Twilight Sparkle slammed the door to the basement, and ran as fast as she could down the stairs. She slipped and fell on something gooey, sliding down the last few steps. She landed with a small thud, groaning as she got to her hooves.

'What in the hay just happened?' she thought to herself.

She looked back and gasped at the sight; a clear gelatin-like substance had seemingly splashed itself about the stairs. She sat down and inspected her hooves. Her front hooves had lost some skin and hair, leaving some white, bone-colored membrane where her fur was supposed to be. On the backs of all four hooves, there were large balls filled with gelatinous pus, one on each hoof. As she inspected these pouches further, she saw that the one on her back right hoof had burst, causing her fall on the stairs. She poked the one on her front right hoof with her front left hoof, and after some prodding it burst like a balloon, sending the putrid substance splashing outward and dripping to the floor. Her eyes went wide at the scene. She quickly levitated a towel to herself and cleaned up the mess on the stairs and basement floor. With that task completed, she levitated more towels over and wrapped her hooves in them. She steadied herself slowly, and made her way to the desk by the computer.

'I have to find out what's wrong! Do I have a disease? I need to know what's happening to me!' she thought to herself as she started going through notepapers and books.
-

Several hours later, Twilight slumped over her calculations. She had taken some blood, and doing a quick analyses yielded more questions than answers. Something did not add up. The blood did not react like pony blood, or any other blood that she had ever studied.

"What does this mean?" she said aloud.

She trotted over to a mirror that was in the far corner to examine the hairs that Rarity had spotted earlier. Upon examination, they were more needle-like in appearance than she had originally thought. She levitated scissors to her face and cut one of the hairs off her chin. She put it through as many tests as she could think of. She was getting very confusing results, so she decided to analyze the data from her teleport more closely. Using her magic, she activated the computer's printer and printed out her teleportation. As she read the data, her eyes widened, and she jumped back from the table in abject horror.

'The computer is reading two data patterns! There should only be one! I was the only one inside the pod… Right?' She asked herself in her mind.

She activated the computer with her magic again, and printed out another sheet. "I have to isolate this other pattern, and find out what it is!" She hissed to herself.

She studied the sheet in detail, unsure of what it meant. She huffed in frustration, and threw the paper aside. She went back to her desk and sat down, slumping over with a defeated sigh. She gingerly looked over to her right, where the hair that she had plucked was standing up, leaning onto a stack of books. Suddenly, she perked up as a thought struck her.

"I…I think I've seen that hair before somewhere," she said.

She bolted upstairs and went through her science section. She found the hair on the spine of a book on the second shelf. She tore the book out of his place and dropped it to the ground in front of her. What she saw on the cover made her stomach tighten, and he breath cease for a moment. On the cover of the book, etched in the heave outer layer, was a perfectly designed fly. As she looked closer, she saw the detail of the hairs in the etching. It was a book about identifying insects. Twilight opened the book and turned as quickly as she could to the section on "Musca Domestica." She found a description and then on a diagram, she found the same type of hair that she had pulled off herself. Celestia's prized student whimpered in fear, her breathing getting heavier with every passing second. She ran downstairs as fast as her hooves would take her, and she examined the computer readouts again. The lines appeared to be over each other, as though they were one line and not two separate ones.

Then it hit her.

'The buzzing,' she thought to herself.

She screamed as she realized what this meant. The increased strength, the primal urges that she felt, and even her increased paranoia had all made sense now. She stared at both of her front hooves for a moment before slumping to the ground and she laid her head down in her hooves, and started crying softly to herself.

"What did I do…what did I do…" She kept whispering to herself in between quiet sobs.

ONE WEEK LATER…

Pinkie Pie stretched, elongating and cracking her back as she yawned. It had been a very long week at Sugar Cube Corner. The Cakes had added some new menu items, and had to head to a family reunion in Hoofington, leaving Pinkie in charge for three days now. The work hours were long, but it wasn't that hard for Pinkie to get through the day. After all, her baking made everypony smile with her delicious treats. The last customer had just left, and Luna's moon had been in the sky for a few hours now. Pinkie knew the routine by heart, and, tired though she was, hummed a little tune to herself as she started cleaning up, and making preparations for tomorrow's customers. After the front counter and shop area were clean, she made her way to the kitchen. There were pots and pans scattered about, but she was so used to the routine that she had them all clean and put away in no time. Her last task of the evening was to take out the final bundle of trash. She went out the back door with a few bags, making her way to the trash pails. She suddenly heard a rustling by the pails. Pinkie stopped and dropped the bags to the ground as she cautiously approached the pails.

"Hello? Is somepony there?" She called out.

Suddenly, she saw a head pop up from behind one of the pails. The figure seemed to be wearing a shawl, making Pinkie even more curious about who could possibly be going through the bakery's trash. At first, she thought it was Zecora, since the coat was similar to the one she would wear when she came to Ponyville, before the community had accepted her fully. The figured turned and stammered a response to the pink party pony.

"Oh…hi Pinkie Pie," The figure said.

Pinkie raised one of her eyebrows in confusion as she recognized the voice.

"Twilight? Is that you?" She said.

Pinkie walked over to the small porch lamp that was by the trash bins. Twilight shielded her eyes as the light washed over her. She watched Pinkie Pie approach her, and she shuddered. She was hoping to avoid a confrontation. She didn't know if Pinkie was still angry with her over what had happened with Angel.

"Twilight, what are you doing out here in the spooky-ooky dark? Do you want to come inside? Is this for some experiment? Did you find my rubber chicken in there? I lost it the other day, and I can't seem to find it…"

Twilight breathed a sigh of relief. It seems that Pinkie had forgiven her. Listening to her talking incessantly made her feel at ease for the first time since this whole nightmare started.

"Pinkie, please stop talking," Twilight said.

Pinkie stopped mid-sentence, and just stared at her friend. She had been asked, even demanded that she cease her babbling before, but the way Twilight said it had scared her. She had almost whimpered it to her.

"Pinkie, I'm going to have to show you something. I had an… accident," Twilight said.

Twilight then used her magic to remove her hood. What Pinkie Pie saw made her gasp in horror and shrink back in fright. Twilight's mane had become stringy and most of it had fallen out. Her skin had developed milky crevasses filled with a clear substance that seemed to flow like rivers throughout her face. Her eyes were sunken in with black flakes under them.

"Twilight…what…what's happened to you?!?" Pinkie stuttered.

Twilight sighed. "I've made a terrible mistake, Pinkie. I fixed the problem with the telepods. I couldn't let Angel die for nothing. I tried so hard to make it work, and they did. I…I tried it out on myself, Pinkie. I teleported myself a little over a week ago. At first, the change was great, but, as you can see, there was an issue with the teleportation. A fly had made its way into the telepod with me. The computer read us as a single organism, and…and…"

Twilight stammered as she got choked up trying to say the last part of this admission.

"The computer fused our DNA together, Pinkie. I'm changing, and I don't know how to stop it," she whispered.

Pinkie stared blankly at her fellow element bearer. She felt like Big Mac had just bucked her in the stomach. Her ears flattened as she felt her fear rise.

"Twilight, what does this mean? Isn't there anything you can do? Can't you just…I dunno…unfuse yourself or something?" Pinkie said, nervously.

"I'm not sure, Pinkie. I'm doing everything I can, but the science for this is incredibly complicated. I'm not sure where to even start. I still have more data to gather," Twilight stated.

"So, what were you doing out here, going through the trash?" Pinkie asked.

Twilight looked down, startled. She found a half-eaten muffin and used her magic to lift it to her face. She looked like she was about to eat it. Pinkie Pie was about to stop her, when the element of magic vomited a light-green milky substance onto the half eaten baked good and devoured it right in front of the earth pony. Pinkie Pie thought she was going to be sick as she backed away and brought a hoof to her mouth in surprise.

Twilight looked up and realized what she had just done.

"Oh, Pinkie Pie, I'm so sorry. That must have been disgusting for you to see. You see, flies eat by spitting a very corrosive acid onto their food so that they can digest it properly. It's how I have to eat now,” the unicorn stated.

"Oh Twilight, what are you going to do?" Pinkie asked, approaching her friend again.

"I don't know, Pinkie. All I can do for now is look for some sort of solution. A cure, or at least a way to separate our patterns," Twilight said as she moved her right hoof up to scratch her ear.

She lightly touched her ear and started scratching. As she did, her right ear dislodged itself from the side of her head and flopped to the ground with strings of mucus-like membranes slowly fading away. Pinkie Pie yelped as Twilight stared at her ear that now lay on the ground between them. She couldn't take it anymore. After all the stress, the fight with Rainbow Dash and Rarity, the isolation of not seeing anyone for days, she broke down and started wailing as she slumped to the floor in front of the torn appendage. She slowly crawled forward, reaching out with her bandaged hooves. The pus pockets had all burst now, and the substance it contained had seeped its way through the now ragged and dirty towels. She hugged Pinkie Pie around the pink mare's front hooves and cried softly. She looked up into Pinkie's eyes and began to whisper.

"Help me…help me, Pinkie Pie…please help me, please, please..."