Epilogue: Recovery
Several months later…
Preston whined as Lauren lifted her head, holding another broken feather in her mouth. She spat it to one side, then shoved the filly deeper down into the plush of the mattress. “Quit struggling! It’s harder if you don’t hold still!”
Ponies were flexible, younger ones even more so. Preston turned to glare over her shoulder without difficulty. “You said you’d be gentler this time! I don’t think that last one was ready to come out yet!”
Lauren glanced down, and saw there was indeed a few drops of blood clinging to the shaft of the broken feather. “Sorry!” She touched her head slightly to the top of Preston’s, then pulled away. “Looks like that was the last one, anyway. Let me just…” She lowered her head again, taking her time to return every misaligned feather on Preston’s wings to their proper place, spreading oil on each one as she went.
Preening had not become less dull, but having someone to help and talk to meant she could at least pass the time without entirely losing her mind. Her own wings were already prepared, since she had gone first. Preston always wanted to go last, as though that might make the simultaneously boring and intimate process less of either.
They hadn’t shared a room before, but things were different now. A single bed felt like a vast ocean, swallowing both of them with room for half a dozen more ponies if they needed it. Neither of them had felt strange to be sharing it, like it was a nest atop a seaside cliff. Of course their ability to fly couldn’t completely eliminate another frequent difficulty when it came to living in human spaces: everything was gigantic. The difficulty of erecting ramps and stepstools all over the room was part of the reason they had elected to share.
The bedroom door swung open, which was easier now that it never fully shut. Like every door in the house either one of them used, handles had been replaced with long lengths of rope, which could pull the door open from either side.
Mom stood in the doorway, hands on her hips. “You two are still here?” She rolled her eyes, then glanced down at her watch. “You missed the bus twenty minutes ago.” Lauren had since learned just how much sharper her eyes were. In this case, they were even sharp enough to pick out the little scar on the side of her mother’s arm, where the inoculation had been injected about a month ago.
The inoculation that let a human interact closely with a pony. As it turned out, ponies only remained “contagious” for a few days after transforming. Only fluid contact could spread it after that. That was still dangerous enough to mandate the inoculation for anyone who lived in households with ponies. They would need it again in a few years, though nobody was entirely sure how many years it would take.
Lauren rolled away from her sister and stood on the bed. Even so, she was at least two full feet shorter than her mother. “The bus is stupid!” She hopped down off the bed, spreading her wings as she did so. The gesture was all it took to slow her fall. She landed lightly, instead of the painful sprawl she would’ve been in if she had just tried to jump down almost three times her height. She bent down to where her saddlebags had been dropped the night before, and started to fight with the connectors.
Seeing her struggle, her mother bent down to help, loosening the straps with one hand. As much as it embarrassed her not to be fully independent, Lauren enjoyed the feeling of a warm hand against her coat, so she didn’t resist. Lauren never bothered with clothes anymore, aside from the scarf and goggles for windy days. “There.” Her mother rose, looking back up towards the bed. “Hold on sweetie, you don’t have to get down.” She lifted Preston’s bag, helping her too. “There.” She stepped back. “Am I driving you?”
“No!” They answered in unison, then giggled. Lauren added: “Just open the window!”
The towering woman frowned, then sighed. “Do you have to?”
“Well, we’re pegasus ponies now. Every machine in the world is made for humans; we can’t drive, we can’t levitate things like unicorns can. Why wouldn’t we use the powers we do have?”
Her mother flipped the latch and pulled the window wide, letting in the chill of a winter breeze. There was no snow yet, but it was cold enough.
Lauren twisted on her scarf, and she watched Preston do the same along with warm socks on each hoof. She needed Mom’s help with those too. “You don’t have to. I’m more than happy to take you.”
“Psh.” Lauren spread her wings and fluttered up onto the dresser beside her mother. Had she been human sized, the distance might’ve been almost twenty feet away. She didn’t even hesitate, flying past her mother without bumping her and settling lightly on the wood. “We’ve got this. Flying takes like half the time it would take to drive there.” She spread her wings, stretching each one. They cracked and popped with the gesture, as though they had been knuckles on her hands. Hands she… didn’t have anymore.
Her mother only watched, as one might watch an exotic bird perched beside her. And that was exactly how their mother saw her, Lauren knew. Colorful, exotic, and delicate. Still, that was better than her father, who refused to pick them up for fear he might accidentally hurt them. And Preston, well… their father wouldn’t even look at her anymore.
Her sister was quite a bit more hesitant with her flight, but made it up onto the dresser without much trouble. “Lead the way?”
“You know it!” Lauren gave her an encouraging nuzzle, then jumped out her second story window.
The fear of flying was all gone now, vanished into months of careful practice. She didn’t frantically beat her wings as she had done her first few times, just spread them wide. Air rushed past her as loud as an open window on the highway, filling her wings and slowing her fall. As she came within a few feet she tilted herself upward and flapped, sending herself into a powerful climb.
Lauren was larger than almost all birds, and faster too. Soon she was level with the second story. She passed Preston still sticking a fearful head out the window, and called towards her: “C’mon! You don’t wanna be late!”
Her sister slid out of the opening a little more cautiously, like a child nervous about jumping into a deep pool. Preston was the only pegasus Lauren knew who was afraid of heights, and she made no attempt to hide that fear from her sister. Lauren had agreed to be the only pegasus who didn’t make fun of Preston for her fear.
“You don’t have to fly with her.” She heard her mother’s voice from within, soothing. “I can still take you.”
“No.” Preston advanced another step, her face hardening. “I’m going.” The filly hesitated a few moments more, then jumped with a whimper into the air. She didn’t plummet, as her fear might’ve suggested was about to happen, but started moving up almost immediately. Despite their resemblance to birds, much of how they flew was very unlike avians. Despite their mass and comparatively un-aerodynamic bodies, they needed no running start or vast wingspans to lift them. The desire to fly was power enough.
Even so, Preston had to flap her undeveloped wings twice for each beat of Lauren’s. She didn’t seem to mind, and took up formation just behind her. “Let’s see how high we can get!”
“Fly safe!” Their mother waved, leaning out the window after them.
“Like we wouldn’t!” Lauren shouted back, then slowed down so she was closer to her sister. “Think you can make it all the way to the clouds this time?”
Preston’s teeth clenched with determination. “I’ll make it!”
They didn’t, but it wasn’t Preston’s fault. After a few minutes of flight, Lauren glimpsed a familiar group of ponies moving on the sidewalk, and she shouted “Hey, Preston!”
Her sister slowed to an awkward stop in the air, hovering with hummingbird wings. “Yeah?”
“I’m… I wanna talk to my friends. Can we go to the clouds on the way home?”
“Sure.” Preston’s ears flattened, but she didn’t object. Her eyes were just as sharp, and by then she had seen the direction Lauren was looking. “Let’s go.”
Lauren landed with a flurry of wings and hooves, scattering dust and debris with the force of the wind she made. None of her friends here had wings of their own, and so her landing was met with a collective eyeroll. A few seconds later, Preston settled down behind her, much less dramatically. Her friends didn't seem to mind; like all ponies, they were friendlier than they had been before.
“Do you always have to make such an entrance?” Carol asked, flicking her mane back into place. “You could just land like Parker.”
“I could just spend the whole day on a cloud, too.” She grinned. “But that's less fun than it sounds, too.”
She only got another eyeroll, and Jen nudging her with one shoulder. The earth pony probably didn't mean for it to be too hard, but her fantastic strength was enough to almost knock Lauren down with a tap. “Whatever, birdpony. Just don't land on anyone.”
Lauren grinned back, catching herself before she actually fell. Her friends had always liked to tease each other, and even being ponies hadn't changed that. “Haven't yet!”
Carol groaned, then leaned a little closer. “Did you hear about Ohio?”
She shook her head, slowing a little to make room for Preston to squeeze in beside her. Nobody minded; ponies didn't care much about personal space.
“You haven't?” Neil, her only male friend who still was, grinned mischievously at the news. “You really ought to keep a closer eye on current events, Lauren. Stuff doesn't stop happening just because you close your eyes.”
“I don't like watching the news.”
Preston spoke up, her young voice barely a squeak. “What happened in Ohio? More attacks?”
“Not even.” Neil's attention turned on her, and his expression softened a little. Her friends could be merciless, but they frequently showed the filly a little more compassion. “They're building a pony city. A whole city, just for ponies!”
“Buildings the right size!” Carol gestured with her hooves.
“No being mistaken for stray dogs in the dark,” Jen grunted.
Neil stopped walking, right before the doors to the school. “They've already got hundreds of ponies who want to move in! It's gonna be the coolest thing ever!” All around them, ponies swarmed up the steps, saddlebags loaded with books and supplies. For every ten ponies there was one human, those few who hadn't been on-campus during the attack. Most of those were seniors, making them seem even bigger. Ponies flowed around them like water, keeping far enough away that they wouldn't be kicked.
“Adults too, not just kids?”
“Psh,” Carol gestured all around. “Except for your sister, we're all adults. Another year, and we'll graduate. By then, half the town will already be built. News said anypony who wants to could move. You should come!”
Lauren wanted to answer, but at that point she was swept up into the crowd, and had to practically swim against it to make it to the office for her student assistant class.
Life was different, and so far it didn’t seem like the transformation would ever be reversed. Ponies were just another part of western society now. What had been intended to inflict crippling casualties had instead created an entirely new type of person.
Lauren didn’t really know what would happen now. She didn’t know if their parents would eventually decide to be ponies too, to take care of them better. She didn’t know if having communities made up of tiny “magical” beings was going to work.
She didn’t feel like she had to know. She wasn’t living in the school anymore; she had her friends and her sister and parents who supported her. It didn’t matter that she didn’t have hands, or that she was smaller than most dogs.
It was enough.
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6891220
My apologies, it appears some of it wasn't submitted correctly. It's been published now, though!
6891585 Damn this should've been longer.
My only complaint was that it was short. But you made it work. Usually short stories skip the boring things, but you somehow made each bit and left nothing underspoken.
Excellent work, my dear man. Woman. Someone. Somepony.
Damn it.
I'm going to go and try and make a gender neutral term called Zem.
You've got the talent Star. I read this in it's previous incarnation, and I love it even more now. You tied up the story nicely with the last two chapters, that injection of 'life finds a way', hope and 'a new day' leaving us as reading with a better sense of fulfilment. Both transformation and adaptation. Nicely done as always Starscribe!
That description screams TCB. PER anyone?
This story was.... cute.
That's pretty much the only word i think i need for the purpose.
It had an interesting premise, was executed well and had a satisfying ending. If i had one complaint, it made me want more, tbh. and if you REALLY want me to nitpick, i saw a few serious grammatical errors,
but there's nothing else that's really needed for me to declare this a good story. 8 points on the
itude meter!
Zutcha is so pervasive in your stories that it was their cover art that made me take a look at this long enough to see the author and add it to the queue.
I won't say this story was short, but what I will say is it doesn't really have an arc. By the end, there's no real resolution, the biggest mysteries are left unresolved and the characters don't really change/grow or anything. This feels more like a primer for a setting than an actual, stand alone story.
6892327 exactly. I would probably be dancing up and down in joy
The perfect weapon... that nobody actually thought to test before deploying it?
As others have said, was a cute and interesting story of a sorts but it doesn't feel like it goes anywhere or does anything outside of building the basic frame of a setting. An interesting idea, I just wish it had more direction or more of an obvious goal in it's telling outside of just being there. I guess "Life goes on" is the current default outcome.
6893390 Test? Who need test? I am a genius! My plan can't fail!
6892974 It's less a short story then a story cut short.
There was something building up and then bam! Epilogue! It's over! Bye!
6893871
And that kind of attitude is how you (somehow, God only knows why) get equinomorphic mutagens when you actually wanted that new strain of turbo-Ebola.
6893882 I can't help but to think of The Great Dictator by Chaplin, with these scientist demonstrating new revolutionnary inventions to Hynkel only to have these invention fail them.
6894040
Now there's an excellent movie that I really have to watch again one of these days.
God damn it. I want me some wings!
Oh and how awesome would it be if instead of smallpox this was the contagion in The Division?
6893882 Some people call that Ebolapox and believe that it actually exists.
After all,we don't know what happened in the labs of Soviet Union during the Cold war.
6894085
It wouldn't entirely surprise me. Ebola's main flaw as a biological weapon is that it kills too quickly. It's highly transmissible and lethal, but it incapacitates and kills so fast, it barely has any real time to spread through a population before it burns itself out. In the end, though, there's not much we could do about it even if they had, so what point in worrying?
I feel my soul being beaten every time I hear people complaining "want this irl"We were told that virus worked wrong and turned everybody into ponies while the story strongly implies that transformation was,in fact,planned.You can't screw with Ebolapox so much that it turns victims into colorful ponies instead of killing them.Also note that victims aren't just transformed,but given supernatural abilities, the ones that MLP ponies have.
I don't think it's the right time for conspiracy time, but there definetly were people(ponies?) who wanted humans to be transformed.Somewhat PER-like,as was stated by previous commenters.
(Conspiracy is supported by the fact that MLP isn't a thing in the universe of the story since nobody understands what is happening so nobody besides organizers could knew about ponies or their abilities)
Ah, hehe. I haven't read this story yet, but before I do, just wanna say that the title and the cover-image was pretty funny in that it looked like the primary casualties were people's suspenders
This was an excellent story. I find myself rapidly becoming a fan of transformation stories (hell, I've been posting one myself lately), and I like ones that focus on the characters and their reactions to it rather than on the event itself. I suppose that's why I'm not quite as adamant about finding out the how and why this all came about. I do admit, it does sound like it could be the start of a larger story, or at least spawn other stories in this universe, but really, it works as it's own self-contained work.
And, of course, dammit, it's giving me more story ideas of my own. Like I needed any more ...
6892386 God i have not read it but that made me laugh
6894371 If you sing that song, though, you might run into Vegeta who'll be quite angry that you're thwarting his plans.
6894083 Xcom 2 Baby the return of project starburst
6894539 Already preordered my friend! One of my buddies is gonna make a pony total conversion. All the soldiers civvies and advent troops are all gonna be ponies.
I'm so excited!
Know any more stories like this one? People turning into ponies is so interesting to me.
What a fantastic story.
6892390 h0i!
Well, that was interesting. Not much else to say beyond that, but I quite enjoyed it. And the mental image of ponified Obama was more than a little hilarious. Do you have anything else planned for this setting?
Gah wefohwebifubdniewj I love this ending w0rohdnwe
We need a sequel...
Or something...
This was amazing!!!
6894732 she wrote another one, and I've wrote one, and... That's all I can remember.
Her story's called The last pony on earth, and it has a lot of reeeeallly great chapters.
Mine's only just got to the second.
Oh wait there's also Project: Sunflower. It's a really good read too ;3
6894817 so you're just pretty much a constant downer, huh?
6894817 It's not fetish
It's transformation. I mean, transformation of gender isn't really fetish. It may seem close, yes, but it really seems to just be a twist on the idea of turning into a pony, since all major populations in the show consist of mares, so I'm just guessing they decided to do that. I may not be right or anything though, of course :3
But whatevs. Dislike what you want. But I'd watch out for the downvoters
I mean, you could try to actually describe what you don't like in a nice way, not bombarding the story in some rude 'this sucks I hate it so it's fetish' kind of thing
6894817
Didn't you quit forever or something?
This...didn't really go anywhere. Like, you introduced a conflict, hinted at some kind of conspiracy, gave just enough details to make the conspiracy utterly nonsensical (human terrorists, including a presumably large number of untrained schoolchildren, successfully conduct hundreds of simultaneous attacks nationwide -- yet despite all that flawless military-level coordination are completely unaware of what their pathogen actually does?), and momentarily drew attention to a rather terrifying loss-of-self deal. Then the story abruptly ended on what appeared to be an earnest high note that completely ignored said terrifying loss-of-self.
6894817
Dang, I thought that we were finally free from you and your total lack of respect for any other human beings. Grow up, remove head from ass, and go back to AO3. If you have anything worthwhile or intelligent to say here on FimFic, don't. Your understanding of the meanings of both of those adjectives is obviously broken.
Author, don't listen to this asshat. This isn't my type of story, but I'll give a thumbs up anyways. Keep on writing, keep your head held high, and congrats on getting featured!
~Doc
6894817
Dafuq does canon even have to do with any of this?
The story already includes humans, of course it's non-canon.
6895880
The male to female population disparity.
In the first season there were not many male ponies in the show so many writers assume that there is a population disparity when they write fics. In later seasons the population is 50/50 male/female or very close to that number.
That is the cannon part he is talking about.
Forcing a male character to become female to fit into a population disparity that does not exist in the show rubs some people the wrong way.
The same thing can be said about sexual orientation. If you assume that the season one shows are more accurate then either they must have herd families or most of the females are gay (partly because there are not enough males to go around). Later shows with a 50/50 population proves at least some of that wrong...
There is nothing wrong with someone being gay. Forcing someone to be gay because of a perceived population disparity ... that also rubs some people the wrong way ...
6895400 6895495 6895674 6895794 6895880 If you look to your left people, you will see RealityCheck being a dunce as he just rants about absolutely nothing related to the story!
Seriously though, I never thought that comments related to this guy about him being an asshole actually ended up being true... I'm ashamed of myself for just seeing one of his comments and after just meeting this author online here and now...
I want to give him the benefit of the doubt but as my first look into this specific author with just this comment, I'm about to say that wow... you have a lot to go through mate... I can definitely give him respect as a writer but as a person? I just cannot follow if he's like this all the time 
Am I a bad person for recognizing Zutcha's art and immediately assuming the story was by Starscribe?
6894817 Look everyone, it's a ghost!
A dead account is speaking to us from beyond the grave!
6896283 Absolutely not
6894817 Didn't you say that you were going to leave Fimfiction alone?
I appreciate the excellent writing in all categories (which I've found is typical of most of your writing FD - even if you have gotten better your older work is still enjoyable and worthwhile), but I can't help but shake the feeling that this is a story in the most technical definition of the word. Even the epilogue kind of leaves things on a matter-of-fact note. To paraphrase the Simpsons, there's no real moral to the story, it's just a bunch of stuff that happened, and there doesn't seem to be any meaning to it. Knowing that you have written several disparate stories in the same universe before, this may or may not lead into something, but otherwise I must confess I'm confused at how many loose ends you left that were tied up by simply having the characters not care about them.
This isn't a direct criticism since I know you're more than capable of working excellent themes into your fanfiction, but it did leave me kind of disappointed seeing nothing stimulating about its motifs or insight (or, more precisely, the lack of insight) the way you did with Minor Miscalcs or TLPOE. Maybe these characters will show up again sometime and I'll have my answer then?
If I had to guess, I would say this is a prelude to some sequel narrative from Preston's POV; I'm detecting some similarities between her and Logan, and considering that she questions things constantly about the new situation she finds himself in, she's not one to say "it's enough." If so, it certainly would also make sense from a storytelling standpoint, since it would make Casualties the fic that sets the tone and provides the atmosphere only for Preston to rip it all apart and add a more transcendent theme.
Whether or not you do, this is regardless a strong example of your skill in vivid language and it deserves its accolades.
6895400 6895495 6895674 6895794 6895880 6896415 6896521
And cue the dislike from 6894817
Again I want to respect you mate for your amazing writing skills, but I cannot like you if you act like such a prideful, snobby person 
Please, do not start the shit-storm now... Great, for once I actually an using vulgar language here just to prove my point...
6896542
Just ignore him. Negative attention is still attention, and attention horses gonna horse, horse, horse, horse.
Sorry, author, for littering these comments on your story.
~Doc
6896548 Will do, just why do some authors tend to be so trivial...
Not gonna lie... Kind of wanting more
Good read! Thumbed, faved, all that
It kind of feels like Act I of a larger arc. Any plans for an Act II? Life in the new pony city or terrorist pony-mutation conspiracy or some such...
Setting all other issues aside, the one key problem with the story is.... well, it's not a story. It's at most a prologue. It establishes the setting, puts the players in place--- but then nothing develops. There is no plot, no driving conflict and much less any resolution of said conflict. The reader gets the long version of the description: "A school full of kids is infected with a disease that turns them into ponies." And the reader is left sitting there going, "Aaannnnnd......?"