The Yellow Zone, an area of the city blocked off to quarantine access only, at least that’s what the signs say. Blackwatch fenced off the area and set up checkpoints along the border. They got pegasi patrolling the skies and spells aimed at the gates. No one gets in or out without them knowing, except me.

The crowds here are just as dense as in any other part of the city. However, the vibe here is completely off. First off, all the ponies here are wearing surgical masks, they’re all just sitting around or meandering about with nothing to do, and they all keep looking behind their backs as if someone’s going to jump them.

I think I’m in a bad part of Manehaten. Other parts of the city have ponies dressed in business suits running around doing something important, but not here. Nopony is remotely professional looking. In fact, a lot of them don’t look like they’ve took a shower recently. There’s a lot of messy rags and cow-licked manes going on here. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a lice infestation going around.

As my little force keeps pulling me deeper and deeper into the Yellow Zone, things keep getting worse and worse. There’s a Blackwatch pack on almost every street, and a few of them are “keeping the peace” with excessive brutality. On one corner, there are two goons beating the snot out of a unicorn. On another corner, there’s a blue-eye pack that has five ponies lined up and lying on their bellies. And on another corner, there’s a squad hooking some hoof-cuffs to a screaming mare while a small filly is crying her eyes out.

Why in Tartarus would Pinkie Pie be in a place like this? She’s all about the smiles and happy times and crap. There’s no reason she’d be in this depressing craphole. Heck, no one in their right mind should be here.

I ignore the blue-eye brutes as I walk past them. If they’re not trying to kill me, then I don’t care what they do. If the pony dweebs have a problem with Blackwatch, then they can grow some spines for once and deal with them on their own, just like we do in Griffonstone. I got my own battles to fight.

The force in my head takes me to a good-sized city park. While tossing around a frisbee on a grassy knoll sounds like a fun time at the moment, none of the ponies here have fun on their minds. All through the park, makeshift shacks have been set up with shoddy construction work. These things are made up of any trash found lying around, from sheet metal to plastic bags to wooden planks. Big white medical tents also dot the shanty town. Ponies are milling in and out of the shacks while keeping a clear distance of the Blackwatch goons patrolling the area.

This all reminds me of home, and not a good way. I left Griffonstone so I wouldn’t have to live in a crappy shack. Now there’s shacks springing up in what I understand used to be a good neighborhood. I hope these clear out once this whole outbreak thing is over, or else I’m taking my scone business to Detrot. Detrot isn’t any better, but at least I won’t be hunted by blue-eyes in Detrot!

My force leads me to the front of one of the white medical tents. It’s like a circus tent, only shorter and longer, and made of plastic. There’s also a chemical smell coming out that my nose doesn’t agree with.

Before I lift up the tent flap, I hear it. Laughter. It jumps through the air and makes the depressing vibe of the Yellow Zone a little less grim. My soul feels lighter after hearing that giggle. Maybe this there’s still a little hope in the world left in this tent.

I’m right and wrong at the same time. The first thing my eyes see when I walk in is the hyperactive pink fuzzball known as Pinkie Pie. She’s got a surgical mask on like everyone else, but that facemask can’t hide her smile. She’s sitting in front of a semi-circle of colts and fillies of all races and colors, and they’re all laughing at whatever Pinkie just said. There’s even a little green pegasus colt rolling around the air giggling his tail off.

Look at that, this monster sense of mine found Pinkie. Something about seeing her like this makes my beak turn into a little smile. I barely remember anything about this mare, but I can see she’s neck deep in her element. Make ponies happy, this is what she’s born to do, and she’s living it up.

But the happy times ends there. While Pinkie’s little corner of light and sunshine is all pleasant, the rest of the medical tent is a miserable pile of despair. The entire places is filled with cots, shelves full of medical supplies, trashbag-suit ponies and doctors running around, and sick-looking ponies either sleeping, coughing, or trashing around. Even in the sunshine corner, just as a reminder of what’s going on, all the little fillies and colts are wearing surgical masks too.

“Excuse me, miss.” A cream-colored unicorn mare wearing a white lab coat, a heavy-duty respirator, and a pair of goggles comes up to me with stern, pink eyes. “You’re not allowed to be here. Only case-yellow quarantine personnel are allowed in.”

“I’m here to see Pinkie Pie.” I try to walk past her, but she steps in to block my way.

“You’re not authorized to be here. You don’t even have a protective mask. You’re at much greater risk of spreading infection without one.”

“Well, I don’t have a mask, but”- three metal blades gleam in the light as I extend my monster claw right in front of the doctor’s face –“I do have authorization.”

Her eyes go wide as her reflection gleams in the metal. “I-uh… uh- I”

“I just want to talk to Pinkie,” I say. “I need her to explain to me a few things.”

Her mouth keeps making shapes as she attempts to make words come out, but the best she can do is stutter. “Y-you… you’re the griffon… The griffon b-Blackwatch is looking for. You’re going to k-kill us all…”

My eyes roll and I shake my head. Apparently news of my arrival traveles fast. “Kill you? No, I don’t want to do that.” The claw retracts back into its wormy state inside my body. “I really do need to talk to Pinkie though. I’m having a bit of amnesia and I think she can help me out.”

Her jaw drops to the ground when the big claws turn back to my little claws. “But… what?”

“Yeah, I know, those things are scary,” I say as I flex my griffon talons. “And trust me, no one is more confused about it than I am. I woke up in a secret lab about eight hours ago, and from that point of I’ve been running around with these crazy powers and no clue what’s happened. Since then, I’ve found out I’ve been missing for a month, these Blackwatch goons want me dead for some reason, and someone gave my sconeshop a name I don’t want.”

The doctor glances at my claw, then back at me. “Sconeshop?”

I let out a sigh. “Don’t get me started on that. Can I go see Pinkie?”

The doctor stares up at me for a moment. She gulps, nods, and steps to the side. “Just... Just don’t make any trouble. I won’t tell Blackwatch,” she says. “And put on a face mask.”

I smile. My claws are excellent negotiation tactics. “Thank you, and don’t worry. I don’t plan on causing any trouble.” She jumps when I jab a talon at her chest. “But I’m not wearing one of those dumb masks.”

The doctor scampers off to tend to her patients, and I stroll through the tent like I own it. Some of the other doctors and trashbag ponies notice me, but since the doctor lady just let me by I must be okay.

I hear Pinkie’s voice about halfway through the tent. “And then Zeus says, ‘I’m a pretty, pretty unicorn now.’”

The kids burst out into a fit of laughter, though I don’t know if it’s because the joke is funny or if kids will laugh at anything. From the punch line, it sounds like one of those jokes that needs a long set up to work. Not my taste.

“Alright all you junior doctors, I know we’re not allowed to play tag in here, but I know another game we can all play. It’s called snail tag! Do you all want to know how to play?”

The kids all holler. “Yeah!” They sound enthusiastic for a game that’s obviously engineered to make them excited for doing something slow. It’s got snail in the name, what kind of game is called snail tag? On another note, what’s snail tag?

“So we need to pick a pony to be it. Long John, you won the last game. You get to be it! What we all do is-oh-wait-who-is-that-is-that-is-that-who-I-think-it-is-it-is-isn’t-it!”

Her big, blue eyes lock on to mine as she lets that sentence run wild and crash and burn. In a blink of an eye, she’s up in my face with a smile I didn’t know was physically possible to make.

“Gilda! You’re alive! You’re here and you’re alive and this is so great to see you again and I’m glad I get to see a familiar face after so long and I can’t believe it’s been a month so I got to ask where you’ve been all this time but you don’t have to answer if you don’t feel comfortable talking about it because I understand if you got hard feelings about what happened because a lot of ponies don’t want to talk about what’s been going on because it upsets them myself included but that’s okay since I try my best to cheer them up without talking about the past month and as long as you’re happy I’m happy and now you’re here and”-

A small snippet of memory pops up in my head. Ah, that’s how I shut her up. My claw comes up and covers her mouth. Her rambling voice is muffled by my talons, and she stops yammering and just smiles at me. “Nice to see you too,” I say to her, though I’m not sure if that’s the truth.

I let go of her mouth and she yammers again, though at a more bearable pace. “It’s great to know you’re alive. You’re lucky. Not many ponies who’ve been gone for the past month get to say that.”

There’s a tinge of sadness in her voice, and her smile dips down a bit. “I can tell you it hasn’t been all rainbows and flowers for me,” I say. “I’ve been… dealing with some issues.”

“I understand. You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to.” Her smile dies out and flattens out to a straight line. “But I got to know, do you know what happened to Rainbow Dash?”

“Rainbow?” I shake my head. “I don’t know. Should I know something?”

She nods. “You were the last one with her.”

Ah great, something happened to Rainbow too, and supposedly I’m the one who should know what happened. I try digging in the back of my mind to see if I can remember something, but the last thing I can recall about her is the time I rescued her from the gorge. “Sorry. I got a nasty case of amnesia. There’s not much I can remember.”

Pinkie takes a deep breath and lets out a sigh. “That’s okay. At least you’re alright. That’s the best thing that’s happened in a while.”

“Excuse me, Miss Pinkie Pie…” I high-pitched voice pipes up from behind the mare. It’s the green pegasus colt hovering a few feet behind Pinkie. Son-of-a-bison, aside from his coat colors, this little guy is a tiny boy Rainbow Dash. He’s got her ruffled-up mane and rosy eyes and that big smile she gets when she’s excited. “Can I talk to the griffon?”

Talk to me, why would you want that? I notice all the other kids are staring intensely at us, or more specifically, me. They all have the same look most ponies who’ve never seen a griffon before meet me for the first time. Yes, I get it, I’m part of a rare minority in Equestria. I’ve seen these faces a million times and I’ll see them again a million more. It’s been old for a while.

Pinkie Pie scratches her chin. “If Gilda is okay with it, I don’t see why not. It’s not every day you get to meet a griffon.”

I don’t meet griffons every day either. I need a mirror for that. “Pinkie, I only came here to talk to”-

A filly earth pony in the back raises her hoof. “Can I talk to her?”

Another colt, a unicorn, jumps up. “I wanna talk to the griffon too!”

“What about me?” another tiny voice asks. “Let me talk to her!” Great, we got a kiddy riot going on here. They won’t shut up unless I give in to their demands.

A blue earth pony stands up. “I won the game. I should talk to her first!”

“Don’t you mean him?” a nasally voice say. “That’s not a girl griffon, that’s a guy.”

Excuse me?

“No she isn’t,” the tiny voice says. “She’s got white feathers. Guy griffons don’t have white feathers. There’s no way she’s a guy.”

“Yeah he is,” the nasal voice says again. “He’s all big and buff and stuff. He’s totally a guy.”

Hey, I’m not big. If you weren’t a tiny pony child I’d be teaching you how big I really am! Also, I’m not a guy.

“Mr. Griffon, how high can you fly?”

Still not a guy.

“Dude, how much can you lift?”

Please stop.

“Hi sir, what’s it like having a beak?”

“What is the average airspeed velocity of an unladen griffon?”

“What do girl griffons look like?”

The herd of colts and fillies brakes into an outburst of questions and gender confusion. I nudge Pinkie Pie and whisper in her ear. “Can you get me out of this? I just need to talk to you.”

“Oh come on, join the party,” she whispers back. “They’re all excited to meet you.”

“Well, I’m not,” I hiss. “I got enough problems as it is and I don’t need kids crawling up my legs.”

Her pupils dilate into puppy-dog proportions. Oh sweet mercy, she’s begging me. “But I haven’t seen them this happy in a while. They’ve been going through a rough time lately and… and… just look at their smiles.”

I did look. They’re not smiling as much as arguing between each other about my gender. They kind of remind me of a few childhood bullies. Those colts back in flight school also never seen a griffon before too. Way to pitch a sale, you pink spaz. “I’m going to pass.”

“I understand, however,” she looks me dead in the eyes. “I’m not going to help you if you don’t have fun with the kids.”

Wait… she’s serious. The pink spaz is making an ultimatum. I never knew she had it in her. That’s cute of her, but I’m not dealing with this. “Oh come on, I’ve been going through a lot.”

“So have they,” she says. “Just talk to them for a little bit. Who knows, maybe you’ll even enjoy yourself.”

I don’t want to deal with kids, but I also want my memories back. Pinkie is the only pony I can think of who can help me.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” I groan.

She smiles behind the medical mask and steps away and leaves me on my own. Since when did she become manipulative?

Talking to a bunch of kids, how hard can that be? Pinkie Pie claps her hooves, and all the chatter dies down. “Good news everyone, my friend Gilda has agreed to sit down and talk to you. I want you all to be on your best behavior and be respectful to the nice griffon here.”

I lean close to her and whisper in her ear. “I’m not shaking their hands or anything.”

Pinkie Pie nods. “Griffons are a bit edgy on personal space, so not touching unless you ask nicely.”

Not how I’d phrase it, but that’ll do. “Also, no questions about this whole outbreak business.”

“And please be thoughtful of your questions. We’ve all been going through some tough times in the past month, and so has Gilda. If she doesn’t want to talk about it, she doesn’t have to.”

A tiny hoof goes up in the air. “And I’m a girl,” I mutter.

“Before anyone asks,” Pinkie says, “my friend Gilda is a girl griffon. She makes the eggs. She doesn’t season them.”

Woah, what?! Forget her lack of knowledge for griffon biology, she said that in front of a group of kids! None of them are laughing or snickering, so it might have gone over their heads. One of the fillies who knew my gender all along pulls her face mask down and sticks her tongue at one of the boys. He does the same and they get in a battle of silly faces.

Pinkie Pie points to the green pegasus flying around. “Iffy Sniff, since you asked first, you can go first. We’ll go to his left after each question.” Iffy Sniff, what a weird name. The little guy loops through the air and gives me that big, dorky Rainbow Dash smile.

I take a seat on one of the cots and get cozy. I ignore how it’s bending under my weight. Time to get this over with.

“Hi Miss Griffon,” he says. “How fast can you fly?” Damn, he’s even got a raspy voice.

That’s it? How fast I can fly? I’ll give kids credit, they ask the easy questions. “Pretty fast. I’ve won a lot of races against other pegasi, so I’d say I got game.”

His smile grows wider and he soars to the back of the group and whispers to another colt. I can hear him squeaking in excitement back there.

The next kid, a scrawny earth-pony filly pipes up. “What do griffons eat?”

“We’re meat eaters. We like to hunt in the wilds for our food.” Some of the kids made disgusted looks, but I don’t mind. Rainbow Dash needed the restroom after she first saw my homemade lunch. “But don’t worry, it’s mostly rabbits and small critters. And small children.”

How long do I have to do this for?