Wonderbolt Down

by Rebonack

Wherein Things Get Stranger

Day One
Twenty Four Days Remain

Rain against my flight goggles. Wind against my face. Screaming of friends. Maniacal laughter of an insane foe. I'm calling out someone's name. Then comes a sound like a thunderclap. Stillness. The world turns featureless and white.

Unlike the movies I don't awaken with a gasp and bolt upright. Instead the dream dissolves away and I feel myself frozen from the after-effects of a nightmare. I'm in my room. And if my alarm clock is to be believed I have two minutes before it's going to go off. More or less par for course, really. I slowly work the feeling back into my limbs and break the stillness of sleep. Soundwave makes a plaintive sound from the foot of my bed and hops off to sit by his food dish. He has priorities after all and now that his servant is awake they're to be attended to.

“Alright, alright, I'm coming,” I grumble as I haul myself out of bed and preemptively turn my alarm off. Soundwave gets his breakfast and I ponder the dream. I've always had an uncanny memory when it comes to dreams. Especially dreams that I have right before getting up. But this one is really fragmented despite being so vivid. Pretty sure I've had it before, too.

I shuffle my way into the bathroom for my morning shower and flick the light on. I'm greeted by myself in the mirror and for some absurd reason my reflection has decided to put some red highlights in his hair.

“What now...” I deadpan and lean closer for a better look. Most of my hair looks normal, but a few locks of it have turned a deep rust-red color with a stripe of black followed by a stripe of white. Almost like the tips had been dunked into two colors of dye at different lengths. With a sigh I run my hands along my face and a little nagging voice reminds me that I haven't clean-shaven myself in a while. Okay, now it's time to yell.

“Really? Really! The hobgoblins decided to abduct my beard, too?” I yell at my reflection, who is polite enough to respond in kind. I'm glad for that, at least. If my reflection had suddenly decided to start moving out of sync with me like some cheap horror film I'm pretty sure I would loose it right there. I glower at my lack of stylish goatee and stalk off into the shower for some much needed relaxation.

The rest of the morning goes off more or less without a hitch. I dress, eat, and have a fairly comfortable amount of time left before I need to head off to work. I resolve myself to try to avoid thinking about ponies. My resolve breaks in all of three minutes. I decide to check the mirror again on a whim and can't but notice that it looks like I've got a few more locks of red-tailed hawk style hair than I did last time. I take in a deep breath and begin sifting through my hair and dreading what I might find. And finding it doesn't take long. It had looked like something was moving around in my normally brown hair at first, but on closer inspection a lock is turning from brown to red from the roots up right before my eyes.

This is absolutely impossible.

And yet there it is right in front of me. The realization the color replacing my hair matches that of a certain cartoon hippogriff isn't lost on me. On the off chance that invisible hobgoblins are busy dying my hair I flail my hands around above my head to swat them off.

Nope. No dice. Hair is still changing color.

“Well. This is pretty inexplicable.”

By the time I get to the lab enough of my hair has changed color that it's basically impossible to miss. Not that it was difficult to miss bright red hair with black and white bands at the tips to begin with. Thankfully I have a selection of awesome hats with which to obscure my rebellious hair from any prying eyes. I say my usual good mornings and do my best to pretend that absolutely nothing is out of the ordinary and that I am not in fact trying to cosplay as a cartoon character. By the time I'm actually processing samples it isn't too difficult to distract my mind from the recent weirdness. Though that stupid squeaky fan is really starting to get on my nerves.

Steve comes in a few minutes after I do. He looks far more bedraggled than what the party alone last night should have warranted. The reason is immediately obvious. The hobgoblins have dyed a few locks of Steve's hair silver and then stuck them in curlers. I do my best not to smirk at the sight. Though I can't resist the zinging I had come up with last night.

“Don't worry Steve, I'm sure there'll be a silver lining to this whole mess,” I say with as straight of a face as I can manage.

Steve levels a finger at me. “Not. Another. Word.”

Yeah, that's pretty much what I expected. I quickly change the subject. “So I took a tissue sample off my butt-symbol and another normal skin sample to see if there's any genetic basis to whatever the hell it is that's going on. I've got them prepping right now for the nano-pore sequencer.”

Steve gives a little huff and begins his lab work. “Do you really think that's what's going on? That there's some rational explanation for,” he pulls on a springy lock of silver hair. “This?”

“I will freely admit that I have absolutely no idea. The way the hair is changing doesn't make much sense. There's nothing alive in hair to make it change color like that,” I reply. I must have done the tongue click again because Steve is shooting me that look he always does. “Ah, anyway. A full genetic library sequence should tell us whether or not it's time to start freaking out. If this is just funny hair and a tattoo in a not particularly noticeable spot then we can just keep the latter covered and dye the former.”

I leave unsaid the obvious question, though. What if this is going deeper than just a few absurd cosmetic changes? But people don't just up and spontaneously change species anywhere outside of fantasy novels, so we shouldn't have to worry.

When I see the results of the sequences I start to worry. I sit there staring at the computer screen and trying to make sense of what I'm being shown. The DNA had been sequenced alright and I had decided to compare it to the largest full library sequence database we've got, the result of years of work and sequence grinding.

“No matches...” I mutter breathlessly. Steve is standing behind me looking vaguely horrified. See, pretty much all multi-cellular organisms share a pretty huge chunk of their genetic information with each other. Even a banana holds about fifty percent similarity with a human. The sample from my cutie mark came back with less than ten percent similarity which is flagrantly impossible. Flagrant impossibility seems to be a bit of a theme for the past two days.

“Anything from Earth should have at least a fifty percent match to something,” Steve says.

“Yeah, Earth being the operative word. Look at this,” I bring up a screen full of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts, and point to a section of it. “The program is pretty sure that this is supposed to be an open reading frame, but there aren't any start or stop codons where they should be to tell us where the gene is supposed to begin or end.”

Steve frowns at the screen in silence for a few moments before suddenly swearing, “Holy shit. We're looking at a completely different genetic code. This DNA isn't written in the same language as everything else. This... we're looking at honest to God alien DNA.”

Honest to God alien DNA that I scraped off my leg this morning. That certainly isn't unsettling in the least. To make matters worse the 'normal' skin sample I had taken was a chimera of human and alien DNA. How that would even work without the cells detecting mutation and undergoing apoptosis in mass I won't pretend to understand. Though I can say that I'm pretty glad that they didn't. Having all of my cells self-destruct would have made for a really lousy birthday gift.

“We're a walking Nobel Prize,” I laugh in spite of the creeping dread crawling down my spine. What else can I do? Have a complete nervous breakdown? Eh, maybe later. I've still got time on my schedule. “Assuming they give out Nobel Prizes in biology to cartoon characters. Too bad we don't have the equipment here to figure out which codons are used for which amino acids. It would actually be really interesting to find out how the two genetic languages differ.”

Steve gives a groan and falls heavily into one of the office chairs, his face buried in his hands. “This... God, I don't even know what to make of this. Why us? Some kind of... of alien abduction experiment thing? I seriously need a drink.”

“Alas my friend,” I begin, patting Steve on the back. “We still have three hours of drudgery before you can drown your pony-related troubles in booze.”

My friend levels a wither glare at me, though it's easy enough to see that it's more frustration than actual anger. “How the hell can you possible be taking this... this! All of this so easily!”

All I can do is laugh. I laugh to keep myself from crying.

“This isn't funny, Geneva! This isn't a bucking joke!” Steve yells, kicking at a desk leg in frustration.

Did he just use the word 'buck' as profanity? Is this absurd affliction going to make our curses more kid-friendly too?

“I know, I know it isn't. What else am I supposed to do?” I ask as the full weight of implications bear down on me. “Curl up on the ground in the fetal position and weep? Go completely stark raving mad? I'm as surprised as you are that I'm not totally losing it right now. As far as I'm concerned being human is a pretty important part of who I am. Notwithstanding that this is a lot more wide-spread than just you and me and Dust and Surprise. I did some digging around on the internet last night and there are other people getting hit by,” I wave one hand in a completely non-informative fashion. “Whatever this is. For all we know this could be some kind of precursor to an alien invasion. Or a disease from another universe. Or a butt-painting prank by hobgoblins. Or maybe the devil got really board of roasting marshmallows and snuck around scrambling a bunch of people up at the biochemical level.”

That manages to get a little snicker out of Steve. Mission accomplished. “So what do we do now? Keep this a secret? Try going public with it? If the general public finds out that people are turning into aliens for no Goddamned reason it's going to ignite a panic.”

“And if it's as wide-spread as I suspect it might be then people are going to find out no matter what we do. Three hundred and fifty thousand people are born each day. Three hundred and fifty thousand people are the same age as us, with the same birthday. I don't know if whatever this is will hit all of them, but I do know that so far everyone who has been afflicted was born on the first of May, nineteen ninety five. That's too big of a coincidence to overlook,” I sigh and give my tongue a click. “I don't know, Steve. I guess keep a lid on it for now and see what happens. If we do end up-”

“Lance?” Steve says suddenly, disrupting my train of thought.

“Yeah?” I ask. The tone of his voice makes me suspect another awful thing has decided that this would be a great time to befall me and I haven't noticed it yet.

“First, the tongue thing. Seriously, it's annoying. Second? Your eyes are yellow,” Steve says.

My brain stalls out for a few moments as I try to come to grips with that. Yellow. Okay. My eyes are yellow now. Not brown anymore, yellow. Like a hawk's. Like Geneva's. Isn't that just swell? That's really swell. Best news I've heard all day.

I close my eyes and rub them as if that will somehow make things better. Then I pull off my hat and brace for the worst. Steve doesn't let me down and gives a little strangled gasp. “How bad is it?” I ask.

“Well,” Steve coughs. “About half your hair looks pretty ridiculous. And it's longer now, too.”

My eyes open and I run a hand through my hair. It feels like it's naturally parting near the middle of my head, which means my bangs are kind enough to flop off to the side instead of into my eyes. That's a plus at the very least. I feel down a bit lower and discover that my hairline has grown down my neck and nearly to my shoulders. Wonderful. I'm getting the sneaking suspicion that this metamorphosis won't be done until it's done. With a few choice words about hobgoblins I stuff my new luxurious mane back under my head-wear, condemning it to a loathsome future of hat-hair.

“Let's just... ignore this for a while. I don't want to think about it,” I concede.

Five o'clock rolls around quickly enough despite the lingering dread jostling around in my stomach like a rock. It wasn't too long before Steve had acquired a new pair of aqua eyes and I pointed out that he was walking around on his tip-toes. Turns out I was too. By the time we both left my new hawk-hair was poking out from under my hat here and there on account of growing too long to be properly contained. I got a few odd looks from my other coworkers but I passed it off as if nothing unusual was going on. Steve and I met out in the parking lot to make some plans before leaving for home.

“We get in contact with the others as soon as we're home,” I say while pacing back and forth in front of my car like a ballerina. I feel completely absurd. Despite my best efforts to discipline myself and walk normally the moment my mind moves to something else I'm tip-toeing around again. “We should try meeting at Surprise's place, she's got the biggest house to fit us all comfortably. If this gets much worse we're going to have to call in sick for work.”

Steve gives a derisive snort. “Really Lance? Missing a few days of work will be the least of our problems.”

“Alright, point taken. I think-” I begin, only to be cut off by Jerry.

“Hey Lance! Steve! I've been dying to ask, what's up with the hair?” Oh God help us, Jerry. His penchant for prying into other people's business is nothing short of legendary around the lab. If we just blow him off he'll get suspicious and more annoying. I quickly decide that some dead-panned half truth might be the best smoke screen.

“Alien plague that gives people clown hair,” I reply with a smirk. “Don't get too close, it might be contagious.”

Jerry raises an eyebrow.

“We lost a bet at the birthday shindig,” Steve says, waving one hand dismissively. “Had to wear wigs to work. It's no big deal.”

That seems to be enough to satisfy Jerry's curiosity. “Haha, that's pretty funny! Man, wait till the guys hear about this. Later you two! See you on Monday!”

I'm sure that won't come back to bite us in the ass somehow.

Once I'm home I drop a call off to Ivory and Ruben. Surprise surprise they're both going through the same insanity that we are. We agree to meet over at Ivory's place at seven and discuss what we've managed to figure out and decide on what to do next. Because we are going to have to make some serious plans here. I don't think security would be willing to let a hippogriff and a pegasus into the lab. Except maybe in little pieces as specimens which I would really rather avoid.

By the time I'm done with my shower my mane is an absolute dead-ringer for Geneva's, right down to the way it parts and falls. It looks incredibly girly. I decide to do what I can with it and just stick the whole thing in a low pony-tail and plop a derby hat on top of it. There! Now I look like some kind of weird clean-shaven cowboy or something. Not ideal by any means, but certainly an improvement.

I grab a quick bite, feed my overly needy cat, and decide to review a few more episodes of Friendship is Magic before taking the drive. I have a vague memory of an episode that Ivory had gotten me to watch years ago, Lesson Zero. May as well go with that, right? A nice little tale of the show's purple protagonist having a nervous breakdown. I can honestly sympathize with her right now. Though the thing that really catches my attention is Rainbow Dash's means of shed demolition. Namely nose-diving into a building and flattening it with a rainbow colored mushroom cloud. I can't help by wonder if that's accurate in any way. Are the creatures we're apparently metamorphosing into able to laugh off those kinds of stresses? How would they even fly with those tiny wings and no rudder to speak of?

Back to the wiki! Apparently all three races of ponies have their own flavors of magic to draw on, the pegasi in particular focusing on flight and weather. Of course. Magic! That explains exactly nothing. Explanations that don't tell me anything have been really plentiful of late. Regardless, apparently pegasus magic allows the really good ones to break the sound barrier, crash into things at hundreds of miles an hour with relatively little harm, and pull g-forces that should rightfully turn their organs into jam.

“Huh. Sounds like their 'magic' is just absorbing or creating accelerative forces on them,” I mutter to Soundwave as he rubs against my leg. “That would certainly explain why they seem to be able to casually disregard gravity when they feel like it. It sure as hell would make Newton cry, but I guess that's magic for you.”

I end up pursuing the topic of 'pony magic' and nearly forget about the meeting. Whoops! On the way out to the car I adjust my hat since it feels like I've got it too low against my ears. Turns out that my hat isn't too low, my ears are too high. And turned into some sort of weird pointy cross between a horse's and a lion's in addition to having migrated to the top of my head. I spend about five minutes just looking at myself in my car's rear view mirror and twitching them around in different directions. With a morose sigh I look down at my hat feeling utterly defeated.

“I guess I'm going to have to chop some holes in you guys to make you fit...” I explain to my poor, forsaken hat. “I really don't want to have to do this. And I want you to know that this will hurt me much more than it hurts you. But I'm not going to give up on you yet, old friend.”

I pick up my derby hat and cram it down over my ears. The pinching sensation makes my eye twitch a bit.

“No, I'm not giving up on you yet,” I resolve as I drive over to Ivory's house.

As if my aching ears weren't bad enough now my rear starts hurting too. I can feel something growing down there and I'm sitting right on top of it. I keep shifting around trying to get comfortable but the result is always the same, I'm crushing what is almost certainly a new limb that no human should have. It finally gets painful enough that I pull over along side the road and yank my new tail out of my pants. Imagine for a moment a cross between a horse's tail and a lion's. That's pretty accurate. Long and cat-like with a ridge of stringy hair growing down the top with a slightly stiffer poof at the end. All in the red and black and white hawk pattern to match my mane, of course. Got to have a matching mane and tail or else you'll look silly, right? At this point I'm pretty sure that I've hit my limit for weirdness because I accept my new tail with a sort of dulled reluctance.

Thankfully I'm able to curl my tail up over my lap so I'm not sitting on the thing and I make the rest of the drive without trouble. When I pull up in front of Ivory's house I can't help but notice that I arrived last. I really do hate being late, but I'm sure 'Oh sorry, I got distracted when I grew a new limb' will make a pretty decent excuse. I hop out of my car and hang onto my tail to avoid slamming it with the door by mistake. Breaking my new limb within ten minutes of gaining it would reflect poorly on me.

“Hey everyone, sorry I'm late. I-SONOFABITCH!” yep. Closed Ivory's front door on my tail. Thankfully not that hard. Damn treacherous tail! It's already conspiring against me with random inanimate objects. I give the door jam a kick and drop down into the nearest empty chair. Petting my tail, of course. That makes it feel a little better despite looking absolutely silly.

Surprise is giggling despite herself. Her eyes have turned bright lavender and her mane has become this incomprehensible nest of bright yellow poofiness. I'm pretty sure you could lose a a small child in there if you really tried. No tail yet, though. But just you wait Ivory, pretty soon you'll have a rebellious new limb with a mind of its own too.

Ruben comes in with a pair of beers and a tail to boot. I guess he's about as far along as I am. Amber eyes scrutinize me as I pull my hat off and a pair of aqua fuzzy ears on top of his head twitch a bit. He's wearing this cock-sure smirk that leaves me wondering if he's having too much fun with this insanity. Crazy bronies. His mane and tail are sort of a swept back mix of darker shades of yellow. Sort of match his eyes I guess? Sorry, I'm a lab tech, not a paint store guy.

“If we're going to have a serious discussion about this I'm not sure if getting drunk is the best plan,” I point out, doing my best to be the voice of reason in a den of cartoon horses.

“Too late,” comes the slurred voice of Steve from under a pile of couch cushions nearby. “Because being drunk is about the only way I'm going to be able to handle talking about this.”

“Come on Silver,” Ruben laughs as he plunks down a beer on the end table nearest the couch. “This is exciting! A break from the same old, same old! Do you have any idea how many times I've thought about how amazing flying under my own power would be? And we're all going to end up as some of the greatest fliers that Equestria has ever seen!”

“I'm pretty content with just being me, thanks,” Steve shoots back as he grabs the beer.

“Did you tell them about the DNA thing already?” I ask, trying my best to ignore just how chipper Dust is about turning into a pony.

“I told them about the DNA thing already,” Steve confirms.

“Not just ponies, aaaaaaaalien ponies! What's up with that, anyway? Why not normal earth-language-DNA or whatever? What does it all meeeeean?” Ivory asks as she bounces up and down impatiently, her mane bobbing along with her and her new white pony ears slowly emerging.

It's all I can do to avoid staring at her mutant equine ears to just close my eyes and take another deep breath. “It means there's some basis to all of this. Something real beyond the cartoon and the magical land of make believe. If I had to guess I would say that there's probably a real world out there somewhere with real ponies that we're acquiring the genome of for God knows what reason. Maybe whoever or whatever's doing this put the idea of the show into someone's mind years ago. There's really no way to know beyond wild guesses.”

“Do you think there's a way to fix it?” Ruben asks with a quirk of his head. “I did some snooping around on the internet myself and there are definitely other people who are going through this. I'm willing to bet most people probably want to be normal again. A couple of the tweets have back-peddled and said it was a joke buuuut.”

But he isn't buying that. Neither am I.

“Hopeful answer? With the magic of friendship anything is possible!” I declare in the most saccharine sweet voice I can manage whilst grinning like an idiot. My expression quickly grows dour. “Honest answer? This is so far beyond our level of genetic engineering we may as well be cave men banging rocks together by contrast.”

“Eh, I'm cool with it,” Dust says with a shrug as she knocks back her beer. “I would say everypony should just roll with it, but I know that's not going to happen. We're going to have a lot of ponies freaking out in... what would you guess? Three, four days based on how fast things are going?”

“We're going to need to get organized!” Ivory declares. “Not just to let everyone who's changing know that they aren't alone and cheer them up, but to let everyone else know about us too! We need should set the tone for the big reveal instead of letting it happen by mistake. That way the element of surprise will be on our side!”

“Which means exposing ourselves, which we'll need to be really careful about,” I say. “People will want a reason for why this is happening and we don't have one yet. At least not a reason that amounts to anything beyond wild speculation.”

“The best kind of speculation,” Surprise nods sagely.

I give her a questioning look. She just grins. Geeze Ivory seems even more loopy than usual. Maybe this transformation is messing with our minds as well? That's a pretty scary thought. No one likes the idea of having their personality altered against their will. Though that would explain the name slip-ups that we keep having.

“Aaanyway I think trying to organize over the internet would be a good idea. Anyone who doesn't know what's going on will just think we're crazy and those in the know will be all too aware of what's happening to them,” I reason. “Once things have calmed down a little we try going public all at once. But like Surprise said, we want to try to be quick about it. I think it would be a good idea if you start working on a press release or something right away, Surprise.”

Ivory giggles, reaches into her mane, and pulls out... a fake mustache? She sticks it under her nose and begins to rub her hands together menacingly. “I'll start plotting right now! I've got my plotting mustache and everything!”

Everyone just stares at her blankly as she sneaks off to fetch her laptop. Where did she get? You know what? No. I don't want to know. My brain had officially reached its weirdness limit when I grew a pair of hippogriff ears and now any addition of impossible shenanigans are just overflowing like a too-full glass of water. You hear that hobgoblins? I have become immune to your insanity! I begin petting my tail. While stroking that lovely new appendage it occurs to me that having a bout of tittering giggles seems like a great idea so I start doing that, too. I can feel stray hairs sproining out of my mane at random angles.

Ruben coughs loudly to get my attention. I vaguely hear Silver mutter, “Well, she finally cracked. About bucking time.” My attention snaps back to reality when I get hit in the face with a couch pillow.

I sputter a bit and flail my arms around in retaliation against no one near me. “What? I'm fine! I'm cool,” I run a hand through my mane to try to smooth the rebelling hairs down. A few conform, but the rest seem to have declared a free state on the left side of my head. “Sorry, I'm just, hehe... This is a lot of stress. A lot all at once. I feel like I could just up and explode at any moment. But I, ah, hehe, I think I'll be alright. I just need to calm down a little.”

I do my best to offer a reassuring smile, but I can tell by the looks that I'm getting that it's anything but. Oh good Lord preserve me. The last thing I need right now is a complete mental breakdown on top of everything else. I finally settle on closing my eyes and just... breathing. Slowly. I can hear Dust and Silver talking about something but I'm sort of tuning it out. I really don't need any further information input right now regardless of what it's about.

Just let my mind wander. Focus on the sound of my breath. Hum a song that I like. Nice and peaceful. I feel a small smile tugging at the corner of my mouth and ease my eyes open.

Ivory is less than an inch away from my face and grinning like a maniac. “Surprise!”

I give an incoherent and not at all manly shriek as my chair topples over backwards and deposits me on the floor. By the time I manage to prop myself upright Ivory is already holding her laptop aloft and looking proud of herself. And she's still wearing that absurd fake mustache.

“I finished up the website! Google trends showed that 'turning into a pony' has taken a ginormous spike in searches lately and so that's what I named the website!” Surprise says matter of factly.

When she turns the screen toward her I'm shocked to see a very professional looking home page with its own address already. How did she manage to get all this done in the past... what? Fifteen minutes?

“Surprise, how did you finish that so fast?” Steve asks. Even drunk he can tell something isn't adding up here. “And normally registering a web domain takes what? Weeks? Days? More than a few minutes.”

“Hehehe! Oh don't worry about that! I made this site a long time ago!” Surprise replies brightly.

“But this pony thing just started yesterday,” Steve counters, looking increasingly confused.

“Yep!” Ivory chirps back.

Either Ivory just happened to own a web-site about people turning into ponies or she grew a knack for casually violating causality along with her tail. I have no idea which it is, but the suggestion that my silly friend can ignore linear progression of time for giggles is mildly terrifying. Though I suppose that would be within the range of some of the physics breaking hijinks that Pinkie Pie regularly pulled off. Maybe that's just something that ponies with balloons on their ass can do?

That brings to mind my reading on pony magic and provides my brain with a blissful change of subject. “Hold on a moment here. Pony magic stuff. It is strongest in relation to a pony's special talent, right?”

I get two nods and one, “Yep!” followed by a bounce from Ivory.

“So I'm going to guess that Surprise's special talent is sneaking up on people and throwing surprise parties and things like that?” I ask.

“Yeppers!” bounce.

“Okay. Ivory has always had a knack for that sort of thing. And as a kid her hide and seek skills were unmatched in all the neighborhood. Geneva's mark probably has something to do with air currents or air pressure or something? Every time I've gone camping smoke from the fire is always blowing away from me. Even to the point that people just started to avoid sitting across from me around the fire pit,” I reason. Those actually line up really well. And that would imply that whatever this is has been going on a lot longer than what we thought at first. A disturbing notion to be sure.

“I've always been pretty athletic,” Ruben pipes up. “And I've got thing for avoiding bad weather. That's pretty similar to Lightning Dust's special talent.”

“So there's three for three,” I reply with a nod before glancing over at Steve. He's pretty wobbly by now from his alcohol intake. “Not sure about Silver, though. I couldn't find any mention of what his special talent was when I looked it up.”

Steve just shrugs apologetically. “The world may never know.”

I guess I can live with that. Three out of four with one unknown is a pretty decent result.

“Alright. So we can add 'attributes similar to the pony's special talent' to our list of common elements with the people who were afflicted,” I say. “Add that to twenty five years old and a birthday on May first. Maybe something really unusual happened on that date?”

Ah HA! A lead! It doesn't take very long to look up that particular moment in history and discover that pretty much nothing particularly relevant took place. Some stuff about the Croatian war. A guy from Australia scored a bunch of points for a thing. And a musical called 'On the Waterfront' opened at some theater in New York. I can't help but feel a little kicked in the balls over that one. I was hoping for... geeze, I don't know. Something? Massive unexplained neutrino pulse maybe? Unusual comet? It looks like just another unremarkable day in human history.

Our conversation rambles around in circles for a while and Surprise and Dust start making brony inside jokes back and forth at each other. At this point I really have no idea what's going on and I decide to throw in the towel. “I think I'm going to call it a night everyone,” I sigh.

“Everypony,” Ivory corrects.

I decide that it would be best to just ignore that and continue. “It'll probably be a good idea to pick up some supplies tomorrow before we start looking less like really good cosplayers and more like freakish mutants. Or adorable cartoon horses. Or whatever.”

Steve grumbles something to the effect of 'same difference'. Clearly he's still sore about this whole mess. I can't hold that against him.

We say our goodbyes and I make the trip home. This time around I hold onto my tail during all door-transitions to prevent it from leaping into any more painful positions just to spite me. I hurry through the lobby toward my apartment hoping against all hope that I won't run into anyone along the way. If I had been thinking clearly I would have taken the stairs instead of the elevator, but I'm sure those dastardly hobgoblins must have sabotaged my mental process. Which of course means I bump into Mrs. McCullough in the elevator. Glorious.

She's a nice old lady, if a bit batty and with more cats under her care than I think the health codes would probably allow. But every apartment complex needs at least one crazy cat-lady right? Seems the cosmos agrees since Mrs. McCullough is our resident felineophile. Or whatever you call someone who really likes cats.

“Mmm, that's an awfully funny looking get up,” the old woman says as she leans in close to inspect my very realistic looking tail. I quickly drop it and let it flop down behind me. My treacherous tail decides that this would be a great time to begin whipping back and forth of its own accord. “Do you mind if I touch it?”

“Oh, ah, I would rather you didn't,” I reply, trying my best to avoid seeming overly nervous for no good reason. After all, I clearly just got back from a costume party and I'm certainly not turning into an alien cartoon character! Hahahah! Ha. “It's a bit fragile and I really don't want it getting broken.”

That's a great excuse! I'm sure she won't see through that one.

“You smell like wet cat,” the old woman harrumphs.

What.

The ding! of the elevator rescues me from impending doom.

“Ah haha! Here's my floor nice talking to you gotta go!” I laugh nervously and bolt out into the hall. I can feel her gaze drilling into my back as my tail flips around in ways that a costume prop really shouldn't. Say what you want about Mrs. McCullough, but she isn't stupid.

Once my apartment door is shut behind me and Soundwave is rubbing on my legs I finally get the chance to catch a breather. I grab my tail and point at it accusingly. “You're trying to get me killed, aren't you?”

The end of the treasonous appendage twitches in reply.

I narrow my eyes at it. “I'm onto your game.”

After such a taxing day I decide to head straight to bed. As soon as my hair tie comes off my mane poofs back into its perfect Geneva style despite being wet, bound together, and crushed under my hat for several hours. Speaking of crushed I begin massaging my poor abused ears. I really don't relish the idea of cutting holes for them in my hats, but by the same token I'm not about to just stop wearing hats due to something as trivial as having my species magically altered.

A guy has to have priorities after all.

Once I'm settled into bed Soundwave begins pouncing on the end of my tail as it swishes around under the blankets. I'm going to have to hang onto that stupid thing all night, aren't I? With the tail-pouncing crisis temporarily averted I start talking to the ceiling.

“I've got to admit that I'm at a loss here. I'm pretty okay with the whole sovereignty and trusting thing, but seriously. What is going on? What's the point of people turning into alien cartoon characters? Am I going to wake up as a hippogriff in the next few days? This is just... geeze, I don't know. I don't even know what to say. Or ask. Or do. I really hope that a sudden change in species doesn't preclude me from our deal because if it does I'm calling shenanigans. This is all totally out of my hands. Or talons. Or whatever kinds of forelimbs I'll have when it's all said and done.”

“I'm glad I haven't completely lost my mind over this. Silver Lining seems to be taking it really hard. Surprise and Dust are... I'm calling them by their pony names again aren't I? I think that's what bothers me the most about this. My mind is obviously changing. Will I even still be me? Am I even me anymore right now? Have I always been like this, but I just didn't know it until I started gaining magical cutie marks and growing a mane? It's all so surreal.”

“I know there's the whole promise of new bodies and stuff, but that isn't supposed to be happening until I'm dead and the world's busy ending. And while the good book skimps a bit on details I'm pretty sure that magical talking pastel colored horses wasn't what I signed up for. Otherwise the whole 'armies of heaven on white horses' thing would be a bit redundant. Unless I'm expected to be someone's steed and get a coat-job. Which would just be weird and awkward.”

“I guess... If this gets even worse by tomorrow I don't know if I'll be able to face everyone. Heh... Unless I'm so unrecognizable that I just look like some crazy cosplayer who wandered into a church. That might actually be kind of fun and vaguely enlightening. I think I might take a shot at that. Introduce myself as Geneva. See if I get tossed out on my ears for dressing in a heathen costume.”

I can't help but laugh. Despite the despair, the fear, the uncertainty, and the looming specter of madness I can't help but laugh. What else can I do? As awful as all this is the absurdity of the whole situation leaves me giggling. One way or another tomorrow is going to be very interesting.

Comments

[Pop chatters]

This is really underrated.
I always love concepts like this. This also explains why I did not know how the main protagonist looks now; it is not important.

Hurr durr.

[Dogman15]

"She's a nice old lady, if a bit batty, and with more cats under her care than I think the health codes would probably allow." I think you should add a comma there.

[swyrl]

Do people ever read the original story first? Or am I the only one? Everyone seems so surprised by the fact that their bodies are changing. Of course they are! It's a fivescore fic.

[Chrome Masquerade]

“I'm glad I haven't completely lost my mind over this. Silver Lining seems to be taking it really hard. Surprise and Dust are... I'm calling them by their pony names again aren't I? I think that's what bothers me the most about this. My mind is obviously changing. Will I even still be me? Am I even me anymore right now? Have I always been like this, but I just didn't know it until I started gaining magical cutie marks and growing a mane? It's all so surreal.”

Hard to say, mostly and prrrrobably?

[Rosie Quill]

A guy from Australia scored a bunch of points for a thing.

You know that is very descriptive. But would "a thing" be some type of sport, or what?

[Saris Daddy]

I hate to be that guy buuuuuut a hippogriff dosen't has a cattail or other cat typical features it's a mix of a bird and a horse (points at silver quill)

[Chrome Masquerade]

“Don't worry Steve, I'm sure there'll be a silver lining to this whole mess,” I say with as straight of a face as I can manage.

Want some ice for that burn, Steve?

[Chrome Masquerade]

Ivory giggles, reaches into her mane, and pulls out... a fake mustache? She sticks it under her nose and begins to rub her hands together menacingly. “I'll start plotting right now! I've got my plotting mustache and everything!”

Oh, whitie pie, you so funnay!!