//------------------------------// // Chapter 14: For Science* // Story: Bailing Out // by PhillyCh3zSt3ak //------------------------------// Chapter 14: For Science October 20, 2020 “Andrew, are you sure you want to do this?” Spitfire asked. We were in the base’s lab today awaiting my injection of the gene therapy drug. It seems like something out of Stargate: Atlantis doesn’t it? They got the Ancient gene, I could possibly become a fucking super hero. “For the twentieth time Spits, yes,” I replied. By this point I was rolling my eyes at her whenever she asked that specific question. Spitfire had gotten the other cast off finally, but was told to use the crutches still until she regained the muscles in her legs, or something like that. I can’t really recall it at the moment due to a little thing called anxiety. I really, really hate needles. “You know, you could back out now and I bet they’d totally understand why.” I turned to Spits, “If I pussy out now then I’ll regret it.” The privacy curtain was pulled back and in came one of the scientists, I’ve never seen him before, but why am I surprised, the base is huge. “Hello Herr Briggs,” and apparently he’s German. “And Frauchen Briggs,” he said turning to Spits. He turned back to me, wow this seems like a set-up for one of those old Old Spice commercials. “Are you ready for das procedure?” “As ready as I’ll ever be,” I replied. “Sehr güt!” he said pulled out a medium sized syringe. As he got close to my arm, which by the way the sleeve was rolled up, a thought came to mind. “Hey doc? What are the side-effects?” He paused his approach. “Hmm… Well you’ll have a slight headache, possibly some nausea, pain in your shoulder blades if your body accepts ze wing gene, a massive migraine if your body accepts ze ‘magic’ gene, muscle growth if it accepts ze other one. Or nothing at all,” he said jabbing the needle in my arm, which by the way stung a little, I mean why wouldn’t it? It’s a needle being jabbed deep into your flesh. “To ve honest ve have no idea vats going to happen,” he added pushing down the plunger. Before Spits could say anything in protest the syringe was emptied before being pulled out. “So Herr Briggs, are you feeling anything?” the doctor asked. My eyes traced the ceiling and looked left and right. I held my arms up just high enough to see my fingers and I started moving them as if I had been typing for a long stint. I set my hands on my thighs. “Nah, nothing. No, wait there’s something,” I said pausing dramatically. The doctor’s eyes widened in anticipation. “No, wait that’s just my stomach.” My stomach started gurgling, “Can we go now? I’d like to eat something.” The doctor sat there blinking for a few moments, but he finally came back to his senses. “Ja, you may go. But remember that-” “I’m not allowed to leave the base until the therapy has been completed, I know,” I said getting back on my feet, hopping down from the hospital-style bed. He turned to Spitfire, “And make sure to keeps notes on his progress, assuming there is any.” I walked out of the double doors of the lab towards the cafeteria, Spits right beside me. “So,” I trailed as I put on my black leather jacket, “what are you feeling in the mood for today for lunch?” I asked her. *** Officer’s club, Cloudsdale “It’s just so weird not having her around,” Soarin said taking a drink of his beer. “I know what you mean,” the white haired woman said beside him. “It’s been close to four months now, hasn’t it?” “It has, Echo. Four long months of hoping she can come home soon,” he replied taking another swig of beer out of the mug. “The most depressing thing of all is that almost no one comes to the shows anymore. I’m a terrible in-term captain.” He looked down depressingly at the floor. She rested a hand on Soarin’s shoulder, “No, you’re not terrible, you’re a great captain. We’re all going through a tough time. In all fairness we haven’t come up with any new maneuvers that really draw the crowd in. As soon as we do that then they’ll come back.” “Do you think we should hire a new team member?” Soarin asked. “You’re the captain and that’s your decision,” Echo replied as she took a sip of her own drink. “HOWEVER, in my own personal opinion we probably should.” “Why should we? We already have all the people we need.” “Let’s think about this for a moment,” Echo said. “Captain Spits was the face of our group, she was the reason why many of our candidates sign up whether it be from the sex appeal she had in those pictures, or from many young girls looking up to her as a role model. We NEED someone like that again.” “We could have you as our spokesperson,” Soarin said with a straight face. “Pfft me? You know I have a hard enough time trying to get in front of a guy I have a crush on, but a room full of hormone crazed boys and gals? No way José,” Echo retorted. “Soarin, I mean, Captain.” “Echo, you know you can call me by my name while we’re off duty.” “Sorry,” she said as she cleared her throat. “Soarin, what we need is a new ‘face.’ Someone that will appeal to the boys’ hormone filled brains and to the girls’ sense of empowerment. Someone who's also good with people.” “Who do you have in mind?” Soarin asked draining the rest of his drink. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow when we’re not boozed up. We don’t want to make a rash decision after all, but I have a few in mind,” she said. They sat there for a while. “So have you heard about the Cap’s new husband?” Soarin was in the middle of a drink and did an immediate spit take. “I’ll take that as a no,” Echo said as she brushed off some beer foam from her arm. “SHE GOT MARRIED!?!” he yelled, which drew the attention of the rest of the club. “Yes she did, now would you calm down?” Soarin nodded and Echo continued. “Well it’s not like he’s a bad choice either. Apparently the Cap’s parents got to talk to her after she got out of the hospital. And before you ask, yes she is ok. They said that ‘he looks like a charming young man and a looker,’ or something along those lines. They never said what he did for a living though.” *** Meanwhile… “*Achoo!* Hey Spits, you know when you said that you could feel that someone was talking about you?” I asked. “Yeah,” she replied raising her eye from the scope of the rifle. “What of it?” “Because I think someone’s talking about me right now,” I replied as I looked down my spotter’s scope. “You’re high and to the left.” *** “So she’s happy?” Soarin asked with a saddened tone. “Her parents seem to think that she is.” “Well there goes my dreams,” he said taking a long drink. “What dream was that?” Echo asked getting real close to him, expecting that he would tell her his secret. “Nevermind,” he replied solemnly. Echo waved down the bartender and got themselves another drink. She raised her glass, “Here’s to the Cap, may she find happiness wherever she is.” They clinked glasses together. “Yeah, whatever,” he muttered taking another large drink. *** Area 51 “So what do you want to do now?” Spitfire asked as we walked back from the range. “I dunno, just watch the planes take off and land I guess. Do you think they have a couple of lawn chairs lying around?” I asked. We found a few chairs and sat down. We watched the new experimental planes take off and land. Something I always liked to do when my grandpa would take my down to Luke and wait for my grandmother to finish her art lesson at the base. We had stopped in the cafeteria for lunch, simple enough. Then we went over to the range where a few Marine Scout Snipers were waiting to be shipped out, so we got a few pointers on how to be more accurate in our shooting. It wasn’t like we were going to be snipers anyway, but it was nice of them to do that. Eventually they left and we were the only ones on the range. We went for a few rounds of HORSE, mainly setting up targets and shooting them at various ranges, and now here we are. Watching planes. “There is something else we can do,” I said. “And what would that be?” Spits asked. I sat up, “Well there’s these flight sims that we can ‘fly’ around for hours in.” “That sounds like fun, plus if whatever supposed to happen kicks in we don’t have to worry about you crashing in a ball of fire,” she joked darkly. “Wow, thanks for the vote of confidence there, Spits,” I said dripping with sarcasm. *** Later… “Andrew you beat me the first round, but now you’re going down,” Spitfire said. “I’d like to see you try,” I countered with a smirk. The sim started back up again as we went into another dogfight. She started behind me this time. We were both flying simulated F-22’s, so at least we would be equal in terms of hardware. She tried to get a missile lock on me. I sped up to Mach 2 before immediately cutting the engine watching her fly right past me. I swapped over to the guns and landed one or two hits before she peeled off and got out of my line of fire. I swapped over to the sidewinders. As I followed her I got the lock tone. But as I got ready to pull the trigger my vision started blurring. “Hey Spits, something’s not right,” I said over the radio. She barrel rolled over behind me and shot my simulated plane down. The screens darkened and the cockpits opened. I tried to climb out but I fell over on the ground. Spits ran over, “Oh my Cele- God! Andrew are you ok?” she asked. “Ugh, my head is killing me,” I replied as I held my head and tried to rub my temples with one hand. To be honest, it’s not working all too well. “Andrew we should probably get back to the lab,” she said getting me up. “Someone give me a hand,” she said and one of the flight instructors came over and helped me, along with Spits, back to the lab. Once we got back they set me on a table and one of the doctors came over. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “We think that the treatment that he was given earlier today has kicked in,” Spits said to the lady. She turned to me, “Andrew, tell me what’s going on.” I winced at her voice, everything was getting louder by the minute, “A headache, a massive headache. Making it… hard to… think straight,” I tried to say as I winced at my own voice. “It feels like someone’s putting nails to a chalkboard in my head,” I groaned. “Is there anything we can do?” Spits asked in a panicked voice. The doctor thought for a moment, “We could give him some low level pain killers.” “Please and thank you!” I yelled. They prepared an IV line and put in some pain killer, I have no idea what it was, but it slipped in my veins like liquid ice, and felt wonderful. The sharp piercing headache went down to a dull throbbing a few minutes later. “Much better,” I said a lot calmer now. “Andrew have you felt anything else?” Spits asked. “I dunno, maybe something around the scapula area. That’s a funny word, scapula. Hehe.” Wow this stuff kicks in fast. “My hand looks all funny.” Spitfire had to stifle a chuckle and the doctor rolled her eyes, “Well that’s because you’re drugged up, remember?” she asked. “Oh right.” I’m starting to lose my higher cognitive thinking. Oh well, not much I can do about it anyway. “The professor did say that you’d start off with a headache, next is either worse headaches or pain in your shoulder blades and your skin splitting for when if you have wings when they erupt.” Spits looked back at me and saw that I was keeping myself amused by flexing my fingers, “A-and you’re not listening are you?” “What?” “That’s what I thought,” she said as she rolled her eyes. “I think I’m going to take a nap,” I said as my eyes started to slowly close. Shortly after they closed my mind slowly drifted away to sleep. *** “Vat is happening to Herr Briggs?” the German scientist asked as he walked in the room. “I don’t know,” Spitfire replied. “Andrew said that his vision started getting blurry before a headache that felt like ‘nails on a chalkboard’ in his head. Right now he’s sleeping after some mild pain killers finally kicked in.” “Did he mention anything else?” the scientist asked with a raised eyebrow. “He said that he was starting to feel some pain in his shoulder blades.” “Ah I know vats going on here,” he said as he brought up an MRI of a random brain. He pulled out a laser pointer and shined it on the scan. “As you can see here zis is a normal brain, happy as can be.” He then shined it over to another scan, “Zis is a brain where ze new nerves are being created in ze brain to eventually control ze new addition, in zis case vings. That is vat’s causing his headaches.” He turned off the monitor and started stroking his beard in contemplation, “But vat you’ve said has concerned me, ze headaches should be minor, nothing like you’ve described.” “What does it mean, doc?” Spits asked with concern. “I have no idea. I’ll have to get back to you,” he said as he left the room in a hurry. Spitfire took a seat next to the bed. She placed her elbows on her thighs and folded her hands as she rested her head on them. ‘Please Andrew, please be fine,’ she thought. *** I slowly awakened with a very foggy brain. Damn, how much of that pain killer stuff did they give me? I tried to sit up, but found that I could not, mainly because I was lying on my stomach. Why the hell was I lying down on my stomach if I fell asleep on my back? I tried to get up, but when I tried this time I was still unable to do so. “Umm, hello? Anyone here?” I asked. No one answered right away. The room was dark and I could hear a heart monitor. What the hell happened? “Hello?” I added a sing-songy tone for the hell of it. I heard someone stirring, “Andrew? Are you awake?” It was Spits. “No I’m a figment of your imagination,” I sarcastically said. “Of course I’m awake. Can you remove this strap that’s keeping me like this?” I asked. She reached down and unbuckled the straps on my back and legs. “Much better,” I said starting to stretch my extremities. “So what happened to make you guys tie me up like that? It’s only been one night, right?” She looked really sad all of a sudden, “You were out for one week,” she said sounding really worried. “Say what now?” I asked with a look one would give a drunk person asking for another drink. You know the kind. Raised eyebrow on the dominant eye, head cocked slightly towards the dominant hand, and a facial expression that says ‘are you shitting me?’ “Here, let me get the lights,” she said as she used the dimmer switch to give the room more light. I winced at the brightness for a moment before my eyes adjusted. “Why was I out for one week?” I asked as I found a glass of water and took a drink. She didn’t say anything for a moment. “You were in pain, so much that they decided to sedate you while the changes finished.” She went over to the blinds and raised them up before opening the window. It was about 6am by the positioning of the sun for this time of year. “You were thrashing about and screaming in pain. Eventually we strapped you down to keep you from hurting yourself and kept you sedated until the treatment was completed.” “Wait, if I was in so much pain, wouldn’t have I remembered it?” I asked scratching my head. “I forgot who it was but they went down to the R&D department and grabbed a truth serum cocktail which sixty seconds after injection causes temporary short term memory loss for several hours.” “Then the sedatives kicked in and here we are. Well that explains everything.” At least that’s one trauma I won’t have to deal with any time soon. “So… what’d I get?” I asked like a kid on Christmas. “It doesn’t matter, I’m just glad you’re ok,” she replied. She stood up and come over to me and gave me a kiss. It was one that didn’t last as long as a New Year’s kiss, but longer than a peck. Honestly it felt really nice. The next thing I heard was a *pompf*, “That should give you your answer,” she said with a smirk. The thing that surprised me is that Spitfire’s wings weren’t out at all. “Wait… if that wasn’t you, then who was-?” I said as I slowly turned my head to the right. In the corner of my eye I saw a wing, a jet black wing with black as night feathers. I quickly whipped my head over and looked to my left, I saw another wing. “Woah. That shit works, doesn’t it?” I look at my newly discovered wings, they were still splayed out, “So uh, how do I get these stowed away?” “Think of them as another set of arms,” Spits said waiting for me to figure it out. Ok so if they’re another set of arms then… I looked at one of the wing tips and thought about flexing it like my index finger. To my pleasant surprise it moved. Ok that worked, so let’s try this… I then thought about folding my wings. They slowly moved until I could feel their feathery warmth on my back. “There you go,” Spits said as she threw a shirt to me. The shirt from my uniform. As I put it on I could feel the soft cotton touch the new nerves and it sent shivers down my spine, I can see why Spits would have been a little sensitive now when I touched them a little roughly a few months ago back when I first met her. When I had finished getting dressed, which brings up another question of why, but to an extent I don’t want to know, a doctor came in. In her hands was a medical chart. “So how are you feeling, lieutenant?” she asked. “Like I just woke up from a nap,” I replied. “Please take off your shirt please.” I complied, the only thing left on my upper body were my dogtags. “Please extend your wings,” she requested, though her tone was more demanding more than anything else. I unfurled them and felt as she poked and prodded them in various spots. Yeah these new nerve endings aren’t helping at all. As she kept messing with my wings shivers were sent down my spine and my cheeks started getting a little red. I could see Spits trying to hide a laugh, “Yeah yeah, laugh it up,” I muttered. “What was that?” the doctor asked. “Nothing. Are you almost done?” I asked. “Just about,” she said as she poked one of the joints. She finished writing some stuff down on a clipboard. “I’m all done here, you can leave any time you’re ready.” She left the room in a bit of a hurry. “Well that was… interesting,” I commented as I put on my shirt again, followed by my jacket, the shirt again causing a few chills to run down my spine. I walked out of the infirmary, Spits in tow. As we walked outside Spits turned to me. “So do you want to learn how to use those, or not?” she asked with a grin. How come I have a bad feeling about this right now? *** Hernandez’s office Hernandez looked out the window with his hands held behind his back. He saw Andrew trying to figure out his new wings and Spitfire was trying to teach him. “What are the results doctor?” he asked the German scientist. “Vell Colonel, zey are güt. However I do have concerns about the length of ze transformation process and-” he read off of his clipboard. “Ze pain troubles me ze most though,” he said wincing at the memory of Andrew screaming in pain. “Send the current serum formula down to R&D and tell them to see if they can’t find a way to mess with the pain receptors as well as maybe implement more nanites into the formula to speed up the process.” “Ja, it vill be done colonel,” he said as he looked down at his clipboard again. “And vat about Subject Delta?” “Subject Delta,” he heavily emphasized ‘subject,’ “will be in cryogenic storage until further notice,” he said taking a drink from the glass of scotch on his desk. “You know what’ll happen if he is let free to roam about.” “Of course, sir.” “Is there anything else?” “Vell sir there is one thing,” the scientist mentioned. “I have a theory about ze compatibility of ze gene therapy.” “Well?” Hernandez asked. The scientist came over and whispered something in his ear and the colonel’s eyes widened, “Is that even legal?” he asked as the scientist pulled away. “If ve convince them it’s just a genetic mutation they’ll accept it and ze experiment vill continue.” Hernandez sat down and thought about it, “If we make it safe enough to meet safety standards you may proceed with the experiment.” *** One day ago - Canterlot In a little vault built off the side of the castle’s private hearing chambers Twilight and friends placed a multi-keyholed box inside. The vault was closed and sealed. “Now that that’s done we can have a party!” Pinkie said with gusto. Out of nowhere she pulled out her party cannon and fired it. When the confetti stopped falling there was a ‘The Princesses are safe now let’s have a party’ banner as well with other party paraphernalia. “You guys go ahead, I have a letter to write,” Twilight said leaving the room. ‘And a new plan to get Spitfire home,’ she thought to herself. She walked to her room and closed the door with her magic before sitting down at her desk, cluttered with months of research and data. She pulled out a clean sheet of paper, a pen, and ink. She thought of the words she was going to have to write. She took a deep breath before dipping the pen into the ink and placing it on the paper she wrote. Dear Warhawk and Blue Chord, I regret to inform you that getting your daughter back will take longer than we originally discussed a few months ago. It has to do with the phenomena that happened yesterday-