//------------------------------// // 1: Help! There's a Bug in My Room! // Story: Nymphetamine: The Heart's Price // by Architect Ironturtle //------------------------------// Chrysalis's wings ached as she soared through the chilly pre-dawn air, an empty forest spread out beneath her. Honestly, why did the signal have to come from the far end of Equestria? No really, why? Wasn't her life hard enough as it was? It could have been from that frontier town just a few hours north of the hive, but noooo, it had to be Vanhoover, Equestria's north-western point. Considering the badlands were to the south-east, this meant she had to traverse the entire country. What a pain. Well, at least she was more than halfway there, according to the fact she'd passed Canterlot over half an hour ago. At this rate she'd arrive at noon, roughly, at which point she could grab a disguise, scope out the area, and confirm once and for all that nothing was happening what-so-ever and go back to sleep. By Sleipnir, she was tired. 88888888 Alex groaned softly as an incessant beeping noise filled his ears. What happened? He remembered pain, then a lot more pain, but then... nothing. He must have passed out at some at point, but other than that he had no idea. He shifted around groggily, and realized with a start that he wasn't on his bed. Or his couch, for that matter. In fact, none of the furniture he owned had a mattress this thin. So where- He blinked his eyes open. A stark white ceiling greeted them, one streaked with the light of early morning coming in through a window on the far side of the room. The sharp tang of disinfectant filled his nostrils as he took a deep breath, causing him to burst out coughing. Huh, he must be in the hospital. Still, that begged the question of who had brought him in and why he was here in the first place. A memory from the previous night clicked into place as the prompt cycled through his cerebrum. Oh, right, the person that had been screaming was him. He guessed that would attract some attention. He shifted again and tried to sit up, only to feel a pressure on his wrists and ankles keeping him horizontal. Wait, why would they restrain him? He had a record here. It was only common sense that he give the doctors a baseline of human vitals in case he ever got injured enough to need their help, so they knew he wasn't a threat. They shouldn't need to restrain him. Alex noticed that he was very, very confused, and started scanning his surroundings more thoroughly. He quickly noted the bars on the window, the heart monitor synced up to a patch on the inside of his wrist, the reinforced steel door, and what sounded like a couple of ponies standing around on the other side. Whoever wanted to keep him contained was pulling out all the stops. He idly scratched at an itch on his butt, contorting himself just enough to reach, and froze. Something had pulled on his back when he moved, and he knew for a fact that he didn't have claws. Didn't used to have claws, rather. His brain came fully awake, and the beeping spiked in response to the surge of adrenaline in his veins as he fought to control his panic. He needed to get out of here now, and panicking, while cathartic, would render him helpless for quite some time. Whatever had happened to him, he needed to deal with it immediately. A quick test confirmed that his claws were sharp enough to cut his skin, and he twisted his wrist around to get at the strap on his arm restraints, his mind buzzing over his options even as his fingers got to work. He'd planned, well, not really planned, but expected, to spend the day moping about his problems. The thought brought the hole his chest back to his attention, along with making his stomach growl painfully, but he shoved the sensations aside and focused on getting free. If he had a meltdown here, he wasn't going anywhere, end of story. Therefore, his priorities were 1. Get out of this room, 2. Find a mirror, 3. Determine what had happened, how, and why, and 4. Track down the responsible party and make them fix it. Then he could handle the clusterfuck that was his life. He had just finished cutting through the first restraint and was busily untying his other arm (revealing a black clawed limb covered in circular pits that made him shudder) when the door clicked open and a pair of ponies in scrubs walked in. Alex stared at them in silence. They stared back. The possibility of not subduing the ponies and instead just calmly asking them what they knew passed through his mind, and he latched onto the idea, fluffed it out a bit, and went for it. After all, they were doctors, their job was helping people. "Hey, Doc," Alex said wheezily, the stopped and lifted a hand to his throat. His voice had this crazy buzzing undertone to it now, and the disconnect between what he'd heard and what he thought he should sound like stopped him cold. His voice had the opposite effect on the doctors. "It's escaping!" The orange mare shouted, and turned to run. "Hold up!" Alex sort-of shouted, "I'm not going anywhere." This wasn't strictly true, but the truth would only make her panic worse at this point. She stopped in mid-step, then looked over her shoulder, "You aren't?" She asked, clearly baffled. "Of course not," Alex replied gamely, reaching down towards his legs and freeing whatever object/body part had been pinned against the bed, "I'm still tied down, remember?" The pony had the sense to look sheepish at his response. The other doctor, a pitch black mare with a snow white mane, coughed and shot her colleague a glare the made the younger mare cower, "I apologize for my intern, sir, she's," she waved a hoof, "easily startled when not in the operating room. Now, if you don't mind, I have a few questions-" "Only if you'll answer my questions too," Alex shot back, kicking his left leg free and noting that one of his toes had a hole drilled straight through it. That sent shivers down his spine, especially the part where it didn't hurt, "Starting with a mirror. Please," he added as an afterthought. The mare frowned, but nodded, and stuck her head out the door to say something to one of the ponies standing outside. Two sets of hooves walked away, making Alex wonder what the second pony was doing as the doctor levitated in a cushion and sat on it, clipboard at the ready. She told her assistant to wait outside, something Alex was grateful for. This would be difficult enough without staring down two people at once. Eventually, he finished untying his other foot and scooted forward on the bed, feeling something flutter through the air behind him. Curious, he reached out, grasped something smooth and silky, and pulled it forward into his field of vision. He stared in surprise: a wing, an insect's wing that shone a bright green with just enough blue in it to maybe pass for teal and big enough to fit his frame met his gaze, and a gentle tug confirmed that it was indeed affixed to his back. "That's disturbing," he said out loud, turning the wing over in his fingers. He was pretty sure he was in shock at this point, and that that was the only reason he hadn't had a nervous breakdown from having this... this, whatever, piled on top of everything he'd gone through yesterday. "Ahem," the older mare, causing Alex to jerk his attention back to her, his expression to complex to pin down, "Name?" she asked. Alex raise an eyebrow at her question. He must have looked really different if they couldn't even tell it was him by his photograph. "Alexander Fleming the 2nd," he said, rattling off the Scadian* pseudonym that had become his given name in this crazy world. His 'true name' had never passed his lips here, as the first thing he thought of when he saw actual magic existed was "names have power." As far as Equestria was concerned, his name was Alex, and the only ones who would know otherwise were those who tried to use that knowledge against him. "Species?" the mare said, scribbling down his response. "Human," Alex replied, then stuck the claw on his index finger through one of the holes in his right hand and wiggled it, trying to process the sensations the action brought, "At least, that's what I used to be. No clue now." That got her to look at him, even if her expression was still blank. "And what can you tell me about last night?" Alex winced. This was the part he hadn't been looking forward too. "Not much," he said, as evenly as he could, "After my marefriend broke up with me, I went to a bar to let off some steam. Then I walked home and passed out before waking up here, like this. I don't know why or how, if that's what your asking." If Alex was going to pin Cadance to the wall, he needed to do it right. As a Princess, she would be able to wriggle out of anything less than his best effort. For a criminal charge of this severity she would be more slippery than an eel-pig hybrid covered in soap and oil. That meant saving the wonderfully juicy expose for when he got to the press, not blabbing the entire thing to the first pony he met. The second part was, once again, only partially true. Alex had a hunch that Cadance's magic had something to do with his transformation. The only thing he could think of that could do this was magic, and he hadn't been subjected to any other spells over the course of the past week that he was aware of (although the fact he hadn't been aware of Cadance's spell either was a cause for concern). If so, that meant she had even more hell to pay, but the idea was untested, the only hypothesis rather than the best. He wasn't certain enough to stake anything on it yet, and throwing a doctor a false lead never ended well. The doctor looked at him sharply, one eyebrow raised in challenge. Alex just shrugged. "...Age?" "26," Alex replied without thinking. If he'd celebrated his last birthday a few months ago, and he'd gotten lost when he was 24, that meant this... was his second year in Equestria. Well, that was a sobering thought. "Occupation?" "Currently unemployed, but I normally work security at the docks. Come on, you guys have a file on me, you shouldn't need to ask this." "I'll tell the nurse to check when he gets here with the mirror," The doctor stated flatly, "Blood type?" Alex opened his mouth, then paused, thought it over, and sliced the back of his right ring finger. A drop of green blood oozed out, and he said, his voice cracking, "Unknown." The mare blinked in surprise, but before she comment a knock at the door interrupted their little interview. Alex was happy to to have something to focus on other than his oncoming meltdown, if even for a moment. The doctor got up and opened it, allowing a pony carrying a large handheld mirror inside. She took the mirror in her magic, then whispered something in the stallion's ear. He nodded and trotted off again, this time in a different direction than whence he came. Alex asked, "What's your name?" as the doctor returned to her seat, prompting a short sigh before her bedside manner returned. "False Positive," she said, instilling Alex with the exact opposite of confidence, "I know, it's a terrible name for a professional. I'll live." She hesitated, then floated the mirror over to him. He took it in shaking hands, and looked in. A horn was the first thing to grab his attention, short and stumpy yet sharpened towards the tip, with a hole drilled right through the base. The second was his eyes, now containing two irises and a slit pupil surrounded by a light green 'eye white.' The third was the fangs peeking out from behind his lips, just long enough that they didn't quite fit inside his mouth. His skin was now a green so dark it was almost black, and pointed ears were nestled in the short, tousled mess of wing-like membranes that seemed to be his hair. His bone structure was unchanged, but he might as well be another species when you added up everything else. He felt something inside his head snap, and his vision went hazy as the room wobbled on its axis. "I-If you'll excuse me," he said faintly, almost dropping the mirror from nerveless fingers as he laid it on the bed, "I think I need to lie down now." Dr. Positive nodded, a look of sympathy passing across her muzzle, and left as quietly as she could. Alex, meanwhile, curled up on the bed and proceeded to have a much deserved nervous breakdown. 88888888 "How is he?" Stopwatch asked, falling into step behind her mentor. "Stressed," Dr. Positive replied, "Times a hundred. Honestly I'm surprised he's still conscious. If what he's saying is true a pony would have fainted by now." "Will he be ok?" Stopwatch asked as they cycled out of the high security wards. Dr. Positive only sighed and shook her head, "Physically: if we can figure what did this, yes I think so. Even if we can't undo it his condition seems to have stabilized. Mentally: well, that's up to him. Him and whatever psychiatrist gets lucky/unlucky enough to have him as a client. Now, go tell Captain Armor that the patient needs some time to process this. We'll let him know when he's ready to talk." "Y-yes Ma'am!" 88888888 Chrysalis gagged as she landed in a clump of bushed on the outskirts of Vanhoover. This city stank. Greed, distrust, and apathy mixed together in the air to form an emotional miasma even the world's most masochistic changeling wouldn't touch. She would liken it to eating sulfur mixed with rotting fish if she'd ever been unlucky enough to sample such a concoction, and resolved to spend even less time here than she'd planned on previously. She'd have to find a nice, small village on her way back to fill up on. Those generally tasted sweet. After a quick look around to make sure no-one was watching, her entire form flashed green, and a teal coated unicorn with a matching mane and tail walked into the city. The smell was even stronger here, but Chrysalis could also pick out the subtle communal ties and love of friends and family the overarching stench covered up at a distance, making the experience bearable. Still, she would have done the empathic equivalent of holding her nose if she hadn't needed that sense to know where she was going. The love pulse still hadn't dissipated entirely, although it had weakened since it first appeared, allowing Chrysalis to follow it with relative ease. She quickly tracked it to the south western edge of town, using a simple misdirection spell to turn away the few crooks who were bold enough to be out during the day, and soon found herself staring at something both exhilarating and alarming: a crime scene perimeter. Ponies walked in and out of a tent surrounded by carefully painted wooden blocks sitting next to a weird-looking cart covered in a metallic finish, going up and down the front steps whenever they went inside. Chrysalis briefly wondered why you would need stairs to enter a tent, but dismissed the question as unimportant. Whatever had happened here, it was big, but at the same time it meant that the scene had been tampered with. Chrysalis couldn't do her investigations now without putting some effort into staying hidden, and the stuff she was looking for might already be long gone. Hmm. Maybe not entirely gone. Chrysalis started walking again so she wouldn't attract the suspicion of the guards on duty, and softly lit her horn. Objects with strong emotions tied to them left traces of energy in their wake: the bigger the attachment and the more recently the item had been used, the stronger the trail was and the longer it would last. Anything capable of making a pulse strong enough to echo across the continent would leave such a trail. Chrysalis could not conceive of a world where that wasn't the case, which was why the fact that she wasn't finding anything was making her left eye twitch. When a full minute of scanning provided no leads, she sighed, swallowed her pride, and went to pump a bystander for information. "Excuse me," she said to a nearby stallion, a pegasus with a tan coat and blonde mane who was watching the cops work, "Do you have any idea what happened here?" She widened her eyes in a display of fear mixed with curiosity to appeal to his protective instincts and continued, "I've never seen the guard out in force like this before. I hope nopony's in trouble." "Well," the stallion said with a dry chuckle, "You sure picked the right guy to ask. I'm the one who called this in. You see, my neighbor, the guy who lives in that tent," he nodded towards the pavilion, "Bit aggressive, but real friendly once you break through his shell. Anyway, last night he started screaming loud enough to wake the entire street. I rushed over, of course, and found him passed out on the floor while twitching under the influence of some magic I couldn't make heads or tails of. I called an ambulance, and they whisked him off to the hospital. Haven't seen him since." The stallion sighed wearily, "They still haven't told me if he's ok. Right now the guard is combing through his stuff to figure out what could have cursed him. They haven't found anything magical, but..." The stallion lowered his voice a bit, "I think they're going to have quite a few questions for him once they're done." An earth pony holding an evidence bag as far away from his person as possible that contained what appeared to be the severed tail of a griffon walked out of the tent a moment later, seemingly driving home the point. "Ah. Thank you," Chrysalis forced out around the sudden lump in her throat. Could it be? "Do you where the ambulance took him?" He did, and Chrysalis thanked him (always keep up appearances) and walked away as quickly as she could without raising suspicion, then swapped disguises once she was out of sight. The hope in her chest couldn't be suppressed anymore, and was whizzing around her head so strongly it was making her dizzy. The scene the stallion had told her about sounded way too familiar to be a coincidence, and it was all she could do to keep her hooves moving in a steady pattern and pointed in the right direction. Stumbling around like a drunkard would draw far too much attention here. The stallion's directions proved true, and Chrysalis quietly snuck up on an orderly taking a smoking break outside a rear entrance, jumped her, subdued her, hid her away behind a few dumpsters, then took her form and jacket and slipped inside. A large portion of going unnoticed was acting like you had every right to be where you were. Move with the gait of somepony who has somewhere important to be and something equally important to do once they get there and most ponies won't give you a second glance. This was how Chrysalis was able to fake her way into searching the hospital from top to bottom, with no success. She was just about to go back outside and grill the pony she'd caught for information when a stray conversation made it's way to her ears. "You're kidding, right? That thing can't be him, they look nothing alike!" "That's what he claims. Also, all the identity confirmation questions check out. If it's not him, whatever replaced him is doing a magnificent job." "Eh, I'm just glad it's in the high security wards. I don't want that thing anywhere near the other patients if I can avoid it." Chrysalis smiled, making a mental note to thank, and then kill, those two ponies later, and headed to the bottom floor. While the guards at the door to the correct wing provided a temporary obstacle, all that took was a minor mind trick to make them think she was authorized, and in she went. Only two of the cells/wards were occupied, and the first contained a minotuar that had lost both his horns in combat and clearly looked like he didn't want to be there. That left the other room. Chrysalis gulped as she stood before the slab of steel separating her from her answer. Would she find what she was searching for, a companion to keep the darkness away and a sign that the crystal royalty had returned, or just another disappointment, like all that had come before? She lifted a hoof and placed it against the metal, then hesitated. She considered leaving, going back to sleep and pretending this whole thing had never happened. Her curiosity and hope responded by ganging up on her timidity and beating it into submission. She was going to see what lay on the other side, even if it killed her. She took a deep breath, steadied herself as best she could, and pushed. The door clicked open. Her heart stopped. Gossamer wings attached to a black, hardened back. A horn, short but sharp. Membranes of hair covering his head. And a claw, riddled with holes, scratching at the tip of one of his ears in thought. Chrysalis's initial touch of disappointment that he wasn't a pony was run over by her other emotions. The mere sight of him took her breath away, and set off a series of sensations she hadn't felt in centuries. Extremely pleasant sensations. Chrysalis couldn't help herself. She stumbled forward, into the room, letting the door close behind her, then started skip-trotting in place right then and there while muttering, "Yes, yes yes!" "Ahem," Chrysalis froze, blushing heavily as she turned to face her the new changeling, who was staring at her with open suspicion, "Just who, and what, are you?" 88888888 Alex stared at the fake nurse in confusion. He knew she was fake. Even though nothing in her appearance gave her away as a copy, Alex could see that it was just a disguise. In fact, if he looked closely, he could see the outline of another pony under the shell. A much larger pony. He was up and running before he realized he had moved at all, and the pony slammed flat against the wall and his hands around her throat, pinning her there. "What are you!?" He shouted, "Show yourself!" The pony coughed, then flashed green, and Alex almost dropped her in stunned confusion as the light faded from his eyes. Green eyes with slit pupils, a twisted horn, teal/green membranes sprouting from her head and cascading down her back, and gently fluttering wings, all topped off by a fanged muzzle that had stretched into a tired smile. The pony-bug didn't even seem to care that she was being strangled, and instead was gazing at him in... joy? What the hell? Alex, naturally, made the connection. "What did you do to me?" he hissed in her face, the buzz in his vocal chords giving the expression a whole new threatening undertone. Her expression changed to one of confusion and mild concern, "Nothing?" she told him, phrasing it almost like a question. "Bullshit," Alex snapped back, squeezing harder, "I wake up as some kind of bug monster and the very same day another bug monster shows up looking for me? There's no way you're not involved in this." "It. Wasn't. Me," The bug gasped out, her smile gone and her cheeks starting to turn green, "Love. Spell. Gone. Wrong. Could. Feel It. Came. To. See." Alex snorted, but relaxed his grip enough to let her speak. She coughed a few times, then glared at him, "Put me down and I'll explain." Alex raised an eyebrow, but complied, though he didn't move far enough away that he couldn't pin her again if he needed to. "Start talking," he growled, "I've got a boatload of issues and the powerful urge to smash something." "Give me a moment," Chrysalis shot back, shaking herself all over, "I fly clean across the country looking for you and this is the thanks I get? Some welcome." Alex's fists clenched, but he managed to keep himself from lashing out. Just barely. "I won't ask again. Start. Talking." "All right, all right, fine, stow your wings already," she replied, then took a deep breath, "What I meant is I don't have the power to do this to you. It takes a certain spell cast by a certain bloodline corrupted in a certain way. You are not the first to fall victim to it, although hopefully you will be the last." She paused thoughtfully, "Tell me, have you been under a love spell recently? Perhaps one cast by a pony with a special shimmer in his or her coat?" Alex nodded slightly, not liking where this was going. "Then it's as I thought. My name is Queen Chrysalis. I'm a greater changeling. The last greater changeling," she bowed, just a small dip of her head, "Until you."