Return to Equestria

by David Silver

19 - Take One and Call Me

"There is a little problem." The Doctor had them all in his room, with David up on the patient's table. "As I mentioned before, we have no healthy samples of your species around. I will want some though. We don't want to just roll the dice and hope you come out as something we like."

David had been, er, written about being a unicorn before… "A unicorn wouldn't be the end of the world."

"Actually!" He drew out a pill from nowhere. "I had a feeling you'd be back, so I went and made one ahead of time, to be ready."

“We had a deal.” Gloomy counted three walls and spoke to the fourth. “You’re a good doctor, Doctor Feel Good. And my jinx is still in play. We all played our part to get here…”

Gloomy tapped her hooves in a furious rhythm. “We had two deals. The first was to get Blue Sky’s medicine tested. The second was to make sure it would work.” She turned on the only biped in the room. “The price has been paid, the path has been laid. It’s all up to you, so what do you do?”

The pill floated up where David could easily snatch it up. When a cup of water floated up beside it, he held up a hand. "Never needed water for a pill before, I won't start now." And in the pill went. He wetted it with his saliva in an idle swish before gulping it down as it was, proving he was still capable of devouring a pill without the help of water. "How quickly does it work?"

"The cat began its healing in… ten minutes, but you are quite a bit larger."

Back rubbed her hooves nervously. "I'm really sad we're losing our human. You were a nice looking human, for a human. Um… Were you a nice looking human?" It hit her, perhaps late, that she was no judge on human aesthetics.

“He’s still going to be a human.” Gloomy looked up with general disinterest. “Just like Charlie. Only the outside changes. He taught me these rules.”

Joypad nodded in firm agreement. "If he wasn't, he wouldn't be our David."

"That's true." Back worried her hooves together. "I must sound so rude, or just selfish, which is rude… I have so many questions. Be healthy!"

"Doing my best." There wasn't much for him to do, except… "Shoot." He put one sneaker against the other and easily kicked it off, repeating with his foot to get the other off. Without saying why, he casually slipped off his socks and tossed them onto the sneakers in an ungainly pile.

“100% of all of your clothes are about to become very awkward.” Her prophecy of fashion doom rang out with the rhythmic shuffling of her little gray unicorn hooves.

There was a reason he got rid of his sneakers, becoming visible as his feet curled on themselves to a painful edge that had him rubbing in the search of comfort. "Dang it." But there was no alleviating the contraction that only grew in intensity as his many toes became one large toe that was capable of supporting him on a dense hoof that was all of his nails combined and fortified for the task. "Huh…" As hooves went, a perfectly suitable set of them at the end of his still bipedal legs.

Back grunted. "When do we know, for sure, you're fixed?"

“The transformation doesn’t have to be complete to cure the condition.” Gloomy shuffled nervously. “We only specified the medicine had to work. The end form never even came up. That was part of the cost. Charlie said he didn’t care what it cost.”

Where there was a hoof, there was fur. A hoof without fur? That just looked odd. David scratched lightly at where it itched with so many hairs growing in thicker suddenly. "I am really sorry, but do you have… a snack?"

Doctor Feelgood let out a thoughtful hum. "I think it's supposed to just use what's there. Are you eating properly?" Despite his complaints, he got a jar of nuts with his magic and brought it over. "These are healthy for your species, I hope?"

"Wow, great." David grabbed the jar and was soon munching on the collection of assorted nuts. "Actually, one of my favorite snacks, so good job there." Mmm, cashew, peanuts, and other nuts beside. David lost track of the itch on the path to devouring the nuts.

There was the ringing noise of an artificial bell, breaking Gloomy’s rhythm, as she pulled her phone out of her pocket to see she had received a text message.

"Did you keep your phone?" David dug out his phone, gained from Zephyr Heights. A quick swipe unlocked it. "It gets service out here?" The fur swept up along either leg, only visible at first as he scratched up along it. "Oh!" He glanced left and right. "Can I use your bathroom?" And off he went, scurrying for privacy, or trying. His progress was quite slow as he found out that hooves did not work exactly the same as feet.

Gloomy’s monotone took on recognizable emotion as she read the text message out loud, as David thrashed about in mid pony transformation.

From: [e-mail]

To: [e-mail]

Don’t worry, my brothers found your doll. He’s fine. Things are complicated right now, but I promise we’re going to return him to you as soon as possible. In the meantime, don’t worry. He’s safe and I promise I’ll take good care of him until we can get him back to you. I know this is gonna be super suspicious but I have to delete this account as soon as I send this. So you have no way to get back in touch with me. Sorry about that.

Love, Luck, and Polypropylene Fellow-And/Or-Future Pippsqueak,

Lady Bug Waifu, Crowned Princess of Cuddle Muffins

Out of sight, David closed the door to the bathroom carefully with barely a sound. He wriggled out of his pants and kicked off his boxers into an uneven pile. "Ah…" He confirmed that the fur had spread up to cover his hips, and brought other changes with it. He was a horse all the way up to a bit under his belly button. "Hm…" He twisted, grabbing the wall for support as he got a look at his back end. Yep… Just as he had suspected.

He had a tail growing in right where it belonged, or didn't belong. But the fur wasn't pressing upwards. He was half a horse. "This happened last time too," he grumbled to himself, not nearly as upset about it as, perhaps, he should have been.

Back Cover raised a hoof beside her snout. "Everything coming out alright in there?"

Joy bonked her new friend. "Did you forget the laundry list of issues? That question is… really rude."

"Huh?" It was only then that the potential meaning dawned on Back and she colored. "Nevermind!"

“Charlie taught me to ask two questions.” Gloomy made a little not-smirk. “‘Did it work?’ and ‘What went wrong?’”

Joy looked over at Gloomy's words. "Are you asking me, or answering? I don't know yet… But he hasn't screamed in agony… So?" Her eyes went to the doctor. "When do we know for sure?"

"When he reports he feels better, and he stays that way. Oh, and we're sure what kind of pony he is. I might have tried something."

Back threw up a hoof. "You were supposed to test it!"

"And I did. Your human is a very willing test subject." He nodded as if that was just a normal thing.

“A willing test subject…. Doctor?” Gloomy smiled. “Like I was?”

In the bathroom, David slipped his boxers back up as far as they could go with his new tail coming in. "You're a cute little thing." A small limb that twitched when he felt it, with fur that was growing thicker by the moment. He grabbed his pants and stepped into them. "And you're going to work even less… He pulled them up anyway, leaving the tail mooshed to the side within them. "Best I got…"

But then came the headache, a hand going to his forehead as he clenched his teeth. Not the first headache he had by far. He was fairly used to grinning and bearing such things, not even looking for painkillers. He waited patiently for it to pass as he breathed a little harder.

Damp? He drew his hand away to see blood on it and he almost fell over in surprise. "The heck?" He wheeled on the mirror in the room and saw blood was oozing down his face in a garish display as something new was poking free of the tortured skin. "Oh damn it… That… is a bad look."

Joy perked an ear. "I hear you moving around in there. If you're having any trouble, you just have to ask." She didn't move towards the bathroom, the shout was apparently enough.

“What did you do, Doctor?” Gloomy tapped a bitter rhythm and scowled. “I know what me and Charlie did, and that’s bad enough, What. Did. You. Do?”

"No need to look at me that way." The doctor of a unicorn adjusted his front with pats of his hooves. "He seemed very indecisive, so I went with his thing. You all were here, wanting to help him, so… his pill uses all of you as samples."

Joy and Back's jaws fell open, gaping at the doctor's words.

“You are a bad doctor, and I am embarrassed on Charlie's behalf that he ever trusted you.” Gloomy heaved a heavy sigh. “On the other hoof, it feels good to admit that. You were always wrong.”

"My patient will be right as rain, just you see." Doctor Feelgood waved a magically gripped pen at Gloomy. "Stop being down about it."

In the bathroom, David hissed and grunted, unable to resist a few choice noises of pain. With a wet parting, his headache hit its peak and, mercifully, began to ebb into a dull throbbing. Through the one eye that wasn't coated in blood, he could see he had a bloody horn protruding from his head. "Great…" Was it a good horn? Heck if he knew… At a quick decision, he couldn't decide if he had improved or not as a complete package.

Water could be heard flowing as he dabbed himself and splashed water. "God damn it!" Still open skin didn't like the touch of water, he found out, slowing in his efforts, but becoming cleaner with each careful motion.

“After this you stop, Doctor” Gloomy nearly snarled with unfamiliar emotion.

Joy reached a hoof for Gloomy's shoulder. "Calm down. Dave! You alright?"

"I'm fine." The door swung inwards. David emerged, clenching his hands, and looking a bit odd. Besides having hooves instead of human feet, he had a unicorn's horn jutting from his head. Still mostly human? "I'm alright."

Back Story inclined her head. "Not all alright… You said all three of us. Why's he got a horn and no… everything else?"

"Three of you?" David joined them in the main area of the clinic. "Did I miss something?"

“The doctor used samples from all three tribes” Gloomy explained plainly.

“This is exactly how Charlie told me this works…”

"Oh…" David patted himself down as if checking for something. "Alicorn, not check… But I am speaking straight, so that's a plus. By the way, I have a tail now. I don't mind having a tail, really. It's kind of cute, but these pants are really not made for a tail."

Joy peered at her human(?). "You know, it's alright to be more upset about this."

Back Story hopped to her hooves. "Maybe this is a human thing. A bonus to mental attacks, neat. I would not have guessed that, and it's uncanny to see in the real world instead of ideas on paper or on screen… I have to rethink everything…" She slowly listed to the right. "After I see your tail. You are going to show us that tail, right?"

Author's Note:

The more things change, right? I did everyone this chapter but Gloomy and the letter she got.

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Comments

[Booster Spice]

I wonder if Siren and Kirin are alternate branches of Hippogriff cross Dragon?

As for Spike, thres been one mention of a smol dragon in merchandise so far, I wonder, if like many franchises, theyve decided that history being legend is biased, and so this time they are going to be like the Pope, and female?

Something about, the great thing about history, is that as theres noone left to argue any different, you can write whatever you believe about it, and make it sell?

[No one is home]

Who could have ever guessed that Doctor Feel Good was a shady Quack?