven and past Avalon. Tell me somethin girl, what is it you have in store. She said come with me now, On the devils dance floor!"

"Well, swing a little more, little more, o'er the merry-o. Swing a little more, little more next to me. Swing a little more, little more o'er the merry-o. Swing a little more, on the Devils Dance Floor! Swing a little more, on the Devils Dance Floor!" My violin was franticly trying to keep up, I decided to whistle the interlude.

A bit more softly, and directly to the poor mare, "Swing a little more, little more o'er the merry-o, .Swing a little more, little more o'er the merry-o. Swing a little more, on the Devils Dance Floor! "

"The apple now is sweet, oh much sweeter than it ought to be. Another little bite, I don't think there is much hope for me. The sweat beneath her brow, travels all the way an headin south. The bleedin hearts cryin, cause theres no way out!" Her tears were dried and her grin wide. "Well, swing a little more, little more o'er the merry-o, swing a little more next to me. Swing a little more, little more o'er the merry-o. Swing a little more, on the Devils Dance Floor!" I left the remaining chorus to the crowd as I walked over to the mare.

"How do you do, miss?"

"L-lenny?"

"I've been called Heart these past few days, but yes I am Lenny Lovesong. You seemed a tad distraught when I saw you on TV, so I came running to cheer you up."

She looked at me up and down. "I suppose that's where you were the other day. I can understand you not wanting to be seen in public once... this," she gestured to herself with a front hoof, "started up."

"Ahh, yes. Terribly sorry about that, it has been a very ... unpredictable week."

"Yeah... I tried to leave, but when ever I move away from the tree, I feel their eyes staring at me. Analyzing, wondering, suspecting. I hate it. I just can't get close enough to ask them to move, before they start bombarding me with sound."

"I could help with that. I'm rather exhausted, but I think I could hold their attention long enough for you to get away, if you'd like."

"That'd be wonderful, but are you sure you'll be okay on your own once I make it away?"

"Absolutely, I love a good crowd. If push comes to shove, I could always just let panic take over and force my way out."

"Okay then..."

"Right, get ready to sprint away, because I don't know how much energy I got left in me. Once I start, Wait until all eyes are on me, and just run. Head straight for cover once you do, don't want anyone noticing you on the way out."

"Oh-by the way, Heart, I've been going by Love lately, I don't know why but other ponies are just calling me that."

"Tis a lovely name for a lovely girl. Now then Are you ready to enjoy a good tune?"

"Ready as I'll ever be." She smiled and leaned over to me and whispered, "That was a terrible pun."

"I know, I couldn't help myself." I smiled and raised my violin once more, and the crowd fell silent.

I decided to go with something simpler, more distracting. Perhaps a Jig?

The crowd had it's eyes on me, ears on my music, but my ears just swiveled towards the sound of a retreating Love. No one seemed to obscure her passage, so I just smiled and held everyone's attention a bit longer.

Several minutes pass, many of the reporters had just dropped their mics and started dancing. I kept the violin floating loudly in the air near the tree, and approached the nearest reporter. She was dancing, her blond hair let down and flailing about and her eyes closed.

"Excuse me ma'am? You are with the news right?"

She stopped dancing and looked at me, eyes wide. "You can talk?"

"Of course I can, I'm not some animal. Anyways, I'd like you to do me a favor."

"Uh, what would that be?"

"Spread this message to all of the news sources you can."

"Oh.. okay?"

"We are ponies. We were humans. We still have rights. Back the fuck off. We deserve privacy as much as the lot of you."

She just stood dumb struck, jaw dropped. "Right, I'll pass that along."

"Thanks, thanks a bunch." I just turned and started walking back to my violin.

"Uhh... Miss?" I heard her shout behind me.

I stood and turned my head. "Yes?"

"Can I have your name?"

"You can not have it, but I will tell it to you." I silenced my song. "My name is Lyra, Lyra Heartstrings. You can call me Heart." I walked away.

I gathered my things, and sat on the bench, staring at the sun as it set behind the old oak tree. Today was a good day. The various onlookers and reporters were gradually starting to trickle away as blissful quiet began to wrap it's tendrils around the park once more. I drifted off to sleep.

I awoke to the sound of hooves approaching. I swiveled my ears towards the noise, but did not open my eyes. "Who is there?"

"It's just me, Heart." That was Gate's voice, but Gate didn't walk that loudly.

"Prove it."

"Just open your eyes, it's me."

I opened my eyes and looked, it definitely looked like the friend I've had for years, but I could tell that it was not her. "No, it isn't. Gate would never pass up such an opportunity to play a joke on me. Who are you?"

She grinned for a moment, and a deep green circle of flame appeared at her feet. It rose up and burned away her disguise, revealing a hole-filled black carapace. Thin bug-like wings were on her back and her horn was bent, jagged, and broken. The look in her now-green eyes was unmistakable. "It is only me."

"What do you want C? Just let me sleep in peace."

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that, making such a show of yourself will draw unwanted attention."

I grinned. "That was no show, that was just a day's work. A friend was scared, and needed a distraction. I provided for her while she ran. There is nothing to show in that."

"That is not what I meant. You made an open statement to the human media, knowing full well the direction they would take it in."

"And?"

"And what?"

"You speak as if I care what you think. I did something, you don't like it. That's your problem, not mine." I pointed my hoof behind me. "I don't like that rock over there, so I don't look at it. I don't change it or move it, because I know others like that rock, so I just deal with the fact that it's going to keep being a rock."

She seemed a bit taken aback at the comparison. "That is not what I am saying, I-"

I cut her off with a shout. "I don't care what you are saying! Just shut up, let ME live MY life!" I felt energy begin to flow into my horn.

"Now, you listen here. You are going to respec-"

"NO! You have no right to try to tell me what to do. Be gone." I wrapped her in my magic and lifted her about twenty feet over the air, casting an eerie pale green glow onto the otherwise unlit park. I compressed all of my energy into the ball, and launched it as far away as I could, as fast as I could. She was out of sight for nearly a minute before I stopped pumping energy into her acceleration. I blacked back out from exhaustion.

I felt another presence near me, sitting on the bench. "Hey Heart, you okay? Twinkle, Snow and I were on our way to find you when we saw the light fly overhead. We noticed C was inside the light and screaming in terror, she tried to fly once the light faded but the wind must of torn her wings, because she just fell to the road."

I opened my eyes and smiled meekly. "Hehe, yeah. Magic can be pretty awesome sometimes."

I heard Snow's voice from behind me. "Dude, sometimes? We were watching you on TV! When you walked up to that reporter and told them all off, it was funny as hell!"

Twinkle giggled from my left. "Snow didn't stop laughing until he ran out of air and passed out."

"Figures." I said. "So then, anyone wanna carry me back to the house? I'm kind of exhausted as hell right now."

Snow 'lightly' punched me in the side. "Wimp."

"I sprinted for nearly fifteen miles, at speeds exceeding fourty miles per hour. While carrying 15 pounds worth of violin case, making it float magically at the same speeds. And then I danced for a solid two hours, while playing music loud enough for an entire crowd to hear. Let's see you do that in a body you've had for a day." I laughed at my own words. They sounded kind of funny.

He rubbed his chin with a hoof for a bit. "Fair enough. One of you get the violin, the other help me get sleepy head here onto my back."

I felt myself floating off of the bench and passed back out.

Day five: She did what what in the who now?

Sometime before the crack of dawn, I slid my head out from under a familiar blanket, only to see an unfamiliar sight. There was no lights turned on, the curtains were still drawn, the room was completely dark. I could still see. I looked up to my horn, there was no light shining from it. Why is everything green then?

I began turning my head side to side, scanning for a light source. It wasn’t until I looked down on the other end of my bed that I stopped. There, Gate was still sleeping. She was enveloped in calm, flowing blue. Must be seeing auras again. But why? And why did it wake me up? I got out of bed, as quietly as I can. Thankfully, my hooves agreed with my preferred direction of motion and let me stand without falling. I couldn’t tell what time it was, but I could sure as hell tell it was late.

I started to raise a hoof to take a step, but thought better of it. It would just make too much noise. Instead, I decided to get some socks out of my bag. I slid them on without a thought and hoped it would dampen the noise. It did. Well, they are definitely useful in that sense.-

I quietly crept over to the guest room door, pressing my ear against it to listen. Once I was satisfied that there was nothing waiting for me to open the door, I let my magic reach the door knob and slowly opened it up. Despite my best efforts, the door let out a long and echoing screech from its age old hinges. Shut up door! I’m trying to be sneaky here! I looked back over to the bed and saw that Gate hadn’t even twitched in her sleep. Good thing she’s not a light sleeper. I carefully stepped into the hall way.

Maybe some noise over in Snow’s room woke me up? The door to his room was just across the hall, so I didn’t have to risk my clumsiness making too much noise. I pressed one ear against the door to his bedroom, and heard both Snow and Twinkle inside snoring lightly. Did they just do what I think they did?

I cracked their door open and peeked inside. Under the bedroom blanket were two auras, one smaller pink one, and one larger white one. I looked a little closer, and saw a very faint speck of a third silvery aura inside of Twinkle. Snow had gotten her pregnant.

Do they even know?

Should I tell them?

Do I have any right to be the one to tell them?

Maybe they’re just fucking with me?

But how would they-

My thoughts were interrupted by a sound from outside a window. I immediately closed my eyes and focused on the source, flicking my ears side to side until I heard it once more. There it is. A light shuffling, just outside the window in this room. I opened my eyes and breathed deeply. I could faintly see the outline of someone’s aura through the wall. I let myself open my eyes a bit wider to an almost painful point. There wasn't just one person outside, there was dozens. And they were armed.

I quietly crept over to the sleeping pair, and whispered “Hey, Snow, Twinkle, wake up. There is a lot of people outside, they are trying not let us know they are there. Come on, we need to be alert for whatever this is.” Neither of them moved a muscle. Ugh, Snow had better not kill me for this.

I let my magic wrap around the mattress, and slowly started tipping it. The sleeping ponies on it started to slide off, when Snow woke up. He started to shout, but I stuck a hoof in his mouth. “Shhhh… People outside, I think we might be in for some trouble soon. I’m going to go wake up Gate.” He nodded, and I crept back into the other room.

I didn’t bother trying to whisper anything to Gate, she had always slept through anything she wanted to. Instead, I just pushed her off of the side of the bed. She hit the floor with an echoing thump, before opening her eyes. “Good morning, Floor.”

“Oi, that’s my line wanker. Wake up, something is about to-” my sentence was cut off by the sound of shattering glass from the small window overlooking the bed. A small silver canister flew through the air, with smoke flying from it. I panicked. Grabbing it in my magic, I just threw it back outside through a different window pane.

Gate was getting up, slowly. “The hell are you breaking windows for? I’m up I’m up!”

“Not up enough, we’ve got trouble!”

I heard the stomping of heavy boots on wooden floors coming from the other end of the house. I looked through the open bedroom doors to Snow and Twinkle, who was now wide awake. For the briefest moment, they were calm, until their own window shattered. Apparently, it was large enough for one of the intruders to come directly in. Twinkle’s horn flashed pink and he flew back through the window, knocking down a few of his friends in the process. “Heart! Gate! What’s going on?!”

“I’m starting to think that drawing attention was a bad idea!” More boots were approaching, rapidly.

I found my lyre hanging from my bag on the door, and took it out. I stepped into the hallway and looked towards the stomping noise. I started to play another lullaby, but nothing happened. They all pointed guns at me. Big, shiny, deadly looking guns.

Gate used telekinesis to drag me back out of the hall and into my room. “ They probably have got earplugs!”

“You are just now telling me this why?!”

Twinkle walked calmly towards the door. For the first time, I caught a glimpse of her blazing eyes. It was a pale pink flame, trailing outwards around her head. She walked into the hall, and turned and faced the intruders. Her voice seemed to be the collective echo of a thousand whispers, coming from inside of my mind. Her lips never moved. “You are not welcome here. Leave, or suffer.” I heard the clicking of guns being armed. “If you wish to die, then so be it. Fire away, gentlemen.”

Snow’s eyes widened. “What are you doing?!”

Twinkle just smiled, as the guns started firing.

There was a rather impressive but deafening flash of pink light for a moment, the sight of which made me clench my eyes shut. By time I managed to open them again, there was fire. There was a lot of fire, the same color as the flames coming from Twinkle’s eyes. There was no heat from the flames, and they were not burning anything. But the flames wrapped themselves around everything. Every bit of exposed wall, every piece of furniture, everything that wasn't alive was engulfed in the torrent of the pink fires. Judging by the far brighter glow coming from the hall, the intruders were probably lit up like the fourth of July.

“I warned you. No one is going to harm my friends. You have three seconds to run.” The three of us just stared at her. She was floating about two feet off of the ground, eyes burning almost as bright as her horn. Her mane and tail looked like flames of their own, as opposed to their normal curls. A gun was fired, but the bullet was crushed against an invisible wall several inches from Twinkle’s, eye. "Pathetic.”

She blinked, and all of the pink flames were extinguished as the house fell back into darkness. After a moment, everything was bathed in a cacophony of screams. It sounded not too unlike a chorus of singers, suddenly terrified by the song they were singing. A smaller pink light flowed in from the hallway, as did the stench of burning flesh. It made me want to vomit, but I couldn't make myself take my eyes off of Twinkle. It was several minutes before the suffering ended. Did she just burn all of those people?

Twinkle fell to the ground, panting. Snow rushed to her side to help her up. His jaw dropped when he looked down the hall way, and he stopped moving. Curiosity got the better of me, and I poked my head out and into the hallway.

There were at least a dozen men dressed in bullet proof vests, helmets, and other standard combat gear. None of them were burned, but all of them had a faint pink glow around their heads. Each one was unconscious, by their twitching I assume it was nightmares about Twinkle. I looked over at Twinkle. “How did you-“

“Magic.”

We had all agreed to simply wander into the forest and keep moving; It was the logical thing to do when being hunted. We were all covered hoof-to-mane in thick globs of mud, to hide our scent. Gate, Twinkle and I were taking shifts covering our tracks as we walked; we had discovered it to be a rather simple task. Just gently return anything we disturbed to its previous position, and no one will ever know you were there.

We were travelling light. I had my hoodie pulled tightly about my fore-hooves-chest-area-thing, along with my raggedy old messenger bag. It was a bit awkward to carry it normally, so I just sort of put the strap around my neck and let it sit on my back The lyre was in side of it, and my violin was floating near by.

Gate had brought what seemed to be a large blue fanny pack, hanging from her neck. I didn't need to ask to know the Lyra Plushie was in there. My only question, was where she got such an atrocious object. Who the buck even owns those any more?! The other two were carrying nothing, except each other. They both seemed incredibly tired, leaning on one another as we walked our way through the foliage.

We kept at this for several hours and were well into the forest, (About 23 miles past the tree line, according to Twinkle.) when suddenly, Snow fell to the ground from exhaustion, Gate just nudged him with a hoof. “Get up, we can’t afford to stop moving.”

“I can’t, I can barely keep my eyes open as is.”

“I thought you were the big strong one?”

“I didn't get much sleep last night, too tired to strong.”

“Why didn't you get much sleep last night?”

Snow’s eyes closed and his head just rolled over, asleep .Twinkle blushed, her cheeks a brighter red than Snow’s eyes. “He... we… no reason.”

“No reason, eh? Why were you two in the same bed then?”

“I, We, He, uhh..”

“Out with it girl!” Gate was getting annoyed it seemed.

I decided to interject. “They were busy getting Twinkle pregnant.”

Twinkle’s shame was nearly palpable. “Wait what? I'm - You know about that? We thought you were both out of it entirely!”

“We were, when I went in there I saw a two auras, yours and his. I looked a little closer and saw a small, third one.”

Twinkle fainted.

Gate managed to scrape her jaw off the floor long enough to form a sentence. “What do you mean auras?”

I set my things down with a sigh. “Since it seems we are stopping for a break no matter what, I guess I can explain. You see, every now and then, when I’m frightened or alarmed, my eyes glow. You know that bit. Well, when my eyes start glowing, my vision doesn't change at all, beyond the tinge of green that everything gets. What it does, is it lets me see the flow of magic around every living thing, the aura if you will. The stronger or more familiar the aura, the easier it is to see through obstructions like thin walls. It isn't exactly x-ray vision, but it does help me see things coming. That’s how I knew that we were about to be under attack, sort of.”

“Wait, what do you mean ‘sort of’?”

“Well, I was unaware of anything out of the normal when I first woke up. All I knew was that my eyes were glowing. I went to check on Snow and Twinkle, that’s when I saw the foal starting to form in her, I looked a little closer to double check, only to spot a flare of a red aura outside. Then I woke you all up, and you know the rest.”

"Well... dang. That sure does put a bit of a hamper on things."

"That it does." I scratched my chin with the tip of my fore hoof. "Say, isn't there supposed to be bears and stuff in these woods?"

Almost as if on cue, we heard a twig snap.

"Heart, we should get the beauty and the beast over there back into the world of living. This is a terrible spot to rest."

I nodded in agreement. "Yeah, but they are so out of it. I don't think we have the time to find a clearing, got any ideas?"

Gate's previously neutral facial expression quickly started to evolve into thinky face once more. Someone press B! Quick! Her mouth cocked slightly upwards on the left. Her nostrils flared slightly. Her pupils dilated down to pinpricks. Her eyes widened to impossible amounts, even for freaky big pony eyes. For the fainted of moments, There was an inkling of a blue glow coming from her eyes. "Heart. I just had an idea." Really? I would have never guessed. "Help me get these two into a tree."

And so we all sat in a rather large oak tree. Gate and I had our hooves wrapped around some thick branches, desperately trying not to fall; while Snow and Twinkle were tied together with vines, and were safely against the firm tree trunk. Gate had asked me to keep my eyes closed and my ears open, since she was so sure that something wanted to kill and eat us in these woods. "Don't you worry your pretty little blue head. I've got a lot of shit I need to do before I let anything even try to kill me." I had said.

She just rolled her eyes and scoffed. "It isn't you I'm worried about." I knew that it shouldn't of, but that had hurt. My gaze fell away from her and my ears fell to my head.

She seemed to notice this, and started to speak. "Heart, that isn't what I-"

I cut her off, a hiss in my voice. "Shut up." It was barely louder than a whisper. "Something is coming."

There were two forms approaching the our position.

Day five: That song sucked anyways.

The two figures past below us. A cyan, rainbow maned Pegasus mare and a very well-endowed red earth pony stallion. The moment my eyes saw them, I felt an uncontrollable urge to just act nonchalant, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Just four ponies hiding in a tree while two others walked below, there is nothing to see here, move along. I noticed Gate had her thinky face once more. I was scared.

The moment the two were out of sight, I turned and whispered to her. “Hey, Gate, think we should follow them?”

“What? Of course I don’t! I mean, I really want to, but I don’t think we should.”

“Why not?”

“That was Rainbow Dash and Big Macintosh.” Big, that was an understatement. “Dash is one of the mane six.”

I looked at her with a blank expression.

“You know, the main characters of the show?”

Still not a twitch.

“The ones who do almost everything? The ones who saved everypony all the time?”

Not. A. Twitch.

Gate facehooved. “She’s the one that everypony thinks is a lesbian.”

“OHHH! Why shouldn’t we follow? They seem to know where they are going. If anyone can help us figure out what’s going on, wouldn’t it be one of the main characters?”

“That’s just the thing. We shouldn’t follow BECAUSE she’s a main character. She’s also the brash, gaudy one who always finds trouble.” She paused for a moment. “Also, she would hate you.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You are … incredibly strange. Your personalities would clash in a way that is worthy of making the gods cringe in awkwardness.”

“Sounds fun!”

“Exactly my point.”

It seems as though Snow was being pulled back to the world of the living by our argument. He only grumbled lightly, but it sounded like ‘shut the hell up over there’ to me.

I shimmied my way along the tree branch and got a little closer. “Snow! You are awake, good. I’m gonna need some help getting out of this tree.” I looked down. It was about a fifteen foot drop, survivable in my old body. I could have just jumped down at an angle and rolled when I hit the ground to disperse the force of the impact, if I were still human. I had no idea how to do half of that sentence as a pony.

“I would, “ He grunted. “But it seems as though someone thought it a good idea to tie me to a tree.” He glared at me for a moment. “Why are we even up here?”

“Oh! Well, Gate and I were chatting once you two were out of it, and we heard something coming. We did the ‘logical thing’, “I did my best airquotes with my hooves, nearly causing me to lose my grip on the tree branch. “And so, here we are, stuck in a tree. Before you ask, we used magic to get us all up here. Well, Gate did to be technical. I don’t trust my ability to hold any heavy objects at the moment, especially not a living heavy object.”

“Are you calling me fat?”

“No! Not at all, just not easy to lift.”

“Right… I’m going to pretend you didn’t call me fat. Just until you untie me and we can all get down.”

Gate turned to us and hissed. “No! You idiot, don’t let her down, she’s just going to run after those other two.”

I pouted a bit. “Says who?”

“I said, because I know you too well Heart.”

“Well, you are a regular jack ass.”

“I am not a donkey.”

“I didn’t say you were a donkey, I said you were a jack ass.”

“Ass means donkey, nincompoop.”

“I am not a nincompoop!”

Our bickering lasted several minutes. For some unknown reason, Snow was content in watching us throw insults at one another, for a while at least.

“Would you two love birds just untie me already?”

I shot daggers at him with my eyes. Or rather, I really wish I could shoot daggers out of my eyes. That would be neat. And snow would have died. That would have been neat.

We continued down the wooded path. Twinkle was sprawled lazily over Snow’s back. Lucky bitch, not having to walk and stuff. Eventually, we came upon the end of the forest. It was nearly nightfall, the sun hanging desperately onto the horizon, like a child not wanting to go to bed. The moon was already half way up the sky when the sun relinquished the struggle. I imagined a bit of a spat between the two.

“No, moon! I don’t want to go to bed. You can’t make me! You aren’t my mommy!”

“Shut the hell up sun, you are delirious! Everyone needs to sleep, let me let them!”

“No, I don’t wanna!”

“I’m raising anyways. Move.”

“Fffiiiiiiiiine.”

I found myself laughing at the thought. It seemed like it could of happened, had the sun and moon been able to talk to one another. Which they couldn’t, of course; that would be silly. Something dug its claws into the back of my mind.

Weren’t the rulers of Equestria able to move the sun and moon or something like that?

I shot a glance at Gate, and saw the bags under her eyes. “Hey Gate, you know pony stuff right?”

“What?”

“What were the names of those two that ruled the sun and moon?”

“Celestia and Luna, why?”

“I just had a funny thought is all.”

“About what?”

“The sun not wanting to go down, behaving like a spoiled child not getting it’s way. Then the moon just pretty much says ‘Screw you, I’m rising anyways.’ The sun grumbles and goes down pouting.”

“Well Celestia and Luna-“

I heard Twinkle’s voice interrupt. “You are an idiot, Heart.” Snow grumbled his agreement.

I stared to hang my head low in defeat, only to have my mane start poking me in the eyes. “Gah, stupid thing! Anyone happen to bring scissors or a knife? I can’t take this anymore!”

Three voices deadpanned as one. “You are an idiot.”

We kept walking.

It was getting darker now, the sun’s receding rays desperately trying to stretch themselves through the inky light of the moon. I turned around, looking at the forest that we were leaving behind. It suddenly seemed impossibly creepier, almost dangerous. It was a strange feeling; a mix of dread, confusion, uncertainty, and a splash of thankfulness that I had made it through the forest alive. We hadn’t seen any other sign of life, beyond the two from earlier. No squirrels on the branches, no birds overhead, not even an insect buzzing in the distance, it felt like the entire forest itself was the only thing alive. And it was watching.

I tried to voice my concerns, but the words died before ever reaching my mouth. I could think them clearly, but my tongue could not act accordingly. Looking at back to the others, I noticed they seemed to be having similar issues. I laughed a bit. “I suppose we can’t talk about the forest then?”

Gate cleared her throat. “Yes, it would seem that way. But since it seems as though we can talk about talking about the forest, what would you say if you were capable of talking about the forest?”

“Well, if I could have said anything, I might have commented on the distinct lack of sound beyond the noise of hoofsteps.”

Twinkle seemed to think for a moment. “I would have mentioned the absolute zero movement, no leaves swaying in the wind, no ferns being brushed aside by squirrels, nothing.”

Snow shuddered. “I would have mentioned the fact that not once did I ever feel compelled to look up. I always look up. I would have also mentioned the fact that at one point I thought about doing so, only to get a sudden intense cramp in my neck until I changed my mind.”

Gate looked back into the trees once more. “I would have mentioned that the path we took had zero prints on it. No paws, no hooves, no feet. It would be worth mentioning that it almost felt like the forest opened the path just for us.”

My eyes ached of dryness when I realized I hadn’t blinked since turning around. I managed to force myself to close my eyes, removing the foreboding trees from my sight, and then the pain came. It felt like every fiber of my being was being torn apart. For more than a moment, I thought I was going to die.

I opened my eyes again, and the pain vanished. “I think… the forest wants us back.” I took a step towards it. “Why though? Is it sad because there are no animals inside?” I took another step.

Gate shoved a hoof in my path, halting my movement. “I think the forest is the reason there are no animals inside. We need to get away.”

A new path into the forest appeared. The shrubbery around the trees looked as if blown aside by two different sudden winds, splitting down the middle.. Trees were slowly inching their way away from this new path. I saw a glimmer of light in the shadowy distance. It was a familiar light. What followed was a variety of sensory overloads.

A taste that reminded me of home cooked meals on a night of celebration.

A scent that spoke of open fields, freshly blooming in the spring.

A soft and gentle warmth that felt like the hug of a loving mother.

A burst of various gentle glows, flowing out like a mist made of rainbows.

And then there was a song. The song was a sprightly tune, one that immediately brought a smile upon my visage. It seemed to contain unspoken volumes of fond memories.

A voice rudely cut into it, but only for a moment. I couldn't understand the voice at all. My mind was too preoccupied with discovering the source of that melodious beauty.

“Hey!”

There the voice was again. Oh well, it was gone. My attention fell back to the song.

“Heart!”

It was a tad more clear, it sounded familiar. Who was it?

"Snap the hell out of it!"

I felt a sharp pain across the side of my head, and fell to the ground.

.,-~ten minutes later~-,.

My eyes slowly opened and the first thing I saw was Gate standing over me panting. "What the hell was that?"

"Come on, we need to go. Now." She just lifted me with her magic and carried me behind her as she ran. She was running fast, faster than I had seen her run before. Trees looked quite distorted when moving at such a speed. Wait, trees? I thought we were out of the forest? I looked ahead, and saw the clearing once more. It was bathed in the pleasant, silvery glow of the moon.

We broke free of the shadows cast by the trees and Gate immediately fell over exhausted. I fell out of the air and into the dirt. My ears pivoted towards the sounds of heavy breathing a few feet away. I turned to see that Snow's hooves were coated in some green ooze, dripping off of them in a manner not unlike blood. "Hey Snow, Twinkle, can somepony tell me why you are all tired and what that stuff is? Why does the air smell like death?"

Snow just glared at me with relief in his eyes. "You started to walk into the forest as soon as Gate said we should run. You had this weird, fog thing around your head that was getting thicker as you got closer. We all looked to one another and just followed you in, trying the whole time to get you to turn around. Twinkle and Gate tried to use magic to move you, but they couldn't make you move an inch that you weren't moving on your own. About two minutes of walking later, we saw some kind of weird beast things. They were made of wood, but shaped like wolves, and they were all sitting around this weird ball of red light. You walked into their little miniature clearing, I assume it was their den, and you just stood there smiling. They started to stand and lick their lips. I think there was about nine of them. One or two started to walk towards you. I coughed, and all of their attention fell on me with angry snarls. The next thing I know, I'm tearing through those things like paper."

Twinkle butted in. "He was screaming 'Yeah' every time he beat one."

"Right, that too. Anyways, Gate was trying to snap you out of your trance while Twinkle fended off any that got past me. We eventually just decided to knock you out and drag you away. As soon as Gate's hoof hit your head, the light faded and the wolves started running away. Gate picked you up and carried you out, while Twinkle and I sprinted ahead."

I wasn't a tad surprised at what the massive stallion had done to the poor beasts in my defense, but the thought of the entrancing light made my jaw drop. "The light, it looked like a glimmer at first, and then it seemed to cycle through feelings until it stopped on the most amazing song I've heard in a long, long time. I was just curious as to where it came from, all I could really see was a weird rainbowy mist dancing around my eyes. It was trippy as hell, at first I thought one of you drugged me when I wasn't looking."

Twinkle scoffed. "What? You really think any of us would do that to you?"

I laughed. "Gate would, and has. Numerous times. Nothing serious though. It was always something cheap and slightly not legal."

"Slightly?"

"Maybe a little more than slightly."

Gate managed to speak, finally catching her breath. "In all fairness, I only ever did that when you were seriously depressed to the point of bumming me out!" A sudden change in topic, as expected. "Besides, we need to get moving. Who knows what else might tempt this idiot to make us go back into those woods again?"

"But first, where is my stuff?"

"Over there, next to that rock." Twinkle motioned with her hoof towards a nearby boulder jutting awkwardly out of the ground, with a long and dull pointed tip. It looked almost like a big stony knife. I made my way over, finding my belongings in acceptable condition. I picked them up and readjusted my jacket before placing them on my back, and then rejoined the group.

We all turned back towards our original direction to start walking. We stopped when we saw what was there.

Big gap for semi-suspenseful cliffhanger mid-chapter? Go get a drink!

At a glance, they were bugs. At the second glance, they were pony shaped bugs. At the third, Gate spoke up. "Changelings."

Snow nodded. "A lot of them."

One of them, taller than the others walked towards us.

"Chrysalis, why can't you just leave us the hell alone?" I shouted.

She seemed a bit taken aback by this, hesitating on her next step and looking aside for a moment. She re-found her resolve and started towards us again.

I looked over to Gate. Her eyes were glowing a pale blue. "Twinkle, distance."

"Eighty two meters and closing at a rate of two meters every 2.36 seconds."

Gate nodded, and looked to me. "Listen for her heart rate and breathing, tell me if she gets excited. If you can, try and make out the chatter among the other changelings."

I nodded, and closed my eyes. My ears seemed to take on a life of their own, shaking lightly as I honed them towards the approaching changeling queen. "Steady breathing. Indeterminate heart rate, I am unsure of what is normal for changelings. She seems calm." My eyes opened again.

Gate nodded once more. Her horn lit up and a blue dot appeared a short distance ahead of her. "Snow, stand with your left hind leg there, then fly directly upwards." Her horn flashed once more. Snow's hooves started to glow palely. "When the glowing stops, you are at the right height. If it starts again, I want you let your wings go limp. Just fall straight down, try and yell as loud as you can when you do it. Do not change direction, just let yourself speed downwards. When you can make out the glowing dot once more, do as you please."

Snow hesitated for a split second, but did as he was told. Soon, he was but a faint white dot in the sky.

"Twinkle, distances."

"Which one?"

"All of them."

"Chrysalis: Thirty four meters away. Changelings: One hundred and sixteen meters away. Snow: Just about one hundred meters up, his unsteady flapping makes it a bit too erratic to be certain. Heart: Two thirds of a meter to your seven-thirty. Me: Sixteen eighteenths of a meter to your four o'clock."

Gate's eyes closed, with the glow still visibly shining from under her eyelids. She mouthed out a few words to herself, repeating the same ones several times. "Let me do the talking. Do not move until you see me jump to my right. Not my left, my right. Nod twice when Chrysalis is exactly thirteen meters out."

What the hell is going on?

A few quiet moments passed. They would be silent, if not for the sounds of excitement and magic gently radiating from Gate's chest and horn. Twinkle's head nodded twice. Gate grinned. "Chrysalis! So good to see you once more! Might I be the first to ask, as politely as I can possibly muster, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT?"

The shout hurt my ears to the point of me cringing. Nopony noticed.

"We have come," She gestured to the small army behind her, "To ask of you to join us once more. As you did from birth. I know you have long since forsaken that identity, but it still can be regained! You can still live gloriously as-"

"NO! Shut up! I am not a damn bug like you! I don't care if I was once. I AM NOT ONE ANYMORE!" I fell to the ground with my fore-hooves clenched around my head. Damn it she's loud!

Chrysalis had stopped for a moment, but started walking again. "Your friend has the right idea, cowering like that. Changelings are a powerful race, you can be powerful too, if you just-"

"WHAT PART OF THIS DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?" Gate's horn flashed brighter, then went back to the dull glow. The white dot in the starry sky started to grow larger. And then I realized it. Chrysalis was standing directly over the small blue dot on the grass. That blue dot was the homing beacon for an incoming object. That incoming object was very large, and very mad. "What you don't seem to understand, is that the three of us," She raised one hoof towards Twinkle, and the other towards me, "All find bugs to be absolutely disgusting."

Chrysalis just widened her eyes in what seemed to be shock. I was the first to hear it, it sounded at first like someone swinging something in a very wide, very rapid circle. You know the small whistling whoosh sound it makes. Moments later, it sounded a bit like a far-off car. Chrysalis looked up and gasped. Gate jumped to her left and helped me up off of the ground.

"Sorry for the yelling, we need to move." She levitated me and all of my things into the air, then jumped sharply to her right towards Twinkle. "MOVE!" Needless to say, we moved.

Snow sounded like a freight train as he plummeted downwards, the stunned insect took a bit too long to think enough to simply get out of the way. Once she started to, Snow could see the dot. He angled his small wings sharply enough to turn almost immediately. Chrysalis's own wings opened up in terror, only to reveal their tattered remains. Apparently, they were still torn from when I kind of made her go away.

Snow didn't crush the creature under his weight, nor did he simply hit her. He grabbed her by the horn and kept on flying, straight through the spot we had been standing only moments before. He was going fast, really fast. At this speed, he could have simply thrown her screaming form aside and let her neck snap on the ground. But no, that was too simple. He flew straight towards the boulder.

I closed my eyes and covered my ears tightly, but it wasn't enough to disguise the blood curdling crunch of her carapace being shattered. I cracked my eyes open slightly, only to see her semi-impaled on the now-green rock. A rising feeling started in my stomach, so I immediately looked away.

Snow flew back over to us. He cleared his throat calmly. "Ladies, I advise you cover your ears. Sorry in advance Heart, but this has to be done."

I sighed and covered my ears with my bag. "Go ahead..."

He smiled widely. "YYYEEAAAAHHHH!!!"

My ears rang loudly for a moment, too loud to make out what else was being said. I assumed it was something along the lines of. "Nice work!" and "Geez, loud enough?"

When my hearing returned to normal, the first thing I noticed was a heartbeat coming from behind me.

Twice in one chapter? Yeah. I just did that. Keep scrolling down.

"KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL! LET THE BUZZARDS FEAST ON THEIR ROTTING CARCASSES!" Chrysalis pulled herself slowly off of the rock as she shouted the order to her swarm. They obeyed immediately, bursting into the air.

At this point, I was legitimately terrified. There were at least one hundred bug-pony-monsters flying straight towards me, fangs bared. Every single one had but one purpose in life at the time, to tear me to the pieces.

Gate, eyes still glowing, looked smug and calm as ever. She levitated several cans of spray deodorant and two books of matches from her fanny pack. "Everyone, stay close together. Form a tight circle." They all decided to form said circle around me, since I was still on the ground and cringing.

The spray cans formed a sort of dome around us, each spray nozzle facing outwards. "Hey Twinkle, think you could start lighting these matches? This is about all I can levitate at once."

"Sure." Gate let the matches fall into Twinkle's grip.

Soon they were lit, one levitating just in front of each spray can. I looked over to Gate. "Gate, you are a bloody genius. How did you know to bring these?!"

"Sheer coincidence. I brought the deodorant for you, mint is a strong smell that gives me a headache after too long. The matches were in case we needed fire."

The changelings were upon us in moments. They started flying around in a funnel-like formation, trying to find a gap in the wall of make-shift flame throwers. There wasn't one.

I really could not help but suddenly get an old song in my head.

Before I could blink, my nostrils were assaulted by the reek of burning flesh. The screeches of burning changelings echoed deeply into my very soul. These creatures were people at one point...

In a matter of minutes, the once horrifying horde was reduced to an agonizing combination of ash, blood, and screams. All of it in a circle around me. In a circle around my hooves. I could have stopped this. I could have stopped this all. All it would have taken was a second opinion to be spoken, and none of them would have had to die.

I felt an unfamiliar sensation, streaks of cool moistness falling down my cheeks. I looked down, and saw drops of rain water falling off of my chin. It wasn't raining. That had been the first time I had cried since I was an infant. When my father died in an accident, I did not shed a tear. When my mother overdosed depression medicine after that, I bit my tongue. When there was a pile of slowly burning corpses surrounding me due to my neglect, I wept like a newborn infant.

Day six: Equivalent

Thirty minutes had past. My tears were long since dried out. I had grown disturbingly accustomed to the reek of burning changelings. The screams of agony were gone, replaced by the sound of small patches of burning grass. I couldn't help but sit there in the middle of it all, staring at my own hooves. All of that blood, is on these hooves... I just laid there on the grass, the one unsoiled patch of grass. All around me was dead. Everything dead. I closed my eyes and tried to hide from it all.

"Heart, get up, we need to get out of here. The smoke is going to start drawing attention." Twinkle was gently nudging my side. She was just trying to be nice, to help me snap out of this comatose state I was in.

There was no way I could go on with myself, after what had just happened. I knew that, but I decided to try, for their sake if anything.I decided to at least stand.

We were all exhausted. We had been walking since before dawn, and it was well after dark. "We should find a place to sleep." My first words since it happened, they felt hollow and pointless. I floated my belongings onto my back and started walking. I didn't bother waiting for the others to follow me, I didn't even turn my head to see that they were. I didn't need to of course, I could hear them start to walk behind me after a moment.

Gate whispered, I suppose to Twinkle. "Now you see what I meant about the depressed state she sometimes gets in."

I stopped, intending to turn around and snap, but a grim realization hit me like a sack of bricks. "Where is Chrysalis? I saw her crawling away as the other changelings flew up to us, but nothing after that." They all stopped in their tracks. "Don't tell me she got away... How did she even survive that?!"

Gate's head lowered. "She beat Celestia without a second thought. Chrysalis is a tough one to kill."

"While we're on the topic, mind explaining why you decided to torch those changelings? They used to be people, like me, like YOU!"

She just sighed. "Empathy."

"What?"

"Ever since this started, you have had increasingly sensitive ears. Twinkle has increasingly sensitive eyes. When our eyes start glowing, it adds another change, contradictory to our normal ones. You have good ears, so your glowing eyes make your eyes better, so you rely on something more than what you hear. When Twinkle's eyes glow, her magical abilities are more potent, so she can make up for her physical vulnerability. I never told you my other change. Since this started, I've been becoming increasingly logical, thought driven, fact obsessed; you could say I've made a habit of knowing every solid fact about what is going on around me. When my eyes glow, it pushes me back down to earth, letting me experience emotion once more. Not mine though, those are already there. I get to feel what everyone around me feels. No, never mind, I don't get to, I HAVE to."

There was a confused look on my face for a moment before she continued.

"I felt your pain, when you cringed away from my shouting. I felt Twinkle's unease at the whole situation. I felt Snow's burning blood lust as he came down on Chrysalis. I even felt Chrysalis's feelings. Initially, she felt unsure, wondering whether or not she could really convince us to join her. When Snow came down, it shifted to an absolute, overwhelming terror. When she hit the rock, I felt the stabbing into my own stomach. When she ordered her changelings to kill us, I felt her sadness, her anger, she felt betrayed." A tear fell from her chin.

"When the changelings came, I felt nothing from within them. They were hollow, absolutely devoid of anything beyond being an extension of Chrysalis's own will. There was a sadness, in a few of them. A desperate feeling of regret and despair. At first, I thought it was a shred of individuality, but then I realized. Each time Chrysalis's heart beat, those individual feelings were being snuffed out, creating progressively more mindless drones. When the burning started, one of the ones that was sad, had shifted to thankfulness. It was glad I killed it, saving it from becoming another zombie."

I was torn. One side of me was screaming that an innocent life should never be taken. The other side was sobbing for those who lost their entire being against their will. Somewhere in the middle ground, I broke completely. "Let's just find a place to sleep." My head low, spirits lower.

We kept walking. Some where along the line, I passed out.

I awoke to the sound of gunfire. Distant, yet very clear in what it was. Guns firing, bullets tearing trees. I stood up immediately, entirely ignoring my surroundings. My eyes were still closed, to help me focus on the sound.

"Eight different guns... assault rifles, firing in bursts of three.." I whispered quietly to myself.

I paused for a moment, listening for any more information. Then added "Approaching." My eyes opened slowly, sparing them from the sudden onslaught of the sunrise in my face.

I was still in the field, not far from where I collapsed. To my right, Gate was asleep against the lone tree behind me.. To my left, I saw Snow hanging limply from a low branch. Twinkle was standing a few feet away, staring in the same direction my ears were pointed.

"The noise finally woke you up?"

"Yeah, any idea what's going on?"

"I was standing watch when I saw some light flashing off in the woods. Some small fires started here and there, but they were quickly put out, not before I saw the smoke though. Apparently, something made someone very mad, and then took off into the woods."

"Eight assailants, heavily armed, but conserving ammo. Can't tell what their chasing. Might be more of them that aren't shooting."

"They are taking a path parallel with the one we took yesterday. You don't think?"

"Couldn't be. We covered our tracks perfectly. Those.... wolf things will probably just eat whatever is in there. What's left of them will, at least."

"I don't think so, the only ones that got away were severely crippled. They won't be hunting any time soon."

Gate stirred from her slumber. "What's going on?"

I gestured with a hoof towards the approaching noise off in the forest. "Gunfire. Eight guns firing, chasing something. Heading this way. Why are we so close to the forest still though?"

"We were too tired to drag you far, this tree was close and on a small hill. Height advantages like this are mandatory when keeping watch."

"Fair enough, I'm well rested. I guess you guys are too?"

They both nodded. Twinkle looked up. "Anyone wanna risk waking the sleeping beauty up there?"

I looked Gate dead in the eyes. "One..."

She nodded in understanding. "Two..."

In unison, "Three! Not it!"

I looked at Twinkle, and giggled a bit. "We both said not it, you didn't. You're it!"

"That isn't even fair!"

"All is fair in love and war, Twinkle. You get to wake him up!"

The pink maned former-manly man looked at me with the intent to kill me, but seemed to change her mind. For now at least. She just wrapped Snow in a pale pink glow, and lifted him off of the branch. "Everypony might want to get out of his line of sight."

"Good idea... " We all made our way to the other side of the tree, opposite of Snow.

Twinkle's horn stopped glowing, and all that was audible was a dull ~Thump~ from the other side of the tree. That was followed by a rather horrifying tap on my shoulder from behind. I turned and saw Snow. He looked calm. Too calm. Like the calm before a tornado.

"Who did it?" Gate and I immediately pointed at Twinkle and backed away. He just glared at her for a moment, and sighed. "If it was either Gate or Heart, we would be a group of 3 ponies by the end of the hour."

I decided to change the subject, away from the topic of murdering me. "We woke you up because there's gunfire in the woods, and it's approaching. I don't see how you guys don't hear it already."

Twinkle suddenly seemed on high alert, staring back into the forest. "Whatever the gunmen are chasing, it's almost out of the trees. I just saw movement."

Gate grew serious once more. "We should hide. We don't know what it is, too many variables."

"We've got a tree right here, ripe for the hiding!" Snow said, as he lifted Twinkle into the leafy branches and out of sight.

I looked to Gate. "Shall we?"

Both of our horns lit up, and we started to levitate one another into the tree. On several instances, I could have sworn she made me hit my head on a branch intentionally.

Two ponies burst out of tree line. One green, one pink. They were making a beeline for the tree we were hiding in. I looked over to Gate. "I think they are going to hide behind our tree..."

She just nodded.

The two unknowns were sprinting across the field now, and clearly exhausted. They both ducked out of sight, panting with their backs against the tree. I couldn't see them from where I was, but I could hear their conversation.

"You think we lost them?" The male voice asked.

"Not a chance. Did you not see those guys? Why were they even chasing you to begin with?" The familiar female voice responded.

"I'm not sure, I was just wandering the forest when I saw them, they started shooting at me so I ran."

"Sure, really believable, all of that and you just HAPPENED to run into me? I was just peacefully collecting berries, I did nothing to provoke them! I don't even know you!"

"Well, since we're about to die. Let's get introductions out of the way. You can call me Guyra, Guyra Heartstrings." And then, I found what it felt like to have a 'what the fuck' face.

"Heart? Is that you? I thought you were a mare?"

"Nope, one hundred percent stallion. And the name is Guyra."

"Well, 'Guyra', you can call me Love." So that's why I knew that voice...

And then I fell out of the tree, hitting my head firmly on the ground.

"Come on Heart, your going to end up getting brain damage or something if you keep getting knocked out like this." Gate was shaking me awake.

My ears were ringing, and my head was sore. "What the hell happened this time?"

"You fell out of the tree, dumb ass."

"Come on now, miss 'Gate' was it? No need to be rude to such a lovely mare." That was Guyra's voice.

I opened my eyes wearily, and looked over to this new pony. He looked... well, almost exactly like me. But he was a he. And he had a goatee. His mane and tail were a bit shorter, but I suppose that just comes with being a stallion. I glared at him for a moment longer.

"You ... " It took me a moment to find the right words. "Freaking wanna be. Go jump in some paint or something."

"Ouch, and here I was thinking that the attraction was mutual. Can't say you don't look quite better than the other mares here."

I heard heavy hoof steps back away, from behind me. I assumed it was Snow.

The other three, Gate, Twinkle, and Love, that is, all formed a line between Guyra and I. Gate went first. I chose to ignore the shouting as best I could, and turned to Snow.

"What happened this time? Did I hit my head harder than usual or something? Where are those guys who were shooting at Love and Guyra?"

"Oh nothing really, they stepped out of the woods and looked around. Apparently, none of them saw those two duck behind our tree, so they assumed that the missing ponies were still in the forest, and turned around. Twinkle said they looked just like the guys who attacked us yesterday."

The sound of yelling behind me died down, replaced by the noise of hooves pounding onto flesh.

"So, I guess that those guys were looking for us still, but saw Guyra and thought he was me. So they chased him, hoping it would lead them to the rest of us?"

"That's what it seems like, yeah."

"They should have known better. That impostor can't even comprehend what it is that makes me so amazing, let alone imitate it."

I heard his cocky, arrogant tone from behind me. "I'm still here you know, even if I AM getting all of this physical attention, which is kinda fun."

The sound of his beating stopped as soon as his words were spoken. Snow started eyeing me funny. "You really do look better as a mare. That guy is a prick."

"Are you hitting on me? I don't think Twinkle would like that."

"Wait- what? No, that's not what I'm saying at-"

I cut him off. "So your saying you like to judge other stallion's appearances? I don't think Twinkle would like that either, finding out that you are a colt cuddler. Don't worry though, Your secret is safe with me!" I gave him a friendly punch in the shoulder.

"What? I'm not- what?"

I laughed and walked off to the others, standing over my male duplicate. He was laying on his back and his coloring was a bit off around the facial area, probably from some mixture of new bruises and blood. "Get up, you idiot. We should all get moving before those guys from earlier decide you two aren't in the forest."

"Why would I want to get up? I've got four lovely mares standing over me, giving me all the attention I crave." His eyes went wide as Love walked over to where his hind legs were. She turned around and reared up to buck him right in the nether region, but stopped herself inches away. "I'M UP I'M UP!" he shouted as he jumped to a standing position.

Gate leaned on me. "Yeah, he's exactly like you, a regular dumb ass.

We walked for about two hours, about eight miles. After some discussion, I learned that Guyra had gone out into the forest to look for something to do, out of sheer boredom. He couldn't get back into his apartment, because he couldn't figure out how to open a door with hooves. I had tried to explain magic to him, but he refused to acknowledge it as a legitimate thing. He insisted it was impossible, until Gate mentioned the fact that we were all talking ponies. That made him shut up.

By sheer accident, we all ended up walking in pairs of twos, each pair a bit further apart from the rest of the group, yet close to one another. Twinkle, of course, walked with Snow. Love and Gate were chatting about candy's effects on teeth. That left me to walk with Guyra. The discussion between us had abruptly ended when he realized it was just he and I. The silence was incalculably awkward, until my stomach decided to break it like a hammer through a glass window made of wet paper.

"Huh, Guess I'm hungry. Anyone bring any food?"

Guyra nudged me with a hoof. "I got something you could eat."

I stopped walking, to only glare at him. Gate came up behind me. "Just. Like. You."

The next several minutes consisted primarily of everypony's stomachs groaning, until Gate did the unspeakable.

The rest of us looked on in shock, absolutely disgusted by what was occurring in front of us. There, not bot ten feet away from me, stood a blue unicorn. A self proclaimed genius. An old friend who saved my life three times more than I was willing to count. A personal hero. There, Gate was eating grass. Right out of the ground.

She looked up. "We are ponies, it's grazing. Stop whining about hunger and sate yourselves."

Day Seven: My sleeping habits kind of suck

Well, as it turns out, grass actually wasn’t all that bad. Not that good, mind you, but not all bad. It didn’t really have a taste, like chewing wet, crunchy air. Either way, it was enough to silence some rumbling stomachs. Honestly, it tasted better than my own cooking. That’s not saying much, seeing as how I once burned an apartment down trying to boil water, on an electric stove. I still don’t know how I lit water on fire. But I did, and then I panicked and threw it. The whole place was in flames in minutes.

Anyways, back to what you are here for. We all ate grass for several minutes, in relative silence, until I noticed Snow and Guyra having a conversation.

“I agree with you wholeheartedly Guyra, these mares are absolutely crazy.”

“I just don’t get why I feel so compelled to hit on them. Never had to deal with that as a woman, I was completely asexual.”

“Wait, you used to be a she?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Heart used to be a he.”

It was at this point that I looked up from the grass and walked over to them. “Okay, whatever caused all of this, is a serious ass. Makes a chick turn into the stallion version, makes a guy turn into the mare version. That’s just not even funny right there.”

Guyra looked at me with a quizzical look. “Well, that certainly is… an interesting situation. Wanna trade?”

“I would do anything to be able to… almost anything.”

Snow shrugged his wings. “I think it’s kind of funny.”

Guyra and I both glared at him, and in a strange moment of unintentional synchronicity, said “You like your reproductive system the way it is, right? Would you be laughing if we gelded you right now?”

We both looked at one another once more. “That was weird.”

I blinked, we had done it again. “Stop that.”

“No! I’m not doing it! You are copying me!”

“STOP THAT!”

“I’m not doing anything you idiot! It’s you! Stop saying the same words as me at the same time as me!”

“I’m not doing it intentionally, I swear! It has to be you!”

Snow just coughed his throat clear. “You are both idiots.”

I decided to ignore that comment. It seemed Guyra did as well. “Okay, seriously, let’s just both say something completely random and break this whatever it is, alright?”

We nodded at each other, and paused for a moment. “YOUR MOTHER HAS AIDS!”

“Well, that didn’t work.” We both rubbed our chins in contemplation.

“Hey Gate! You’re the smart one! Fix this!”

She looked over her shoulder at me. “Why? It’s funny to watch you both make each other mad, as opposed to the rest of us.”

“JUST HELP US STOP DOING…. THIS!”

“Ugh. Fine.” Gate trotted over to where we stood. “Heart, what’s the meaning of life, the universe and everything?”

“42.” I glared at Guyra for saying it as well.

“Okay, how about this, you should both have a different answer for this one. Where were you born?”

“Kennesaw Hospital in Marietta Georgia May 1st, 1995. Three twenty two AM. In the emergency room, Mother never got to the maternity ward fast enough.”

Gate looked a tad surprised. “Well, on such a long sentence even. Either you two planned this, or is that true Guyra? Exact same as Heart?” Guyra nodded.

“Well, you two might be long lost fraternal twins or something. Unless your mothers were side by side when it happened, or you two are just the same person? I don’t know. Magic is weird. Let’s try something else.” Gate stuck a hoof in my mouth. I pulled it out immediately.

“Eugh! The fuck Gate, I think you stepped in something!”

“It worked didn’t it?”

“Huh? I… guess it did! Neat!”

“Your ears are twitching, kind of like your hands used to.”

Guyra looked at me. “Your hands did that too?”

“Let’s just stop talking about that stuff! This is getting kind of creepy!”

I took out my lyre and let it play a simple tune to stop the twitch.

Gate just walked back over to where Twinkle and Love were staring at us. “Called it! I fucking called it! Exactly alike! You owe me twenty dollars Twinkle!”

The white unicorn in question just rolled her eyes and went back to eating.

We were walking once more. Nearly as far as any of us could see was just open fields, save for the slowly shrinking city in the back ground. I don’t know where we were, what time it was, or how long we had been walking, but I was bored. I was really bored. I was as bored as a fencepost. Eventually, I decided to start annoying everypony.

“Where are we even going?”

Gate just shrugged. “Iunno, away.”

“Where is ‘away’?”

She pointed a hoof back towards the city. “Not that way.”

“Why not?”

“People want to kill us, remember?”

“We don’t know that for certain, they might have been acting in retaliation. All they did was try to gas us first, that probably was intended to knock us out harmlessly. If it wasn’t for us panicking and fighting back, they probably wouldn’t of started firing lethal rounds.”

“So, you want to go back and make nice with all of the big scary men with big shiny guns that want to introduce you to their friend mister bullet? Go ahead.”

“Well, you’re just no fun. Do we even know who they were?”

Guyra chimed in. “Couldn’t of been Army, National guard, or marines. There are no bases or even recruiting stations close enough. If they were going after you guys because of what Heart did in the park, it would have taken them longer to get military force authorized for use and get something planned. No, it would have to of been civilians that just really don’t like you. That or it might have been some underground or organized crime group, maybe mercenaries? I don’t know. They were organized and prepared though. Definitely trained, some of them might have been ex-millitary.”

I gave him a funny look. “How do you know all of that?”

“I was wanted to join the reserves in high school, ended up not doing it since there aren’t any major recruiting facilities nearby. I didn’t want to travel too far away for training either, so I just changed my mind.”

“Well, that cuts out the whole ‘Government wants public to shush’ idea that I had. Let’s see, who do I know that would want to kill me for doing that…”

Gate grumbled. “I know someone. Remember that gas station guy? He might have had something to do with it. He was the only one who saw us, until you ran off to the park.”

“You really think it was that gas station guy? The creepy old man who tried to rape me? How would he go about organizing that many people to kill us?”

“It’s just an idea, Chill your nuts.”

My head hang low with another sigh. An all too familiar poking sensation suddenly caused a ripple of agonizing pain through my body. "Okay, someone PLEASE just rip my mane out or something. Or maybe get me a comb?"

The sun was high, the air was still, and all was silent as our make shift company of six trudged along We had long since run out of things to say to one another, until a small mass of trees came into sight. Gate was beaming with excitement at finally having something to do besides walk.

"So, I say we take a break in those trees, all in favor?"

A chorus of grumbling 'Aye's could be heard, so our path veered off to the left.

The little patch of woods was coming closer now. We had all come to an unspoken agreement that it would provide a wondrously shady area to lay our heads for a minute. I smiled contently as we approached, weary from two days of walking.

We all stopped as we neared it. As a precaution, Gate had asked Twinkle and I to scan for anything alive and mobile in there. When we reported nothing out of the normal, we all happily entered. Snow seemed hesitant at first, obviously checking if he could look upwards with ease.

We all decided to sit in a small clearing of grass within the woods. It wasn't very wide, so the tree branches of the surrounding pines covered most of our view of the sky, but we didn't complain. We had a nice spot to sit and rest on cool grass, with no worries about being seen.

I had been sitting alone and away from the others, tuning my Lyre and Violin at the same time, when Guyra sat next to me. "So," he said, "any chance you could teach me how to play?"

"Huh?"

"The Lyre, I've got a picture of it on my ass and I have no idea how to even play one."

"Oh, you'll have to learn to use your magic first. You can either focus on the act of it until it becomes a thing, practicing on increasingly large/complicated objects, like Twinkle did to learn; or you can learn it how I did, not even realizing you just did magic until your already familiarized with it."

"How do you do MAGIC, and not even realize you did it?"

"Well, that was the first time I did it consciously, just sort of willing the TV remote to my side."

"I learned to play the lyre when I still had hands, a few days ago, on sheer and absolute instinct. That was also the first time I did magic in general."

"Golly gee, that sure was helpful!" Oh how his sarcasm was making me want to strangle him with his own- Never mind.

"Alright, look. You do it a little like this." I set the violin in it's case and focused on my lyre, and began to play. "It really is a rather simple thing to do. Just clear your mind of all but the song, let the magic flow through your horn, and through the Lyre. After that, the music is free to roam the air, until you do something with it."

"What do you mean by 'do something with it'?"

"Simple." I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing, forcing my heart rate down to calm myself. I opened my eyes again to see a light green tinge on everything. A green, which was flowing from the every note plucked by my magic. "Once you learn to not just hear the sound, you can train yourself to feel it. Once you manage that, it's a simple matter of using your magic to direct it's effects into whatever you desire."

"Such as?"

"Such as turning the simple sound waves into spears of light, harmonizing with the music that created it, and then directing those spears to focus into the ears of the enemy A simple lullaby, starting on a whim, can drop a dozen armed soldiers with ease. If I want to literally harm them, I can just focus on the resonance between the sound and the spear a bit more until it solidifies. Boom, impaled."

"Wait what? Why didn't you do that kind of stuff when you guys were getting shot at?"

"Ear plugs. If they can't hear the sound of my music, it can't touch them."

"That's a little cheap. Just two little bits of foam blocking something that awesome?"

"Yeah... But If I can't harm or debilitate my enemies with it, I can always just assist my friends."

"How so?"

"I-" My mind suddenly went blank, and my lyre fell to the ground. "I have no idea. I feel like I know, but when I try to remember it's just this big empty blegh."

Gate ambled over to us. "How did you explain all of that, when you've only done any of it once, on sheer instinct and accident?"

I noticed myself shaking a little. "I-I don't know... He asked, so I just sort of explained. Is that at all weird?"

Guyra just shrugged. "Not at all as weird as the rest of the stuff that's been going on. I mean, swapping genders? How did you males ever aim these things!?" He was sitting on his haunches, gesturing towards his crotch with his forehooves.

"That is not a topic I am obliged to discuss." I felt my face get a little bit warmer.

"You haven't even tried out your new equipment yet, have you?" He eyed me suspiciously.

"Considering all the hell that's been breaking out lately, I've barely had time to eat. I'm always either running for my life, fighting for my life, or unconscious because of unsuccessfully doing one of the other two."

"You know, I could help you get used to your new found gender..."

It was right about then that I decided to pretend to faint, just to avoid that conversation.

Snow fell to the ground with a thud. All eyes fell to him, only to see a small, plastic dart sticking out of his neck. Guyra hit the ground beside me, almost immediately.

Gate shouted. “EVERYPONY! GET DOWN!”

Love and Twinkle obliged, unwillingly. They had been tranquillized.

“What the hell Heart, Did you not hear them?!”

“I still don’t! I have no idea where it’s coming from Gate!” I paused for a moment. Gate didn’t answer. A short, sharp pain in my neck later, and everything faded to black.

“…and keep them under watch at all times. We can’t afford to let any of them wake up without us knowing, not until they arrive.” I heard, in a hushed voice. It was a male voice, obviously a lifelong smoker, I’d put him around 40.

“Yes sir. If any of them so much as open their eyes, I’ll put them under. Any movement, and I just press this button.” A younger, less confident voice replied.

Needless to say, I opted out of opening my eyes. I decided to simply stay immobile and uncertain of my surroundings. There was the occasional shuffling, sometimes from above, sometimes from the side, and once from below. It sounded like unconscious movements made in sleep. With my eyes closed, my ears and mind were free to roam. I could hear eight sets of breathing lungs beyond my own. One forward, about four feet, the rest positioned around me, with something in between us.

After a time, I noticed the heartbeat and breathing of my would-be guard started to slow. That idiot must be new at guarding potentially dangerous prisoners, he was falling asleep! I didn't hear any other signs of life, so I decided to venture forth and crack my eyes open.

For the briefest of moments, I began to panic, but I calmed myself. I let my eyes open a bit wider, to take in more of my situation. I was in a form of hard plastic box that was so small I was forced to remain laying on my stomach, with the steel bars blocking the only possible exit. I saw my ‘guard’, who was napping quietly in a folding camping chair outside of my make shift prison.

He was wearing an all too familiar uniform, only lacking the helmet I had previously seen. It was my first time getting a close up look, without having to run. The boots were as you would expect, steel toed and thickly laced. His pants were colored in urban camouflage gray, and were loose enough to allow a full range of movement without being too loose to wear. His bullet proof vest was a simple solid gray, worn over a rather thick looking shirt. On his sleeve was an insignia that was rather frightening in its appearance. The insignia was the silhouette of various predators, such as a Lion’s head and a crocodile, with a net-like pattern in the back ground. And then it hit me. These guys weren’t soldiers, they were hunters.

I started hyperventilating, when I heard Guyra’s voice from my right, in a hushed whisper. “Calm down you idiot! We’ve all seen it already.”

“Wait, you guys are awake?” I snapped back.

I heard a series noises that I assumed were hooves on plastic, tapping twice each. There was five in total, each from a different location in the room.

Guyra whispered to me again. “Yeah, it seems they were dumb enough to leave us all in the same room. Gate and Twinkle have been sort of pinging each other with magic, in Morse Code, to decide on a plan of action.”

I heard Twinkle’s voice answer him, laced with venom. “Will you two shut up? He’s waking up! Act out of it still!”

I immediately closed my eyes and let my body fall back to its limp position. I heard the Guard guy slowly stand and step out of the room. I heard him grumble something about needing to use the restroom.

“Guys, if we’re getting out of here, now is our chance. He’s in the can.”

Gate groaned. “Why would they let us escape so easily, unless they wanted us too? I say we act as calm as possible until we are threatened. They might be wondering if we are hostile.”

Twinkle coughed a little under her breath. “I think I proved the hostility thing when I made a dozen of them think they were burning alive.”

Love gasped, seemingly surprised at the other mare’s violence. “You did what?!”

“It’s not like any of them were actually hurt in any way at all. They were just terribly frightened, and in a lot of non-existent pain.”

“Uhh everypony…”

“Still though, you probably scarred the poor dears for life! No wonder they abducted us like this!”

“Hey, guys…”

“They started it! They broke into Snow’s house in the middle of night and-“

“GUYS!” I finally shouted.

“What?” Twinkle was glaring at me for interrupting her rebuttal.

“Why are we still here? We are unicorns right? Why haven’t any of us just ‘poof’ bars are open?”

Gate chuckled a little. “Well, dang. Why didn't I think of that?”

Within a matter of seconds, we were all out of the little boxes, save for Snow. He was having a bit of trouble fitting through the small gate, so he just tore the box open instead.

Guyra nudged me in the shoulder. “Why didn't he do that earlier?”

“Buck if I know. No one ever said he was the smart one.”

I yet again received his ‘I’m going to strangle you with your own intestines’ glare. “At least I’m useful in a fight. What do you do again? Listen to things?”

I rolled my eyes. “Anything you can do with your muscles, I can do with my magic. From farther away.”

He had a smug grin on his face. “Oh really?” His tiny wings started flapping and he floated into the air.

“Screw you, Snowball.”

“Twinkle already did, thanks for the offer though.” He and Guyra got quite the chuckle.

And then the guard came back into the room.

Day eight: Well, Hello.

The guard saw us and immediately threw his hands upwards. “Relax, I’m a brony. I wouldn't hurt a pony to save my own life.”

Gate glared at him. “Prove it.”

The man’s expression softened from surprise to relief. “You are Minuette, AKA Colgate, background pony first seen in part two of episode one, assumed to be the Ponyville dentist.” He looked to Twinkle. “Twinkleshine, in episode one you talked to your friends about Twilight sparkle, saying ‘ Doesn't that mare have any friends?’ Or something, I haven’t watched the first episode in ages. The big one over there, Snowflake, he was first seen in ‘Hurricane Fluttershy’. Frequently yells ‘yeah’ in a loud manner. Fans nicknamed him Roid Rage due to the large muscles and not-so-large wings. And then Lyra Heartstrings, frequently excited and jumping up and down in crowds. Fanon assumes you obsess over humans, based off of one scene of you sitting upright like a human does. And then there’s…” He paused for a moment, looking at Guyra and Love. “Sorry, I guess that the green stallion is an r63’d Lyra of some form, but I don’t know who you are, pink unicorn.”

Love seemed a bit saddened by it, but Guyra had a smirk on his face. “I still say she’s the r63 of me. But you seem legit, brohoof?” He stuck one fore hoof towards the man and waited.

The guy’s eyes widened, his smile stretched to an almost Cheshire manner. It was rather creepy looking. He tried to recompose himself, but failed. “Fantastic.” He bumped his fist against Guyra’s hoof.

Gate walked up to him. “Alright guy, mind telling us what’s going on?”

“Well, to put it simply, I work for a company that deals in exotic animals and their parts, selling things like tiger skin rugs. I for one don’t approve at all of our actions, but once you go AWOL from the military, finding a job is kind of hard to do. Usually I just work in an office desk, but everyone is on hands lately. Orders from higher up have us trying to round up as many ponies as we can. If you guys want, I could show you the way out. I’d lose my job, probably get shot or something, but it’s better than worse than that happening to a pony!”

“Relax; we can take you ‘hostage’ on our way out. They wouldn’t shoot you for that would they?”

“They’d probably shoot me, just so you’d lose your hostage.”

“Maybe we can make it look like we kicked your ass and got away on our own?”

“I guess that’ll work.” He shrugged. “But first…”

“Hm?”

“If you guys can, I’d like you to tear down this company. Our company actually only has this one building, here in the states. It’s where our founder and owner live. I was thinking that maybe a little unicorn magic could scare him straight?”

I stepped forward. “I got this. You guys go ahead and make your way outside, get me an opening. I’ll tear my way through these bastards one by one until I find my stuff.”

The man perked up a bit. “Oh! I can show you where that is!” He walked over to a steel locker in the corner of the room. “I don’t know what the combination to this is, but everything you guys had on you when we found you is in here.”

Gate stepped back away from him. “Why would they leave our belongings near us? This is getting a little too easy.”

“To quote my jack ass of a boss, ‘we don’t know how badly they are going to react when they wake up. We might need something to calm them down, can’t have them being too sedated. Don’t want to kill them until we know someone is willing to buy the corpse. Best keep them alive and calm.’ I for one, think that was the stupidest thing he could have done.”

Gate still had thinky face. “Come to think of it, how did you guys even find us?”

“Oh! Rather easy really, your horns give off a slight radiation when you use magic. It builds up and acts like a mini-flare when you don’t use it. It’s harmless, but definitely noticeable. We sort of just grabbed a Geiger counter waited for you to stay still.”

“Wait, magic is just radiation?”

“Well, I don’t remember what the lab guys said, but it wasn't actually radiation. Very similar, similar enough to track it like someone looking for radiation would, but not actually radiation. I’m not real sure what they said, but it was something along those lines.”

“So what you’re saying is that as soon as we get out of here, you guys can just follow our trail to wherever we are, as soon as we leave.”

“Well, yeah. That’s why I was wondering if you guys wanted to just take the place down. Do you?”

Snow answered for us, I don’t have to tell you what his answer was, just that it made my vision starry and my ears ring.

Guyra walked up to the man. “So, how do we open it if you don’t know the code to the lock?”

The face hooves from around the room were simultaneous. I poked him in the back of the head. “Dude, really? You just aren't getting the whole ‘unicorn’ thing are you? We use magic. If that fails for whatever reason, we have Snow punch it until we don’t need him to anymore. That’s how we do things.”

“Right, of course, magic solves everything. Have a problem? Magic it! Makes total sense!” I couldn't honestly tell if he was being sarcastic or just felt stupid. I assumed it was the latter.

Love walked to the container. “I got this everypony, I want to try something.” Her horn started to glow a pale green, as did the door to the locker. Her eyes closed, and her teeth started grinding. I heard the tell-tale sound of metal creaking. “Just a little… more…”

The door suddenly flew off its hinges and onto the floor, with a rather loud clanging. “YES! I did it!”

I put a hoof around her shoulder. “Nice work. Now, let’s see what to do next.” I practically jumped into the open locker when I spotted my bag and violin. I held the things close, in a tight embrace. “Ahhh mama missed you! Don’t worry; I’m never leaving you guys again!”

After a moment of my cuddling with the inanimate objects, I realized everyone was looking at me a little funny. “None of you saw anything. Shut up.” I put my jacket back on, with a smile. I was glad to be back in its familiar cottony warmth, I really was. Strapping the bag and case back over my shoulder and onto my back returned the comforting weight. It felt like I was wrapped in an old, yet still soft, blanket.

I got a few more funny looks. “I said shut up!”

The man looked back towards the door. “Well, I suppose you should all beat me a little and be on your way then.”

Gate started to walk towards the door for a moment, but paused. She turned and looked at me. “Heart, flare your eyes up and check the other side of the door. I still don’t trust this guy completely. “

“Sure. Just give me a moment.” I sat back on my haunches, front hooves together in a meditative position. A few deep breaths later, the world turned green. I saw the familiar blue, pink, and whites of Gate, Twinkle, and Snow. The foal in Twinkle’s womb was starting to develop more of its own aura. It’s starting to grow… I turned and saw that Guyra’s aura was the same green as my music. It was spiraling out of the tips of his ears and flowing down the rest of his body. Love’s was a dull rose color that started the base of her horn, flowing over her head like oily water while flaring around the rest of the horn.

And then I looked at the man. He looked familiar, very familiar. His hair was cut in a simple buzz, but his pale blue eyes and gentle smile spoke untold volumes. Thousands of kind words and sad tales seemed woven into his very being. His aura was what was unusual though. It was a dull golden, flowing from the center of his chest as well as his forehead, meeting in the shoulders and flaring out a bit at the neck line. And then I heard it. Or rather, I heard them.

I had known something was off about this guy since I noticed him napping. His heart beats were irregular, louder than most humans I've heard so far. Almost as if…

“There’s two…”

Gate looked at me. “Two what? People outside waiting to shoot us?!”

“No, no. No one is outside waiting for us.”

“No… Two heart beats in his chest. He isn't human!”

He looked at me for a moment, with a hint of shock in his face. “Well, I never did manage to quite get the slang down right. American is a hard language to learn.” His British accent showed through, making his identity easy enough to confirm.

“You should really go by ‘The Actor’ you know, you’re quite good at it. If I hadn't noticed the heartbeat, you've remained a familiar face and nothing more. Might I ask how it is that you are in this... dimension? I thought you were a TV show?"

"TV show? Ahh right... well, to say it without spoilers... er..." He paused for a moment, scratching the back of his head. "Let's just say the TARDIS decided to mess with me again, and then I noticed something off. So here I am doing what I do."

"And what are you doing, exactly?" I shot him a quizzical look. If anyone could give me answers, this man was the man to get them from.

"Well... Agh! I want to tell you so bad, but I can't! Sorry!" He turned and ran out the door, slamming it behind him.

Gate started after him, but I picked her up with my magic and shook my head. She glared at me. "Why are you letting him get away? He might be warning his companions!"

"Oh Gate, you really should have picked up on my offer to watch that Doctor Who marathon..."

"What does that have to do with anything? That man might be the death of us!"

"He's the Doctor. The ninth Doctor, to be exact. Just let him do what it is he does, if anyone hears him ask for any of us to do anything, just listen to him, alright guys?" I looked to the other five, and saw four uneasy nods. Gate just grumbled.

"How is 'The Doctor' here though? Even if that is possible, which it isn't, why would he be helping us?"

"I will answer your question with another question, if you don't mind. How are we talking, multicolored, magical ponies? Even if that is possible, which it isn't, why us? Why not someone else?" That was the final blow to Gate's stubbornness for the day it seemed, as there was no retort.

"So then everypony, I'm going to do what The Doctor asked and do my best to tear this place a new asshole. You guys can leave if ya want, I don't plan on getting violent. A few lullabies here, a few bucks to the head there, until I make my way to the boss guy."

Twinkle facehooved. "That is a terrible idea. You are going to get yourself killed."

"Says who? I can handle a few hundred unsuspecting office workers. Besides, even if I end up having to resort to violence, none of them will be wearing ear plugs, because none of them know I'm coming! It's an easy win!" Gate remained silent, with a disbelieving look on her face.

Snow flexed his muscles. "If you're gonna go bashing heads, I'm coming with you. I'm not about to let you get hurt, not after saving your life so many times. That'd just be redundant. Besides-"

"No."

"Huh?"

"You make far too much noise, I'm trying to maintain a low profile. I can direct my own noise away from anyone's attention, but I refuse to let any of you get hurt if I slip up. You guys go on and find your way out of here. I'll catch up to you." I opened the door and started to walk out into the unlit hall way, colored into a visible green by my makeshift night vision.

Gate called for my attention, desperation in her voice. "Wait! How do you expect to find us after we're gone and you're done?"

I looked over my shoulder and smiled coyly. "I can spot that toothpaste smell from miles away, Gate. It won't take me but thirty minutes." I stepped fully into the hall, and closed the door without another thought. Immediately, I sprinted in the direction I thought I had heard The Doctor run.

It was a mere matter of moments before I caught wind of him. His aura was really hard not to find, what with how it nearly lit the dark hallway ablaze. I was still slowing from my gallop so he heard me approaching. He turned and scowled. "What are you doing here? The mess hall is just around the corner, are you trying to get yourself shot?!"

I laughed a little. "Oh, Doctor, don't be silly. I know better than to follow you, I just had one more question."

"What is it then, come now, out with it."

"Where is the guy in charge of this place? I kind of want to pay him a little visit."

"Without your friends?"

"They are safer if they just stay away from what I'm going to do."

"And what are you going to do, exactly?"

"Have you ever seen someone fall prey to their own feral instinct, Doctor?"

"What do you mean, exactly?" His scowl turned to a look of worry.

"I'm going to point myself in the right direction, draw my Lyre, and let myself do what has to be done."

"I wont let you kill anyone." He seemed a bit angry.

"Oh! Don't be silly. If anyone deserves to die, out of all of mankind, it is people like this. I'm not going to kill anyone that doesn't try to kill me, but they will certainly never walk again without a noticeable limp."

"For an adorable little unicorn, you are quite violent."

"I'm not normally violent at all, if anything, I'm usually rather carefree. But these guys, they hurt innocent animals. If I let them continue, the list of animals they hurt is going to start including ponies. I can't let that happen, so I'm going to ensure that the guy in charge never hurts anyone again."

"Vengeance is never the answer to anything. Killing him will only anger his comrades, and they will kill you. Then your friends will be angry, and they will kill them. The cycle is endless once it starts, don't let it."

"Ahh, but Doctor! That is where you are wrong! I don't plan on killing him at all! I have a far worse punishment in mind."

"What might that be?"

"I'm going to let him live! I'm going to show him what it feels like to be hunted, to be terrified for your own life, to cherish each breath as if it's your last. And then I will let him live with the knowledge that he is doing that to others for a living. I will let him live, knowing that the animals he hunts feel pain. He will feel that pain too, mind you, but he will feel it for the rest of his natural days."

With a sigh, his expression shifted to neutrality. "Top floor, second door on the right as you leave the elevator."

I nodded my thanks and went along my merry way.

I stood at the elevator door, waiting it for it to descend to my current floor, when I heard a the sudden clopping of a single set of hooves approaching me. Oh gods damn it! I told them to leave!

A light voice sounded off, "I'm helping you Heart, I don't care what you say. You're not doing this alone. You've saved me twice now, it's my turn to save you."

"Love? What are you doing here?" I turned and saw the pink mare. This was the first time I had ever seen her with such conviction. She had previously seemed unsure about the entire world around her, but now, she had a sharpened brow, a light grin, and a calm heart rate. She was actually serious.

"I just told you, now what's the plan?"

"Go to guy in charge, kick his ass, make him regret ever hurting anything, let him live the rest of his life knowing the fear of being hunted."

"Sounds cruel. I like it."

I sighed inwardly, unsure of whether or not I agreed with her opinion on the matter.

There was a light 'ding' as the elevator arrived. The door opened slowly, revealing four armed men, pointing guns straight at us. Called it... I so fucking called it...

Night eight: Heights

We both leapt to either side of the elevator door as a few bullets flew through the air. The guns stopped firing, and apparently just waited for us to walk back into their line of sight. I coughed loudly. "Do you guys really intend on just waiting until we decide to let you shoot us?"

There was a bit of a pause, until I heard one of the men said "Affirmative."

"What the hell kind of hunters are you? You should at least at least grow some balls and fight me!" I'll admit, their lack of devotion made me feel a tad unappreciated.

There was some grumbling amongst them as Love looked over to me. "Hey, Heart... What was that you were saying about those spears of light? You don't need to see them for them to hear you, right?"

One of the men panicked. "Shit! Everyone, ear plugs now!" I heard a lot of shuffling from within the elevator.

"Nice one Love. Now I'm useless." She winced.

"My bad. Here, I have a better idea anyways." She sat back on her haunches and started focusing her magic.

Within seconds, I saw four assault rifles of some kind and several small pistols fly out into the darkness of the hallway. I grinned at her."Did you just?"

"Yep. All unarmed."

"I always did prefer an unfair advantage. You really have to love magic sometimes."

She nodded while smiling. "So then, shall we dance, Miss Heart?" She sounded a bit smug.

"Yes, let us dance my fair lady!" I returned her same tone.

We both dove towards one another, ending up in a bit of a tango(ish) standing position in front of the elevator. We looked at the four unarmed men. The one closest to the buttons slowly reached over and pressed one. The door started closing. I stuck one hoof in the door's path, making it open back up.

The guy tried to reach for it again, but I grabbed his hand in my magic and snapped his wrist. He whimpered like a kicked puppy and hid behind his friends. I gently pulled their ear plugs out of their ears, and let them fall to their feet.

Love chuckled a bit. "That was a tad easy, don't you think dear?"

"Yes, we haven't even gotten to dance yet. Shall I play a song for us to dance to, Love?"

"I think that would be most befitting." She turned her head away from me, only to turn back with a rose in her teeth.

"Keep up at that, and I might just have to put something else in your mouth."

Her eyebrows went upwards twice, followed by a low growl. I imagine this was quite awkward for the four men waiting on us to kick their asses. I pulled my violin from it's case and began humming a long to a song.

Now, I will be entirely honest here. I couldn't dance to save my life in my old body. I wasn't about to even try in this on; so our 'dance' consisted mostly of us beating these men senseless. After a moment, Love pulled me to her with her magic. She leaned in close and put the rose in my mouth, using her tongue. She grinned a devilish little grin; an immediately leaned on her fore hooves to buck the man behind her right in the family jewels. He fell to the floor in a slump. Ouch. Poor guy.

I heard a noise to my left, someone was jumping down towards me. I ducked backwards,and let him fall on the floor. When he tried to get up, I simply stomped his head into the floor. He stayed down.

I looked to the corner of the elevator, where broken-hand-guy was quivering next to oddly-feminine-looking-guy.

I noticed Love walk up to them, and pull them down to their knees with her magic. She glared at them both. "Boo." I heard one of them loose bladder control.

I took the rose out of my mouth and chuckled a bit. "You know, we could of just as easily gripped your heart with telekinesis and crushed it. Or your spinal column, or your brain, or your lungs. In fact, there are a million things worse than that broken hand."

Broken-hand-guy stood up and tried to run, but Love was having none of that. She lifted him and placed him firmly back down on his knees. "You know, I could use a little plaything of my own. Something I can bend and twist and break, letting all of my stress melt away in the sounds of their screams."

I was a bit surprised at her word choice there, but passed it off as a heat of the moment scare tactic.I was wrong.

She gripped the guy's broken wrist and began to twist it. "AAAAAGGGGHHHHH!"

My violin clattered to the floor as I reeled from the noise. "Love..."

She grabbed the rest of that arm, and twisted each piece in a different direction. I didn't even register the scream as anymore than a sudden bout of tinnitus. "Love!"

I saw her grip spread to his neck. "Damn it Love!"

I tackled her to the ground. "We are not here to kill anypony! Stop!"

She grinned at me, eyes distant. "But I'm not killing somepony, I'm killing someBODY."

Her horn started glowing again, and I heard the cracking of more bones coming from the guy's leg. "That's enough!" I swung my own hoof across her face.

She stared at me in surprise. "You... hit me?"

"I'm not going to let you kill anyone." I turned to the remaining unharmed man. "You might want to start getting your friends out of here."

Thankfully, he complied without a word. He just placed his most injured companion on the back of another, using him as a stretcher, and dragged all four out into the hall at once. As soon as they were out of it, I closed the elevator and pressed the button for the top floor.

"Mind telling me why you let them go?"

"Mind telling me why you wanted to kill them?"

"They ponynapped us! They tried to kill us! They would have killed us!"

"And if we killed them, they would just send more until they kill us. It's how people like this work, Love."

She grumbled something under her breath.

"Pardon?"

Grumbling again.

"What was that?" I held a hoof to one ear, as if that would help me hear anything.

"I said, WE COULD JUST KILL THOSE ONES TOO THEN!"

"No, we couldn't. I'm sorry, but you are truly idiotic if you think you can hold out against these guys forever."

She sat down facing a corner, defeated.

-=-=-=-

“We should really get moving…” I said, sighing as the elevator ding'd open.

“Right, let us be off then!”

I retrieved my belongings from their pile and stepped out of the open elevator. We followed The Doctors directions, and found a rather extravagant looking redwood door. It was massive, well-polished, and absolutely screamed ‘I am so much more important than you, that my office door is worth more than your house.’

I heard a set of footsteps storming up the nearby stair well, and armed myself. My Lyre floated idly, waiting to dispatch whatever enemy was approaching. Instead of the blood thirsty gunman I was expecting, I instead saw a brit in a bowtie with a rather pointy chin. My ears swiveled to confirm that it was The Doctor, two hearts beating loudly from his exertion.

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out two bags of blood, the kind you would see at a hospital used for transfusions. “Here,” he tossed them towards Love. “Heart just told me of your plan not but thirty minutes of my time ago, sorry it took so long to get them. I missed a few times.”

Love caught the bags in her magic, with a manic grin. “It was really more of an idea, but now that you mention it, it would make a great plan. Who are you again?”

I looked at her like she was a special kind of stupid. Not ‘special’ in ‘that’ sense mind you, I’m not trying to offend anyone. Argh, you know what I mean; I gave her my best ‘are you fucking kidding me?’ face. “It’s The Doctor, with a few… hundred-ish years added.” I turned and glared at him. “It took you two more regenerations to realize we needed a bit more help here?”

“Like I said, you JUST told me about the blood thing. I’ve got a party to get back to, bye!”

He ran off back down the stairs, and I could have sworn I heard him shout something along the lines of “Amy! Stay away from the men with the guns! Rory is waiting back at the party!” And then I heard nothing more from the madman in a box.

I turned back to Love. “So, what’s this ‘plan’ he was talking about…”

She grinned sheepishly. “Well, I figured that the easiest way to scare someone into being good would be to make them think we had just slaughtered all of their men. The easiest way to do that would be to cover ourselves in blood, and act as insane as possible.”

“You frighten me sometimes.”

“Good! That means its working!”

I was honestly frightened by the grin on her face as she levitated the bags of blood over each of us.

“Hang on, let me move my stuff out of the way, don’t want the blood mucking up my strings…”

Actually, I didn’t care about that. I just didn’t want my jacket or bag or anything getting stained. I could clean the Lyre with a thought.

Having safely stashed my belongings on the floor, I let Love paint me red. It was a rather disturbing experience, to say the least. I simply held my eyes clenched shut as ‘the artist painted her master piece’. (Her words, not mine) When the flow of the muck on my fur stopped moving, I opened my eyes and saw her grinning widely. “Are you okay there Love?”

“Never better, you look great by the way!”

“I don’t even want to know what I look like, to be honest.” I said, while shaking my head.

“To put it simply, you look as though blood was dripping down from the tip of your horn, as if you had been stabbing people with it. I also let it splatter a little here and there in wide arcs, to make it more obvious it isn’t yours. To top it off, look at your hooves!”

I really did try my best not to, but my eyes decided to look down anyways. I was standing in a very small pool of red. My hooves themselves were entirely red, while little splashes of it found their way up my legs and onto my stomach and chest. I couldn’t help but gag a little at the sight. “Love, I know you think this is a good idea and all, but this is a little too… grim for me.”

“Oh don’t be such a whiny baby! It’ll work, this guy will never hurt anypony again!”

“I- I guess…” I said with an unsure sigh. “Let’s just get this over with.”

“Alllllrighty!” She practically jumped with joy as she started tearing open her own bag. Instead of having it slowly flow to specific spots like she did for me, she simply let it poor and splash wherever it pleased. Red streaks covered the mare’s entire being. Her tail and mane were matted to her legs and neck by the gooey blood. “So then, let’s go kick some ass!”

That is it, I have lost her. She went completely off the deep end.

We stood side by side at the door. She was giggling with excitement, while I was trying my best to hide my disdain. I reached forward and put my hoof against the door. “Just let me try and frighten him verbally first, alright?” I whispered towards her, but she didn’t seem to hear me. That, or she didn’t care. I couldn’t tell which.

I pushed the door open, and was rather surprised at what I saw. There was a pudgy old man, well past his prime, sitting at an extravagant desk. The carpet was white, the curtains were white, and everything else was either gold or mahogany. Book shelves lined the wall behind him, while a window made up the wall to his right. He didn’t even seem to notice us at first, and that was plenty enough to get me peeved.

“Oi! Wanker!” I shouted, his eyes remained on the paperwork in front of him.

I grabbed his chair with my magic, and made it rapidly tilt forward. His face slammed harshly, cracking the wood of his desk.

“What the hell was that?!” And then he saw us.

Two pint sized unicorns approached him, covered in blood and seemingly after more. I could practically taste his astonishment.

“You are never going to hurt another pony. Understand? I might have to let my friend here have her way with you if you do not.” I flung a hoof over my right shoulder, towards Love. “I assure you, she can be VERY persuasive. Just look at the gift your men left us, it's so pretty and red!"

Love dove onto his desk, making him gasp. She stared dead into his eyes and licked some of the blood off of her lips. She whispered into his ear. “I want yours. I want it all. I want to bathe in the blood of your infant grandchildren, and make you watch.”

I pulled her into the air with my magic, as she flailed wildly against my grasp. “That’s enough for now, Love.” I looked the man dead in his beady little brown eyes. “Unless, of course, our friend here decides that ponies are to be hunted like animals; in which case, I’ll just turn my head.”

I started to gently lower the mad mare back onto the man’s desk, while turning slowly away.

“Please! No! I’ll do anything; just don’t let this beast near me!”

I looked over my shoulder. “Beast?”

“This PONY! I’m sorry! I really am truly sorr-“ He was cut off by a sudden spasm, and he fell to the floor.

I turned back towards him, to see that he seemed to be having a bit of a seizure. Oops. “Love, we need to-“ I noticed my eyes flaring themselves up once more. “Oh no… that’s never good.”

“What isn’t what’s going on?” Love had a bit of unease in her voice.

I looked to the man’s aura, only to find an empty husk. After a moment of his shaking, he stopped. Thin yellow lines attached themselves from various directions to each of his limbs. He stood slowly, eyes wide. His irises were glowing and red, but with the whites were yellow. What in the hell?!

He started to laugh, but it wasn't a laugh of mockery or hilarity. It was a hollow laugh, not sarcastic or insulting, just a laugh. This is the part where I thought I might start pissing myself. “Something is really really wrong. We need to get out of here… “

The Man’s right hand shot towards Love, in a motion not unlike a puppet having its strings pulled. He grabbed her by the throat.

“Silly little pathetic little ponies, you really think you have a chance? You’re all lucky I didn't simply wipe you out of existence. No, I was kind to you. I let you live out an entirely new life. I gave you that gift, and here you are, attacking my toys?!” His grip tightened, Love was desperately trying to get his hand away with her hooves, but nothing worked. She wasn't breathing.

“Love! Just use your magic on his hand!”

The man grinned. “Nope.” He snapped the fingers on his free hand, and her horn just fell off of her head.

I looked on in horror. “What the hell are you!?”

“I am your worst night mare, little filly.” His grip tightened again, and I heard a sickening crunch. A crunch that was all too similar to how it sounded when Chrysalis hit the rock. My eyes extinguished and widened when I noticed her movement and flailing had stopped.

His grip tightened more, and blood sprayed out from around his hand. “ HA HA! So fragile!” His other hand reached up and grabbed the top of her head. He pulled in opposite directions with each hand, and her body fell to the floor. The spine was exposed, and her head remained in his hand. He snapped his fingers with one hand, and there was a flash of light. I found myself standing up against the window in the room, fully dressed and cleaned.

He turned to me, and grinned. He stood as if pitching a baseball, and threw remained of Love’s head at me with such force that it made me fly through the window. Shards of glass found new homes deep in my flesh as I soared to the ground.

I looked down at the ground below.

This is how it ends eh? Thrown out of a window… who the hell saw that one coming… I must admit, it was a rather surreal moment. My life never flashed before my eyes, I never saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Everything just went black as I closed my eyes for the final time.

-=-=-=-

Yeah, long break. Would have ended the chapter there, but the voice in my head said to keep going.

-=-=-=-

Much to my surprise, I found my eyes opening once more. The wind was whipping in my mane back and forth, and I felt a tightness across my chest. I turned my head around and saw a familiar white fur. “Snow?” I whispered.

There was no reaction, at least not until after I blacked out again.

I ran. I ran like I had never run before. I don't know if it was chasing me, but I prayed it wasn't. I turned a corner that wasn't there moments ago. It was there. I turned again. It was there. Again, and it was gone. I ran in that direction instead.

I kept running.

Always running...

“…can’t believe it…”

“… how did this even…”

“…she okay?”

“…hope so…”

“…had better be or I’ll…”

I was hearing fragments of sentences as my mind reeled from the day’s trauma. I had what felt like the world’s most painful hang over. I stuck one hoof to my left ear to silence the ringing, as I stood up slowly onto my other three.

“What the hell happened? How am I not dead?” I looked around and saw some comfortingly familiar faces. Gate had obviously been crying. Twinkle was leaning against her. Guyra just stood and stared at me with a blank expression.

Snow put a rather comforting hoof around my shoulder. “You might want to sit back down.”

I complied, letting gravity overcome my exhausted legs. “Anyone want to tell me what happened, and where we are?”

I looked around, we were on what seemed to be the roof of a concrete building of sorts. The wind was blowing, I could hear the sound of it echoing through canyons of concrete and glass.

And that was all I heard. My jaw dropped. "It's so... quiet." I looked westward. The sun was only just setting. "There should be a lot more noise than this in such a large city..."

Twinkle took a deep breath, and lifted her eyes to the sky. She stuck her tongue into the air for a bit, before looking back at me. "Chicago."

"Wait, you mean the Chicago with 3 million people living in it?"

A silent nod from Twinkle.

"There's no way that three million people could possibly be this silent at this hour. I call bullshit." I said firmly.

They all stared at me silently.

"Wait, you can't be serious?"

More silence.

"Son of a- How?!"

I think I broke them, they just wouldn't talk.

"What could have made three million people go silent?"

Whatever it was, it seems I was the only one not effected.

"Okay, you guys are starting to scare me a little bit..."

You can assume what their response was, no? You guessed wrong. Guyra coughed a little and pointed a hoof over his shoulder.

I went over to investigate. There sat all that remained of the first love of my life. The person who's smile was the thing that made me want to get up in the mornings. The person who's laugh had made me consider actually giving life a chance. Her head sat there, staring blankly into my soul. Carved onto her forehead was the word "Unimportant."

I fell. I simply fell to my side, letting gravity have it's way with me. I was vaguely aware of a dull 'thump' as my head hit the concrete. I laid there, tears starting to roll down my face.

Night eight continued

Heart and Love slowly slumped to the ground once they saw one another. Gate and Twinkle looked at one another with uncertain glances, before rushing to either side of Heart; while Guyra and Snow appeared at Love’s side instantly.

Gate prodded Heart gently, trying to get her attention. “Heart, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

Heart barely managed to choke back the tears long enough to respond. “It’s… my fault. It’s my fault she’s dead. If… if I hadn’t of been so careless, so reckless, and so… so stupid! She would still be alive…”

Twinkle spotted a few gray hairs among the white streak in Heart’s mane, but thought nothing more of it.

Guyra lifted Love back to her hooves, letting her lean onto his shoulder.. “You alright there? What’s with the water works?”

A tear fell from Love’s chin as it quivered. “I should have trusted her. She said she could do it on her own. If I hadn’t of gotten in her way, if I hadn’t of slowed her down…”

The mare’s weight fell entirely onto Guyra, causing him to stumble a bit. “Hey! Hey, it’s all alright, everything is going to be fine.”

She stepped away from the green stallion and scowled at him. “How can you say that?! Heart is dead and it’s entirely my fault! What the hell is wrong with you?! How are you acting so calm when her blood is on my hooves?!” Love sat on her haunches and looked down at her forelegs. “It was everywhere… I never would have guessed that one mare could bleed so much.”

Snow noticed Love’s yellow mane seemed a little paler, but he assumed it was a trick of the light caused by the setting sun.

I forced myself to stand from the ball I was curled in. If everypony else could accept that the love of my life was dead, I would have to at least pretend to be fine, for their sakes if anything. I cast one more tear filled gaze at the severed head of my friend and tried to steady my breathing.

Gate smiled, apparently seeing that I was at least trying to move on. “Guys, we should get moving. We’re too high in the air, too late at night. Here in a bit, the air is going to get much colder once the sun is done setting.”

We all nodded our agreement, and Snow lifted us one by one, down to the empty streets below. For a moment, I thought it was rather odd that Snow had brought Love’s head; but then I realized that we should probably bury her remains. It would have just been cruel to leave it to the birds, disrespectful even.

Once I was safely on the street, I found myself grinning slightly at the sight of the walls of this concrete canyon. I bet the acoustics would be wonderful right now.

Having decided on a course of action, I started to hum a rather pleasant little tune.

Love’s hooves met the ground, and Snow landed next to her. She was still shaking from the shock of the day’s events, but had agreed to trudge along with her companions. Wherever they were going, it was away from the memory of Heart being-

No. I can’t let myself even think about it. Stop.

Her hooves flung to the sides of her head, face twisted into a grimace of obvious pain. “Agh! Stop!”

Guyra put a hoof over her shoulder and pulled her in for a hug. “You’re going to be okay,” he cooed into her ear.

Once we all had our hooves on the ground, I picked a direction and started walking. I didn’t care if the others were following.

Why should I? Those bastards are acting like everything is perfectly normal! I screamed in my head at the thought. I just wanted to get away from the stench of rotting flesh coming from the head Guyra was holding.

After a few minutes, it occurred to me that I had no idea where I was. I looked down at my dull green hooves, wondering where they were taking me. Surely, a straight line in any one direction would have provided a way out of this damned jungle of bricks and glass.

Gate managed to catch up with me, and was breathing heavily. “Where are you going? We have to-“

“Away.” I replied calmly. “I’m going away from this hell hole, as far away as I can get, and then I’m going to go farther.”

Gate stopped following me mid-stride and looked over her shoulder. The rest of the group had stayed behind, talking to one another about something. I could have listened to them to find out what, but I really just wanted to keep going away.

I decided to start galloping, and the blue mare behind me followed suit without hesitation.

Snow, Guyra, and Twinkle stared at the blue unicorn as she pursued their distraught green friend.

Love glanced towards Guyra with a worried look. “Why is Gate running off with Heart’s head? She whispered.

“What? Heart ran off and so Gate is trying to catch her.” He was thoroughly confused at her question.

It was Love’s turn to be confused. “But Heart is dead. I saw her get-“ Her voice and thoughts were both interrupted by a stabbing pain behind her eyes. She fell forward, choking on air for a moment.

Once her coughing fit resolved itself, Guyra still looked confused. “Are you okay?”

“Y-yeah… I just had a rather unpleasant combination of aching eyes and itchy throat. I think it’s all alright now.”

“What was that you were saying about Heart? You saw her get what?”

“I- I don’t know what I was going to say. What I did see though, might be a bit more than worrisome.”

By this point, Snow and Twinkle had been silently eaves dropping. Snow decided to stop being so silent. “What happened before you two fell through that window?”

Love looked away and to her left, eyes glazed slightly over from deep thought. “I know what happened, but when I picture it… it’s like someone recorded something over an old VHS movie. It sort skips in my head, almost like a scratch on a CD that plays a few seconds of the wrong song, before jumping back to what I’m certain of. Well, that’s not quite right. I can’t really explain it any way else though. Hmmm.”

Guyra and Snow looked at each other with raised eyebrows and slight frowns, before Snow just shrugged his wings. “Mare logic, just pretend it makes sense.”

Twinkle jabbed him in the chest with her hoof, without looking away from Love. “So it’s like you KNOW what is supposed to be there, but when you try to remember it, something else shows up instead?”

Love looked a tad dumb struck for a moment. “Well, yeah. That actually makes far more sense than what I was saying. Thanks. Anyways, it was all as planned until we got in the elevator. Once the guys inside of it were disposed of, the lights sort of flickered a little, but then came back on in a bit of a yellowish hue. When I try to remember that fact, all I can picture is Heart laughing over a guy who’s bones she had broken.”

Snow stamped his hoof against the side walk. “Heart would never do that, she might be weird but she would never hurt somepony, not without regretting it immediately.”

“Exactly why this is giving me such a headache, Snow. Now stop interrupting. It was a rather creepy laugh, kind of sounded like it was overlapping with somepony else’s, a deeper male one, it sounded like it would of if he was still human. It continued on until we left the elevator. The memory goes back to solid certainty at this point. We walk out, stepping in unison to the door to the guy’s office. We both pause for a minute, and look at each other with disturbed looks. Right then, the memory skips over to the unclear. Heart is grinning ear to ear as she cuts the wrists of some fallen guard that wasn't actually there. She plays with his corpse like a dog with a rag doll, getting his blood everywhere.” Love shuddered and paused for a moment.

After a deep breath, she continued. “Then it jumps back to clarity, we walk through the door as it opens itself. We both walk over to the window and stand there staring at one another. The office is empty, beyond the large desk in the middle. Papers were moving around on it on their own accord. We stared at each other for what feels like it was several minutes. Memory skips again, more like a broken record than anything, and we are only just having walked in. We were both covered in that man’s blood and Heart just sprints for the desk. There is a tall, slender old man sitting at it. Really, he looked like nothing more than a bag of bones. Heart jumps into the air while laughing, but stops just as she is above the desk. I see the faint glimmer of light reflecting off of something like thin fishing wires, that were suspending her in their grip... She twitches a bit, but screams in agony. Every time she tries to move, the wires cut clean into her flesh. One of her hooves fell off. Clean off, it bounced onto the desk, covering the paperwork in red.”

A tear fell from her eye, and she noticed Twinkle had her hoof around her shoulder. It was rather comforting. “You don’t have to remember it…”

Love just shook her head. “No, I do. The man didn't even look up from his paperwork until the words on it were hidden behind the red. He just grimaced at Heart and said ‘Insignificant whelp. You aren't even important. Stop trying to be.’ He snapped his fingers and then…”

Love started to sob, and Twinkle wrapped her in a hug. No one had anything to say, so Love continued through her weeping. “I don’t think I've ever seen so much red at once… It was like a cloud that just floated there, mocking gravity. The memory goes back to reality again and Heart and I are still looking each other in the eyes. She had obviously been crying, the air reeked of vomit. I looked down and saw a puddle of it under me. A sudden wind pushed us both head first through the window, and then nothing. Next thing I know I’m waking up on the roof.”

Snow cleared his throat. “I think I can fill in the blanks there. Gate, Twinkle, Guyra and I had just made our way out of the building. We knew that you and Heart were going after whoever was in charge, and figured that anyone who was in charge of such a place would be on the top floor. So Gate suggests we get to some high ground fast, and watch the upper floor windows. I spotted a nearby building which had a clear view of the building we woke up in, so I dragged those three up onto it’s roof. We were all just staring at the windows and waiting for movement to happen. Twinkle spotted you two standing near the window of the top floor, so Gate hummed to herself for a moment. Her eyes glowed blue for a bit and she told me to go hover near the window and wait for something to happen. I did, and within a few minutes, you both just sort of flew out the window. I managed to catch you both at once, luckily. Somehow the two of you got caught up in an embrace before I caught you. That made it easier.”

I could see the gaps between the walls of the buildings. The edges of the city were coming closer. Noticing this, I forced my legs to move faster, despite their protests. The rapid clop of my hooves against concrete had been echoing endlessly with every step, and I was quite sure my ears were bleeding from the sound of it.

Gate was still following me, the damned fool was making enough noise for me to be certain of it. She was breathing heavily, and her pace was slowing. Won’t be long until she can’t keep up; that noisy ass is too out of shape!

My thoughts were interrupted by my front left leg going entirely numb. I failed to correct myself in time, and my face met the concrete.

Gate was laying on her stomach next to her still sleeping friend. She had carried Heart the rest of the way down the road, onto a small grassy hill that marked the city's limits. Even as a pony, she still sleeps like a brick. She smiled at the thought. Maybe this wasn't as much of a change after all. Gate felt something warm press against her. She looked and saw that Heart had rolled over and was cuddling against her. The sleeping mare looked scared, and was twitching occasionally. Gate ran a hoof through Heart's dull green mane and sighed. She looked back the way they had came.

The road that Heart had taken had a few cars parked along the sides. Small orange discs could be seen on many of the tires. Why are so many cars booted? Heart squirmed again and whimpered in her sleep. Must be having a bad dream...

Gate's horn started glowing a pale blue. The light flowed into a three small orbs on the tip that were about the size of base balls. She put a little more energy into them, and let the spell finish casting. The blue Flares flew into the sky and hovered at a height well above that of the buildings. The sky was filled with the pale blue glow they gave off, as the last remnants of the sunlight were drowned out by an otherwise black sky.

Guyra, Love, Snow, and Twinkle were slowly walking in the direction that Heart and Gate had run. Nopony said a word, until Love looked up. "Guys? Whats that?"

Twinkle looked and saw the source of the light. From this distance, it looked like a star, but it was too bright and too large to be seen at this hour. It was also blue. "That must be Gate's flares."

Love raised a confused eyebrow. "Flare?"

"Yeah, while we were waiting on the roof for something to happen, Gate and I were playing with magic a bit. Figured out a way to shoot flares made of magic. It's really no more than just a really tightly packed ball of energy, levitated really high."

Guyra gave a rude cough. "I still say this is all a bunch of malarkey. Magic shouldn't even be real, it denies all laws of physics!"

Snow just shook his head. "You aren't getting this are you? Just treat it the same way you treat mare logic."

Twinkle only just barely resisted the urge to say something, and just smirked instead. She lowered her head and started to cast two of her own flares.

Love looked at the pink lights. "Why are you only doing two when Gate sent three?"

"Because, we agreed on a simple code. One flare means we need help, two flares is a confirmation, three flares basically says 'over here'. As we get moving, I'll keep my flares directly over us. Gate will start to lower hers as we approach, and so will I, until we see each other."

"Neat."

"Yep."

Guyra imitated a gagging noise.

I felt a familiar warmth next to me, and snuggled closer, grateful for something to ward off the chill of the night. I heard a light giggle, but I ignored it in favor or returning to sleep. It wasn't until I noticed a wetness on my left cheek that I decided to touch it with a hoof. It was sticky, and warm. There wasn't a lot of it, but there was definitely a line of it across my cheek. I opened my eyes and looked at my dull green hoof. The tip was red.

"Oh, you're awake, good. I was a bit worried that you'd hurt your head when you fell."

I looked up and saw that the warmth I was cuddling against had been Gate. I immediately pulled myself away and stood up. I noticed my face get considerably less cold, and decided to avoid that subject. "I fell?"

"You were running, but sort of just fell forward." She smiled at me.

"I remember my leg had gone numb, but then nothing."

"Your leg went numb? Let me see it." Her eyes started to glow the same blue as the ambient light that I hadn't noticed before. "Which one was it?"

I started to raise my left foreleg, but she just levitated me off the ground. She twisted and turned me to get a better view of my leg. Couldn't she of just moved her head? I'm certain that at that moment, I started looking a little greener than usual.

"Not broken, no signs of muscle damage, either. There is a small bug bite on your fetlock though."

"On my what?"

"Basically the back of your hoof. Anyways, this looks like a bug bite."