Pop quiz: what’s whiter than Texan senate and colder than the north pole of Hoth?

Joe would have loved to know the answer, because somehow that’s where he ended up. Snow, snow, snow, maybe a funny looking rock, and more goddamn snow as far as the Red Lantern’s eye could see. If he didn’t have his ring and the power of his frustration to keep him warm, he would have been a very nice something-cicle an hour ago. He didn’t know what he was anymore, just that it was rust-red colored and scaly with a tail. His first guess was “dragon,” but the giddiness of becoming undiluted awesome fell with each snowflake, and there was a fuckton of snowflakes falling.

“I am so kicking Linksano’s ass when I get back,” he growled as he flew through the air, flexing his claws. He groaned in anger and came to a stop, looking around and seeing precisely dick. “Where the hell is… anything?!”

He let out a snarl and lowered himself to the ground, powering down his ring. New approach needed; eyes were useless, but the second sight of a Sith might not. He closed his eyes and impatiently lashed his tail as he reached out with the Force.

He almost fell backwards from the sheer amount of dark side energy that was nearby. Not living, not quite, not from a breathing Force user, just pure undiluted darkness clinging to something in the tundra like the black part of burnt toast.

“Jesus Christ!” he marveled, snapping his eyes open. “And here I thought this trip wouldn’t get me any good loot!”

His ring flashed to life and he sped off, flying low to the ground and kicking up snow as he went. He didn’t have to go far, and the treasure loving Sith dove right into the snow where he sensed the source, kicking up powder everywhere.

“Come on, come to papa!” he cackled with a wild, demented grin as he clawed and raked the snow aside, fumbling for whatever it was hiding. His claws finally grasped something solid, and his eyes practically lit up like the lights of Vegas as he felt the sheer power jolt up his arm. “Gotcha!”

Joe pulled his arm back, and his wild-eyed greed was replaced with confusion. The thing in his hand was a black and red something or other the length of his forearm that looked like a thorn, or a claw, or a horn snapped off of someone or something. He looked down its broad end, and it did indeed have the inside of some sort of bone, perfectly preserved in the snow but with mysterious singe marks around its edge.

“Well, that was a rip off,” he snorted. “The hell could I do with this thing? Probably some dark lord’s backscratcher or some shit.”

He cocked his arm back to toss it back into the snow. Everything in his arm seized up. He felt his head quickly grow numb and shook it, bringing his free hand to his head and looking down at the relic again. “On second thought,” he droned lifelessly, his own internal thoughts speaking in unison in a voice not quite his own, “maybe I should keep it. It could come in handy later…”

He shook his head and snapped his eyes to where the horizon would be if he could see shit. Through the haze of dark side energy, its epicenter firmly in hand, he could sense a wellspring of light side energy. It was much more energetic, lively; not a trace of a past event or person, but one actually still living and breathing. Many living and breathing someones, in fact.

“Finally,” he breathed, shooting back up into the air and speeding off at the prospect of some actual contact, the horn growing warmer and warmer to the touch in his hand. “Maybe someone will be there that can tell me what the hell is going on, even if they are pansy-ass light-siders…”

“Next stop: science!”

The little elevator in Insano’s new house dinged and the mad colt practically skipped out of it into his basement laboratory, madly giggling to himself. Lyra was more cautious, stepping nervously out of the lift and onto the tile floor, keeping an eye on the scientist. If he acted any more effeminate or any more crazy, his Y chromosome and his brain would probably both file for divorce.

“So, this is your lab?” she asked, taking a risk and looking around the room instead of at him. It was blinky lights central, with wall-to-wall machines running incomprehensible computations, beakers bubbling for no discernible reason, and shelves of creepy anatomical examples in jars that were half-replaced with machine parts. She could have sworn she saw a cybernetic eye blink at her. It’s how she’d imagine Twi’s place would look if the unicorn had absolutely no semblance of sanity or good taste.

“Well, this is my temporary lab, really, while I work here,” he corrected, looking over a selection of multicolored jars with injection needles at the bottom. Not promising. “I hope to go home and get some of my old stuff to bring over. My landlord is a jackass and wouldn’t let me build half of this stuff, but here I have government funding.”

“And where are you from, exactly?” she asked with a raised brow. “You don’t have any accent I’ve ever heard.”

“Very far away from here, you never would have heard of it,” he shrugged off. “Now, get on the operating table so I can sedate you and we can get started.”

Lyra looked over to where he pointed. It looked like any other operating chair she’d seen at the Heart Sister’s place, with black leather and segments to raise and lower if needed. There was even a canister and breathing mask off to the side to put her under. It looked too… not suspicious.

“Why do I need to be sedated if this is chiropractic?” she asked warily.

“Chiropractic and genetic,” he corrected, levitating one of the needle jars and looking it over. “I’m turning you from something with four hooves and a horizontal spine to something with two hooves and two hands with a vertical spine. Your genetic code is going to get rewritten and I’m going to be monitoring to make sure all your new parts grow in right, and it’s going to hurt like nothing you’ve ever experienced.”

“So… you really can’t turn me into a full human,” she sighed.

“Not right away, fuck no,” he scoffed. “If I were to completely rewrite your genetics in one go, you’d croak. We’ll see how this part of the operation goes. If there are no complications, I’ll ring you up for the second half and make you into a full ape sometime later.”

Lyra looked between the operating table and the distracted mad doctor. She looked back to the elevator. Just a short canter and a single pushed button, and she’d be on her way back home to Bon Bon. No mad science, no operation, no risk. But also no change, or the money they needed.

She took a deep breath and climbed onto the operating table, lying on her stomach. “Okay, I’m ready when you-”

The table under her shifted violently, straps shooting out from under the table and tying down her legs. She let out a yelp before another pair of straps shot up and tied down her muzzle and neck, her bonds digging into her skin.

“I’m just about ready,” he chuckled darkly. “Can’t believe you fell for this. I mean, my god, I’m Doctor fucking Insano! I once got elected president by the most powerful country on Earth, and yet I am still amazed when people are shocked that I’m fucking evil!”

Lyra tried to keep calm and use magic to escape, but her horn didn’t even glow. She tugged at her legs and tried to pull her head back, but the more she struggled, the tighter her bonds got.

“Don’t worry; you’ll get what you want. I really do need a test subject to see if I can make a pony more human,” he said with a giggle. “But there are some… extra surgeries I’d like to perform on you. There’s a 98% percent chance you’ll survive them, though, I promise you that. I can always make sure you don’t remember any of this anyway.”

The mad doctor cantered in front of his prone patient, a wicked grin on his face as she looked up at him in terror. “I just need a willing assistant, a henchman, to help me out on a secret project of mine, or as willing as cranial implants and hypnosis can make you. And really, nobody would ever expect you to be my accomplice, and you want this so badly, so you’re the ideal choice. It’s really nothing personal. Now, hold still…” Next Chapter: Transformation Central 3: Dark of the Stupid Titles Estimated time remaining: 17 Minutes