Call me crazy, and I am definitely off my nut, but I think I can jump over that building.

Forget the fact I got wings, with just my legs I feel like I can jump onto the roof. That building is, what? Ten stories high? Fifteen? I can do it, no problem.

It’s the dead of night. It’s still raining hard. Everyone with common sense is inside. The odd night-owl pony couldn’t see me behind the downpour and darkness. As far as I’m concerned, I’m free to do whatever I want.

My knees bend and I crouch down low. I can feel the force filling my legs up. It’s explosive. It wants to escape and blow away everything in its path.

With everything I got, and with all that explosive power, I jump. I rocket through the air, soaring high above the dark Manehatten street. I’ve flown all my life and this is a similar feeling, but it’s completely different. Flying feels graceful and elegant. This feels heavy and direct. I love it!

I’m only at the fifth floor when the power of my jump fades away. I can jump high, but damn it, I want to jump higher. The force inside me still yearns to escape. It won’t take no for an answer. When I say I can’t do it, it takes control.

Without thinking, my wings flap forward and I slam into the building. Instead of crashing and falling, my legs hit the bricks and they sprint up the way up. Holy crap, I’m running up a wall! What can’t I do?

My claws dig into the brick works and leave craters behind with every stride. Soon I fling myself over the edge and land on top of the roof. I did it! I just climbed a building!

I don’t have time to celebrate. The force pulls me along and keeps going, and I chase it. I sprint across the rooftop, then jump at the ledge and land on the building across the street. Then I run across another building, and I jump again. My beak is stretching into the widest grin I’ve ever had and I’m cackling like a deranged witch! I swear I can do this all day.

I wonder how good my flying is.

At the next building ledge, my wings unfurl and I jump as high as I can. They catch the air and I glide over the sleeping city. The raindrops hit my face hard, but I don’t care. Whatever this power is I’m having a blast with it!

I try giving my wings a flap, but they don’t budge. They’re locked up in the flying position. Is this a joke or something, why can’t I move my wings?!

Okay, this isn’t fun anymore. I’m bleeding off height faster than I would like. The cold, wet street looks incredibly hard right now and I’m on a crash course straight towards it. Come on wings, work. Work dang it! Work work workworkworkwo-

I slam full speed into the pavement and skid along until my head crashes into a flower pot. That… didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. If anything, my pride stings more than my body. If anyone saw that, I’ll make sure they’ll never talk about it again.

There’s a petunia dangling over my forehead. I get up, brush it off, and look around. Say, this neighborhood looks familiar, and crappy. Have I been here before?

The world blurs out again and son-of-a-bison not another flashback!

The same neighborhood, daytime, brown feathers…

“So this is our new home?”

An empty room, creaky floorboards, I smell a dead rat somewhere…

“What, can’t stand the grime? You can’t find a place like this in Griffonstone!”

A frowning beak, Tanya…

“I was expecting better.”

Dirt, a cockroach scurries across the floor…

“If you can cough up another two grand per month, by all means find us a better nest.”

Oh right, I live here. Doesn’t matter, this place is still crappy.

It takes me an instant to find the building I’ve been living in. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve crash landed right at the doorstep. What the heck, do I have super-finding powers now too? I got super jumps, super speed, and now I got the power to never lose my keys again. Did a zebra enchant me or something?

Tanya and I moved here to be close to the store. It was the best place I could find with the money I had. The rent rates in this city are murder. Tanya is a good chick, but if I had the money, we would be living in separate units in different buildings and I wouldn’t have to listen to her gargle oil in the morning ever again.

Our apartment is on the seventh floor of this twelve story building. I choose to go up the stairs inside. I’m tempted to jump up there with my new powers, but I don’t think I’m ready to freak out Tanya with them just yet. I’m still coming to terms with it myself. Stairs are fine. A nice stair climb gives me a chance to breathe. I’d like that, especially after tonight’s craziness.

The building is poorly lit. There are a few flickering lights scattered all over, but they barely provide enough light to see. I think about what I’m going to ask the griffon. Why did we go with “Scone Quarry”? Why didn’t you smack those ponies on the head for forcing the name on me? Why didn’t we replace the sign when the ponies weren’t looking? My thoughts circled around these specific questions mostly, though the question of why the street looked like a warzone popped up once or twice.

The stairs are the kind that spiral up. There’s a big enough gap you could push a unicorn off the railing and he’d fall to his death. And there’s enough space to look up and see anyone looking down at you, such as a pair of blue, glowing spots floating in the darkness above.

Wait, blue glowing spots?

Sheep-bucker, not these guys again.

The blue-eye pony scurries back into the darkness, and if I remember the building layout correctly he’s on the same floor my apartment. Not good.

I super-jump up through the gap and land on my floor. The blue-eye runs for my door, which has five of his buddies standing outside it. Down the hall I can hear the battle-shrieks of a large lion-bird. Tanya!

Two of the blue-eyes rush into the door, while the rest look at me and start firing spells at me. The bolts sting, but I don’t care. I can feel the power rage inside of me and I sprint up to the closest blue-eye in a heartbeat. My fist swings at him and his skull cracks under my strength. He flies into a wall from the force and his buddies spread out away from me.

The spells keep flying, but they do nothing. I charge the next guy, but instead of punching him, I grab him by the chest and throw the bastard over the stairs. He screams for a full second before going silent.

The next guy, an earth pony, somehow avoids my pounce, but it leaves him open for me to kick him into the air and strike him with a claw. I don’t just kill him, I slice him in half, from the groin to the head. His blood sprays all over the hallway and on the last blue-eye standing.

Before the two pony-halves fall to the floor, something bloody and oozy shoots out of me and takes hold of the pieces. They look like tentacles, and they rip up the pony into tiny bits, and those bits melt into me just like the doctor and pegasus before.

Okay, that’s new. Puberty was more than enough fun with gross things coming out of my body. I don’t need to go through that mess again!

There’s one blue-eye left, a pegasus with a spell-shooty-thingy, and he looks just as stunned as I am. It’s a reasonable reaction to seeing your comrade be consumed by a mass of tentacles. At least he’s lucky enough not to have to figure out why the tentacles are coming out of him.

While the blue-eye is gawking at the horrors just witnessed, I tackle him, beat him to a bloody pulp, and try not to think about what I’m doing as I “eat” him like his friend before. Ugh, this thing I’m doing even comes with slurping noises! It takes everything I got not to puke while he’s dissolving.

It’s done. I shudder. Don’t think about it. Moving on.

Another bird-loin screech comes from the apartment. I barrel through what used to be the door to find Tanya fighting off her own blue-eyes. What little furniture we bought is either strewn around or blown to pieces. There’s a blue-eye lying on the floor with his neck sliced open. Another is leaning against the wall nursing a broken hoof. Two unicorns got the big bird pinned down with their magic. The chick might be big, in fact she’s larger than me, but those unicorns have no trouble handling her struggling.

It’s the wounded one that announces my presence. “It’s Zero!” he yells. The two unicorns hear this and turn around to fire their spells at me. The effect is predictable at this point. I lock on to the closest unicorn and pounce at him-

Only to be bashed away by a flash of blue. After I’m done skidding across the floor, I look up and notice the unicorn has a shield spell up. I charge again, be he swats me away like a fly. I crash through the wall and tear open a big hole into the flat next door.

After the dust clears up, I find myself in a room with tile walls, a shower curtain, and a mirror. There’s a stallion in a bath cap and a rubber ducky in his hooves looking down at me. He screams like a filly at the sudden intrusion and scampers off into who-knows-what part of the building. Damn, we have noisy neighbors.

Before I get up, the unicorn slams his shield down on me. He hits me again, and again, and again. Each hit makes a deep thud. I can hear the floor cracking beneath me. The unicorn screams at the top of his lungs and hits me with all he’s got. “Why. Won’t. You. Die?!”

Enough of this! I grab the rim of his shield and yank it away, but the blue-eye has a strong hold on it. He yanks back and throws the shield across the apartment. I don’t dare let go, but maybe I should. The shield and I break through the wall to the other flat next door, and I’m hovering above a little filly cowering underneath her bedsheets.

“Hi,” I say, waving.

The filly shrieks in fear as the shield swings back into my own apartment and slams me into the cockroach-infested floor. Oh sweet mercy, I heard something go squish inside me. I hope that wasn’t important.

The shield flies away again, and I have the intelligence to let the thing go. I roll away just in time for the next shield bash, it crashes into the floor, and I flop onto my four feet. Ugh, I don’t feel so well. It takes some considerable effort to stop myself from teetering over. Is the world going grey?

The injured blue-eye yells behind me. “It’s bleeding! We can kill her”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do,” the unicorn snaps back.

And you both can shut up. The injured blue-eye is a few feet behind me. With a little dash, I zip over there and punch him into a big explosion of ponybits. And then the tentacles shoot out and his goop melts into me. Damn it, how do I turn that off?!

The blue-eye behind the shield unicorn screams. “Sweet Celestia, she’s putting herself back together!”

“I can see that,” the unicorn grunts. “Stop giving me a play-by-play and shoot her!”

I’m doing what? I look down at my chest, and Good King Grover my insides are hanging out. No, those aren’t my insides. They’re all red and black and goopy, and they’re slithering. Oh sweet mercy my insides are slithering back inside me.

While I’m not looking up, the shield flies around and swoops in to cut off my head. I grab it within inches of my neck. Damn, this thing is not fun to fight. It’s spinning and slicing into my palms! Come on, just a little push…

Something in my limbs wiggles around, like a bunch of worms trying to break out. Great, something else weird and gross is about to happen. Those worms to break out through my talons and surge forward and over the shield. They slow down, and six shiny blades, one for each of my talons, shoot out with a metallic screech.

What in Tartarus... I got big meaty claws now! Geez, these things are as big as my torso.

With my upgraded claws, I clamp down hard on the shield and stop its spinning. Then I bend it. I put all my power into bending it. The shield warps a few inches before shattering into a cloud of blue sparks.

The unicorn falls over yelling and kicking like an upset toddler. He clutches his horn, but touching it makes him scream even louder. This must be the fabled magic feedback unicorns get on occasion. Huh, looks painful. Time to end his misery.

I walk over to his shriveling form, the claws click and clack with every step I make. I stand over him, look him dead in those soulless goggles of his, and slice him into bits. Oh great, this one is melting too. I need to find a way to control this thing.

Now to finish off the last… why is the world going blury?

“Captain Cole Slaw, sir!”

A dark room, a yellow pegasus looking at me…

“You are to take in the griffon named Tanya for questioning.”

Marching footsteps, a picture of an owl-loin…

“What are the charges?”

Shuffling paperwork…

“She and Patient Zero used to live together. After the incident we just had, we need to track down anything we can use against Zero. The nerds tell me we’re going to have a bitch of a time if we don’t track her down soon.”

A salute…

“Understood. We’ll have Tanya in by the end of the hour.”

Another salute…

“Good luck Sweet Tooth.”

My body shudders. That wasn’t my memory! That was someone else’s. Did that belong to the blue-eye I just ate? I can eat their memories now!

I look up and meet eyes with the last blue-eye. The last one, the unicorn holding Tanya down, sputters and shudders and as I stare him down. His horn fizzles out, and before I get a chance to tear him to shreds, a stray fist hits him in the head and makes the loudest crunch I heard all night.

“That’s for the fight,” the large, brown griffon spits. After giving him a hard kick to the ribs, she looks at me and I can see she’s been in a rough fight. Scratches, ruffled feathers, a crack in her beak, no wait… She’s always had a cracked beak. “Gilda? No, it can’t be.”

My beak twists into a smile. “What, you’d think I’d leave my scone shop out to fall apart without me?”

The big owl-lion’s jaw drops. “But you… you died!”

Huh? This is news. “Eh, what?”

She throws her claws in the air. “You died! There’s no way you could’ve survived the outbreak!”

My left eye, it’s twitching. “I died?” Waking up in a lab, eating ponies, random superpowers popping up… This griffon needs some answers.