“Mr. Verga, mind me asking why you would ever want these?” The scruffy shopkeeper pinched the bags of Human hair between his two fingers as if he were uneasy about coming in contact with them.
“Ehn… Just a little experiment I thought up. What if I took Human hair, and put it on dogs? Or CATS!? Blonde, brown, black, and red flowing hair on Cats and dogs! Of course, the repercussions of an experiment of this certain nature may cause the hair to grow rapidly all over their bodies…” He seemed to wander off into a conceptual plain of imagination.
“I’ll need to rethink my hypothesis, but as of now, this is PERFECT! Thank you, Jeremy!”
“It’s James.” The grouchy shopkeeper muttered back to the dark brown Unicorn as he took the bags of hair with his magic. He trotted out of the dusty shop with a bit of pride in his hooves. James turned back to his old shop which was filled with oddities of every kind.
“Crazy Bastard.”He lit up the cigar which he had pulled out of his desk.
“Pony or not, crazy is in his genes.” As his Cigar glowed, a grand explosion could be heard over the stillness of his empty shop.
******
Walter trotted down the dark sidewalks of the old part of the city. He grew up here, and knew it like the bottom of his hoof. It was still fairly early in the evening and he observed the rambunctious party goers with a childish enthusiasm. He could remember the days that he had been one of them, and enjoyed those times. He looked up at the looming hotel a couple blocks over, and immediately remembered the target Dr. Martin had given to one of his many contacts. He was to kill a domestic terrorist named Marcus Deran. As a Human Liberation Front Lieutenant, he was able to conduct an attack on a Bureau in Miami. Wishing to stay out of the news, the operation was orchestrated within his home, over a secure feed to his operatives. The Miami Conversion Bureau, being the one of the largest and most active in the North American Commonwealth, provided a supreme target for the HLF. Walter, an older pony, often became tired easily. He sat down upon a bench next to an old storefront and watched the hotel with constant vigilance. Before he could even get comfortable, a massive explosion rocked the atmosphere. In horror, the tired middle-aged pony gazed upon the collapsing building in awe.
“My god… Delvin...” He slid the packs of hair into his saddlebags and galloped toward chaotic ruins, taking cover from the fiery dust and smoke along the old brick walls of downtown. Screaming, everywhere. It was like the entire city had been forced to watch a horrible death. Right now, Walter understood that his mission was to find Delvin, and if he was still alive, to take him to the nearest medical center. It was unlikely, but if Dr. Martin was to lose him again… No. Not this time. He couldn’t.
Sirens and screams rang out all over the city, desperate to rescue any survivors plagued by this horrible disaster. When Walter neared the site, smoldering rubble dotted the streets. Charred bodies littered the roadways, and the fire raged within the ruins of the former building.
“Delvin! ‘cough cough’, are you out there?!” It couldn’t be hopeless. He knew he was out there, lying under the rubble, dying… No, he was alive! He must be okay! His newfound hope was quickly extinguished as he passed a charred woman clutching her deceased child. He started to tear up at the sight, but had to soldier on through the dust. As a pony, he couldn’t bear to see suffering. It came with the transformation. The unwilling lust to help others was in all of those who became converted by default.
A feint voice came from outside of my polycarbonate tomb. I had unrealistically survived the fall and collapse of the building somehow, and was now trapped beneath smoldering rubble. My armor’s shield and the thick ablative ceramic plates protected everything pretty well, but the fire greatly damaged my lungs and I was finding it extremely hard to breathe. A constant ringing was prominent in my ears, and I could barely speak. My muscles, aided by my suit’s enhanced movement capabilities, could still be moved and flexed. I proceeded to lift part of the rubble off the top of my body, and stood up. The effects of the drug the man named Kaleth gave me earlier were now more prominent. My vision lacked great clarity, and I was in desperate need of some visual aids. I could barely feel anything anymore, but I could still move. I stood up in my rubble pile, and found that the building had indeed collapsed, and there weren’t many survivors by the looks of it.
“Delvin! My god, what happened here? Was it Deran? No time, we need to get you to a hospital!” I was relieved to see Verga, and attempted to follow him to wherever he was taking me. I heard the distinct sound of emergency vehicles in the distance, and presumed he would bring me to one. Just as I had thought my life was saved, a flash of light… Not only to my eyes, but everywhere in my body. It had felt like a supernova went off inside me. I collapsed to the ground, and in my waning vision I caught a glimpse of Walter Verga hovering over me, pounding on my chest with his hooves.
“Delvin! Delvin! Please, don’t do this to me!” Walter attached his vision on the rapidly incoming emergency vehicles. Several fire engines and ambulances were greeted with impassible rubble.
“Help, please! Get him to a hospital! This is Dr. Martin’s son for god sake!” The medics loaded him onto a gurney, and rolled him into the back of the nearest ambulance. Delvin didn’t publically announce the fact that he had a genius of a father, mostly because if it was public, he would be a man targeted by almost every single criminal organization known to man.
“Keep him safe.” Walter pleaded as the emergency vehicle zoomed down the street, causing an echo that could be heard for miles.
******
“Dr. Martin, we don’t understand either. We’re working on a solution, but the damage has been done. If we don’t figure out something soon, we’ll have to consider other means of saving him.” A female voice called out in the darkness.
“There has to be something you can do, Kathryn.” At the sound of my father’s voice, something in my mind sparked.
“Eric, I’ve already given options. If we don’t treat him soon, he can die at any waking moment. I’m sorry, but that is the current option. Either wait for him to die, or treat him with the only possible solution as of now. If I were you, I wouldn’t want to just sit around and wait. I would save him.” I was preparing to say something along the lines of ‘what the hell are you talking about’, but when I activated my brain, everything went awry.
“He’s destabilizing! We don’t have much time!” I felt my heart racing, and could feel myself slipping into an abyss.
“Do it now!” I felt an overwhelming sense of calm wipe over my body.
“He’s stabilized. Vitals returning to normal.” A brief exchanging of words between my father and Kathryn ensued. Before passing out, I could hear my father quietly weeping beside me.
I awoke in a cave. Well, at least I think I woke up in a cave. Except, I don’t exactly remember waking up. The dark and gloomy cave forbear an ancient malevolence I couldn’t quite understand. All around me, the cave was changing. It changed from rock, to sand, to magnificent cotton candy, to brilliant blue sea. But all the while, it remained dark and fearful. Upon reaching the end of the cave, I was met with a great black chasm. It was a solid plane of black, and it emitted some sort of magical energy. On the other side of the chasm was a beautiful garden which possessed every living thing known to man. On my side, billions of unrecognizable faces dotted the black landscape. These were not mere men, but something more. They all had faces, but all of them were the same. Their face was not perceivable, and was something that existed outside the confines of normality. Many prominent features adorned the faces of these men, but were changed upon looking to another. All of them appeared to have the same face, but yet were differed from each other. Then, I remembered a brilliant quote that would’ve only came to me in my time of need.
“We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aero plane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.
To those who can hear me I say "Do not despair". The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die liberty will never perish. . .
Soldiers: don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate, only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers: don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written:
"The kingdom of God is within man"
Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men; in you, the people.
You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let's use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfill their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.
Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!” Those words were somehow pulled from the back of my mind. I remembered seeing it in a Charlie Chaplin film. This speech truly touched my heart in many ways. I leapt to the other side to the chasm, landing firmly away from the edge. Two majestic creatures stood before me. One of the two I recognized as the great goddess Celestia, and the other as Luna. Their appearance didn’t unnerve me, nor did it seem unwelcoming. A great warmness circulated through my body as I bowed to them both.
“Rise, dear child.” Celestia’s voice was calm and motherly. “You are much wiser than the average man. You possess great wisdom, and your fate is a true one. Go now, eliminate hate and suffering. Go now, and make use of your greater humanity. Go by our grace.” My departure was slow, like the erasing of a picture. As the magnificent colors were gracefully stripped from my view, I awoke to pain. A lot of pain. I let out a strained gasp, and attempted to lay as motionless as possible. When my eyes finally adjusted, I saw the white, sterile ceiling of a hospital. When I finally breathed again, my lungs seemed to be brand new. I was able to take in a ridiculous amount of air; something of the likes I would have previously never been able to do. I lay there, admiring my ability to breathe perfectly. I was still afraid to move as I could feel another jolt of pain. I started to take notice of my perfect eyesight. Even in the dimly lit hospital room, I could make out every detail I could see on my limited view of the ceiling.
I felt a bit… Well, off, to say the least. It felt like my neck, back, legs, and arms were all taken apart and put back together in all the wrong places. In the darkness, I began to make out a shape protruding from my mouth. I concluded I had been hooked up to a breathing apparatus of some sort. Without thinking, I turned my head slightly to the side. Expecting pain, there came none. I moved it to the other side, and concluded that I wasn’t experiencing any pain. Lifting my head slightly forward, I noticed my dad sleeping on the other end of the room. Then it all came dancing back to me. The Hotel, Marcus Deran, the madman, and the pill… Walter Verga found me, but I passed out before the EMT’s got to me. I attempted to sit up in the bed, only realizing I couldn’t.
“The hell?” I said under my breath to avoid waking the sleeping dragon in the corner. I attempted to grasp the bed sheets I was laying on to give me assistance, but I couldn’t feel my fingers, and my arms bent entirely the opposite way they were supposed to. Alright, I was a bit freaked out at this, but there had to be an explanation, and there was. I lifted my ‘arms’ out from underneath the sheets to find that my hands were not hands at all. They were rather flattened marshmallows that vaguely resembled hooves. I stared at them for a while, wondering what the hell had happened to me. I clapped one against the other, causing a ‘clop’ sound. At this, I broke.
“D-Dad! Dad!! Wake up!! W-What’s going on?” I started to shiver at my lack of fingers. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. I repeated those words in my mind. My father awoke with a disgruntled snore, and quickly cast his eyes on me.
“Delvin! Calm down, please! It’s okay!” He sleepily lumbered over to my bedside.
“Okay? OKAY?!?! You call this ‘OKAY’?!?!” I caught my hoof on the sheet that was covering me and flipped it off, revealing an equine body, another set of legs with hooves, and a tail.
“Gah, fuck! Holy sh- Dammit!” I tried to find the best words to describe the way that I was feeling, but couldn’t find a word of that magnitude.
“What the hell is going on?! Why… Why….” I looked over my body once more before I fell back to my pillow. My head began feel like it was being crushed by a giant, and my chest ached. Out of confusion and loss, I began to weep.
“Delvin, please… It’s okay.” He grabbed my forelegs, examining them with a childish curiosity. “You’re safe now. It’ll be okay. You’ll be okay!” He became eccentric with overwhelming joy. I was missing out on something. He dropped my forelegs and hugged me with a choking force. I returned the hug with some major difficulty, as I was still having a hard time adjusting to how things worked. Every time I tried to move my fingers, I was reminded of my permanent transformation.
“But… I don’t understand… Why am I like this?” I asked with sincerity as I felt a tear descend down my now soft and furry cheek.
“All in due time, Delvin. Please, you need your rest.” Was he insane? With that anvil of information dropped just dropped on my head, sleep was something short of a miracle.