Author's Notes:

So sorry for the late chapter, hit major writer's block... also real life and general laziness. I also was in Peru for two weeks, so there's also that.

Have at thee!

As much as it is cliché, the phrase “It was a dark and stormy night” applied most well to the scene at hand. Massive waves tore across the ocean as rain poured down in sheets. Gales howled and stirred the waters into an even higher frenzy. Lightning flashed across the sky, illuminating the blackness for brief moments before the darkness returned and thunder ripped into existence.

Miles beneath the surface of the ocean, a complex sat, large and intimidating in its construction. Within its shaded halls and quiet bustle of activity, one would find a series of laboratories stretching from one end of the complex to the other. Within most were strange creatures, some looking half decayed, others barely formed, even fewer appearing whole and healthy. All of them were alive though, and every single one exuded a predatory aura that drove fear into the minds of everyone nearby. Further in, much deeper into the depths of this strange building, sat a single room. Grandly furnished and opulent in the extreme, this room, this office hosted a single occupant.

“Ms. File, if you’d be so kind as to inform our public face of our new plan of action?” A single, immaculately manicured finger pressed an intercom button, a deep, faintly English-accented voice echoing through the vast office.

Sitting back, the mysterious man swept a hand through his short, immaculately styled hair and chuckled, “Step one, complete. Now… let’s see what our dear little dragon is up to, shall we?”

Dark chuckling swept through the office, the man’s burning orange eyes just visible under the curtain of shadows draped over the room.

Hundreds of miles away and in considerably better weather, a certain young man stood on a secluded beach in the middle of Nowhere, Equestria with his girlfriend. Crimson eyes scanned the water’s surface, minute shifts in biology providing detailed analysis of temperature, salinity, contamination, even the average amount of microscopic life found per liter of ocean water.

Apparently satisfied with his examinations, Drake dropped to all fours and changed, taking on the reptilian body of his standard lizard form. From deep within his body, undifferentiated biomass poured out of a pocket dimension and gave mass to the lizard, allowing it to mutate further and extend a series of tubes from its spine. Placing the tubes into the salty water, Drake flexed a series of freshly created muscles and began pumping and filtering water, filling a slowly expanding reservoir tucked firmly underneath the armor of his spine.

Minutes passed until Drake’s back had swelled into a semi-translucent, armored bubble approximately the size of a small car. He rumbled approvingly, turning and waddling away from the beach and into the nearby forest. As he crunched through the underbrush and around the trees, he came upon a clearing with a pre-dug hole in it, just deep enough so that the top of the bubble on his spine would reach above the lip of the hole. Without a second thought, the lizardbeast jumped into the hole, flesh warping and shifting as he fell.

Within seconds, the hole was filled and the edges sealed by a strange, bony substance. The top of the armored bubble opened up and the excess flesh melted into a series of decorative plates and spines around the edge of the pure, steaming pool of freshwater. The bottom of the six foot deep pool bubbled and swelled, forming a small pustule of flesh that quickly reshaped into the form of Drake himself, though his tail was replaced by a fleshy tendril connecting him to the rest of his body. Under the surface of the water, the pool finished taking shape, a ledge growing out and small holes opening here and there. Once finished, Drake rose his puppet body from the water and shouted, “Hey Beth! Bath’s ready!”

An immediate reply came in the form of his girlfriend flying into the clearing and splashing down into the pool, spraying water into the air and splashing Drake’s puppet body. Elizabeth Mason, or as she was now called, Eve sank into the water with a happy groan, allowing her body to relax under the careful pulses and massages of her boyfriend’s highly mutable flesh. Drake’s puppet body dispelled and shifted into a mass of fleshy tendrils, one retrieving a basket of bathing supplies while the rest cradled Eve’s body and massaged it gently, exfoliating and rejuvenating, producing compounds to aid in relaxation and health and filling the water with a calming, light green tint.

Eve smiled and began washing herself down, rubbing shampoo into her hair as Drake’s tendrils continued their gentle ministrations. A thought struck her as she lathered, causing her to chuckle and speak out into the open air, “You know, Drake, isn’t it cheating if I have a hot bath in the middle of a camping trip where we’re supposed to be, and I quote, ‘Roughing it’?”

The pool quivered as Drake’s head formed out of a pile of shifting plates and spines, fixing Eve with an amused look. “Well, y’know, I only ever took that to mean that we wouldn’t have tech more fancy than a flashlight and a gas stove… not that we need those two either.”

Eve chuckled and patted Drake’s head with an unoccupied hand, the other receiving a professional level manicure from more tendrils. “Well, if you put it like that…” She hugged Drake’s disembodied head to her chest, squeezing gently. “Thanks for taking me out here, Drake.”

“Not a problem, Beth. Anything for you, remember?” Drake’s voice came unhindered, its source coming from a raised, almost speaker-like portion of the surrounding plates.

Drake continued massaging his girlfriend as she bathed, taking care to be as thorough as possible. Hours passed, the two engaging in smalltalk and light banter, until finally the sun set and stars filled the night sky. Eve rose from the pool, a last sweep of Drake’s tentacles absorbing the last of the excess water and eliminating the need for towels. As she dressed, Drake’s body dissolved into thick orange slime, absorbing the water and allowing him to reform a few feet away, already clothed. Once he had regained full functionality, he slung an arm over his girlfriend’s shoulders and pulled her in for a hug and a kiss, wrapping around her in a comforting and protective embrace. Smiling at each other, Eve and Drake fell into a contented half-doze, merely sitting and basking in their other’s presence.

No words were needed between them, not when both of them knew exactly how to manipulate their cells to pass on messages in their own special way. Drake often felt that it made the two of them closer than most other couples could ever think about.

At this point, Drake and Eve both felt that there was nothing that could go wrong with their moment, their camping trip.

“Doctor Code, if you’d be so kind as to release test subject, oh let’s say…. 393 out for a little test run, that would be wonderful.”

“Yes sir! You heard the boss! Release 393!”

But then again, when had anything ever gone right for the bio-manipulating couple? As a single, fleeting strand of paranoia flashed through Drake’s neurons, a minute hiss of air and an unnoticeable whine signaled the movement of a patch of grass some thirty meters behind the cuddling lovebirds. Metal plates retracted in an iris pattern, grass and disturbed soil falling into the depths of an absurdly deep and dark tunnel.

Within the blackness, a pair of glowing orange eyes lit up as their owner awoke and began growling. Immediately, it caught the scent of Drake and Eve, their entwined aromas enticing a massive worm-like creature to slither from its holding cell and out into the open night air. Slimy, soft flesh compressed and squeezed out from a too-small opening, bringing a seemingly impossible length of heavily mutated and genetically engineered flesh and blood from underground. What was currently exposed already showed a length exceeding a hundred meters, segmented with soft, stubby legs akin to those of a salamander. Hundreds of legs worked at the soil, digging in with strangely sharp claws and hauling the worm to freedom. It swung its centipede-esque head around, six eyes gleaming and jaws scything through the air. Long, feathery antennae scented the air and gave it direction. And with a quiet hiss of hunger and sadism, it dove underground, all six hundred feet of worm sliding underground at frankly ludicrous speeds.

Drake and Eve, however, had not noticed the creature, so engrossed were they in the subjective majesty of the other’s presence. At some point, their clothes had been abandoned, though they simply clung to each other. Sex, for the both of them, was something that neither of them needed no matter how amazing it was. For now, it was just the two of them.

That is, until the ground erupted in front of them and the centipede-worm launched from the earth and coiled around, head raised in an intimidating gesture. Both Drake and Eve immediately sprung to a stand, Drake’s tail glowing with blinding heat and Eve’s hands glowing with charging laser beams. The worm itself sized the pair up before previously unseen slits along its sides opened and a quiet hiss of escaping gas filled the air.

Drake’s eyes immediately widened and he slammed his hand over Eve’s mouth, flesh warping and twisting to form a crude gas mask even as he melted his flesh down and removed his nose and mouth, lungs quietly dissolving inside him as he shifted his body’s structure to become anaerobic and chemosynthetic. With a single reverberating growl from deep within his chest, the lizard-man leapt into the air and swung his tail down into the worm’s head, eliciting a screech of pain as it flailed. Steaming orange liquid poured from the gash upon the flailing beast’s head, dousing the ground and causing grass to wither and dissolve. The air filled with hissing, from the ground, from the worm, even from Drake.

The worm continued flailing, limbs catching its own hide as it slashed itself open in a bizarre ritual of self mutilation, bleeding acid and spraying the corrosive droplets through the air. Drake caught the tail end of one spray and immediately his lungs came back as his mouth tore itself open, allowing him to scream in horrific agony.

Where the acid had struck, Drake’s flesh had blackened and decayed, even with his regenerative ability, the necrotic flesh kept expanding in area, slowly covering his limbs and abdomen with spots of black. As he writhed on the ground, he had the good sense to fall away from the slowly expanding pool of orange, viscous acid, instead using his tail to drag himself away from the scene of devastation while jettisoning whole chunks of flesh as the acid ate through them. The worm kept up its self-mutilation, expanding the acid pool around it even as its wounds hissed closed and continually reopened. Around the worm was a discolored patch of air, nearly twenty feet in diameter and growing. What it did, not even Drake could tell. Eve remained in the background, scanning the worm’s mitochondria to see just what it could do.

No such luck. She soon had to press a hand to her head and reorder her own cells to stave off the utter headache that came from trying to read constantly shifting mitochondria. In some areas, it was a direct mirror to… Drake’s… mito….

“Shit! Drake! I think this thing knows how to change its DNA just like you do!” she shouted, barely getting the sound through the gas mask that Drake had so roughly clamped to her face. From where he lay recuperating from the acid, Drake looked at the worm with narrowed eyes, pupils shifting and retinas moving aside as his eyes changed their internal structures to suit his needs. Twin pinpricks of light grew from the depths of his crimson orbs and lanced out across the space between Drake and the worm, the initial flash paving the way for the absolutely massive arcs of light flashing from Drake’s eyes.

Both beams struck the worm and tore through it the same way they tore through most everything else: messily and with the stench of smoke and ozone. When the lasers finally died down, the worm’s headless, charred corpse flopped into the pool of acid it had generated, twitched a few times, and lay still.

Drake sighed and ran a hand through his hair as he stood. He groaned aloud and turned to Eve, “Beth, looks like we’re gonna have to cut this trip short. We’d… we’d better re… re….” Drake trailed off as he collapsed to his knees, blood dripping from his nose and eyes unfocused. He stared down at his hands as they erupted into a frenzy of tendrils and whips, trying in vain to fight off the strange chemicals racing through his body. Drake’s world went numb, colors fading and sounds blurring together into a constant droning whine. Eve screamed and rushed over to him as the gas mask over her face fell to the ground and dissolved. She cradled his head in her lap as she tried furiously to burn the chemical out via controlled cell detonation. Behind her, the worm’s corpse gave a final hiss as the pores along its body dilated open and released a cloud of gas that completely enveloped the surrounding area.

Eve rubbed her eyes, confused as to why the world was spinning and blurring around her. She tried to stand and carry Drake, but the world fell out from under her and the pair collapsed to the ground in a tangle of insensate limbs. Her last sight before the world went dark was the flashing of something within the corpse of the massive worm, even as its body started dissolving into the acid that filled and sustained it.

With a last, dizzy utterance of confusion, Eve fell into the darkness.

“Miss File, how go things along the public front?”

“Just fine, sir. The evening news should be on pronouncing our newest success.”

“Excellent work, Miss File. In fact, you may have tomorrow off. I know you’ve not had enough time with your children lately, and have taken to simply leaving them in the daycare area. Go and spend tomorrow with the children, Miss File.”

“Y-are you sure, sir? I mean, I’m grateful, but… there’s a lot of work to be done…”

“Nonsense. Just take your leave, Miss File. You’ve earned it.”

“T-thank you sir!”

“Of course, my dear.”

A well manicured hand reached out and withdrew a slim remote from the confines of a desk drawer, pointing it to the wall behind the shadowy figure and turning on the massive screen installed there.

“Now, let’s see what’s on the evening news…”

“Good evening Equestria, I’m your host, Honest Press and I’m here with you today to discuss Genesys Pharmaceutical’s latest product: The Vitality Pill.”

The pretty, silver haired E-type woman on screen caught Twilight’s attention as she wound down after a long day of paperwork and research. “Vitality Pill, hmm? This bears investigation…”

“Yes folks, this little pill supposedly grants the user a slow, but noticeable increase in physical capability, stamina, mental strength, and even magical prowess when taken in the prescribed doses! I’m here with one of the first testers, a Mr. Long Shot, to see if this little pill really works. Mr. Long Shot? What’s your opinion on this so-called ‘Vitality Pill’?”

The focus shifted to a young U-type fiddling over a compound bow. “Well, as far as I can tell, the pill works. I mean, I got caught up in a real bad case of pneumonia a few weeks ago, and recovery was pretty hard, but I took a couple of the pills and now I’m almost back to normal, really.”

Twilight ignored the rest of the news report, already typing out an email to the investigative teams to see just what this pill could do.