The day was deceptively pleasant. Birds chirped cheerfully, a warm breeze blew through the trees, and the sun poured gentle golden light over the long, low building. It was visually inoffensive, deliberately so; designed to look calm and safe to those who looked at it.
Rainbow Dash shuddered, looking down at that building. She knew exactly what it was, and despite the architect’s efforts, she felt neither calm nor safe looking at it. She needed to go down there, had promised to, but Celestia’s name, she didn’t want to. She wasn’t sure she could take it.
It was a Conversion Center, one of thousands scattered across Equestria and Earth.
No one knew exactly how the two worlds had been linked. Some thought the portal had formed from the Earth side, by a group of physicists conducting a high-energy experiment. Others thought it had come from the Equestrian side, by a group of unicorns working on a new spell. It didn’t really matter in the end where it had started; it was what it was, and it couldn’t be stopped.
Rainbow still remembered the excitement of those first few days. The joy and delight of discovering a whole new world full of strange creatures. It had been true for both sides; humanity had never met another sapient species before, and after a short period of shock they’d been fascinated. Both sides had.
Then they’d discovered the Effect. Rainbow knew it had some fancy arcane term that was like five words long, but everypony knew it as just the Effect. Something about Equestria, or the magic it contained, was thoroughly, utterly inimical to humanity. Any human who spent too long in Equestria died, horribly. Ponykind and humankind had searched, and searched, and searched for a way to avert it, but none had been found. Still, while that put a stop to human visits to Equestria, Equestrian species weren’t similarly affected by Earth’s environment. Rainbow had considered it hideously unfair and one-sided, but the universe didn’t seem to care, and everyone involved had adjusted quickly. Ponykind, and zebrakind, and griffonkind, and all the varied species of their world had eagerly, happily visited Earth, learning about humanity and letting humanity learn about them in turn. That mood of optimism and excitement had returned, only slightly dampened by the presence of the Effect. Their different cultures could still learn from one another, still interact and mingle. The portal was still an occasion for joy.
The pegasus shivered when she remembered what happened next. The discovery that the Effect had begun to spread through the portal had elicited an attitude of near-panic in Equestria, and it had been worse on Earth. The excitement and optimism of the previous days had evaporated like morning mist, leaving fear and tension in its wake. The region around the portal had been evacuated, and Equestrian and human researchers had worked together frantically, trying to find a way to slow or stop the spread of the Effect, to close the portal, something. Humanity was searching for a way to survive, and Equestria was working desperately to save the neighbors it had only just met.
Nothing worked.
The spread had been slow at first, but even the early tests had found that it was accelerating. Something needed to be done. Something. If the Effect spread across Earth, the way it had looked like it was going to, humanity would go extinct. Rainbow could remember with crystal clarity how Twilight, one of her best friends and a prominent figure in arcane research, had worked herself to the point of collapse over and over and over again trying to find some solution. The unicorn had actually been hospitalized at least once, when Spike had found her collapsed over a pile of research materials. She’d had a seizure from magical overstress and passed out. Rainbow and her other friends had visited her in the hospital, and she’d bullied them into bringing at least some of her books in so she could keep working. The unicorn refused to surrender.
No one, human or pony, had discovered a means to halt the spread of the Effect. One of the research teams, though, had stumbled upon something else, an alternative; the process of Conversion. By turning a human into a pony, the Effect could be rendered harmless, and a plan was born. Once the procedure was tested, they could try converting as many as possible, saving as many humans as they could. It wasn’t what anyone wanted, and even early on there had been bitter arguments about it. The species would go extinct, one side said, while the other argued that the members would still be alive, at least. The infrastructure to support the effort had been under construction even before the first major tests, to make sure that it could be made ready as fast as possible. To let Equestria save as many of their neighbors as they could. Debate or not, none of them could imagine anything else.
The early tests had gone on, regardless, and Rainbow had been directly involved. Twilight had asked her friends to help out; not really in the arcane department, but as a way of lending moral support. Rainbow had wound up helping out the test subjects, and she’d made a close friend there; a human mare named Sarah.
Woman, blast it! Rainbow snarled in her head, correcting herself. You can at least try to remember what they call themselves! They deserve at least that much!
Sarah had been cheerful and friendly, and she and Rainbow had hit it off well. The pegasus had done an admirable job of helping to relax the young woman, giving her someone to talk to and laugh with, and she’d stuck by her friend all the way up to the transmutation room. She’d hugged the human, wished her luck, and sat down outside to wait. Rainbow could remember it clearly.
“Heh, today’s the big day, huh?” The pegasus asked, grinning up at her friend.
“Guess so!” Sarah grinned back. The two stood in the facility’s lobby, while Sarah looked around. Rainbow wanted to rush her, actually wanted to just pick her up and bring her to the transmutation chamber as fast as she could, but she fought that urge.
Still, she watched the young woman carefully. The test facility was inside the Effect, it had to be for the spells involved to function properly, and part of Rainbow was terrified of what might happen. It took days for the Effect to kill, she knew that, and she and Sarah had arrived here only a few hours ago, but still, Rainbow was anxious. She’d seen what the Effect did. The idea of watching while that happened to this bright, friendly person she’d come to call friend was beyond sickening.
“C’mon, let’s go,” Rainbow said, stepping behind Sarah to push gently against the human’s back. “Faster we get in there, faster it gets done.”
“Hold... hold on just a second,” Sarah said, taking a slow breath. She was nervous, Rainbow could see that clearly, and she could understand. Soon, Sarah would be changed, her body shifted and modified into a form that could survive the Effect... but it had to be scary to think of looking into the mirror and seeing a different face. Neither of them was really sure what would happen, and Rainbow knew her friend was afraid it would hurt. Not terrified, but a slow, heavy fear that hid behind other feelings. She’d seen it in Sarah’s face, once she got used to reading the human’s flat countenance, especially without the extra cues provided by the mobile ears Rainbow was used to seeing. Human expressions always seemed muted, subtle, much like her childhood friend Gilda’s had been.
Rainbow reared up, resting a forehoof on Sarah’s shoulder in a gesture she’d leared that the tall bipeds found comforting. “Hey, listen, it’ll be okay. These are smart ponies, and they’re sure nothing’s gonna go wrong. You got nothing to worry about.” Oh, how those words would haunt her in the coming years, how the memory of that one simple phrase would gnaw at her, chewing her soul to bits and spitting out the ragged shreds.
Sarah took another deep breath, mustering her courage and nodded. She flashed her pegasus friend a smile. “Yeah, I know. I wish they’d at least figured out what I’d wind up as.”
“Hey, doesn’t really matter,” Rainbow replied. “Wings, horn, or neither, it’s all cool. ‘Course, if you get wings, I’ll be here to show you how to use ‘em!” The thought of being able to teach her friend how to fly made Rainbow’s heart soar, but she knew there was only a chance of it, no certainties.
Sarah giggled. “Yeah, and even if I don’t get ‘em, I’ll be able to teach you to be, ah, a little more graceful in the water.” Rainbow rolled her eyes. She knew that she was incredibly clumsy in the water, especially next to an experienced swimmer like Sarah. Still, she took the slight jab with good humor; Sarah didn’t need her to shoot back right now.
Finally, finally, she was able to usher Sarah down the hallway. Her heart had pounded as she’d passed her friend over to the smiling, kind-voiced doctor, who’d taken the human into the transmutation chamber, closing the door behind her with a soft click. Rainbow had sat down in a not-terribly-comfortable chair, ready to wait as long as she had to.
Sarah had come stumbling out more than an hour later, trying to get used to moving on four legs. Rainbow had been a little disappointed that her friend had wound up as an earth pony; she’d hoped to be able to teach the transformed human how to fly. Unfortunately, the Conversion process was entirely random, with no way to tell whether a particular human would wind up as a pegasus, unicorn, or earth pony. She’d shrugged that thought aside; there was plenty they could do. "Hey,” Rainbow said, a smile of relief spreading across her face. She’d been worried, tense, and seeing her friend emerging okay was like lifting a huge weight from the pegasus’s shoulders.
“Hey.” Sarah grinned, though she had to quickly look down as one of her forehooves slipped. The four-footed body was clearly awkward for her to manage, though the doctors had assured both of them as well as humanity and Equestria at large that she should quickly adapt. “Sorry, didn’t wind up with wings.”
“Hey, that’s no problem at all. Looks like you’re pretty occupied with just the four legs, without having to manage two more, huh?”
Sarah laughed breathlessly at the mild jab, not contradicting her friend’s words. Rainbow felt another sense of relief; Sarah’s laugh hadn’t changed. It was exactly the same as when she’d been in her human body. Peering closely at the earth pony’s face, Rainbow could see Sarah’s personality behind it, the person still the same though the face that she presented to the world had changed.
“C’mon,” Rainbow said, “They’ve got a pool out back. Maybe that’ll help you get everything sorted out.”
“Oh, that sounds great.” Sarah lifted her eyes with a grin that was only slightly forced. “I kinda want to see how it feels to swim in this body.”
Sarah had been unsteady at first, but with the help of Rainbow and the research doctors, she’d learned quickly, adapting to her new body. The young woman, now mare, had been specifically chosen for being intelligent and athletic, reasoning that she would be a good ideal test subject since with that combination of traits she should adapt quickly and master her new body. All had been going smoothly.
Then the problems had started.
Sarah forgot things. Unimportant memories at first, things that her family had mentioned when they’d visited her and that she’d later confessed to Rainbow that she couldn’t remember, then more important things. Rainbow remembered the chill she’d felt when Sarah’s sister had come in, and Sarah hadn’t recognized her. The pegasus had bolted for the doctors, dragging one back forcibly to look at her friend and figure out what was going wrong.
Over the next few weeks, Sarah had forgotten more and more. Every memory of her life slipped away, despite the desperate attempts of the doctors, Rainbow, and Sarah’s family. The mare had gotten more and more disturbed, as the strangers around her continued to insist that all these things that she didn’t remember were part of her past. Her mannerisms changed, too, as did her personality. Her cutie mark had appeared at the end of the fourth week, and by that point nothing of Sarah had remained. She’d left the facility and moved to Baltimare, over the doctors’ advice, trying to get away from the strangers that insisted they knew her. The last time Rainbow had checked on her, she was helping to run a shipping business. She was a champion runner, who competed in races regularly, and had taken the name Cinnamon Stick.
Sarah had hated to run. She’d complained that it hurt her feet.
Cinnamon Stick didn’t go near the water; she hated swimming.
Rainbow’s friend was gone. Except for her laugh; Cinnamon Stick still had Sarah’s laugh. It was why Rainbow couldn’t visit her anymore; hearing that laugh when her friend was gone hurt.
It had been devastating, for everyone involved. The Conversion process had immediately been put on hold; every single subject had undergone the same memory loss. Every one of them had emerged a different person.
Almost worse had been the response of Sarah’s family. They were upset, devastated at the loss of their daughter and sister, but not angry, and they’d refused to blame Rainbow for what had gone wrong. She’d grown close to several of them during Sarah’s preparation and after the procedure, and they’d invited her to dinner several times after Cinnamon Stick had left for Equestria. The pegasus had only accepted once; she’d felt so selfish when, while Sarah’s mother had been telling a story about her daughter’s elementary school swimming career, she’d broken down crying at the memory of her friend. Sarah’s sister had followed suit, and the pegasus had tried to comfort the younger human even while her own tears had flowed down her face. It hadn’t worked.
Rainbow had avoided Sarah’s family after that. She felt so guilty about what had happened, felt like she’d been partially responsible. Like she’d failed to help the young… woman, that was it… hold on to her life.
Conversion had been set aside, but it had been brought back into the public eye eventually. Nothing stopped the progress of the Effect. Nothing even slowed it. None of the efforts of the Equestrian mages or human scientists did anything, and the letters Rainbow got from Twilight were growing increasingly frantic. It was spreading, rendering more and more of Earth inimical to humanity, and it was probably inevitable that proponents of Conversion had started pushing it again, arguing that life, any life, was better than death.
There had been vicious arguments about it, even amongst close friends. Rainbow could clearly remember when Twilight and Fluttershy had almost come to physical blows over the matter during one of their friends’ reunions. It had shocked all of their friends, how vehement Fluttershy had been. She’d been almost savage in her insistence that saving life was infinitely preferable to losing it, even with Twilight’s argument that a personality alteration that radical was tantamount to death anyway. Rainbow and Applejack had had to forcibly pull them apart, and Rarity and Pinkie had been on the verge of tears at the sight. Fluttershy and Twilight had refused to even speak to each other for days, both saying that they considered the other’s argument to be monstrous. That kind of scene was repeated, on small scales and large, all throughout Equestria, and through Earth as well, with a slightly different focus.
Several of the human governments had eventually approached the Princesses, once it became clear that no solution to the Effect was going to be found, asking for a Conversion system to be set up in order to save at least some of their populace. The public reaction in Equestria had been… tumultuous. Everypony knew what happened to the Converted; the experiments had been extensively covered by the newspapers. The natural Equestrian reaction of, “our neighbors are in danger, we have to help, in any way we can,” had slammed into the equally natural “We can’t just kill them like this! We’re not saving them at all!” and the result had been chaos. The worst of it had been when two opposed riots had slammed into each other and burned down half of Fillydelphia; Rainbow could still remember the clouds of smoke, visible even from Ponyville. There’d been a lot of deaths when the two sides, both utterly convinced that the other was wrong, had clashed in the city streets.
Celestia had finally, after significant debate and consideration, consented to set up a limited program. She’d been absolutely adamant that it would take only volunteers, though; she’d set her hoof down on the idea of making it mandatory for any humans. “No coercion will be permitted,” the Princess had declared, “I refuse, under any circumstances, to force this on anyone.”
So, despite the arguments, the debates, even the riots, the Conversion Bureau had been born. The first conversion center had been out in the newly-affected areas of Earth, and a number of ponies had volunteered to help. Not as doctors; there were never many of those, and they weren’t widely liked, but as counselors. Even the most anti-Conversion ponies, even those who felt that the idea was repulsive and wrong, felt that the newly Converted and those heading for the procedure could use someone to talk to, someone to reassure them and to listen. Rainbow and her friends had been among the volunteers for that first center.
Humans had come in, ponies had left. The acquisition of a cutie mark was the final sign, the indicator that the human personality was gone. A celebration had emerged; a combination of funeral and birthday party that marked the passing of the person who’d come into the center and the birth of the new person. Even in the beginning, Rainbow had never attended any of those; she found them horribly morbid, and the idea made her feel a little sick. She wasn’t there for the ponies that were leaving, anyway; she was there trying to help the humans that were entering. She eventually realized she was trying to make up for what had happened to Sarah, hoping vainly that one of the people she helped would retain their memories, their personalities. Just one would be enough. Just one.
None of them did. None of them ever did.
Centers had sprung up quickly, more and more humans volunteering for the process as the Effect spread, choosing one kind of death over another. There were so many that Rainbow had started to wonder if they actually knew what they were getting in for. She knew there were human groups opposed to Conversion, and she’d tried to contact some of them, though she’d wound up abandoning the effort when she realized how violent some of them were getting. She could understand, completely, their desire to have their people live, but she just couldn’t help them kill ponies or humans. She couldn’t. The pony groups were the same way, though they preferred to try to block supplies and destroy roads and infrastructure rather than directly murdering the people and ponies involved the way a few of the human groups did. They were willing to kill, though; the doctors at the centers the pony anti-Conversion groups hit almost never survived. Fortunately, such attacks were extremely rare.
Rainbow’s friends had all volunteered to help, at least at first. They’d sat with the humans who’d come in, waiting for their procedure, giving them someone to talk to, to reassure them and try to comfort them. Oh, Celestia, that had been hard. It was the hardest thing Rainbow could imagine doing. She never lied, never told the people she spoke to anything untrue, she just told them that she’d stay close, stay with them until she couldn’t anymore. And she followed up on those promises; she’d set the tradition for a volunteer to pick someone and stay with them throughout the procedure and acclimation process until their cutie mark appeared.
These days, Rainbow and Rarity were the only ones of the Elements still doing that. Fluttershy… Fluttershy’s opinion had changed. She no longer thought that Conversion was right, not after working in the centers. She couldn’t bring herself to even come within sight of one; she broke down in hysterics these days if she did. Applejack had stopped, too, though in her case it had been more a situation where her farm and family had needed her more. Twilight had left to go work with some of the remaining human scientists, still trying to find a better solution. She was convinced there had to be one, she just hadn’t found it yet. She was running out of time, though. There were only a couple of years left before the Effect engulfed the human world completely.
Pinkie… Rainbow shuddered. The pink pony had worked so hard. Ground herself down to nothing trying to make everyone happy, trying her absolute hardest to make those poor people smile. The birthday/funeral party had been her idea, though she hadn’t been at all happy with the way it had turned out. That story had ended… badly. The pegasus pushed the image of wide, bloodshot blue eyes, the sound of a broken giggle, and the smell of blood back into the dark box in the corner of her mind where she kept it, and made a note to visit Pinkie at the asylum. Tomorrow or the next day, maybe. It had been too long, and the doctors had been cautiously hopeful the last time. Rainbow closed her eyes for a moment, knowing that she was going to have nightmares again tonight.
The pegasus shook her head. She was stalling. She really should get down there and pick someone to help. It was harder every time, harder to force herself to go down there and go inside instead of sitting up here with her memories, and she could feel the exhaustion of burnout gnawing at her. The centers had a brutal burnout rate, and went through volunteers so quickly. Very, very, very few lasted as long as Rainbow had. Even the doctors burned out sometimes. Even the visitors burned out sometimes.
Princess Luna had been an example of that last group. Celestia almost never visited the centers; they clawed at her heart, and to this day Rainbow knew the Princess wasn’t sure she was doing the right thing. The Sun Princess did make it a point to visit sometimes though, forcing herself to watch what was happening. Her sister… Luna had visited a center precisely once. She’d gone around, talking to the humans who were waiting, and to the volunteers who were sitting with them and trying to help. She’d sat down and talked to one of the children, a little… girl, that was the term… maybe seven or eight years old, and the volunteer who was helping the child. Then the tall, blue-coated winged unicorn had excused herself in a calm voice, thanking the child for her time, walked out of the room, and locked herself into the supervisor’s office and refused to come out. The staff had heard her crying through the door. One of the volunteers had commented on it to Rainbow, finding it odd that, despite the Night Princess’s loud speaking voice, her sobs had been soft, almost inaudible. She hadn’t come back, and as far as Rainbow knew, the Night Princess had avoided even coming close to another center.
The doctors’ burnouts… weren’t that pretty. They were rarer, but when they happened… They tried to stay stoic, and the Diarchy provided them counselors of their own to try and help them, but it didn’t always work. Rainbow had actually been at the center when Caduceus had her… rather well-published psychotic break, something even worse than Pinkie’s… breakdown. She could remember it clearly.
She’d been working with a man named Michael at the time, who went by Mike. A middle-aged, comfortably heavyset man, Mike had been the last member of his little family to go through conversion. His wife and two daughters had both gone through ahead, but not from this facility, something that Rainbow considered a mercy. Kids tore her up inside when she saw them in a conversion center, and Mikes’ daughters had been twelve and eight.
Mike’s head had snapped up at the sound of the bloodcurdling scream that echoed through the building, and the color drained out of his face. “What was that?”
“Nothing good.” A shot of adrenaline had jolted through Rainbow at the sound. That was an ugly scream, full of fear and shrill with pain. She wanted to go see what she could do, but she couldn’t abandon Mike; she was his volunteer, which made his safety her responsibility. “Come on, Mike. Shelter’s this way.” She hovered up into the air, pointing with a forehoof.
Mike blinked. “But…”
Rainbow interrupted impatiently. “Seriously, don’t argue.” There had been a few attacks on conversion facilities, from both sides. The patients weren’t usually targeted; attackers usually went after the staff, but just in case there was a reinforced shelter meant to keep the patients safe. The pegasus flapped behind Mike, planting both forehooves on his back and shoving gently, making him stumble forward. His back was cold under her hooves. “C’mon, let’s get you to the shelter. I’m not gonna let you get hurt.”
Another hideous scream echoed through the halls, and Mike started jogging. A chill gripped Rainbow’s chest; that was another ugly scream. It… it had sounded like someone dying. She was a little ashamed to hope that it was one of the staff; she liked most of those ponies, but she’d rather they get hurt than one of the patients. They were completely innocent.
Finally, they reached the shelter, and Rainbow shoved Mike inside. He turned, frowning, realizing she wasn’t following him. “Dash? Are you coming?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Gonna go see what that is. You stay here.”
He looked scared. Really, honestly scared, not just nervous. “But, if something happens to you…”
Rainbow smiled, though her heart was hammering in her chest. “It’s okay, I’ll be fine.” She got along pretty well with Mike, for which she was glad. He was more stoic than a lot of patients she’d helped, which made it easier on her. She hadn’t had to work to form a rapport, hadn’t had to pour her soul into the relationship like she had with some. Every time one of those had gone through Conversion, it had ripped out a little piece of her heart, but Mike hadn’t asked for that, and she was deeply grateful to him for it. “Listen, even if something happens to me, you won’t be left out in the cold. The Bureau’ll find you another volunteer, I promise.”
He reached out a hand, catching her forehoof and staring her in the eyes. “Please, Dash, be careful.” He didn’t say anything more, didn’t plead with her to come back, didn’t declare he’d be lost without her or anything like that. Again, she felt grateful to him; it was nice for a volunteer to have an undemanding patient sometimes, it let her rebuild her shattered heart a bit. She gave him a smile, and gently disentangled her forehoof from his hand.
“Thanks. I will. Now shoo, I gotta go see what’s going on.” She glanced over her shoulder as another scream rang out, this one long, drawn-out and shivering. Rainbow shuddered.
She flew quickly down the corridor, encountering a few other volunteers and their patients, all looking wide-eyed and terrified. She quickly directed them back to the shelter; these were all newer volunteers, who didn’t know the center as well as she did. Most of the volunteers were newer than she was; very few lasted this long, and it looked like a lot of the vets were outside right now. The ponies and humans stumbled past her, their limbs unsteady from fear, but Rainbow headed directly for the screams. That was supposed to be one of the jobs of a volunteer, to try and head off danger from the patients, but in practice a lot of them ran.
Another shriek. It was coming from the treatment area, which sent a chill down Rainbow’s spine. She didn’t know who was scheduled for Conversion right now, but there was only a few dozen doctors on staff, and they couldn’t do many simultaneous procedures. She hoped whoever it was wasn’t after the patients; it sounded like they were tearing into the doctors. She hadn’t heard any gunshots, which more or less ruled out a human group; that left ponies, who were very likely to be going after the doctors. Every one of the Equestrian anti-conversion groups hated the conversion doctors; they considered them the vilest creatures in the world, murderers all.
Rainbow burst through the door and spotted two of the doctors, Caduceus and Bloodwork. She gasped at the sight; Caduceus had clearly been one of those attacked, and she was covered in blood. Bloodwork looked okay, but utterly terrified, his eyes wide and his breath coming in fast, shallow pants.
“Guys, guys, are you okay?” Rainbow gasped, landing and looking around for the attackers. She could see bloody hoofprints and gory spatters leading to one of the doors. “Where are they? What’s going on?”
She got no answer, just Bloodwork’s fast pants. He sounded panicked, terrified, but she slowly realized that that noise was coming just from him. Caduceus… Caduceus was making a low, strange sound in the back of her throat, a weird, animalistic noise like nothing Rainbow had ever heard a pony make in her life. It sent a creepy, shivery sensation dancing up Rainbow’s nerves, and she could actually feel her multicolored mane bristle and her feathers fluff out.
Slowly, Rainbow turned to look at the two doctors, and realized what she’d missed. Bloodwork’s gaze was locked on Caduceus, and he was backed into a corner, with nowhere to go. If he wanted to get out, he’d have to go past the blood-spattered mare.
Caduceus, on the other hoof, didn’t look terrified. Her eyes were wide, dilated, but instead of the terror in Bloodwork’s eyes, hers had an ugly, feral gleam, and her posture was tense, aggressive. Her teeth were bared in some kind of rictus, something Rainbow had never even seen before. She hadn’t even glanced at Rainbow, and the pegasus realized that none of the blood on Caduceus belonged to the doctor; it was spattered across her forequarters, dripping down her chest and forelegs and sprayed back along her ribs, with some on both back hooves. Most of it was on her head and face, and her mane was caked with gore. If she’d actually lost that much blood, she’d be dead, and Rainbow couldn’t see a single wound on her.
Bloodwork’s eyes darted to Rainbow for a fraction of a second, just glancing aside before re-fastening on Caduceus. He looked like he didn’t dare to tear his gaze from the maddened mare, didn’t dare to speak, and from Caduceus’s posture and the mad sound she was making, Rainbow could understand.
“Deuce,” Rainbow said quietly, hoping to draw the mare’s attention away from the other doctor by using her nickname, “Deuce, talk to me. It’s me, Rainbow Dash. What’s going on, Deuce?”
Caduceus didn’t so much as twitch. She was moving, Rainbow realized, in the middle of a slow, prowling step toward Bloodwork. She was getting slowly, micrometrically closer to him with every second.
This was nuts. Caduceus had always been utterly calm, detached, uncaring. Rainbow had always thought she didn’t give a buck, that she was one of the doctors for whom this was just another job. Those were the ones that tended to last in this job, because they didn’t care. The others, the ones who felt like they were trying to save lives, usually lasted for a few months at best, but the ones like Caduceus didn’t have any problems. Had someone poisoned the mare? Cast some kind of curse on her?
“Stop her, Rainb-urk!” Bloodwork blurted out, his voice high and desperate. The instant he spoke, the very instant, Caduceus lunged, as though his voice had broken a spell. She slammed her horn into the other unicorn’s throat with the explosive speed of a striking snake, the sick, wet noise of her horn punching into his flesh cutting off Bloodwork’s voice while the stallion choked out a sound of strangled agony. Blood fountained from the wound, drenching Caduceus’s face in crimson, iron-smelling gore.
“Holy…” Rainbow squeaked, taken totally by surprise by the speed and vicious violence of Caduceus’s movement. The mare twisted her head, ripping the hole in Bloodwork’s throat open wider and drawing a sound of utter agony out of the stallion, and that broke Rainbow’s momentary paralysis.
Rainbow slammed into Caduceus’s side before she’d made a conscious decision to move, her forelegs wrapping around the unicorn’s neck and pulling her away from her victim. The pegasus fought back a wash of sickness at the sticky feel of blood squishing into her coat; Caduceus was saturated in the stuff, the sick, iron smell hanging around her like a miasma, and Rainbow spared an instant to curse herself for not seeing it in time.
The doctor struggled in Rainbow’s grip, still utterly silent except for that weird noise, fighting not to hurt Rainbow, but to get out of her hold, jabbing her horn violently at Bloodwork, who’d collapsed twitching to the floor after Caduceus’s horn had been pulled from his throat. She wasn't flailing her forelegs at him, or trying to buck him, but jabbing her head at him over and over, a violently unnatural motion. Blood poured from his ruptured throat, staining the floor in a thick, growing puddle, and he struggled, gagging, trying to stem the tide with his forehooves. Rainbow and Caduceus fought in silence, the unicorn still making that weird, eerie noise while she struggled to stab her colleague again, and she even tried snapping at Rainbow’s forelimbs. It was possibly the creepiest thing Rainbow had ever seen in her life, having the unicorn fighting silently in her grip, trying to actually bite her to get free and stab the other doctor again. It continued until Bloodwork shuddered, a convulsive, full-body motion, and let his breath out in a long, slow, rattling exhalation.
Caduceus relaxed explosively at the noise, her lips dropping back over her teeth. She blinked, and let out a high giggle. “Done, done, done, that’s the last one,” she said in a mad singsong.
At least she wasn’t fighting anymore. “Last one?” Rainbow growled, “What the heck do you mean, ‘last one?’” She had a sick feeling she knew, but she couldn’t help asking.
“Last but one, and evil’s done,” Caduceus replied. “All of us, stained black with what we’ve done. Evil, vile, spawn of Discord, spawn of chaos, inexcusable, inexcusable.”
“What are you talking about, Deuce?” She asked, then raised her voice. “HEY! Hey, somepony! I need help here! HEY!”
Caduceus giggled. “You know. I’ve seen it in your eyes. When you bring them to us, you want to take them away, you want to save them really-really, not like us. We say we’ll save them, and rip and warp them into new shapes, shapes the soul doesn’t fit in!” Tears were pouring from the unicorn’s eyes, though she was grinning in a fixed smile. The water was diluting the blood, turning it pinkish and thin where her tears ran. “We tear them so the soul leaks out! Nothing left, and something grows, but it’s not what it was! Not what it was!”
Oh, gods and goddesses. Caduceus did care. She cared and she hid it, letting it fester and rot in her heart until the infection had burst. She’d snapped, like Pinkie had snapped but even worse. “Someone!” Rainbow screamed, as the unicorn started to fight again. “Someone, help me!”
“Never what it was, never ever ever ever...” Caduceus babbled, struggling in Rainbow’s grip as the tears poured down her face. “Finish it! I’m the last! Got the rest, but I don’t know if I can get me!” The doctor started sobbing. “Please, please, I’m weak, I’m weak and I’m the last, finish it! Finish me! Please! Take it away! Take the pain away! Please! Oh, please, let me die!”
Finally, finally, some of the other volunteers had arrived, had helped Rainbow restrain Caduceus after staring in shock and horror. It had taken six ponies, one of them Rainbow, to finally tie up the maddened doctor where she couldn’t hurt herself or anypony else, and Rainbow had stared at the shrieking, sobbing unicorn in sick shock. Two of the other volunteers had lost control of their stomach.
Rainbow lost control of hers when she retraced Caduceus’s path, looking for a victim she might save. Bloodwork had gotten off easy; most of Caduceus’s victims were… considerably more mangled. One Rainbow didn’t recognize immediately; the mare was so badly disfigured by what Caduceus had done to her that the pegasus had to guess based on her coat color. Rainbow had staggered from that room into the hallway and lost her lunch, vomiting uncontrollably.
The pegasus shook herself, yanking herself out of the image. The counselors had warned her that she’d have flashbacks like this; she really wished she could find a way to stop them. She didn’t want to remember, certainly not this vividly.
Her mind wandered back to the mad doctor for a moment. It had taken hours for relief to arrive. Hours in which Rainbow had had to listen to Caduceus as she sobbed, screamed, babbled, begged… it was something that popped up in Rainbow’s nightmares after that.
Caduceus had been taken away to a mental facility, where Rainbow had later heard that the doctor had wedged her own horn into a gap in the door and snapped it off, an act of vicious self-mutilation that even Rainbow knew would have been horrifically painful. The hospital staff wound up having to keep Caduceus permanently restrained and under sedation, when she’d followed that up by attempting to kill herself. The unicorn had been found trying to gnaw her own forelegs off. She’d inflicted severe damage on herself using nothing but her teeth before the hospital staff had managed to subdue her. While Caduceus was the worst, she was far from the only doctor to have her mind break while working in a conversion center; the Diarchy had finally set maximum limits on the amount of time a physician mage could be assigned to one.
Still, it continued. There were still a river of volunteers for Conversion, a flow that had grown as the Effect enveloped the Earth. Goddess, it was so fast. And so many humans chose to die instead of choosing to live at the expense of having their minds torn away, something Rainbow couldn’t honestly blame them for. She suspected she’d rather die than have it happen to her.
The pegasus closed her eyes, heaving a gusty sigh. No point stalling any further. She pushed herself up from her sitting position. There were people down there, scared people, nervous people. She could still try to help. She wasn’t so weak that she was going to give up now, though it grew harder every single time.
She glanced around as she walked down the hill, not wanting to look at the center yet, which was why she saw the other pony.
She was sitting behind a tree, facing the conversion center, but not looking at it. Rainbow knew the feeling, and she knew this unicorn. Her mint-green coat had been a regular fixture at this center, and along with Rainbow Dash, she was one of the few volunteers still around who had been here when this center opened.
“Lyra? You okay?” It was almost the traditional greeting between Conversion Center volunteers.
The unicorn looked up, her golden eyes bloodshot and swollen. “Rainbow Dash? I… I don’t think I can do it. Not anymore.”
Rainbow frowned in worry. “Yeah, I can understand. It’s hard.” Oh, Celestia, if Lyra was burning out… she’d been the best of them. She got the humans in ways none of the others could manage. She always took the worst cases, the most scared, most nervous, and she calmed them. It was like her own brand of magic, like the soothing harp music she’d earned her cutie mark for. Rainbow was seriously concerned about the unicorn, and for good reason. Last year, more than half of the suicides in Equestria had been ponies who’d volunteered at a Conversion Center for more than six months. Lyra had been working here since the beginning, more than four years.
Lyra swallowed hard. “It’s… it’s more than hard. How many, Dash? How many have I lied to, telling them that it would be okay? Telling them that I’d stick with them, that I was there if they needed me?”
Rainbow reached out and stroked the unicorn’s mane in what she hoped was a soothing manner. “It wasn’t a lie. You’ve been there, more than anypony. You’ve talked to any of them who wanted to. I’ve never seen you turn anyone away. Buck, you’ve taken two or three at once a few times. None of us have managed that.” The pegasus wasn’t feeling cocky right now. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d felt that way.
“And how many have I saved, huh?” Lyra snarled angrily, her eyes blurring with tears. “How many, Rainbow Dash? None. Not one. Single. Soul. All of them faded, all of them died, Rainbow. There have been hundreds, and I haven’t helped anyone. I’m useless.”
“I know how you feel.” Rainbow knew. All of them knew. It was what burned volunteers out at a brutal pace, knowing that the people you were trying to help would cease to exist in a matter of weeks. Knowing that no matter how hard you tried, in the long run you couldn’t help. “We all do. But what else can we do, huh? Just leave ‘em? They need someone right now.”
Lyra sniffed, her eyes dropping to the ground. “I know. I know they do.” She looked up. “I… I feel so selfish. I don’t want it to be me anymore. I want them to ask someone else, anyone else, just not me. I’m so horrible.”
Rainbow pulled the unicorn into a hug. “That’s not horrible. Heck, I’ve felt that way.” She felt that way every day. Every day she told herself that she was just going to fly away and not have to do it anymore, and every day she didn’t. Every day she went to the Center instead, feeling her heart shatter a little bit more. “So, you gonna go?” The question wasn’t an accusation. No volunteer would ever begrudge another leaving. Every one of them understood, intimately, how that felt.
Lyra shook her head, clinging to Rainbow. “No. Oh, I want to, though. I want to so bad.” Neither of them spoke further, they just hugged. It wasn’t an unusual sight, outside a Conversion Center. Inside it, the volunteers couldn’t do this, couldn’t admit how hard it was. Not where the real sufferers could see.
“We need to go in,” Rainbow said, at length. Lyra nodded, her throat too choked to reply, and they finally separated.
Side-by-side, the two volunteers walked into the center, headed for the room where the new arrivals would be waiting. Stepping in, Rainbow looked around, seeing ponies and zebras sitting with humans, talking quietly. There was even a griffon off in the corner, who must be a new volunteer. Rainbow hadn’t seen her before. There were a number of humans by themselves, looking lost, afraid, and painfully alone. Rainbow looked at each of them carefully; she tended to pick the ones she suspected the other volunteers wouldn’t, a habit she’d learned from Fluttershy. Those were the ones that really needed it.
At least there weren’t any kids here this time. Those were by far the hardest.
Rainbow’s eyes landed on one. Fairly young, so she thought, a little younger than Rainbow herself. Sixteen or seventeen, probably. Rainbow thought this one was male, though she had trouble telling male humans from female at that age; the older ones were easier. He was standing alone, away from everyone else, looking at the wall. He looked intelligent. All of these were things that would make the other volunteers shy away; teenagers were almost as hard on a volunteer as children were, and smart ones were the hardest. Not because they were difficult or dangerous, but because interacting with them, getting to know them the way a Conversion Center volunteer needed to, was incredibly painful. The isolation was another factor; most of the others preferred to wait, to let the patient come to them instead of forcing their presence where it might not be wanted. Fluttershy, before she’d become unable to work in a Center, had shown Rainbow that the ones that held back were nearly always the ones that needed the help the most.
She squared herself, working her wings a little to let at least some of her tension out, then put on a smile she didn’t feel. The pegasus walked confidently across the room toward the young human, who looked up and met her eyes as she approached. “Hey,” Rainbow said without preamble, “you look like you could use someone to talk to. Wanna sit down somewhere?”