Author's Notes:

Hello! This is the third addition in my Men and Monsters series, if you're reading this, you're either new, or coming from the last one. I want to thank you for giving this a chance, and I hope you continue to read it, as this is my most passionate project. I've put a lot of time and effort into this, and will put a lot more. Please tell me if you see any issues, and enjoy!

“The flowers are blooming.”

“The birds are chirping.”

“Kids like you…”

Alice stood above Pinkamena’s unconscious body, right above her head. She was leaning over looking down at her, her copper hair having gotten a bit longer and was now covering a bit of her face. Her arms were out to her sides as she leaned down, almost like she was bowing.

“Probably shouldn’t be sleeping in the middle of the woods.”

Pinkamena tried to open her eyes at the sound of Alice’s voice, expecting the sunlight to burn her eyes, but it didn’t. She was greeted by Alice’s face, even though from Pinkamena’s perspective she was upside down, there was no mistaking that unnaturally wide grin. Though this time there was something different about it, strangely, there was no malicious undertone in her smile. Her eyes didn’t seem entirely empty now, there was a spark of life in them that seemed familiar to her. Alice’s smile also seemed boisterous, like she had just won a bet.

She dare say, Alice looked genuinely happy, which wasn’t an adjective she’d ever thought to use when talking about Alice.

“How...long have I been asleep?” Pinkamena groaned as she slowly rose, her movements were sluggish and she almost had to force them.

She didn’t even remember falling asleep, considering the state she was in last night, odds were she just passed out. The last thing that came to mind was The Whispers mind raping her and having a very strong urge to see her reflection, then she looked into the ocean and saw...something that she knew deeply disturbed her, something that she should probably be glad she didn’t remember. Then she reacted in some mixture of crying and laughing, her face covered in her own bile as hot tears ran down her face, and some point during that she lost consciousness.

She brought her hand up to her head and scowled, a strong headache building up as she tried to recall the events of the night prior. There were evident gaps in her memory, she could feel it. Her mind was like a block of cheese, it all held together, but there were little holes that weren’t significant enough to make a big difference. She could remember everything earlier that day up until after her fight with TSK, afterwards her memory was hazy.

She knew The Whispers were guiding her somewhere, and then she...talked to someone? Found something? Got a text? Something happened along the way, but she couldn’t remember what. Then she got here and the melding process began, an agonizing experience she’d never forget, burned into her mind along with a few other traumatic events she’s been through. While she could remember the process itself, she couldn’t exactly remember what was going through her mind during it. She remembered trying to speak and multiple faces she didn’t recognize come to mind, names and events she’s never experienced felt familiar to her.

She winced as she began rubbing her temple, the more she tried to remember the worst her headache got. She’d always had a really good memory, so when she felt she couldn’t remember something, it annoyed her to no end.

“Long enough to where you might as well not bother going to school today, that was the first time in the past two days you actually got any sleep after all.” Alice said as she put her hands on Pinkamena’s head, grabbing a handful of her hair in each hand and beginning to play with it.

Pinkamena sighed and stopped trying to think about it, if The Whispers were the reason she couldn’t remember some things, there was no point. She pulled her hand away as the throbbing began to stop, noticing some dried blood on the tips of her fingers. She then became acutely aware of how sticky and gross her face felt, remembering that there was blood on her forehead from slamming it against the ground to try to deal with pain, a concoction of the contents of her stomach and blood on her mouth, and her eyes and cheeks sticky with dried tears.

The blood on her fingers was too dried to tell, so she wasn’t sure if her blood was actually black, or if that was just a hallucination. There were a lot of things going through her head at the time, not all she remembers. Judging from the way she smelled, she could really use a bath too.

Pinkamena leaned over to the ocean water, ignoring Alice, causing her to pout angrily as her hair was pulled away. Pinkamena closed her eyes and reached into the water, cupping it in her hands and using it to wash her face. Sure, ocean water near Manhattan was almost surely polluted. However, Igneous used it to clean himself for years, so it couldn’t have been that bad.

She was quickly done washing her face, but she was still going to take a proper shower the next time she got the chance. Even so, she hesitated in opening her eyes. She couldn’t remember what it was she saw in her reflection last night that bothered her so much, or if it was even strictly something with The Whispers. It could’ve been something that changed about her physically, she did recall them saying that there might be physical abnormalities.

She took a deep breath and exhaled as she lowered her hands, opening her eyes to look at whatever the ocean was about to show her.

“What the fuck?” Pinkamena mumbled to herself as she brought both her hands to her face again, touching her face to see if it felt any different.

The first thing she noticed was her hair, it’s shape wasn’t different at all; it was still straight, long, and silky, hanging off her head like a curtain. The color of it changed, or, at least half of it. Half of her hair stayed the same shade of pink, the other half was now dark black. The same shade of dark black that the strains on her head were before, but now they’ve seem to spread. Where one part of her hair stayed pink, the next part was black, like highlights. It looked incredibly natural, the color going all the way down to her scalp. It was also striped, kind of like a zebra, in a way. It didn’t look bad exactly, just...different.

https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/466576-my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic (This was the closest visualization I could find to how her hair looks now, I didn't feel my description did it well enough, so I thought I'd put this to help.)

There was only one other difference she noticed, but it was about as noticeable as her hair. Her right eye was no longer blue, it had turned the same shade of crimson it usually did when she transformed. The pupil didn’t change into slits either, looking the same as her normal eye. Like the hair, the change looked completely natural. She’d heard of people being born with two different colored eyes, but it was different to actually see it.

It was...kind of pretty, she had to admit.

She activated enough of her Chimera abilities to where her eyes started to change, her left eye changing to the same shade of crimson and the pupils morphing into slits. She turned them off just as quickly, but while both their pupils turned back to normal, only the left one’s color actually faded back to blue.

*Welp, looks like the eye and the hair are here to stay. I suppose there could have been worse things to happen to me during that, I think.*

Pinkamena lowered her hands, finding nothing else with her face that was different. She turned to look at Alice, who had been glancing over her shoulder curiously, like she wanted to see Pinkamena’s reflection too.

She hadn’t noticed it before, but Alice was wearing a new outfit. It was a very large and very long blue dress, which covered almost all of her body except past her neck. It was also wide enough to be bigger than her, she wondered how Alice was moving around in it considering how small she was. The dress stopped at her arms around the elbows, there she wore gloves the same shade of blue that covered the rest of her arms. She was also wearing a black band around her throat, over all, she looked very fancy. She had expected her to be wearing her hair up in a bun or something, but she was still just letting it down, though she noticed it was a bit longer than before.

“What’s with the get up? You look like you’re going to a ball.”

She rolled her eyes and scoffed, having that same smug smirk she was used to seeing on Alice.

“Well duh! Of course I am, Cinderella was going to a ball, dummy.”

*Oh yeah, kind of forgot about her whole obsession with fairy tales.*

“What, do you want me to call you Cinderella now?”

Alice looked at her thoughtfully with a finger on her chin, before just shrugging nonchalantly with her hands behind her back. “Nah, it’d get annoying if you had to call me something different every time I decided to switch things up. So let’s just stick with Alice!”

She beamed at Pinkamena, her eyes widened like a child whose father had just gotten them a puppy, this was the first time she’d actually seen her look and act like the little girl she appeared to be. Like a little girl, she suddenly jumped forward onto Pinkamena, latching her arms around her shoulders and nuzzling her head into Pinkamena’s neck.

“You’re so warm and soft Pinks, like a giant pillow fresh out of the dryer. Next time you see Starlight, you should give her a biiiiigggg hug, to thank her for putting up with you being grumpy.”

To anyone else, this would have seemed cute and just the actions of an innocent young girl. To Pinkamena, who Alice had only been sadistic and manipulative up to that point, this was straight up horrifying. From the moment she met Alice she didn’t trust her, both because she was a part of The Whispers, and because it was obvious just how Alice liked to do things. She said that she wanted to be her friend, and more than anything did Pinkamena want to believe that. But after what happened in that alleyway, when she tried to force her to kill to prove a point, even if it was a hallucination, showed her that genuine friendship between them could never be a possibility.

Now she wanted to act all close to her, as if she hadn’t threatened to control her body last night like some kind of meat puppet? No way, she didn’t trust that, not for a second.

“Yeah… I’ll deal with you in a bit. Can you just tell me why my hair and eye changed color?” Pinkamena said as she had to practically peel Alice off of her, trying to keep her voice as neutral as she could.

Alice looked a bit disappointed until she looked up at Pinkamena’s hair, her eyes slightly widening in surprise, even though it was pretty obviously faked since Alice would have a lot of time to notice these changes.

She reached up with one hand grabbing some of her hair, the other hand rubbing her face around where her right eye was, making a slight ‘hmmm’ noise like she was thinking. As Alice touched her, Pinkamena noticed something she hadn’t earlier, Alice felt real. Usually, Alice’s touch felt chillingly cold, more like a dead body than a person. Her hands now felt...warmer, more alive than before. Not as much as an actual person, like a machine trying to imitate one, but it felt real enough.

*What’s with this sudden change? Does it have to do with the brain melding? Does that mean he’s going to be acting differently too?*

Alice abruptly pulled her hands away from Pinkamena, her arms extended to her sides with her palms open facing upwards, shrugging her shoulders and shaking her head.

“I dunno. Could be a lot of reasons, changes in pigments, melanin, lotta stuff. Told you there’d be some physical abnormalities, you should just be glad you didn’t grow any extra appendages or anything. If it makes you feel any better, I think it looks really cool!”

Pinkamena rubbed the bridge of her nose, she had hoped after finally gaining access to their memories The Whispers would be more useful, but it was obvious that was too much to expect. Things have only gotten more and more difficult the second she was thrown into those woods.

“Whatever, I’ll just have to get used to it. I need to head back to The Syndicate, a lot of people I need to talk to. Plus I need a shower, I feel...dirty.”

She reached into her pocket, pulling out her phone and turning it on. It was sometime around noon, about lunchtime if she had been in school that day. She had received some new messages, all of them from about three people. The first two messages were from Applejack, one telling her she had handled things with Sunset, and the next asking where she was.

She wasn’t going to bother responding to her, it’d be easier just to explain things the next time they’d meet.

The next was from Starlight, basically asking her how she was and that she was worried since she hadn’t heard from her for a while. It was a message she sort of expected to come from Maud, but either Maud had a lot of faith in her, or she just knew there wouldn’t be a point in texting her if she was that worried. The next message caused a little concern, especially considering who it was from; Sunset Shimmer.

‘We need to talk.’

*Well, that’s not ominous at all. I’m sure that’s going to be annoying to deal with later.*

She ignored all those messages and typed in Discord’s emergency number, like last time, he picked up almost immediately.

“Pinkie, this isn’t my normal number. This is for emergencies only, and I doubt you’ve had a life or death emergency two times in the past twenty four hours, not even you. So h-”

“The Whispers gave their memories to me, they did the whole ‘brain melding’ thing last night. I figured you’d want to be the first person to know, and that you’d want to do some test or something, to make sure everything was fine.”

He stopped talking for a few seconds, she could hear him sharply inhale, and then what sounded like him slamming a door.

“How do I know this isn’t just them controlling you after you couldn’t survive through it?”

Her eyes widened a bit in surprise, she didn’t think Discord would guess what The Whispers were planning to do if things didn’t work out, she heard Alice scoff behind her.

“You knew they’d do that, huh? Must not have a lot of confidence in me if you were worried about it.”

“I had an inkling, it sounded like something they’d do, and I’m sure they’d be capable of it. Plus, a little doubt never heart anyone. I’m a paranoid man, it’s how I’ve lived so long.”

She glanced back at Alice, who was playing with a few strands of hair she had apparently pulled from her a few moments ago. She wasn’t sure whether the hair was actually there or not, but the idea of her hair just floating if anyone else could see this was a little funny to her.

“Well, if that was what happened, it’d mean I’d basically already be dead. You or anyone else wouldn’t really be able to do anything about it, or even really tell. I could tell you that I’m me, but that wouldn’t really make you believe me.”

Discord stayed silent for a few moments, the only sound she could hear was the sound of him impatiently tapping his finger against something. Alice was also remaining almost completely quiet, which was uncharacteristic of her, she would expect her to say something about Discord guessing their plans.

Then she heard him reluctantly sigh, the sound of him tapping his finger against something abruptly stopping. “You’re right, there’s no point. Any big changes I should know about? I heard a little of your hair was turning black?”

“More than a little, but yeah. As for big changes…” Pinkamena put the phone against her ear and between her shoulder, sharpening the nail on her pointer finger and slicing across the palm of her left hand. She shouldn’t have been surprised when the blood coming out of her was dark black, it had a strange smell to it she couldn’t quite describe, and seemed a bit thicker than normal blood. Otherwise, it was the same. “You could say that, yeah. It’d be easier to show you, I’ve obtained some...peculiarities I’m sure you’ll be interested in.”

The wound began to heal as steam came off her hand, she wiped the blood off on her pants as she grabbed the phone in her other hand, her claw retracting back into a normal fingernail. “I can be at HQ in about an hour, do you mind if I take a shower first? It’s been a while since I’ve taken one, and I should probably also get a new set of clothes.”

“No, wait till after I’m done. I can be there in thirty minutes or so, luckily I have some stuff I need to get done, so I can burn some time. Next time you call this number, if it isn’t a life or death emergency, I will leave you out to dry.” He warned her, ending the call.

She put the phone back in her pocket, slowly standing to her feet. She felt and heard multiple parts of her body pop and crack as she stretched, sleeping for somewhere around thirteen hours or so had made her body rather stiff. She turned around to look at Alice, who was looking up at Pinkamena with a wide grin, like she was expecting candy or something.

“What’s up with the ‘cutesy’ act? It’s kind of freaking me out.”

Alice responded by slightly tilting her head to the left, her grin lowering into an almost unnoticeable frown. “Don’t like it? I thought to be better friends with you, I’d act like the friendliest person I know; You! Or, I guess the old you. Say what you want about how you used to be, immature, annoying, whatever. You were good at being friends with everyone, some of them you got really close to. Now you’re just a big meanie pants who beats themselves up almost as much as they beat up other people, who doesn’t even eat candy anymore!”

She said with emphasis, snapping her fingers as a small, brown bean appeared in the center of her left hand. She walked up to Pinkamena and jumped off the ground, slamming the candy into her mouth.

“Don’t be mean, have a Boston Baked Bean!” Alice shouted as she landed back on the ground, somehow her dress not having moved at all.

Surprisingly, there was no actual force behind what Alice did. Insead of physically putting it in her mouth, it was more like when she made the motion of putting her hand against her mouth, the bean teleported from her hand directly onto her tongue. It tasted exactly like a Boston Baked Bean, she was basically a candy expert, and would recognize that combination of peanut butter with candy coating anywhere. At the same time, she also knew that this piece of candy wasn’t real, and the taste and texture of it felt so real because they were using her memories to recreate it.

“I figured that since we’re basically one person now, then we can really start being besties now! Since we don’t have to worry about keeping you in line, and we don’t have to keep any secrets from you!”

“Yeah, you know, except for all the memories of the previous host, including my father.” Pinkamena said with a roll of her eyes.

“Let me rephrase; No important secrets.”

*The identity of The Silent Killer is pretty important, and whatever else I know you don’t want me to know yet.*

“I suppose it’s better than the cold bitch you were before, then again I doubt he’s going to suddenly change his act like you did, so it is what it is.”

“You can also think of it like I’m a constant reminder of who you used to be, trust me, you do not want to forget that.”

*Oh yeah, because my friends looking at me in pity like I’m a broken toy wondering what happened to me wasn’t enough of a reminder.*

She began to walk into the woods, right past Alice on her way to head back. Alice stopped her by grabbing onto the back of her hoodie. Pinkamena turned back and saw that she was pointing at something, one of the trees around them, though this one was a bit bigger than the others.

“Do me a favor, hit that tree as hard as you can.”

Pinkamena’s eyebrows raised slightly, looking at the tree in confusion.

“Why?”

“Testing something.”

*Yeah, that’s probably the best answer I’m getting, I shouldn't have expected that to change either.*

She walked up to the tree Alice was pointing at, deciding she was better off just listening to Alice. Just because she was acting more friendly now, doesn’t mean they’ll take any more kindly to her defying them.

She put her hand on the tree, trying to get a feel for how tough it was. It was clearly very old and sturdy, a normal iron axe wouldn’t cut it, it would probably take a chainsaw. She’d never punched a tree before, but it couldn’t have been that different from punching a person.

She pulled her arm back to her side, clenching her fist as she closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. She remembered that during her fight with Michael, she was able to focus her scales on a specific part of her body, taking it away from the rest and hardening whatever she wanted to in that moment. She could do it quickly and it made that part of her body very durable, but the rest was much more vulnerable..

When she did it then, she was practically running on instinct, and she just kind of did it. However, now she felt that she could do it on command if she thought about it. She’d need to work on it, as of right now, it was much slower than back then. There was still a lot of her body and capabilities she wasn’t aware of and needed to practice with, but that was when she’d get a day off.

So never.

She took in a deep breathe as she pictured her right hand hardening, specifically just the knuckles. Cracks began to form in her skin as pieces of it began to fall off, the remaining skin beginning to change shape. Her skin on her arm turned to dark red, lizard-like scales covering her knuckles and everything below it. It was very thick and healed together nicely as steam came from the small cracks, even as she moved her fingers around they didn’t change.

*If I only focus it on one area, it makes it stronger. The less spread out, the better.*

She felt her scales finish forming, noticing that like last time, her hand didn’t feel any heavier or harder to move. Pinkamena pulled her arm back, gritting her teeth and clenching her fist as hard as she could, feeling her entire arm get extremely tense. She grunted loudly as she slammed her fist into the tree, putting all her energy into it and hitting the tree as hard as she could.

She felt the shockwave vibrate throught her entire body, like hitting a ball with a metal bat. Her entire right arm went numb, the scales cracked slightly from the sheer force she pushed out, unable to stop her arm from violently shaking. She couldn’t focus on anything but her body for a moment, before she came back to her senses.

The first thing she heard was the sickening crunch of the wood being crushed, the sound of birds flying away and other animals running away from the tree, dozens of leaves falling to the ground around her. The parts of the tree around where she punched began to crack and shatter, the tree beginning to fall in on its own weight unable to support itself anymore, as the majority of the base had been destroyed. There was a loud creaking noise as the tree began to fall forward, no other trees in the way to stop it.

Pinkamena quickly jumped back, while she would probably survive that tree falling on her, it wasn’t exactly on her list of things to experience. She landed a few feet away from where it landed, though she still felt the wind against her when it did. The sound of a tree that big hitting the ground was deafening, surely it could be heard from almost a mile away. She almost felt bad for punching it now, it was probably a home to at least a handful of animals.

“Did you know when humans exert themselves in any kind of way, the brain sets a limit on how much you can push yourself? It comes from a deep seated instinct for self-preservation, kind of like flinching. Now that we’ve melded, I have a bit more access to your central nervous system, along with other stuff. I can basically remove that limit, and with your healing, you should be Okie Dokie.”

Alice appeared right beside her, staring at the spot where the tree hit the ground with a slight smirk. She seemed to be satisfied with the results, but like she’d still be expecting more.

“So that’s what you did? That sounds dangerous, and there’s no drawbacks or anything?” Pinkamena asked as she looked down at her right arm, relaxing as the scales slowly faded back to her normal skin, pulling out some of the splinters that had gotten into her arm.

“Well, pushing out that much force at once would risk fracturing or breaking bones at worst, and just being agonizingly sore for a while at the least. Shouldn’t be a problem for you, even if you did break something. While I have you here,”

Alice suddenly grabbed Pinkamena by the collar of her hoodie, pulling her down to her knees and at face level with Alice. Alice turned her head to face Pinkamena, the light in her eyes completely gone leaving them empty. Her smile was gone too, her face nothing but blank. Her leer seemed to pierce into her, Pinkamena’s heart dropping as all the heat left her body.

“You will not take Imperium again, or anything like it. If we tell you not to take something, do something, tell someone something, or anything we tell you not to do and you deliberately ignore us again, a brain aneurysm would be like a bug bite compared to what we’d do to you. You were already pushing your luck by asking us to allow you to tell Starlight about us, and there isn’t anything we can do about Discord. I assure you, you don’t want to make an enemy of us. Do we make ourselves clear?”

Fear coursed through Pinkamena’s veins as she felt like she was staring death itself in the face, unable to move or even speak. She nodded her head to say yes, hoping she noticed.

“Good! Then let’s get on with our day!” Alice said as she let go of Pinkamena, her wide smile returning and her malicious stare being replaced with a more joyful one.

*There she is, I knew she wouldn’t have done a full one eighty like that.*

Pinkamena slowly stood up as she felt the heat return to her body, noticing that Alice seemed to have disappeared, which usually meant she was done talking. Pinkamena brought her hands up to her face and tried to fix her hair, the only problem of hers she could fix. She then jumped up onto the nearest tree branch, jumping from branch to branch was likely the fastest way out, certainly faster than running.

Like Alice said, it was time to get her day started. After all, what could possibly be worse than what she went through last night?