Twilight insisted that I go with her, alone. "Have no fear. You're not a prisoner or anything, I'd just like to get some readings without any interference." She had a big smile and a manic, almost eager, expression as she led me away from the others.
Cindy waved at me. "I'll wait for you." It didn't need to be said. We both knew we'd never be apart more than we had to be, but it felt good to hear it, and I bet it was good for her to say.
Twilight led me down some stairs, into a basement that looked like a laboratory, though the equipment was dated at a glance. Considering the basic technology of the world, as far as I knew, it was quite advanced, but compared to Earth, it was primitively quaint.
She turned to me and looked me over again. "You were a human, were you not?" When I nodded she circled around me, eyes never leaving my body, "If Luna's report is accurate, you were all humans?"
I shrugged my shoulders as I pointed back upstairs. "Cindy wasn't a human, or anything we would likely define as 'living' at first. She was a shred of energy, calmly existing until she was sent into a collision course with me."
Twilight frowned with thought. "What did that?"
I pointed at Twilight then. "You, as far as I know. You were trying to reach an Earth, not ours, and crashed right into ours. A wave of pony energy mixed violently with her world and swept up huge swaths of th--"
Twilight held up a hoof for silence as a pad of paper appeared, floating in the air beside her. She began to scribble manically as she nodded. "Please, go on. How do you know I was involved?"
I huffed softly. "Luna showed me a memory she had. She was there, with some other important ponies. You were trying some fancy machine. You had a former human that was a pony."
"Silver Stars."
"Whoever. Why did you think someone who wasn't a human anymore would be a good match?" The question hadn't really occurred to me until I had already asked it, but once I had, I really wanted to know.
Twilight tilted her head at me. "It was his original home. I didn't have a better match on hoof to try with. I hadn't expected anything to be at risk, besides reaching the wrong place and being disappointed. Can you describe what did occur?"
I rolled a hand lightly. "I thought you wanted to examine me, not interrogate me?"
Twilight clopped a hoof on the ground. "Sorry! I'm not trying to be rude, but I really want to know what happened. Is it nearly as bad as you've implied? As... curious... as you and your herd have become, you all seem well-adjusted, even happy with what you are. This hardly seems a bad outcome?"
A small part of me wanted to grab Twilight and throttle her. Her swollen belly and innocent eyes stayed my hands, and the anger gently washed over and away from me. Twilight really had no clue what she had done. She acted out of ignorance, not malice. "The pony energy mixed with the energy between worlds, the void energy. The more void energy mixed in, the stranger the outcomes. Most were overwhelmed with the urge to share the infection, many even before the physical changes finished."
Twilight gave a strong nod. "How? I mean, what was the vector for this 'infection'?"
I threw a hand in the air. "Spit, semen, blood, any bodily fluid. We were hoping you or Luna could help us isolate the infection inside Cindy and me so that we wouldn't be a threat to anyone anymore."
Twilight leaned towards me with curious eyes. "You're infectious then? Do you have those 'overwhelming' urges then?"
I took a half-step away from her, but that only seemed to draw her closer. "No. I don't have those urges, but I am infectious, and while they have no negative impact on my herd, having already been infected once already, I don't know what it'd do to a pure-bred pony."
Twilight waved it off, scoffing. "it can't turn me into more of a pony than I already am. It only causes harm because your people are not ponies."
"Be that as it may." I conjured a bubble of force around myself, to be safe. "I don't plan to hurt you, no matter how confident you are."
Twilight frowned at the bubble and backed off at last. "Oh very well. Sit." She pointed to a chair. "We'll get some readings from you and maybe get to the bottom of this."
As I settled into the chair that was more of a bench and laid my lower belly across the bench, thick straps wrapped around my hooves and held them still. Immobilized, Twilight advanced. She popped my bubble with a toss of her head, and got to inspecting me and a large machine I was beside.
A loud crash brought both of our attention upwards. We could hear muffled thumping and a shout from upstairs. Twilight sighed softly. "They're fine, but they really should try to keep quiet while I'm working on sensitive scientific experiments."
I wondered if everything was as fine as Twilight insisted, but there wasn't much to do but to wait and let Twilight finish her study.