You know how there are those times where you know, from the moment you wake up, that this is going to be a terrible day? Yeah, there’s always something that gives it away: bad vibes, black cats, curtain fires, lechers on a bus; it’s that kind of deal. My hint that today—a day intended to be one of joyous celebration of a friend’s ascension—is not going to be a good one comes in the form of a knock on the door. Okay, so maybe it’s more of a pounding. Nah, even that’s a rather inept description.

So yes, this not-so-awesome day starts with a bone-rattling crash, as though someone is attempting to break down the door. At two in the fucking morning, someone is seriously trying to break into my fucking dorm room. No, really; who does that shit? Two in the morning is like the most obvious time for someone to be home.

Not that these are the thoughts presently going through my mind as this happens. No, instead I’m groggily brushing the sleep from my eyes with one matted foreleg and trying to figure out what the fuck is even going on. When the second slam on the door comes, jarring my bedfellow awake, I practically have to jam my hoof in Blossom’s mouth to keep her from screaming out.

“Shh, not a sound,” I whisper, withdrawing my hoof. “Someone’s trying to break in.” Someone slams against the door again as if to punctuate my statement of obvious facts. As an afterthought, I silently voice my inner concern, “Something doesn’t feel right.”

“Silver Script, open up,” someone says through the door, seemingly unbothered by the prospect of waking the rest of the dorm hall. “We have a warrant for your detainment. Open the door, or we will be forced to break it down.”

I look to the sleep addled, but no less terrified, face of Ice Blossom as I slide out of the bed. “Listen, this isn’t right; the guards don’t generally do Gestapo night raids on university campus,” I whisper, pointing at the door. “The kind of threat that would warrant such a reaction is something far more than what I could possibly pose.”

With another slam to interrupt me, I stop to listen to the louts on the other side of the door. “Are you sure she’s even in here?” I hear one male voice say in a clearly non-Canterlot accent. “If she is, is she alone?”

“Yeah! Positive,” the other answers gruffly. “The scryer told us that only one bed in the room was occupied.”

“Too vague for my liking,” the accented intruder replies. “Could be her roommate, or it could be her and another pony sharing a bed.”

I nod Blossom toward the bathroom door. “Barricade yourself in there, and listen,” I instruct her in a firm whisper. “I’m going to answer the door in case it really is the guards. If something happens, I want you to head straight to the castle. Make an audience with Princess Luna during the night court, and inform her of whatever happens here.”

“But...” She begins to object before she catches sight of the dour look on my face in the dim crystal light. Swallowing a lump in her throat, she nods before quietly sliding out of bed and making her way into the bathroom. “Okay.”

Out of the blue—or maybe not so much really—Blossom turns on the spot and throws her hooves around my neck, pulling me into a tight hug. I can feel her tear-streaked face pressing into my neck as she whispers, “I want you to promise me that you’ll come back.” It’s clear that she’s fighting back every instinct telling her to ignore my words and make a stand with me. “I’m only going to let you go if you promise me!”

“I promise you’ll see me again soon, you’ll see,” I reply, pecking her gently on the cheek before pushing her away. “Now go on! Get!”

Even as Blossom makes her way into the ensuite, I noisily stomp my way across the floor grumbling. “It’s two in the fucking morning, assholes,” I growl loudly enough to be heard through both doors. “This better be pretty fucking important!”

“Oh I assure you, it is, Miss Script,” a smarmy masculine voice floats back through the door.

I can’t help but roll my eyes at the falseness in his tone. Yeah, this is not a good day, and Luna hasn’t even lowered the moon yet. It’s two in the morning, damn it! I can’t have been asleep for more than five hours! If you wanted to make a show of arresting me, why not do it in daylight?

That answer becomes quickly apparent the moment I pull the door open. Instead of a mixed squad of battle-hardened unicorns and pegasi standing at my door, clad in their shiny gold armor, I’m treated to the rather worrying sight of a trio of griffons, one brandishing a spear, one some scroll, and the other a sword. All three look like they could tear a two-headed bear into ribbons, if their matching bearskin cloaks are any indicators.

“Huh, mercenaries,” I comment, somehow unsurprised by this turn of events. “Really? I don’t even warrant a squad of guards?”

“Can it,” the gruff sounding griffon squawks, leveling his spear tip with my nose. “We have a warrant for your detainment, signed by the princess.”

“So you said, almost word for word, I might add,” I reply hesitantly. It’s not a good idea to fuck with mercs, ever, but there’s something about this whole thing that rubs me the wrong way. “Surely your warrant states what grounds you are to be holding me on.”

“Princess’s orders, missy,” the smarmy one with the sword says. “They need no reason other than offense to detain ponies.”

Okay, that right there? That’s practically a giveaway that Aqua Regia is trying to make part of her many mounting problems vanish, by making me disappear before I can lay any formal charges against her. How can she be this fucking stupid? A crowd full of witnesses to her assaulting me hangs over her head, and she thinks nopony will find it suspicious that I just vanish the next morning?

“It sounds like your employer is legally and socially retarded,” I answer, opening the door further before stepping back and assuming an unthreatening posture. “That being said, I see no purpose in resisting. I am unarmed; you are not.”

The griffon with the scrolls smiles his weird beak smile and steps through the door to join me in the room. Sniffing at the air, even now still laden with the lingering scent of sex, as he moves to my side of the room, he stops in front of my bed and gives me a look. “Yeah, unless you wanna hear how loudly I can scream before you silence me with your talons, don’t even think it.”

He shakes his head before tossing one of his scrolls onto the nearby desk. “Oh, don’t worry,” he says coolly, noting my gaze lingering on the scroll. “No pony will know you are missing, and when they do notice, somebody will find your suicide note.”

Oh. It’s going to be one of those kinds of detainments? Fun. Still, I can only imagine what Blossom is feeling, holed up in the bathroom like that. She’s hearing what is essentially a conspiracy to kidnap and probably murder her lover, but I specifically told her to keep quiet. She must be chewing through something trying to keep quiet.

The griffon momentarily stashes the other scroll in a pocket on his bearskin armor as he reaches for something on his belt. His claw comes back gripping shackles. “Well, that’s not much, is it?” I comment as he draws near. “I mean, I do have wings.”

“Oh, I know.” Something about the tone of his voice frightens me. It’s at that point though that it occurs to me that there are three mercenaries, but I can only see one of the others out of the corner of my eye. I should have kept them all in sight. “I’m just the one carrying the heavy gear.”

The words barely leave the griffon’s beak when something heavy slams down atop my back, pinning my wings roughly to my side. I rear back in an attempt to dislodge the sudden weight, but all that comes from it is a bridle being slid roughly over my face. Even as the bit slides into position and the noseband cinches my muzzle shut around it, I cry out in alarm. Then, just like that the assailing merc jumps off of my back.

“Always did like the way bridles look on you ponies,” scroll griffon says toyingly. “Makes you look less like sentient beings and more like livestock.” He glances back to his companions before shrugging. “I’d like to play a bit more, but we gotta have you in fetters and get you hauled off before anyone in the university notices.”

Were it not for the bit in my mouth, I would probably make some smug comment about them making too much noise already. I might then make some glib comment about still having wings, but even as the thought crosses my mind, I remember the fetters the other griffon had taken from his belt and look back to the item in his hand. On my first glance, I’d only noticed the iron shackles, but looking at it now, I can tell that it’s a lot more than some simple hobble. No, this is also something that any self-respecting pegasus loathes: wing bindings.

When you live in a place like Canterlot for even a short time, you’re bound to see a guard detain somepony eventually. If you’re really lucky, you’ll get to see a group detainment of mixed races. It’s not exactly a pretty sight, watching a unicorn thrashing about as a magic limiter is slipped over his horn, or an earth pony getting fitted with lead shoes to keep them in check. Ponies get surprisingly violent when you try to contain them, but neither a unicorn or an earth pony can match just how viciously a pegasus will fight to keep her wings unbound. I still remember the time I witnessed three earth pony guards attempting to bind a drunk and disorderly pegasus—drunk or not, she held her own until a unicorn guard arrived on scene.

Just looking at the thing is making me shudder. Instinct tells me that if my wings were meant to be bound, I’d have been born without them, and that I should flee those who wish to bind me. A sensation—panic, I realize all too quickly—bubbles up from the pit of my stomach, and before I realize, I’m straining against the reins attached to the bridle, held by the other guard. I shake my head emphatically and give my captor a pleading look as if to say, “You don’t need to bind my wings; I’ll behave!”

“Don’t bother with the eyes, girl,” the last of the griffons says, chuckling as he saunters into my field of vision. “Boss loves his bondage.” Strolling up to the one still holding the harness and shackles, he shakes his head. “We’ve gotta move this along. The shifts change in an hour, and our contacts aren’t on the roster for another week. I don’t wanna to turn into a felony since we had to sit on her for a week because you wanted to take your time.”

That being said, he takes the shackles and harness from his compadre and approaches softly. “Easy, missy,” he whispers in a disarming tone as he begins fitting the harness around my barrel and locking my wings down. “It’s nothing personal, but a job is a job.” He shakes his head as he shackles my hooves. “I’d feel the same way in your position. Don’t worry though, we’re not complete monsters. You’d be too popular where you’re going, so I’ll be decent and make sure our contacts give you the hose.”

Being lead through the streets of Canterlot trussed up and bound like some animal still smelling of sex easily tops my list of the most humiliating experiences in my life. Worse, having it done by griffon mercenaries makes it look to observers as though I’m some dangerous, violent sex criminal—and there are many witnesses to my humiliation.

Despite being very much the daytime city, there’s still quite the nightlife in this city. There are plenty of clubs and bars scattered around despite the generally segregated layout, and even the odd brothel, if it suits your taste and you have the bits. The club scene in particular is a popular one, so of course there are many ponies up and about at this late hour.

Needless to say, a trio of griffons clad in bear skins parading a bound mare through the streets gets a lot of attention. I have no idea if Aqua Regia planned this route for them for maximum humiliation or if this is just some ‘happy accident’, but the effect is there, regardless of intent. Ponies along the boulevard catch one sight of me and look away after a disdainful expression crosses their faces.

As if to compound the humiliation, we aren’t even out of earshot when whispers begin. “Did you smell her? They must have caught her doing something insanely lecherous,” is the general theme of their whisperings, and more than once I hear ponies guessing at my ‘crime’. You don’t know humiliation and shame until you have people whispering things like ‘foal fiddler’, ‘foal abuser’, ‘mare molester’, or simply ‘rapist’ behind your back as you go by. Thank Luna my parents can’t see me now.

Through the Canterlot streets we go on one massive humiliation conga, only stopping long enough to alter our path and rile the intrigue of those that pass us by. In less than half an hour, the troupe has paraded me half-way across Canterlot to a rather surprising place: the gates of Ironhoof Penitentiary.

Suddenly this all makes a lot more sense. It would seem that Aqua’s choice of action is to hide me in plain sight rather than outright kill me, by faking my suicide somehow, and then placing me here. Without me present to lay charges for the sexual assault, she’ll probably get off with just expulsion from the school and a slap on the wrists—dare I say house arrest?—for publically assaulting me.

At least, I dare say that’s how I imagine she thinks it’ll go. Unfortunately for her, she’s a few crayons short of a box. In particular, she seems to be missing the colors of foresight, anticipation, knowledge, and—oh yeah!—common sense. She doesn’t have the foresight to understand how her actions play out. Her ability to anticipate how others react to those actions makes a failing grade. Not only does she not know a thing about me, she doesn’t even have the common sense to do a little background check to know how I work.

At last, in spite of the situation and the bit in my mouth, I begin to giggle uncontrollably. If I was able to open my mouth enough, I would even be cackling like a hyena. It’s not just cute that Aqua is this stupid, it’s absolutely hilarious. There’s some lingering doubts, but I’m seriously leaning towards her being the result of incest at this point. At the very least she’s got some major damage knocking around in her noggin.

My unnatural mirth, of course, gains the attention of the griffons as they lead me toward a heavily guarded door around the side of the well-lit compound. The one with the spear is quick to smack me in the back of the head with the butt of his spear, but even that isn’t enough to silence me by the time we come into earshot of the cloth-uniformed guards. I’m still snorting in amusement when the troupe draws to a stop at the tips of no less than four spears.

“What business do you mercenaries have here tonight?” a unicorn captain asks, inclining his head and shifting the badged beret atop his head.

“Prisoner transfer,” the scroll-bearing griffon says, presenting the captain with one of the scrolls. “Fresh from the palace.”

The unicorn takes the scroll, reads it a couple of times and gives the griffon a suspicious look. “You know, normally a file of royal guards escorts prisoners of this threat level.” He shakes his head. “Why’s this one so different?”

For his part, the griffon is a good enough actor to look genuinely offended by the prison guard’s suspicion. “I don’t know how your job works mister, but when your payment is contingent on instructions being followed to the letter, you damn well make sure you follow it to the letter,” he grumbles, gesturing non threateningly with his talons. “Our contract was to apprehend this cretin, bring her to face judgement for her crimes, and then bring her here.”

His countenance relaxing, the guard captain smiles before nodding his head in the direction of the door. “By the smell of her, you had yourselves some fun with her,” he replies smugly, as though this exchange is nothing but routine to him. “Go on, we’ll get her hosed down, into a jumpsuit and stick her in a cell ASAP. Consider your contract fulfilled.”

From there, two prison guards—guard captain included—replace the griffon’s bindings with their own as they lead me into prisoner processing. For the shortest moment, they chain me to a wall while blasting me with a torrent of water, laughing at my discomfort before throwing me—unbound—into a cell with an orange jumpsuit and telling me to get dressed. Well, when you have folks with spears telling you to put on a jumpsuit, you do it without complaint.

At least with the jumpsuit, my wings are pinned in a much more natural way simply by holding them within the heavy material of the jumpsuit. Instead of slapping a bridle back on me and leading me by the nose in the literal sense, they simply attach a lead to a ring on the collar of my jumpsuit. Sure it’s still degrading, but prisoners are kinda like dogs. That being said, I greatly prefer being referred to as a dog rather than as livestock.

While they lead me through corridors, I notice that every turn we take has ‘Male Gen. Pop.’ marked on a sign. Eager to exercise my newly returned ability to speak, I tilt my head toward the guard to my left and comment, “So, I can’t help but notice that this is the way to the stallion’s wing. I’m pretty sure you guys all got an eyeful of my girly bits when you were using that hose, so what gives?”

“No talking, prisoner.”

An unsuppressed snicker earns me a smack on the back of the head with a spear butt—yeah, that’s not getting old or anything—but I can’t help myself. “Wow, are all of you so crooked that you can’t see straight?” I say confidently. “You do realize that once it’s found out that you guys stuck a mare in with a bunch of stallions, you’ll be fired with extreme prejudice, right? Hell, you might even be unlucky enough to join the animals. I’ve seen enough prison movies to know how long former cops or prison guards last in prison. How many prisoners have a grudge against you, pointy?”

The unicorn drops the lead and whirls on me, smacking me squarely in the cheek. “You will quiet yourself, prisoner, or you’ll find yourself in the maximum security wing.”

“Why stop there? Why not permanently subscribe me to solitary confinement!” I say with glee. “By permanently, I mean a few days max of course. At least when someone comes to get me, I might speak in your favor, citing how gallant you were into ignoring your ‘orders’ to stick me in with all those big, icky boys. In spite of the corruption charges, you might just keep your jobs.”

He looks me directly in the eyes, and I return his even stare with my own glare. If not for my adrenaline and stress induced—delusional maybe?—confidence, I might not be able to pull this off, but as I stare the guard down, his own confidence wavers. Of course, he breaks his gaze quickly, grabbing the lead in his magical grip and continuing to drag me roughly through the halls. I note now, though that the signs we’re following all point to ‘Solitary Confinement’.

“Nopony is coming for you.” Though it’s supposed to be some sort of statement of fact, it sounds less as though he’s telling me this than he is reassuring himself of this. “Now that’s enough out of you.”

I shake my head and grin madly. Sure, they’re being rough and my cheek hurts, but he’s just doing his job while being wholly corrupt about it. I think it might be fun to shake them a bit more. See if I can’t really get them riled. “With all the money House Blueblood is lining your coffer with, you must be able to afford quite the attorney,” I croon playfully. A visible shudder ruffles the fur on the nape of the guy’s neck. Oh yeah; he’s as crooked as they come. “A shame it’ll be when one of your generous benefactors goes before at least one of the true princesses. All that family’s corruption is likely to come to a head in a way that can no longer be ignored, and you know what they say, right?”

Even as he tosses me into a dark cramped cell, I begin cackling wildly. “Shit rolls downhill, motherfuckers!” I howl with laughter as I climb onto the bed as the door slams. “They’re fucked, and they’re going to ensure you get fucked in the ass along with them. Just don’t expect them to have the common courtesy of giving a reacharound!”

When presented with a situation where I have absolutely nothing to do but wait, my favorite plan of action is to sleep. Not only would I begin to feel better, but if Blossom went to the castle like I asked, Princess Luna could very well be searching for me. Unfortunately, I’m still coming down off of an adrenaline high, and my heart is pounding in my chest. I can no sooner close my eyes and fall asleep than I can stop my own heart.

No, for this to work, I’ve gotta relax. Sleep is out of the question until I can calm down, but perhaps there is a tool on hand that will allow me to cool off, and even reach a dream state. Granted, I haven’t tried it since I became a pony, so I could very well be quite rusty. Meditation is like a bike though, right?

With my hind legs pulled beneath me in something akin to the traditional lotus position, I sit comfortably with my forehooves on my thighs. In the near blackness of the cell, there’s no point in staring at a singular point on the wall, so instead I close my eyes and envision the flame of a candle flickering in a non-existent wind. This mental conjuration serves the dual purpose of allowing me to relax by calming my breathing, and helping to clear my mind. If I’m focusing on the flame of an imaginary candle, I’m not thinking about how close I came to being some sort of prison bitch, or worse, preemptively gelding some stallion, just to be placed in solitary anyway.

As I sit, basking in the imperceptible glow of this mental beacon, a surprising serenity washes over me, slowing my heart, easing my breathing, and filling my body with numb warmth. With every passing minute my awareness of my body and surroundings lessens until finally, the candle in front of me is more real than reality itself. The stage is set.

When I open my eyes, I decide with minimal thought, I will not be trapped in a prison cell, but instead in my room at the university, sitting in front of my desk. That should definitely do for a basic setting to start out with. It’s familiar enough that I don’t need to actively think to maintain at any length. So yes, when I open my eyes, that is what I should see.

Slowly, my eyelids flutter open, and as sure as I’ve convinced myself, I am greeted to the sight of my dorm-room desk, covered in various papers, trinkets, and various alchemical supplies. That in itself, I find, is a particularly nice touch. Even as I look over the various papers on the desk, I can’t help but marvel at just how detailed this imagining is. Right in front of me is my sheaf of research notes on Zecora’s zebra marital aid, beginning with the list of ingredients I tacked on. At a glance, I can tell that all of it is one hundred percent accurate.

Seeing as there’s nothing else to do, I may as well take advantage of this time to go over my notes, to see if I can’t make sense of this potion alchemically. Strictly speaking, while this potion is fundamentally the same as some of the other things I’ve worked with, its structure and preparation doesn’t make too much sense.

Most of the ingredients have some explanation in the language of alchemy. The gold and silver dust represents masculinity and femininity, while crystallized rose petals signify shape. The petrified lavender stem signifies the body, and the aconite pollen is a potency inhibitor or amplifier, depending on the preparation. I would almost guarantee that at this point that the poison joke is the alchemical word for change.

The arrangement of it all just doesn’t make sense. Usually, aconite pollen is used to inhibit or limit certain aspects of ingredients or increasing the potency of another. It usually boils down to raw pollen or a reduction being mixed in with an ingredient simultaneously. If you’re tailoring a potion for a child, you usually mix in raw aconite after the stabilizing agent—ruby flecks, which are absent from this entire recipe—in order to reduce potency and risk.

In this case though, an aconite reduction is added in before the gold and silver mixture, making it a free-floating modifier. This is completely unheard of in Equestrian alchemy, as it is completely unpredictable. Just looking at this makes my mind hurt.

With a heavy, possibly imaginary sigh, I look away from the notes. Perhaps I’m looking at this with the wrong mindset. Pony alchemy is usually direct and to the point. What if zebra alchemy is a lot more vague, like the roundabout way in which they speak?

Smiling to myself, I call up the ingredients before my eyes, each of them floating free of gravity in the air before me. Going from memory, I reorder them based on the steps of preparation. A petrified lavender stem, a crystalline rose petal, poison joke leaves, aconite pollen, gold and silver: this is the order of the ingredients. Words begin to appear beneath them, and my mouth moves along with it. “Body shape alter/change unbridled/potent male/female.”

For a few moments, I ponder this. Structurally, it doesn’t seem like it should work, but alchemy is queerly as much about the meaning as it is endowed with as it is the interaction of the ingredients. Professor Calcification once told me in a lesson that the most important thing about alchemy is to remember the mindset. “If a potion proven to work makes no sense to you,” his voice echoes in my ears as though he’s right here with me, “you are simply not seeing the potion as it was intended.”

“If the body is changed to the opposite sex, the shape is achieved for breeding apex,” I whisper to myself. A chill runs down my neck as things begin lining up in my head. The potion itself has no stabilizing agent, meaning that it is somewhat in flux. If the potion is unstable, then it is theoretically chaotic in nature. If Discord created a sexually potent creature, he would want it to...

“... breed.” I hardly notice that I’ve spoken the word. I only now realize why the potion works. It isn’t just because of the way some zebra worded this potion. The very essence in progenesis is chaos. Millions of sperm compete for a single ovum; millions of variations exist for a single egg. There is no order in this, but Equestrian alchemy is steeped in the dogma of order. That’s why while ponies can order the body to ovulate or produce more sperm through alchemy, they cannot guarantee conception. Despite the ordered world that ponies maintain, nature is still wild at heart!

Not only have I potentially figured out how to do any number of things using this potion as the basis, I’ve made a very important finding that could turn Equestrian alchemy on its head. We can cure any number of diseases or poisons with alchemy, but when it comes to random things like the common cold or the genetic and cellular mutations that inevitably lead to cancer, our hooves are tied firmly behind our backs. What if we’ve been sitting on the cure for cancer for centuries, but never thought to make it because tradition insisted we add little ruby flakes to a potion?

“I must be intruding on a particularly happy dream, Silver Script,” a voice says behind me, shattering my concentration. “Seldom do I see a mare in your situation grin like the filly that ate the cookie. I suppose, though, that situations often call for happy dreams to distract from the dire cloud over one’s own head.”

Turning around, I’m surprised—am I really?—to find Princess Luna peering over my shoulder. “How is this possible?” I ask, sliding away and banishing the free-floating ingredients and words from existence. “You can’t possibly be here, your highness.”

Of all the reactions I expect to receive from that statement—stunned confusion, offense, silence—laughter is honestly not high on my list, yet here Princess Luna is, laughing at me. “You do realize you’re dreaming, don’t you?” she asks seriously. She pokes me with her hoof, as though that is supposed to pull me out of my non-existent dream-state. “I need you to tell me exactly where you are right now, Silver. You have been foalnapped, and it would appear that somepony is attempting to fake your death.”

I give her a flat look as she pokes me once or twice more before I respectfully raise a hoof to stop her. “Oh, I know all that already,” I say dismissively. “I said that you can’t possibly be here because I’m not asleep. When those asshats at the prison tossed me in a cell, I went into a meditative trance because I felt sleep was impossible at the time. Those aren’t the same thing. For you to be here would be an active invasion of my conscious mind without my consent.”

To my surprise, Luna rolls her eyes and snorts in derision. “You say the two states are different, yet to your body, they are very much the same,” she replies softly. “A deep enough meditative state is indistinguishable from a lucid dream, and recent sleep studies in Canterlot have even shown that these deep trances induce the Rapid Eye Movement state that accompanies dreaming. You say you aren’t dreaming, but your body is very much asleep.

“Now, you said you were at a prison,” she asks, regaining her serious edge. “Is it safe to say you mean Ironhoof Penitentiary?”

I nod somberly. “Fifth cell on the right, solitary confinement, stallion’s wing,” I answer a bit angrily. “When the griffon mercs handed me off to some prison guards, they said they had orders to stick me in a cell in the general population alongside some stallion. Knowing my luck, it’d be that Modest Pants fellow whose job loss I’m technically responsible for.

“Anyway, I convinced them—peacefully!—into sticking me into solitary. It was better than possibly having to make my roommate my bitch in order to get stuck here,” I continue, calming down “Still, the guys are as crooked as a Corsican highway.”

The princess raises her eyebrows and gives me this cautious look. “I see,” she says, retreating toward a surprisingly undetailed back wall in my dream. “Before I return to the waking world to arrange your—how would you put it?—jailbreak, I wish to ask why you looked so gleeful in what appeared to be a dream of studying.”

With a deadpan expression on my face, I conjure up a little paper caricature of Discord, and a little paper zebra to go with him. Holding them both up with my hooves, I say, “It’s probably not as simple as I’m making it out to be, but Discord and a zebra helped me find a new direction for the cure to cancer.”

Author's Notes:

Sorry about the major delay on this one. For the most part it's been ready for days, since my birthday on the 17th, really, but I like to have ALL of the eyes pass over my work. So here's chapter 25, just a few days from Christmas. Thanks go to E3gner, ReFro, Kaidan and NightmareKnight this time for helping edit this chapter. Breakout/Coronation Ceremony is up next, and then punishment for Aqua Regia.