Freemane's Mind

by nucnik

Episode Five: On Kings and Queens

Now, that almost sounded like somepony kicked something.

The faint echo of glass scraping along the floor died out as quickly as it began and I stood perfectly still for a few moments, ears perked, waiting for the noise to appear again. Only everything went quiet, except for a strange buzz that I only now noticed, coming from the sea of light above.

Are they keeping fireflies in there? Please tell me they’re not using fireflies in jars as a light source?

Seeing as how they’d gone through the trouble of painting half a door shiny to make the place look better, it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that fireflies were the cheap, halfway solution to keeping the place lit. Nopony ever went into the morgue, apart from the employees, and they were probably too drunk to care. There was only one problem with that hypothesis.

Actually, that makes too much sense. There’s no way this place would use something that simple. Sure, you'd have a few million dead fireflies every few weeks, but those have to be better at keeping the place lit than a jug-full of magic.

I squinted and looked up at the ceiling, but the light was so bright I couldn’t make out where the noise was coming from.

Besides, everything here has to be over the top. Like the overprotected entrance to the mine. Or that elevator thing. They’re probably using some magically-linked Rube Goldberg device just to power the lights. They did turn on when I opened the crate, and I don’t think there’s anypony here to flip the switch.

Nope, the place was as empty as the donation box on my desk. Nopony ever wanted to donate anything to the good cause of stockpiling weapons for the future uprising. The wimps.

My time will come.

But as I took a look around, I finally found what I was looking for. There was a small control panel just ahead of the suit container, along with a very big, very red button on it. Between the suit and the bright lights, it was easy enough to miss. And the giant morgue, can't forget that!

Right. Escape.

I wished I hadn’t looked back to the entrance at that point, because that's when I saw the door to the normal part of the vault. And really, I started wondering if I could even call it that, since I hadn’t seen a single coin anywhere. The clunking noise from when I opened the container played out in my mind, just to remind me of what else I'd missed apart from the escape button. I was trapped.

Great. So now I have to escape the morgue before I escape the vault. Brilliant design! Who thought of that one?!

I walked over the furthermost edge of the platform, where the fence from both sides joined together at the control panel. It took me all of three steps to get there, but I made sure to make them as heavy as possible. The metal floor would taste my wrath. Figuring out which button to press took longer. The shiny, rounded red button that was just begging to be pushed had a label underneath.

Emergency Seal? So what, is a seal gonna drop down from the ceiling, armed with a club and-

I stopped that thought when another meaning of the word popped up. Only this time, the meaning was even more confusing. I glanced back at the closed door far behind me.

Seal, huh?

“BUT I’M ALREADY SEALED IN!”

I never knew we had a Princess of Irony until that day. That said, she was probably the busiest of the lot. Did a heap-load more than Cadence, I'll tell you that! Not that it helped me in any way. I was left to my own devices - as usual - so I started searching for an override command. I put my muzzle to the panel and did my best to decipher the barely legible abbreviations under the smaller buttons and levers.

APDA – no. FLPI – no. RATW – no. MLP – Where have I heard that before? But no...

Finally, after going through a dozen labels, I found what I was looking for. The clever bastards hid it in the one place where nopony would think to look – just below the Emergency Seal.

OVRD! Finally!

I jammed the tip of my hoof into the button with all the force of a carefully measured push. What? I didn’t want to break it. What followed was the most glorious sound I’d heard since Lunestia shouted at me, only more poetic - a deep thunk, followed by the hiss of the door opening behind me.

“Yes!” I closed my eyes and threw a hoof in the air at the same time.

I’m outta-

There was a strange pony looking at me from behind the fence when I opened my eyes. Somehow, he’d climbed up on the descending rails without as much as a hoofstep.

“Here?”

It's strange feeling your eyelids expand like a balloon. Or your ears gluing themselves to the back of your skull. My initial scientific observation on the subject was as follows: It was terrifying. Fortunately, it was so terrifying that I had the time to discard that observation, bypass the panic of being eaten alive and go straight to a more profound analysis.

Which part of Celestia did you crawl out of?

It was the strangest Pegasus I’d ever seen; entirely black, with tiny, glass-like greenish wings and near solid eyes. And that was just the start! It had fangs and its legs were chock so full of holes you’d think one if its parents was a golf course.

And what’s with the mane? Are you a lizard? And-

That’s when I noticed the horn. What I was looking at wasn’t a Pegasus that flew through a hail storm. It was a leathery, Swiss cheese inspired alicorn. At least it was no bigger than me, which meant it was a baby alicorn, but still. I could feel a frown forming, no matter how hard I tried to keep up my poker face.

This thing is royalty, isn’t it?

He was a prince, no doubt about it – at least it looked male. Or it was a very ugly princess, which also wouldn’t be that surprising if you look at the ruling dynasty. Either way, my luck-o-meter was bouncing off the redline. Hundreds of miles; a desert, a forest and countless mountains, and I couldn’t get away from Canterlot. There was no point in arguing with it.

“You’re going to send a message to Celestia about me, aren’t you?”

I looked straight into his freakish, solid blue eyes and decided to gamble on one last attempt at leaving this place with my freedom intact. One final option that almost never fails when you’re alone with a spoiled bureaucrat.

“I’m sure we can work this out. I’ve got this giant stash of gems just waiting – hey, are you even listening?!”

Prince Attention Span moved the fence door out of the way and approached, one step at a time, all the while looking at me like I was the first pony he’d ever seen. I, meanwhile, was wondering what sort of punishment he was preparing for me behind that act. After all, he was the only member of royalty around, which automatically meant everypony in the facility was subordinate to him, young age or not.

Gotta love Equestrian politics. “No, he’s not too young – he has to learn how to boss everypony around somewhere!” Damn alicorns.

He was right next to, and then the freak factor got turned up to eleven. He started sniffing me, like a dog. First my hoof, then up my foreleg to my jaw. At least he avoided the part that dogs usually go for, so that was good.

What are you doing?

He tilted his head and took a step back, only now there was genuine confusion on his face instead of the curiosity I’d seen before. He was furrowing his brow, his eyes had shrunk slightly, his mouth was ajar – the whole lot! It was getting to be too much for me.

“Just tell me what you want and we can make a deal!”

He twitched back; my awesomely intimidating voice has that effect sometimes. And then it happened. A flame of green energy appeared at his hooves and slowly spread upwards. I was left staring at a replica of myself.

“Ughhh…”

I – well, the other me – then turned to the exit and slowly walked off onto the bridge between the platform and the entrance. I blinked a few times.

No more oxycontin. I’m done. It's not worth it.

You never really know how dangerous drugs can be until you see a hallucination transform into you. The only thing that didn’t make sense at the time was why the demon transformed into me, rather than the other way around.

If drugs are going to ruin me, shouldn’t I end up looking like that? Or am I a monster unless I do drugs? Projected introversion is horseapples.

I kept an eye on the departing me, and scraped a hoof against my chin, which is a scientifically proven way of provoking thought. And it worked! Only not the way I expected it to.

The red tape with the warning signs… That was for the broken vats! This place must be loaded with chemicals.

I took another look around, only this time I took a good sniff of the air as well. It had finally dawned on me that those broken vats were probably filled with formaldehyde and formaldehyde is nothing if not toxic. That’s one of its redeeming qualities. Otherwise it would just be a smelly liquid that kept dead bodies in one piece, and where’s the fun in that?

Gradual formaldehyde poisoning? That would explain a lot.

I couldn’t smell it, but then I had been there long enough for my nose to adapt. The HEV suddenly became the most interesting thing around me. It might have been missing a helmet, but it was bound to have a respirator attached to it.

I wonder if I fit in this?

Of course, the first thing I had to do, in order to answer that, was to figure out how to get in it in the first place. There were no zips, joints or visible locks on it, so after I circled it, I decided to employ the time-honored tradition of poking at it with a hoof.

Come on. I know you want me inside you.

I paused at that, and not only because of how it sounded. My hoof made contact with a small, nondescript panel to the side of the suit, and it popped out like a latch.

Hello!

Sure enough, there was another one on the other side, and after I’d grabbed both of them and pulled, the suit pivoted at the flank and came apart with a jagged line that went along the belly-part of it. I put a leg in and felt the welcome embrace of science-grade foam molding around it, but there was one thing that was stopping me from getting comfortable.

I guess you’re supposed to put this one without the lab coat, huh?

It was getting tangled in ways that would amaze chaos theorists. I flung the coat off and threw it over the rail. Didn’t take long to settle in after that.

Oh yes! This is the stuff. I didn’t start panting at that point. Those are just rumors. Those mares at the Happy Ending know their stuff, but that’s nothing compared to the cold, lifeless embrace of a well-designed armored hazmat suit. Wait. I guess I should say goodbye to my hallucination before it vanishes.

“Bye!”

The damn thing stopped in the middle of the bridge and turned around to face me, before going on its way again.

That’s just not right.

I swung my head around as much as I could, but the one thing I was looking for wasn’t there.

No respirator. Damn. I guess it’s in the helmet.

Finding an armored hazmat suit was turning out to be like getting a coupon for a free lap dance at a strip club, only once you get there, the only dancer that can redeem it calls herself Granny Smith. Really, who takes a hazmat helmet but leaves the rest of the suit behind?

I bet it was some disgruntled employee that took it home as payback for having to work in an underground morgue and that’s why they had to close this place down when the vats went. This was the only suit in here!

The next step was exactly that – getting out of the container. But when I tried to move my leg, the only thing I accomplished was to smush it against the padding a bit. Something was holding me back, so I looked down at the suit to figure out how to get moving.

Either this thing weighs a ton or it’s bolted to the container. And I don’t think they’d design an immobile hazmat suit. Then again…

I wriggled my legs around for a few seconds, until I realized I’d forgotten something.

I can’t move until I close it shut, can I?

For the first time since coming here, I have to say I was genuinely impressed by the safety protocols they had. Sure, I was in a formaldehyde-drenched morgue deep underground with an interactive hallucination running around, and yes, somepony had stolen the helmet to the HEV. But at some point, somepony who helped build it must have said, “Guys, wait! What if somepony forgets to put the suit on before he starts wandering around dangerous chemicals? We should probably keep him out of the danger zone until he’s safe.” It grew my heart three sizes.

Canterlot: keeping you safe whenever we mess up!

I looked back at the lifted part of the suit.

“And how do you do this if you’re an Earth pony, huh?! Didn’t think of that, did you?”

There was no way an Earth pony would have been able to close the suit unless he’d sprained his neck. And do I even have to mention there was no place for wings on that thing?

Good thing I’m a Unicorn. I can’t even imagine what my life would’ve been like if I had to carry my coffee in my hoof.

I grabbed the entire back shell of the suit in a nice aura of magic and closed it shut. Wasn’t prepared for what happened next, though.

“Welcome to the HEV. mark IV protective system, for use in hazardous environment conditions.”

“WHO SAID THAT?!”

Yeah, the suit started talking to me. Oxycontin withdrawal or formaldehyde poisoning - at this point, it really didn’t matter. What mattered was that a monotone female voice was telling me things I never asked for.

“High impact reactive armor activated.”

What?

“Atmospheric contaminant sensors activated.”

Okay.

“Vital sign monitoring activated.”

I guess you’d need-

“Automatic medical systems engaged.”

“HEY! Don’t cut me off!”

“Defensive weapon selection system activated.”

Weapons?

“Ammunition level monitoring activated.”

I don’t even…

“Communications interface online.”

Where?

“Have a very safe day!”

“I’ll make sure to do that!” I figured it’d keep talking forever if I didn’t say anything to put it at ease. The suit went quiet and I waited for a few seconds.

Is it… Is it done?

I let out a well-deserved sigh of relief and tried moving my leg to see if the suit was still stuck to the container. It wasn’t!

I just have to get out of here. Then everything will be fine.

I took a step out of the container when three things caught my attention. One, the suit didn’t sound like an anvil being dragged and dropped on the metal floor. That was good. Two, my hallucination was already out of the morgue and was standing in front of the door to the normal part of the vault. That was understandable. I was still in a morgue full of toxins and I’d take a while for my blood to clear. Then there was number three…

Is the door opening? Sure sounds like-

The quiet squealing sound really was that of the door to the elevator opening in the hallway. It was strange seeing a strip of light from the outside slowly going up my hallucination, but I didn't want to dwell on that. I stumbled forward to get to the exit, when two Royal Guards jumped me – the other me - and Mr. Fancy Armor strolled in to take me-it away.

No.

The moment I saw the Guards tackle me, I grabbed the rail to my right side and threw myself over, all the while knowing full well that I was in the HEV suit that would cushion my fall as I tumbled off the bridge I’d forgotten about.

Air?!

The cracks in the concrete were proof positive that the HEV was well designed. Too bad sound-deadening the non-hoof parts wasn’t on the agenda.

“Did you hear that?”

I was still lying on the floor when I heard the distant, yet unmistakable sound of a Royal Guard asking about the crash I’d made. I never could figure out why they all sound the same, but if their fur is any indication, I’d guess they were just bred that way. Celestia and Luna can lover the sun and the moon, what’s a little genetic engineering for them?

“Close it off!”

You know that strange jolt you get when you get two strong conflicting emotions at the same time? The way your heart skips a beat? Well, that’s kind of what I felt when I heard the other Guard’s reply. Something about two – or possibly more – Royal Guards not wanting to enter a morgue over a sound of something crashing, despite dealing with a vault heist upstairs, got my hairs on edge. Or maybe it was the lack of any kind of persuasion from the first Guard, like he just waiting for the other one to say it.

So, I’m about to be locked into a morgue. No problem.

Good thing I knew the protocol. The door would close, they would flip the kill switch on the lights and then I’d be left with nothing but the glow of my horn to guide the way. Didn’t matter, though. I could see the ramp to the platform ahead of me, and I still had the key-pendant, so all I had to do was wait a few minutes before re-activating the override. Getting back to the mine would be a problem, but that concern would come after I’d gotten out of the room o’toxins.

Careful…

By the time I got back up on my hooves, the door had shut and, just as I had predicted, the lights had gone out.

Amateurs.

I whistled my way to the platform. Literally. The whole thing was just too easy. The HEV even made my horn glow brighter! No idea how it did that, though, but I didn’t care. I was back in front of the console when I realized what a stupid thing I’d just done.

It was an illusion. All of it. My clone didn’t exist and that means that neither did the Guards. I jumped off the bridge for nothing. But that means…

The override button was on a timer. Obviously. Worst still, I’d just hallucinated an entire theater act, which meant the fumes were really getting to me. It was definitely time to get out.

Poke!

“AhhHHH!”

I forgot to shield my eyes from the inevitable burst of light, so for a while, all I could see was the red and yellow pulsing of my eyelids. Did you ever notice how you blood vessels look like snapshots of bloody lightning strikes? No? Go stare at the sun then. A few minutes should do it.

“Stupid. Bright. Lights.”

I rubbed my eyes and opened them as soon as the light from above no longer made me feel like I was on acid. Didn’t take long for the effect to return, though.

“Ugh…”

There was another hallucination standing on the ramp to the platform. And another one, completely identical to the first.

I guess brains really can’t make up new faces.

There were at least a dozen of those things on both ramps, and probably even more below. If there was ever a time to start panicking about how heavily poisoned I was becoming, this was it. But not before those things started coming at me.

Not again. I can’t see another me being dragged off by the Guards. That counts as premonition!

I turned to look at the control panel and took a few steps backward toward the bridge. There was one question that was burning a hole in my brain. I could feel it. Although I guess that could have been all the formaldehyde. If I could see an entire herd of those things, I probably had a toxin level high enough to be charged with smuggling the stuff.

I wonder if they’ll charge me with public intoxication if I – I chuckled at the thought before the next one came by. I’m gonna die.

I had to get out and there were two options when it came to that - to run away as fast as possible or to leave calmly. Running would make the blood flow faster, so I’d probably get more hallucinations, but I would be out sooner. Casually trotting would keep the toxins away from by brain longer, and if I controlled my breathing, I stood a good chance of being able to limit the toxin intake altogether, but there was one tiny variable in that.

If the door closes when I’m already over the bridge, my heart is going to punch its way out of my chest. I won’t even die of poisoning. The heart attack will take care of it.

I’ll take poisoning over a heart attack any day. It’s so much cooler and more exotic. Only when I glanced over at the bridge, one of the demons was already there, and others were looking at me from all sides. I was surrounded by my own imagination. There’s only so much I could take.

"You’re not even real!

They say you should always face your demons, but I chose to go straight through them instead. There’s really no better way to end an illusion than that. So, I took a step back for a running start and jumped right at the hallucination in front of me. You can imagine my surprise when I tangled with it. And then the cycle began again. We picked ourselves up from the ground, and it stayed right next to me and started sniffing me, just the like the one from before. Only this one looked at me all surprised-like and turned to the others. It shrugged.

This is too crazy.

I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t quite believe my imagination was strong enough to drop me on the floor. Whatever these things were, they were real and one of them was blocking my way. Now, before you start thinking zombies, no. I know we all wish that would happen, but let’s face it – it isn’t going to. That, and the lack of brain-related gasps, told me I was dealing with something entirely different.

These are lab rats from Tartarus.

As far as I was concerned, the recipe couldn’t have been simpler.

Take one lab rat, sprinkle it with death, feed it some hate and let it all marinade in a pool of bile. Then, after you scrub your conscience clean, take it out of the pan and shape it like a Nightmare Night ponyquin because why not! Boom - science!

Meanwhile, the experiment turned back to me and came closer.

“You’re in my personal space. I-”

It damn nearly bumped noses with me.

That’s it.

If it wouldn’t get out of my way, I’d get it out of the way myself. Only without touching it. Say what you will about the HEV, I don’t think it was gross-resistant. A magical shove, now that would work wonders.

“One more time: go away!” That didn’t work either, so I mustered up the magic and focused. “I. Said. MOVE!”

There was the expected bright flash of orange, only I never thought I’d be able to see it with my eyes closed. I had a feeling something had gone wrong when there was a loud popping noise a moment later. I opened my eyes.

How…

It was snowing black, with the occasional sharp chunk of black hail coming down with it. The recording from the suit about the weapons played out in my mind. There was one piece of good news, though.

There’s no blood, so it wasn’t a pony. Unless the blood got burned away, but then I’d smell it. So that’s good.

The black circle of charred whatever-it-was on the metal confirmed my suspicion, so at least I knew I really wasn’t hallucinating, which put a stop to a whole heap of worries concerning the poisoning. Now all I had to worry about were the hundred angry stares coming from all sides.

Don’t agitate them.

“Heh. Sorry!” I looked around. They were glaring daggers at me. I gave them my best smile. “He had it coming?”

ZAP!

Green bolts of magic started flying in from all directions. At least they were terrible shots. Most of the bolts landed on the ground next to me, some even went over my head and hit the ceiling – they were all over the place. And that was from near point-blank range! Still, there were a hundred of them, and every time one of them hit my suit, it sounded like a pebble hitting a tin can. I ducked my head and ran over the bridge.

“You’ll never take me alive!”

I was nearly on the other side when a strange buzzing noise, like the sound of a million angry bees, started closing in from behind. I didn’t panic, not until I started feeling the vibration through my hooves.

I can’t die like this!

There was a wall-like formation of those parasites flying toward me and firing off their horns. And then it happened.

ZAP!

One of the million bolts they fired hit my suit and, just like all the shots before, it bounced off. Only now I was over the bridge, and those vats near the door were damn close to the central corridor. I could actually see the bolt flying off past me, directly into a vat to my right. It didn’t punch a hole through it. It blew it open.

Not the corpse. Not the-

“Aghhhh!”

The green fluid came gushing out directly in front of me, and my hooves were already slipping on the spill when the misshapen black corpse of… that something from before flushed out of the vat. I practically hugged it.

Bunnies. Atoms. Derpy…

The happy thoughts came to an end when I heard the distinct sound of an alarm going off and the whole morgue started flashing red. The same voice that my suit had started shouting “Contamination alert!” all over the place, and the door to the outside started closing. Fast.

No no no no no no!

If I wasn’t in danger of being locked in a morgue full of overgrown mosquitoes, I’d have appreciated the Hoofywood-style escape I was in. The door was coming down from the ceiling, I was siding on my haunches toward the ever smaller rectangle of light with a corpse in my lap… Well, maybe not everything about this escape was movie-like. Neither was the fact that I wasn’t going to make it.

Slow down! How can I make it slow down?!

That brief moment felt like a minute. There was only one thing I had that could jam the door while I was sliding out.

Yes.

I wrapped my magic around the corpse and threw it forward at the gap. That’s one of the beauties of magic – no law of conservation of energy. Not in the classical sense, anyway, so I didn’t come to a stop or even slow down. The corpse just flew forward! Better still, it made it to the door just in time to slide underneath it, but not so soon as to go under it. The loud snap of the spine confirmed that, and the fact that I could hear it over the buzzing spoke volumes about the precision of my throw. The door let out a groan as the mechanism came to an unexpected stop.

“Yes!”

I threw myself on the back so I could slide out.

That was beautiful.

I came to a stop just in front of the door and slowly picked myself up. It wasn’t easy with all the green goo stuck to the suit, but once I looked back I knew I was out.

“Yeah! Take-”

The door was still propped up by the corpse and the buzzing was intensifying. My smile dropped. Then my instincts took over and I hunkered down. I had to get that corpse out of there or I’d just delay the inevitable. I grabbed it with a magical lasso and pulled on it as hard as I could.

Come on!

It wouldn't budge and now I could see the twinkling in those things' eyes as they got closer and closer to the light. Against my best judgment, I jumped closer to the body to get a better feel for the tug.

I said. COME ON!

This time, the corpse budged just enough for the door to exert its force. Only the body wasn’t really out of the way when the door slammed down. I don’t know if you’ve ever crushed an egg under you hoof, but this was similar. The black-green saliva-goo-slime that was in the corpse a moment ago had only one way to go. Took me a while to process that.

••• −−− ••• ••• −−− ••• ••• −−− •••

I don’t know how long I stood there, only that I'd never been happier about wearing glasses. The slime was slowly soaking my fur and my right hoof was twitching so violently I thought I was going to scrape off the rubber on the inside of the HEV.

“Oh no! Are you okay?”

Suddenly hearing somepony at my side did nothing to calm my nerves. I was never one to have some inner battles, so feeling one part of my body wanting to jump into an awesome defensive 180 and hunker down to face my attackers, and the other part of me doing all it could to keep my muscles still so that the goo wouldn’t get anywhere unpleasant was a whole new experience. In the end, my eyes shot wide open and I looked at the sciencepony.

“You’d better come with us,” he said in a frail, elderly, scientist’s voice and pointed with his hoof to the other end of the hall.

He also made sure to give me a wide berth as he came around to face me; nearly took his coat off on the wall, that’s how hard he scraped it. I couldn’t resent that.

If I’d have to maneuver around an angry slime ball, I’d do the same. Only I’d have a flamethrower ready.

He pointed down the hall a few more times, all the while looking at me with a stare that told me exactly how I looked – that fine line between wanting to laugh and wondering how much of my fur is going to come off along with the goo. It was only now I noticed his younger assistant standing by, looking slightly more terrified of the whole ordeal.

I hate you. And how are you two not afraid of this – a walking biohazard?

What can I say? Sometimes I give too much credit to others’ bravery. I don’t know how I didn’t think of it sooner.

This happens a lot, doesn’t it? I can’t say that surprises me.

The only question I now had was whether they’d turn me over to the Guards as I was, or if they were going to allow me to take a shower first.

Having a thick layer of death on me would work wonders in the prison. I bet nopony would come within earshot of me. NO! YOU pick up the soap! Now, go and… huh. Go clean your teeth with it? Or something? I have to ask somepony what happens after you pick up the soap.

That reminded me I had no idea what the long-term exposure to this stuff would do. A picture of that thing from the vat, the one that exploded into me, suddenly flashed before my eyes.

Am I gonna mutate? Were those mutants? The half-solid goo on my neck made crunching noises as I looked at my hooves. I don’t… I don’t feel like I’m mutating.

Amidst all the possibilities for what was going to happen to me, only one thing was certain: I was going to get arrested. But you know what? By this point, I was so far beyond worrying what the Guards were going to do to me once they booked me. That stack of gems I had hidden was always an option. But first I had to will every leg into moving, and the crunching noises weren’t helping. The scientist was looking at me, ready to duck and cover at the first sign of something squirting off me, and the other one was backing up into the wall. It was only after I’d turned all the way around that I saw the vault-like door on the side of the corridor, the ones that lead to the elevator, very much shut. Its shiny twin down the hall, on the other hoof, was open.

That’s new.

What’s more, there was a bright white light coming out of it that far surpassed the meager gems in the hallway, much like the light in the morgue. I couldn’t see much of what was inside, but I could make out more lab coats moving about and some straight-edged furniture leading into the white abyss. This was nothing like a vault, or a morgue. There was a certain familiarity to the brief outline that made me the happiest and most confused pony in the mine at the same time. That I hadn’t actually seen any mining take place suddenly started making sense.

That’s a laboratory.

“…you disinfected.”

I zoned out. Well, zoned in, technically.

“What?”

Not a bad thing to say after being given the mud bath from Tartarus. Pretty sure anypony else would have started screaming their heads off the moment they had the chance. The spitting started a nanosecond later, when a chip from the goo-ish crust landed on my inner lip.

That was horrible.

I looked up from the ground, back to the scientist, and asked again.

“What?”

He pushed his glasses further up his muzzle, and sidestepped the puddle of spit on the ground.

“I said, as soon as we get inside the Enhancement Unit, we can get you disinfected. Oh those blasted Guards – they should have told us you were coming by train!”

Enhancement Unit? What are you enhancing, Sunbutt’s butt? Because that’s already-

I stopped myself from thinking the end of that joke. There might have been a running gag in my old lab about Celestia’s mind reading, and how she uses it to spy on ponies and find cake, but there was no telling what safety measures she had in place here. Given everything I’d seen, it wasn’t a stretch to think that maybe the walls had ears.

She didn’t exactly see my escape from the hospital in advance, so there’s that. But then, I didn’t even know I was escaping until the last moment. Must have thrown her off.

It was a refreshing thought – all I had to do to escape the mind rays of the Sun was to not know when and how I was going to do anything. Of course, not planning things out in advance presented a new problem.

I’m going to have a hard time blending in if I constantly hover a baseball bat above my head.

“I know it’s not my concern, but why did you choose to forego the portal?”

Oh, you’re still here. What portal?

The curious way in which he asked that, and the strange mix of fear and worry in his voice told me he wasn’t really asking me that. What he wanted was reassurance that it wasn’t his fault for me nearly dying in the morgue.

“That’s on a need-to-know basis. And you don’t need to know.”

And I know I dub thee Spectacles.

That made him jump. But damn did it feel great saying that! Usually, you only hear actors saying it in movies, and here I was, talking down to a pony that was one wrong question away from sending the Guards after me.

“Oh, I’m-Yes, of course!” he stuttered out.

It worked?

I mean, of course it worked. That was the plan all along, to intimidate him into not questioning me. Now I just had to get the layers of death off me.

“Anytime you feel like going…” I deliberately trailed off.

Spectacles looked back to his young assistant and they exchanged a nod before they escorted me into the lab beyond. If it weren’t for the fact that they were walking behind me, one on each side and a good distance away, I would never have known I was covered in mystery death sauce. I could already see myself walking out of the hallway, toward that elevator thing, faking surprise at the screams and panicked looks of passers-by. I did genuinely wonder how that Shining fellow would have reacted if I didn’t get decontaminated.

Would he recognize me? Would he try to arrest me? Or would he tell one of the Guards to tackle me so he wouldn’t have to get his hooves dirty?

“Ah, here they are. They’ll escort you to the Decom Chamber.”

The voice of the bespectacled scientist brought an end to my meditation. And I was just getting to the part where I would act ignorant and shake like a dog. There’s nothing like imagining the life-altering panic of the idiots behind the sealed door. The rusted-shiny door to the elevator. I wasn’t sure if I could call the things back in the morgue idiots, even if they didn’t recognize a superior force when they saw one.

Who are They?

A couple of ponies in yellow hazmat suits appeared in front of me. And next to me. In the time that it took me to take a quick look around, and see the scientists staring at me from behind the plastic screens on their suits, they were already getting their shiny, latex-y hooves all over me. I got dragged off before I could politely tell them that no, I wasn’t going to resist going wherever they needed me to go. At least they had the decency to pick me up and carry me instead of dragging me along the floor. Spectacles shouted something from behind.

“I’m terribly sorry, this is for your protection and ours!”

Right. Wouldn’t want me to smudge the tiles now, would you?

The joke was on them. The HEV was heavy. I could hear them groaning and moaning underneath me. The scientist working at the desks nearby looked at me with awe and trepidation and being hoisted up on the shoulders of ponies in matching outfits made the whole trip even more enjoyable. I gave them a slow glance, fitting of the moment.

Yes. Bow down to your king! Flee in- SMACK

The low doorway came out of nowhere. The solidified goo took the brunt of the impact, but I still felt like resting my hoof on the bruise. It was purely cosmetic, just to show the peons below what they’d done.

That’s gonna leave a mark.

I took the hoof away when it was time to leave my impromptu carrying service. They put me down in the middle of a round room with nozzles on all sides. The way they were all pointed at me was mesmerizing. All those rounded points, converging on me like a Bizzaro dandelion.

What was that?

Something fell on the floor behind me. I turned and saw parts of Hazmat suits being thrown in, with one of my servants still taking off his boots. He saw me looking at him and gave me the strangest smile before quickly pulling his boots off and throwing them to the ground with the rest of his suit. So here I was, in the decontamination room, with a whole bunch of dirty hazard suits to boot.

What is this, a giant washroom?

I looked down and saw the grates of the drainage system. It was a giant washroom, and the good ponies of the secret mountain lab didn’t even have the common decency to separate the plastic from the biodegradables - Me!

The bit-pinchers.

But at least they had a decontamination room. We just used whatever was in the janitor’s closet when somepony got into the acid cabinet. Probably shouldn’t have left it open like that on guided tour days.

How cool would it be if the HEV shrunk from the washing? Then I’d have to wear it forever!

A strange screeching noise started, followed by bursts of mist through the nuzzles. The sound of water rushing through pipes became louder and louder and I braced myself for the welcoming warmth of a good shower. I hadn’t had one in ages.

Come on, stop teasing and get this thing off me!

The water burst into the room from all sides in a perfectly calculated spray that filled every space in the room, but left enough air to breathe. Now, you might be wondering why I’m mentioning the breathing part. Well, that was the only thing I could do; rapidly. The water was liquid ice.

Mass and inertia are the same thing. A medium-sized cumulus cloud weighs about the same as 80 elephants. More germs are transferred during brohoofing than kissing...

By the time the ice spray stopped, I’d gone through enough facts to redo high school. One rapid broom-scrubbing and second dose of hypothermia later, and I was out of decontamination.

“Dr. Neigh, I thought we’d lost you!”

It took me a second to realize Spectacles was talking to me.

Neigh, Neigh, Neigh… he doesn’t mean old Shakes-a-Lot, does he?

I had to say something before he’d grow suspicious, so I repeated what the old coot always said, “Yes. Yes. Nothing to worry about.”

We never did figure out what made him shake like that. Every lecture, he would stroll in, shaking like a leaf on water, and would start cutting chemistry into the board with his chalk. Talked a lot about tropane alkaloids. Then his eyes would start to bulge and he’d go to the washroom to clear his head and come back a little more energetic than when he’d first walked in. Why Spectacles over here thought I was him, I had no idea.

Beats getting arrested.

“The plant’s been under code Moon for three days now. We’re lucky to have you here so soon; the generator’s been all over the place-” He saw me looking at him with all the understanding of a farm pony in a math class. “I’m so sorry, dr. Neigh, that was inconsiderate.”

You’re damn right it was! That poor farm pony. Haha!

The least he could do was explain why I was here in the first place. All this talk of codes and generators only served to confuse me. But he wasn’t finished. He extended a hoof.

“I’m dr. Cleaner, and I’m so happy to finally meet you! I’ve read all your works on Resonance Cascades and they’re…” He stopped again, and smiled meekly. “You’ve just gone through a horrible ordeal, and here I am wasting your time. Would you like to see the project? The one that succeeded?”

Before I could start yelling at him for being rude a yellow mare came by, hovering a tray of cookies and coffee in front of her. She had a loosely fitting lab coat on, and the kind of smile that would bring a debate over the existence of gravity particles to a stop.

Wonder why they took her in. Must be her brilliant… She fluttered her eyelashes and made a swipe with her fiery tail as she offered me the tray. Mind.

I’d seen some pretty mares in my day, but those cyan eyes were like an ocean inviting me for a swim. Or some other activity. Either way, I have to say she had a great taste in stallions. If I would be a mare I’d pick me as well.

I took a cup of coffee from the tray, my new friends opting for cookies, and she strutted away, leaving behind two panting scientists and a genius who developed a sudden regret about the snugness of his HEV suit. It didn’t help that she swung her hips to make the lab coat sway and press against her flank with every step. As every pair of eyes in the lab trailed her, Spectacles turned back to me.

“So, the project. Would you like to see it?”

“I’d love to see her. It. I’d love to see it.”

He started walking through the lab and I followed suit, wishing for once I’d have a split personality so I’d be able to focus on what was really important while still listening to whatever the bore had to say. Mental illnesses work that way, right? You get some drawbacks and some positives to balance it out. Kind of has to given Celestia’s conviction on harmony and all.

“Now, sadly, you’ve seen firsthoof the little problems we’ve had with…”

She acts all seductive and powerful, but there’s no resisting The Mane.

“…splicing yielded some unstable…”

I bet she came over with the cookies just to get my attention.

“…of course the night guards were just as useless as…”

The cookies. I should’ve known! Nopony just bring a tray of cookies out of nowhere. And the coffee!

“…were kept on a need-to-know basis, you see…”

I took one sip of the coffee and spat it out.

What’s this made of, misery? Eh. The coffee cup went onto a nearby table and I glanced back at Red, only to see she was playing hide-and-seek. Don’t worry, I forgive you. You’ll practice your coffee-making on our honeymoon.

“How did you get the key for the specimen vault anyway?”

I wasn’t the only one who had stopped. And now Spectacles was looking at me, expecting an answer. At least he’d asked me a question about something I had already done instead of asking me what comes next. Still, I couldn’t very well say I’d gone rummaging through the offices in the hopes of finding valuables. I needed an escape goat.

“Shining Armor gave it to me.”

Spectacles furrowed his brow.

“But that’s impossible! That’s a serious breach of-”

“I don’t know and I don’t care.”

Letting the truth out can feel so rewarding. Like dancing in a field of flowers with a yellow unicorn and a tray of cookies. Canterlot exploding in the background. I could practically taste them. The cookies, not the explosions. I’m not Michael Hay.

“So, the project?” I quickly asked before he could start digging deeper.

“Well, as I was saying,” he started, before correcting his glasses, “We’ve managed to create a single adequate specimen.”

With that strange bit of information, he walked on to a darkened window with a hefty aura of magic in front of it, and stopped. The moment I stepped to his side, the room behind the window lit up.

How do you guys do-

“AH!”

I took a cautious step back – that’s all it was, honest. Behind the window was a scaled up version of the black mosquito mutants that had hunted me in the morgue. Spectacles chuckled.

“Don’t worry, she can’t see you.”

SHE?!

He tapped on the window and proudly said, “One-way mirror.”

Okay. But it’s bright in here. Is that what the magic is for? To make it invisible?

There was only one way to find out more without making a fool of myself. I tapped on the window as well.

“Nice force field.”

“Thank you!” He looked at it as if he’d made it himself. “Keeps us out of sight-”

Oh, good.

“-and her fangs out of our throats.”

I couldn’t believe he smiled at that. And then he looked at me like I was supposed to be in on the joke.

“Heh, yeah. Fangs.”

Forget what; WHY is this?

“Now, as I said, this is the only proper specimen of a Changeling to have survived so far.”

So now I know. I killed a Changeling. Whatever that is.

“The rest had either genetic defects that rendered them short-lived, or were deemed too small to survive.”

I killed a member of an entirely new species.

“Either way, we moved them to the vault for archiving or destruction. Depending on what those above wanted done with them.”

First in my class. First to leave work. First to kill a new kind of animal. Can I ever stop being amazing?

At least I hoped they classified it as an animal. It would complicate things if they didn’t. Sure, I killed it in self-defense, and I’d kill anypony in self-defense if I had to, but it still felt nicer to think I’d squashed a bug and not some engineered proto-pony. The only thing I could be certain of, was that Canterlot didn’t exactly want anypony knowing about them, not to mention the whole box-em-up and forget about ‘em strategy they had going on with the failed ones.

How high does this thing go? Is somepony going to give Tia a message saying I killed her new pet? Why would she even want pets like this in the first place?

I had so much whoa swimming in my head I almost missed what the sciencepony said next. Good thing I didn’t though, because he said something so familiar, so ingrained into the scientific community as a whole, that I knew immediately what was coming next.

“Unfortunately-”

“Unfortunately,” I automatically continued in his place, “You miscalculated the probability of those things surviving and now you have an infestation on your hooves.”

He blinked and stared at me, completely taken aback by my incredible display of basic deduction.

“How-how did you know? We didn’t mention the details in the request.”

If I had a bit for every time that’s happened in my lab, I’d own the place.

It was true. That’s why every week, instead of having Casual Friday, we had Surprise Monday. You never really knew what was in the meat they served you, only that you had damn well do a good job of monitoring the symptoms, so the lab can do a study on it to pay off the extermination and the downtime.

“So, what’s the damage?”

“Well, they’ve taken over the vault, as you – ehm – as you’ve seen.”

Yes-HEY! They know about that! Something clicked in place and I suddenly knew why they were expecting Dr. Neigh. Of course they do.

I wasn’t here for the inspection – that news never made it down due to containment protocols. And it was good it didn’t. Unlike the Guards above, the ponies here actually had a faint idea of what they were doing. As soon as the Guards would have sent somepony down to verify my story, I’d be dead. And now I knew why they were so eager to see me and tell me all about the successful part of the project.

This isn’t a social visit. It’s a Hazup.

The fact we’d made an abbreviation for the Hazardous Waste Cleanup procedure should probably have told me more about the state of our lab than I was willing to accept, but I didn’t have time for that, since Spectacles kept talking.

“Luckily we kept the Queen separately.”

“The Queen?”

Latifah?

He was more stunned by my question than I had been by his answer.

“Yes. You know, the Adaptive Body Double. For the princesses.”

Those tall freaks have more enemies than I thought. That’s good.

“Of course.”

I gave the one-way mirror a thousand yard stare to give the appearance that I knew what he was talking about. The reality was I was torn between the good nature of the news that I wasn’t the only one in Equestria that wanted to see a few heads mounted on pikes, and a strange feeling I now felt for the caged abomination. I think they call it compassion.

Being trapped like that must feel pretty bad. Looking like that is worse. Knowing you’ll have to transform into one of them… That’s an entirely new world of horror, right there.

“Ah, good.”

The nervous chuckle that brought me out of my state of compassion told me he wasn’t buying it. A quick glance around revealed more lab coats looking at me with an even higher dose of doubt than when I first wandered in.

Wow, so it’s either you guys or the Changelings, huh? Someone just has to win the staring contest.

It was then that it dawned on me. I was in a sealed vault inside a top secret Canterlot lab with a couple hundred security ponies and Royal Guards above my head. The scienceponies were getting close to making a citizen’s arrest and the real Dr. Neigh was bound to come through the portal sooner or later. In other words, I was going to get caught and there was only one thing I could do if I wanted to have a shimmer of hope for reasoning with the Fun Police. Something so outstanding, they’d have to let me go.

I gave Spectacles the most determined look I could muster and prepared a quiet, deep voice. I was even missing bubblegum.

“So, I guess you want your vault back?”