A/N: If y'all are good I might post a third chapter today. *insert Lenny face here*

"So you burned your tongue…"

"Yes."

"And it turned you into a…"

"A midget cartoon unicorn with wings, yes."

"And in a little bit Panacea of New Wave is going to come to our house just to check out your body and make sure you, a midget cartoon horse, are physically fine?"

"Eyup."

"Christ alive!" Dad said, leaning back in his seat while throwing a hand over his face. I gave a nervous shrug. It was a much shorter explanation than I first thought, but that was because there was no logical way to explain it. The hard part would be facing what was next.

"Taylor…" Dad said, shifting forward in his seat. I was sitting across from him, placing my rear end in a seat while using the front legs to prop me up. I wasn't sure if it was really sitting if one-half of me was technically standing, but I had many more questions about my body than that. "How about mentally?" He finished asking. "Are you doing okay."

I opened my mouth to reassure him that I was, but then I stopped myself and considered. Was I? I didn't just gain powers, which would have been game-changing in the first place, I changed whole bodies.

But then again, my old body hadn't been that great either. I had just started running after nearly falling into a trap set by the bullies, but it had been too soon to see any improvement. Before this, I had still a pudge belly that didn't look flattering. I recall my face had been the topic of choice for the three b-b-b- meanies. At least now no one could argue I looked adorable.

But that didn't change the fact I could never go back out in public again. And while that bothered me it was overshadowed by the fact I wouldn't have to go back to school. Something lost something gained I supposed.

Now that I think about it the whole things with the fingers while not actually having fingers was probably the only thing holding me together here. I didn't understand it, it let me pick up small objects, it let me press buttons, but wouldn't let me untangle knots or scratch an itch. It was like they were there just to taunt me.

I took a breath and answered my father. "I guess I'm doing alright, for now." All things considered, I was just glad for a change in the status quo. It wasn't the greatest improvement on my life, but it could still turn out to be an improvement. I had a chance to get away from school, and a chance to do some good, maybe even turn this horse body into a good thing. Yes, I'm certain that I can put a positive spin on at least some of this.

"Then I guess there is nothing to do but wait." My father said with a sigh.

"And make dinner." I reminded him absently.

"Oh," he said a little crestfallen. "Do you think you can eat pizza?"

I paused and thought about it. Bread, tomatoes, and cheese. That's all things a horse can eat right?

"I don't know," I answered. "But do you think you could get some apples with it?"

***

I was munching on an apple core when there was a knock on the door. I turned my head and looked at the clock. It was about eight, late enough for the sun to have set. I don't remember when I had placed my call to New Wave, but it had been a while ago. Since then I practiced walking around and flapping my wings. While I pretty much mastered walking and took a few tentative attempts at trotting, flying was a no go. While it had taken me off the ground a little bit it also launched me across the room and face first into a wall where I had to spend a couple seconds sitting still to stop my eyes from rolling around in my head. Literally. It appeared the cartoonish aspects were not just limited to how I looked.

My father answered the door for me, which I was glad because knobs appeared to be really hard to use without real fingers. These fake things don't appear to get the concept of a knob most of the time. If I push my hoof against it and gave them a twist there was a fifty-fifty chance the hoof was going to turn the knob against all known science.

Magic horse powers, truly a wonder.

When Panacea came into our house she was flanked on her left side by Glory Girl, who hovered slightly off the ground and looked around our house curiously. Now that Glory Girl was here in her bright white costume I was feeling a little subconscious of the way our house looked. It wasn't messy per se, but it was old. And when a house was old you tended to just accept things as fact about it that you forget. The same way that you might never realize how suggestive a song is or how many swear words are in it until you're showing it to your parents.

I took a deep breath and rounded the corner so they could see me clearly. Their reactions were immediate.

Panacea's eyes widened like she couldn't quite believe it though no doubt she was told what I had said over the phone. Glory Girl, on the other hand, she grinned widely and suddenly started flying across the room.

Before I could protest I was in the air, being held outstretched by Glory Girl from underneath the pits of my two front legs. I did my best to look put off, but I wasn't sure it worked with the way the cartoon physics were going.

"Oh my god Amy! I told you she was for real! Look at her! She is absolutely adorable." I was ninety percent sure that she was about to crush me in a hug when Panacea walked up and said,

"Victoria! You can't just randomly pick people off the floor! Even if they happen to be… cute little unicorn pegasus ponies." Glory Girl made a pouty face at her but thankfully put me down. I really hoped that wasn't going to be a common thing.

"Could you please… just make sure I'm going to be okay?" I asked shyly.

"Of course," Panacea said without a shred of emotion. She knelt down and got closer, allowing me to see the upper half of her face more clearly as it wasn't concealed with her scarf. She looked just as bad as she did in the photos I saw of her earlier today. Stress, determined, constantly irritated, but more than anything, really tired. For some odd reason, I found it familiar.

"Do I have permission to touch you?" Panacea asked cryptically. I nodded to her and she reached forward, slightly brushing behind my ears as she laid a hand on my neck.

I watched her expression change as she did whatever it was she was doing to my body. Her eyes widened at first and then they narrowed as if searching for something. Seconds stretched into minutes of silence as Panacea worked. Oddly enough, it was Glory Girl who broke the silence.

"Um, sis? What's taking so long?"

My father's head immediately snapped to look at her in alarm.

"You mean this isn't normal?" He questioned, looking a little apprehensive.

"For case 53s?" Panacea suddenly countered with before taking her hand away from me. "Yes, sometimes their biology can be a little mixed up. But her's…" she trailed off for a moment.

"Ames?" Glory Girl said, reaching out and poking her on the tip of her nose. "You wanna finish that thought?"

"For the most part, she has a normal horse biology," Panacea answered, shooting a glare at her sister as she rubbed her nose. "But there is some kind of bio-circuitry, reaching out from her stomach and heart and running all along her body. The circuits collect in her wings, horn, and leg muscles. I just can't tell what they do."

"My wings can lift me off the ground," I said without really thinking about it. I stretched my wings open wide to draw attention to them. "Maybe the circuits are part of my power? Some sort of Breaker effect?" Panacea and Glory Girl looked at each other and they before shrugged before turning back to me.

"It could be anything," Panacea answered. "But if your wings give you flight, then you should be able to do something with your horn if that is the case."

I frowned. "Like what?"

"Knowing powers?" Glory Girl said. "Probably blowing stuff up or something like that."

It was a thought. From what I knew most, if not all, powers had some sort of offensive use. Something that gave them the ability to keep going. The only question was how to use it.

Well, I learned to use my legs by just letting instinct take over, and when it came to flying I pretty much did what felt natural. So if I just let my horn do what it wants…

I focused on a chair across the room and tried shooting it. Going with the theory that powers were almost uniformly offensive I could imagine some sort of laser beam shooting out of it and obliterating the chair. After a few moments of thought, I may have felt something give around my horn. I focused harder and pushed, but it didn't feel like my horn was willing.

"Taylor," my dad suddenly said. "You're glowing."

I glanced upwards on instinct. While I couldn't see my horn I could see a glow of some sort. It was light silvery purple like my mane had been.

"You're doing something," Glory Girl observed.

"Isn't this a little dangerous?" Panacea asked, taking a few steps back. My dad nodded in agreement silently.

"Oh, it'll be fine." Glory Girl waved them off. "Besides, she's an adorable little horse. What could she possibly do?"

A little more than reassured to continue I tried something else. Instead of trying to push whatever energy this was out of my horn I let it flow out without any input from me. Now that it was going, I could sort of feel the energy moving through my horn.

As the energy seeped out of me I realized it was sinking into the surrounding room. I could feel it everywhere now, giving me an odd intuitive sense of the room around me in a three-dimensional sense. It was rather disorienting.

Attempting to ignore it, I focused back on the chair, directing all the energy in the room at it. I lost my sense of the room, but the chair glowed. For a minute nothing happened. Then a realize the chair didn't have the weird energy in it, the energy was holding it.

With hardly any effort at all, I raised up the chair into the air with the same silvery purple glow that was coming off my forehead. All the eyes in the room swivelled towards it to watch it curiously.

Moving the chair up and down wasn't all that hard, once I had this energy around it I could feel it like it was a part of myself. Then it was as easy as moving a leg back and forth. I decided to experiment and tried to squeeze it a little. See if I could make the wood groan like it always did when I sat down in it.

The chair was crushed instantly.

"Have I mentioned that I'm really sorry for picking you up earlier," Glory Girl apologized as I had stopped levitating a chair and started levitating thousands of splinters. I barely heard her as I felt the innumerable amount of little spines of wood float around in my telekinesis. I started to arrange them, one splinter after another until they all stood in a few thousand rows. Each one pointing back at me and the others.

"You can stop now Taylor," my father said softly. Realizing what I was doing, I willed the splinters down the kitchen and shoved them into the garbage can.

"Alright," Glory Girl said with renewed energy. "That was marginally terrifying. But pretty sweet, overall."

"I guess," I said with a shake of my head. I barely felt that chair resist at all. I could only imagine what else I could do. Particularly if I had a person in my grasp... "Was there anything else about my body you noticed?" I asked, trying to change the subject of my thoughts. I wasn't expecting much. Just the discovery of these circuits had been a pretty big all things considered.

"Actually, yes." Panacea answered. She walked forward and knelt down next to me again, reaching out to put a hand on my neck again. "You have strange cell structures, the kind I sometimes see in shapeshifters. And considering the kind of change your power gave you, you might be able to go back to human form."

"No case 53 has been able to get back to human form," I pointed out. Panacea shrugged.

"But all other case 53s lost their memories, so you're already a little different." I frowned. I had already tried to turn back into a human. Several times over the last hour, but nothing had happened.

"There might be something blocking it," Panacea suggested as if reading my thoughts. "If you try to go back into a human form, I might be able to see it and change it."

"It's worth a try I suppose," I said, clearly not too hopeful of it. I closed my eyes anyway and thought hard about being human. I focused on the details, what walking felt like, what standing upright was like, how certain things felt against my skin. When I opened my eyes, nothing had changed.

I looked at Panacea pointedly and she furrowed her eyebrows.

"Something was happening." Panacea stated seriously. "It was slow, but a change was happening."

"So, what?" My father asked, inserting himself back into the conversation. "Can she turn back into her normal self? Are you saying it's possible?" It wasn't hard to pick out the hopefulness in his voice, being so sickly sweet I cringed inwardly.

"It might be," Panacea said with a heavy sigh as she rose off the ground. "When I say slow, I mean it. Whatever change there is going to be, it could take hours."

I suppose for someone else their heart would have dropped at that, but I was a little more glad that there was a change to be had at all. I suppose if I found a way to focus on things for hours on end like I had before I might actually stand a chance to become human again. But if that is the case, what is it going to be like trying to be a hero? If it takes hours to move between them I might as well just stay in one form and never change. Although, if this is possible, I'll have the most tightly sealed secret identity of any parahuman. Barring all of New Wave now. Which just might mean my entire secret identity is already blown. Dang it.

"Well, that's all I can do for now." Panacea said, lifting her arms slightly in a helpless gesture. "From what I see she is physically fine. You shouldn't see any problems."

"Well, thanks anyway," Dad said with a sigh. "I know you probably don't normally do house calls so thanks for that too."

"No problem." Glory Girl answered before turning to Panacea. "Come on sis, we've got ice cream at home."

Panacea shook her head at her as Dad showed them to the door. "Take me back to the hospital, I have a few patients to wrap up."

"But Amyyy-" She was cut off when my father shut the door behind them. Dad turned and pressed his back against the door and let out a sigh while shaking his head. It was then I realized why Panacea's sunken expression had looked so familiar, it was something my dad wore a lot of the time.

"Look, Taylor," he started shakily. "It's been a long day, and this is a lot to process. You think we can discuss this in the morning?"

I felt a pang of sympathy for him. That, combined with the full expectation of a serious conversation about this to be incredibly awkward, I took him up on his offer.

"Yeah, I'm ready to head to bed. That thing with the chair really took a lot out of me." As soon as I said I realized it was kind of true. It wasn't a physical exhaustion, but it was tiring all the same. And it was a little startling I hadn't notice it first.

"Yeah, that's good," he answered with a half-hearted nod. "Now, are you going to need clothing?"

Wait, what?

A/N: So, a few questions and clarfications. Taylor CAN change back into a human, but as hinted at it takes about an hour to actually do and there are some pretty obvious physical changes to her human form I'll get into the next chapter. And it only take about ten minutes to go from human to horse, and will start happening if she ins't paying attention like Imp's power. Now, some questions for you;
1) Would you like to see this story get taken out of Brockton Bay? It was suggested by my idea trampoline, Brandon, that I take this to a whole new city, new capes, new everything, and start fresh. And if you would like to see this happen, comment the kinds of settings, structures, capes, gangs, or anything you would like to see. (Even if the answer is overwelhmingly yes I will still spend several chapters in Brockton Bay where she mets the local heros and what not)
2) Her cape name. If you have an idea, let me know. And if there is some reason or meaning behind it be sure to include that. I was thinking something really simple, but inspiring. Like The Alicorn, because everyone is going to know who that is. It would be like naming yourself Hero. *silently looks at cannon Worm*
I might post more questions later if they occur to me.