Crisis of Infinite Twijacks

by ObabScribbler


2. Laboratory Subjects

She raised her head when Tall White Coat came in earlier than usual. He was accompanied by Orange Beard, which was odd. Orange Beard never usually visited the lab on weekdays. The two humans tap-tap-tapped along the metal walkway, jabbering in that strange language of theirs. She watched in amazement as they stopped right by her cage and opened the one next door. Tall White Coat lifted the vet crate he was carrying and tipped it up, emptying the contents inside the neighbouring cage before hastily slamming the door and locking it. She noticed with interest that he used a combination lock, not just the standard metal catch. Whatever her new neighbour was, Tall White Coat really wanted it stashed securely.

Tall White Coat said something to Orange Beard. Orange Beard seemed angry. His bushy eyebrows pulled down in a scowl and though she could not understand the words, she recognised the anger in his tone. Tall White Coat sighed, gestured at the bank of mostly empty cages and said something that made Orange Beard throw up his hands and stalk through the nearest exit. Tall White Coat turned back, murmuring softly to the newcomer. Tall White Coat was usually the best of the bunch when testing time came; he was gentle and tried to tempt subjects from their cages with treats instead of roughly snagging them with neck restraints like the other humans.

When he had also departed, she finally crept out from her bedding pile of wood shavings and nosed at the glass divider between her cage and the newcomer’s. The newcomer was huddled in the corner, shaking. New subjects varied in how they reacted to the cages; some trembled like this one, some fought and kicked and tried to buck their way out until humans came and made clipboard notes on their behaviour. She had seen one poor yellow creature just sit, insensate, in the middle of the cage and do nothing for days until they took it away again.

“Hello?” she called through the glass.

The newcomer twitched.

“Can you understand me?”

Another twitch.

“Hi there. It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.”

Slowly, the thing uncurled. Her breath caught in her throat. The resemblance was uncanny.

“Hello,” the newcomer said meekly.

She blinked. “What … are you?”

Averted eyes. Shame was so rare around here she didn’t recognise it at first. “I’m … a Twilight.”

Involuntarily she shook her head. There was no way.

“A variant,” the newcomer amended. “Our line wasn’t … selling well so they … upgraded our design.” She twitched the fluffy purple wings that were now impossible to miss. “What are you?”

She came back to herself with a jolt. The resemblance was there but this wasn’t her. “Oh, me? I’m just a standard issue Applejack. I don’t think they’ve changed our design since Stage One.” She rubbed at the back of her head. “Well, there was that piebald prototype but they scrapped that almost as soon as they started.” She shrugged, pushing away thoughts of the oddly proportioned creature at the other end of the cages that hadn’t been able to walk on its ill-designed hips.

The newcomer nibbled at a lower lip. The action was so startlingly familiar that it caused her to sit on her rump to get her bearings. She cleared her throat, causing the newcomer to look up at her briefly.

“I … knew a Twilight once,” she said carefully. “She lived in that cage too. We talked a lot through the glass. She wanted to break out.”

The newcomer’s eyes rounded. “Did she?” came the breathless question. Hope. She recognised that emotion.

She dropped her gaze and toed the wood shavings. “Nah. Got her door open. Could probably have made a run for it. She worked out we’re all small enough to fit through a sewer pipe if we can get the grate off the entrance. But she came back for me. Got caught. I never saw her again. She should have kept running, not turned back."

“That’s awful.”

“Yup.” No point in denying it. “But it ain’t all awful around here. Sometimes the humans take us out for testing but a lot less than they used to. And you’re the first new variant I’ve seen in a while. What are you, Stage Two? Three?”

The newcomer’s chin dropped onto her chest. “Fifteen.”

Her jaw fell open. “Fifteen?

“They said they couldn’t get the wing design right. No-one wants to buy something with decorative wings that can’t actually fly but … the shape of the ribcage in a standard Twilight couldn’t withstand the pump action of wings. The ribs kept shattering or their chest cavities broke open completely, plus the bones in a Twilight are too heavy for flight. It took a lot of trial and error to get a prototype that has both function and aesthetic.” One purple wing gestured with the elegance of a human hand. “Me.”

She balked at the thought of Stages Two through Fourteen and their fates. “Well … ain’t that sumthin’,” she said eventually.

The newcomer curled into a ball and started to cry. “Will they sell me to some human child eventually?” she sobbed. “Or just keep me here and poke and prod at me some more until something in me breaks beyond repair and they figure out that design flaw too in Stage Sixteen?”

She was galloping to the glass divider before she could think better of it. “Hey! Hey now, don’t cry. It’s all right.”

“Nothing is all right.”

“Well … okay you got me there. But that’s not to say we can’t work on it.”

“Wh-what do you mean?”

Her eyes slid sideways to the sewer grate in the floor. “That horn of yours. In Stage One Twilights they were just for show. But you’re a Stage Fifteen with real workin' wings. Does … your horn work for real too?”

The newcomer’s head emerged from under her wing, streaked with tears but eyes wide with an entirely different emotion. “I … they ran tests … and the capacity is there, if not the conduit …”

“Huh?”

“It’s possible but our size makes it difficult. We’re too small for a lot of energy to pass through us without … making us explode.” She winced. “Twilight Fourteen,” she said by way of explanation. “They were still testing my functionality when there was an accident in the Research Wing and they had to put me in here while they fix the lab.”

“An accident?”

“A … fire.” For the first time, a small smile tugged at the corner of the newcomer’s mouth. “They couldn’t work out where it started.” A tiny glow appeared at the very tip of her horn.

She grinned. “Twilight Fifteen, I think this may be the start of a beautiful partnership.”