The darkness faded as Zachary slowly came to, incredible pain still present in the part of his head where the bratty princess cruelly tore out his implant.
Looking himself over, he noticed that he was in his civvies, his MonoSkin armor gone.
“Oh, you’re awake!” A green unicorn in a lab coat and goggles said as he trotted up to Zachary, who was shackled to a heavy cement block with chains that allowed some movement, but not enough to attempt an escape. “Sorry about chaining you up, but we have to make sure you don’t escape! We had to remove that suit, too, since reports say it can enhance your strength through applications of gravity.”
Zachary put a hand to the side of his head where he’d been injured, finding bandages covering it.
“Oh, we couldn’t just let you die, of course,” the unicorn said as he turned around and returned to working with a vat and bubbling beakers. “We need a test subject, after all, so we patched you up. Partially, anyway.”
“Wait, ‘test subject’?” Zachary croaked out, confused.
“Yes,” the stallion replied without turning around. “We need to modify the potion to overcome your immunity, you see. And without a Protean to study, we’d have no chance of success.”
Zachary shifted to the form of a klackon while the unicorn’s back was still turned, making his limbs thinner and longer. But right as he was about to simply slip out of the shackles now that his limbs were too skinny for them, the unicorn paused to turn his head to the side to cough. He spun around completely after noticing what Zachary was doing.
“What the buck?” the unicorn squealed. “You really can shapeshift!”
Shouting at the top of his lungs, the unicorn called for help: “The test subject is escaping! I need assistance!”
Slipping his arms and legs out of the shackles, Zachary shifted again, into the form of a human/typhoeus hybrid, opening his mouth, ready to breathe biochaotic flame at his captor, who was now cowering, staring at him in horror.
“You know nothing about Proteans,” Zachary said simply, aiming straight up and firing the breath at the ceiling instead, corroding the tiles and setting the wooden frame on fire. Next, he spread the dragon-like wings he’d formed on his back and flew up through the hole, finding himself surrounded by ponies in glowing full body armor.
“We are the Royal Special Forces!” a muscular pony shouted. “We’re part of the real military of Equestria! Without your equipment, you’re no threat to us! We outnumber you fifty-to-one, and without your armor, you won’t stand a chance!”
“Well, I’d rather die than surrender,” Zachary spat, biochaotic sparks flying from his mouth. “No way am I going to let you make me a lab rat for you to test some kind of enslavement brew on! If I don’t escape, I’ll make sure I die, for I know you need me alive.”
Suddenly, a spell hit Zachary in the back of the head, scrambling his thoughts, causing him to shift back into his default form before a stun spell hit him as well, causing him to collapse to the ground.
“Your devotion to your people is honorable, I’ll give you that,” a unicorn soldier said as he levitated Zachary’s limp form onto his back before heading for the stairs leading back down to the testing room. “But good soldier or no, you’re still the enemy, and we need you alive.”
After arriving at the lab, the soldier addressed the unicorn in the lab coat:
“Doctor Frothy Batch, here’s your test subject back. How did he escape?”
Frothy Batch took the Protean in his own orange magical grip as he ran a hoof through his wiry purple mane, then scratched his head.
“He shapeshifted into a human-sized bipedal ant and used the thinner limbs to simply slip out of the shackles,” the unicorn doctor replied as he set the stunned prisoner down next to the cement block. “Is there anything we can do about that?”
“There is, Doctor,” the soldier replied before casting a spell on the shackles, making them glow yellow. “Now they’ll change size with him, preventing him from becoming spindly enough to escape again.”
“Perfect!” Doctor Batch exclaimed before securing the improved shackles to his lab rat’s legs and wrists. “Please send word to Princesses Celestia and Birthright. I’ve studied his DNA, and I think I’ve at least made some progress.”
Yes, at once, Doctor,” the soldier said before teleporting away.
“I know you won’t forgive me now,” Doctor Batch said to Zachary, who was slowly regaining use of his limbs, “but once you’re a pony, I’m sure all will be forgiven.”
“Screw you, dirtbag,” Zachary muttered as he tried to shapeshift again, recalling the lessons from the three restored humans on how to imitate the menace he was facing, but adding his own twist.
“Trying to shapeshift to escape again, are we?” Batch said with a smile and a shake of his head. “I’m afraid that won’t work this time around.”
“Who said I’m trying to escape?” Zachary growled as his limbs grew thicker and stronger, dark teal fur coated his body, a short and spiky orange tail sprouted from slightly below his waist, his brown hair shifted into a short and spiky orange mane, his head became pony-like, a long spiral horn sprouted from his forehead, and large feathery wings sprouted from his back. He remained standing upright and kept his hands and feet, basically turning into a syncretic fusion of human and Alicorn.
He doubled over, panting from the exertion to concentrate on such a change, but quickly gained a second wind as he stood up, taking the cement block with him.
“”I’m not trying to escape,” Zachary sneered. “No, I’m going to destroy your feeble attempts to corrupt my race, then take my own life! You need a living test subject, as I recall.”
Zachary’s new horn took on a brown glow as his eyes hadn’t changed color, and he glared right at the vat and beakers on the counter. The items were enveloped in the same glow, but before he could crush them to bits, Celestia teleported into the room and flung a spell at him the instant she saw what he was about to do, knocking him back to the ground and breaking his concentration. This time, he didn’t revert, since his mind hadn’t been affected.
“I see you tried to merge biology like mine with your own,” Celestia noted as she flung another spell at Zachary, who was just getting to his feet, knocking him down again. The cement block was only making things more difficult. “Interesting. Well, we can’t have that, now can we?”
Celestia’s horn glowed a brilliant gold, and Zachary suddenly felt the pain from his implant being ripped out all over again. He let out a blood-curdling scream as he put both hands to his bandages, which were starting to get moist with the blood of a partially-healed wound reopening. The pain scrambled his thoughts, growing more and more intense until his shapeshifting abilities were once again out of his control, and he shifted into many strange conglomerations of parts before reverting to his default human-like appearance again.
Zachary dropped to the ground, whimpering like a broken man.
“Much better,” Celestia said simply. “As I am royalty and you are not, it’s far better for you to be on the ground in my presence, you chaotic ape.” Turning to Doctor Batch, she said, “My great niece sends her apologies for being unable to attend. She has pressing matters of preparing for her next battle to attend to.”
“Of course, Princess,” Frothy Batch replied. “It’s understandable.”
Turning to Zachary, the unicorn detached the shackles from the cement block with his magic, connecting them to a metal table instead. Next, he levitated Zachary onto it, grabbed an empty bottle with his magic, and scooped a purple liquid out of the vat with it.
“This is my first attempt at what I call the ‘ultra ponification serum’. ‘Formula #1’, you could say,” Doctor Batch explained to Celestia as Zachary slowly returned to his senses. “After intensely studying the subject’s unique DNA structure and brain functionality, I think I have something that should at least be able to put a dent in his defenses, so we might be able to see some results here. I tested a small amount of it on a sample of his cells that were taken from the site of injury before magic was applied to partially heal him, and the results were promising. They fought back, but they did get restructured into pony cells in the end.”
“Let’s see how well it works when he’s awake, shall we, Doctor?” Celestia suggested with a sinister smile.
“Of course, Princess,” the unicorn replied before forcing the concoction down Zachary’s throat.
Flaring pain welled up inside Zachary’s body as he felt something assaulting every cell it came into contact with, attempting to rewrite them. The worst part was that his immunity wasn’t completely working to halt it!
“Why aren’t I totally immune?” Zachary growled as he manually started controlling his cells, using his mind’s manipulation of them to force them to fight back better.
“Oh, I figured out the chemical in your cellular structure that enables such resistance and formulated a counter to it, effectively weakening the automatic defenses,” Doctor Batch said proudly. “It doesn’t fully work yet, fails completely without ingestion, and I doubt it’ll be able to get through your whole body at this time, but I’m sure we’ll see some surface results.”
“Not on your life, bastard!” Zachary roared as he started focusing on his default form, sending the commands to shift into it over and over to his cells, continually reverting every cell before it could be fully altered. “I’m still in charge of every piece of my body from the smallest cell to all of my joints, and I tell them what to do!”
His hands started to solidify into hooves, but he sent another signal through his body, and every ponified cell shifted back, for their Protean nature wasn’t so simple to erase.
Celestia and Frothy gasped in shock when they saw the forming hooves revert back into hands so quickly.
“He’s using his shapeshifting abilities to fight it!” Frothy squeaked. “I didn’t anticipate this! I weakened his automatic defenses, but he’s employing his mind as a manual one!”
Beads of sweat gathered on Zachary’s forehead as he continued to fight. The serum was starting to leave his bloodstream as another waste product, but it still tried to corrupt every cell it touched.
A tail started to form, but it was quickly sucked back in, the potion growing weaker as it started to flow out into his kidneys, at which point it completely lost all of its power, allowing his automatic defenses to kick back in, making him totally immune again.
“Take that, you silly horse!” Zachary whooped in triumph. “You gotta do better than that! A lot better!”
“Very well,” Frothy said as he levitated a set of notes, an inkwell and a quill over to himself. “I accept your challenge, ape. Your race is more formidable than we anticipated, but it’s only a matter of time before we find a way to overcome all of your defenses.” Turning to Celestia, he bowed and said, “My apologies for such a disappointing display, Princess. I hope to have a Formula #2’ ready to show you soon. I think I’ll try turning that shapeshifting ability against him. If I can actually make the potion hijack his shapeshifting powers, I could manage to essentially make him defeat himself.”
“No need to apologize, Doctor,” Celestia replied warmly while draping a wing over the unicorn. “It was only your first attempt, after all. And your new proposal sounds like it would be very interesting to watch, even if it failed. I’ll make sure Birthright can make it to watch the next one.”
“You monsters!” Zachary snapped, “Proteanhood was supposed to be the ultimate gift we were going to give humanity! Being able to become anything you want to be with the only truly unbreakable limit being the full extent of your imagination is a wonderful state of being! It’s the pinnacle of human and klackon development! There is nothing more perfect, more beautiful, more wonderful, than the nature of Proteus Sapiens except for that of the creator, Ahura Mazda! Our people wanted to have a taste of the wonder of divine nature, and we found it! And with it came great happiness!”
Tears began streaming down the Protean’s cheeks as he glared at the two ponies. “From every aspect, the Protean being is the pinnacle of mortal development, where it is impossible to go further, for anything we could possibly need, we could transform to have! Magic? Just add one of your horns! Flight? Any kind of wings! There are many to choose from! More strength? Just turn into something with more muscle mass or redistribute one’s own mass into more muscle! What can you possibly offer us that would be worth giving all of that and more up for?”
“Harmony,” Celestia stated simply. “For all the gifts you claim to have, we gave the humans something better: harmony.”
“That’s not harmony!” Zachary spat as he was levitated away from the table and his shackles were re-chained to the cement block. “It’s mind control! Harmony comes in many forms! It took teamwork on a national level for us to open the EarthGate, and teamwork is a form of harmony! Every living thing is capable of both harmony and chaos! There’s a bit of both in everything! Even you aren’t perfectly harmonious! No one is except for Ahura Mazda! Your words of Druj don’t fool me! If you were a being of pure harmony, you would’ve tried to teach the humans how to achieve world peace, not transform them! And if the inside of the barrier had actually been able to kill the non-magical, you’d do everything in your power to stop it! And if you were truly harmonious, you wouldn’t be trying to fight us, but instead try to come to a consensus with us! To achieve harmony, a group needs consensus between them! You are no better than we are, and you know it! You ponies are no more harmonious than we are!”
“If you want to believe all that, very well,” Celestia replied. “But you’ll see the truth soon enough. Your suffering will end, I can promise you that. But it will only come by you becoming one of us.”
With that, her horn glowed gold again, and Zachary suddenly started to feel sleep creeping in. “I’m not done talking to you yet!” he shouted, swallowing a yawn. He held it down for fifteen seconds, and the fatigue lifted a little. His training to fight fatigue on the battlefield was proving quite useful. “You may want to make me tired, but it takes more than that to put me under! I’ve been trained at a MILQUETOAST facility, and I have my own personal on-field experiences, to boot! I was a veteran before I had my first battle, and after seeing battle multiple times, I’ve learned even more! I know plenty of mental exercises to keep me alert!”
Celestia’s lips curled down in a grimace, and she cast the spell again, stronger this time.
Zachary bit back a yawn, but focused his transformative abilities for a form that one of his friends from when he was a Private taught him to cheat the need for sleep, even though shifting out of it would then make all the lost sleep hit him like a sack of bricks.
“Oh,” Zachary forced through a yawn, “Did you know bullfrogs never sleep?” He sneered and shifted to the form of an anthropomorphic bullfrog, all tiredness leaving him, for this form had no need for sleep.
“Now, as I was saying,” Zachary chuckled, “Just by observing the ponies I’ve seen here so far, including you, none of you are purely harmonious. Not a single one. Think on that for a second, why don’tcha?”
Stunned that the sleep spell now had no impact, Zachary’s words started flowing into Celestia’s thoughts, making her doubt her own actions for a couple seconds, her eyes brightening and the mist from them fading for those couple seconds before she shook herself and used the pain spell to ruin Zachary’s transformation, then quickly cast the sleep spell again the instant his body stopped shifting into random forms and resumed his default form. The blackness closed in, but Zachary fell asleep on the cold floor with a smirk from the knowledge that he’d gotten the Princess to doubt herself and her actions, if only for a second or two.
Eyes darkened and leaking mist once again, Celestia stormed off, leaving Doctor Frothy Batch alone with the sleeping Protean.