Purpose: Study the various effects of the Zebra Potion, hereby dubbed Eros, on ponies and how it interacts with various affectations of pony physiology.

Study Group: Five ponies of each sex and race, totaling fifteen stallions and fifteen mares.
-Three mares and three stallions volunteered to be temporarily ‘neutered’ for part of this study.
-Two trial subjects have had gonadal tissues removed for medical reasons.
-See appended list for full pre-trial subject details.

Study Format: 1 - Subject dosed with 50 ml Eros.
2 - Physical and magical examination by Caduceus. [See Examination Protocols for full procedures.]
3 - Allow subject a fifteen minute privacy/grace period to experience altered form.
4 - Subject dosed with 50 ml alchemical purgative Mother’s Kiss.
5 - Pay subject 15 bits from research grant following reversion.

Examination Protocols: 1 - Collect blood, semen/ova, dependent on subject’s altered sex, and tissue for comparison to preserved samples collected by medical student Locus.
2 - Record pheromonal changes in altered subjects.
3 - Probe for physical changes, and check reactions to stimuli.
4a - In the ‘neuter’ subset, check dormancy spell interaction with effects of potion.
4b - In the cases with the physically altered mare and stallion, check gonadal state for changes/regeneration.
Addendum - To prevent unwanted accidents, no two subjects of the opposite sex shall be transformed simultaneously. See Findings for further details.

Notes: In preemptive trial, a baseline has been set for ‘pseudo-stallions’. Pseudo-stallion baseline ‘Subject Zero’ [See Appendix B. for full details] exhibits exaggerated arousal state and an unnatural magnetism toward receptive sexual partners, regardless of sex. Likewise, Subject Zero sample found to be highly virile and contains compound found to induce estrus. Pheromone blockers highly recommended for those involved in study operations. While no baseline has been set for the pseudo-mares in the study, it is postulated that physical stimulation might somehow cause an estrus-state to make up for lack of heat-inducing compound in the semen of non-altered stallions.

Findings: All subjects in pseudo-stallion test pool match with baseline established in pre-emptive study. Compounds in semen found to match estrus-inducing compound in Subject Zero samples. Curiously, a larger test pool has revealed an enhanced proclivity to seek out a receptive mate. While Caduceus’ medical team was examining a pseudo-mare, a pseudo-male subject left his exam room and intruded on the exam. Subjects were quickly subdued and separated before copulation could occur, but both were behaving in an almost feral manner, lacking any indication of consciousness beyond a drive for sex until they were reverted. To prevent any further incidents, all tests following this one alternated between two mares and two stallions.

It should be noted that following even minor vulvar or vaginal stimulation, even the use of a speculum, pseudo-mares rapidly entered what can only be described as rapid estrus. The pheromone secretion levels are tenfold compared to those of a normal mare in heat, and multiple cases show indication of multiple simultaneous ovulations. I worry that should the two subjects have been permitted to breed, quadruplets would not be out of the question. Caduceus might have been eager to determine whether or not a natural reversion would occur following impregnation, but the legal ramifications of allowing such a thing when the subjects are clearly not in a proper state of mind were more than enough to assure him we did the right thing. It is at least worth including for a future experiment, should we find volunteers interested in such a trial.

Unfortunately, from our findings regarding the ‘neuter’ subgroup, we now know that this marital aid will never be able to be sold or distributed without regulation. The spells that render a stallion’s sex drive and gonads inert is completely different from the ones that render a mare’s womb, ovaries, and sex drive inert, and therefore did not translate in the transformation. This means that a neutered mare is very much an ‘active’ stallion, and vice versa. Worse, in the ‘neuter’ group, it was observed almost unilaterally that transformed subjects’ sex drives were far higher than the non-neuter test pool, causing them to act as though some biological urge to make up for even a bit of lost time. These pseudo-stallions exhibited immediate, lasting erections and achieved multiple climaxes during their privacy/grace period, and the pseudo-mares in this group were even more sensitive than the main test pool. The neutering spells were recorded as still being intact upon reversion. With this in mind, a pony ‘neutered’ as punishment for a crime could theoretically use this potion as a manner to skirt their punishment and continue their bloodline.

Sadly, the regenerative effects observed with Subject Zero do not seem to extend to the cases with physical removals. Neither subject was observed exhibiting the slightest bit of arousal following their transformations. The mare turned pseudo-stallion bore no testicles, and the stallion turned pseudo-mare did not express the same estrus symptoms due to lack of ovaries.

That isn’t to say that this potion does not have some therapeutic use. One mare in the test group was cured of colorblindness, and likewise a stallion had major depth perception problems. Both issues the subjects had suffered from since birth, and both could see much better following their transformations and reversions. I can only reassert that some random, chaotic little piece of this puzzle alters the recipient’s genetics to remove anything that might be detrimental to the survival and spreading of one’s genes.

Suggested Points of Study: Forward research to ponies in the field of genetics and advise that this could be used as a form of gene therapy. Likewise, the core of the transformative effects should be isolated and tested with a stability catalyst added in. Objectively, this research may lead to stable, non-breeding related sex transformations, targeted body-part transition, or even entire changes in species.

Dear Diary,

Right, so, just got out of the emergency clinic. Interesting story. I may or may not have made my hooves explode while testing my griffon-claw potion. Well, explode might be the wrong word. Explode implies a violent rapid expansion. This was more of a splitting from the edges of my hooves right up my fetlocks. They were prehensile, but extremely painful. Like I said before, I had to go to an emergency clinic to have my forelegs bound after having a purgative to revert my forelegs back from claws.

For the record, my potion DID do its job. My hooves did take on the texture of a griffon’s avian claws... along with most of the rest of my body. The transformation just wasn’t complete. In spite of the agony—or was it because of the agony?—I immediately knew what went wrong. Although I swapped out the ingredient symbolic of the body for a target-specific ingredient, I failed to account for the changes potency resultant of removing that potency modifier involved in the original sex-change potion. The stabilizing agent I threw in probably didn’t help any, either. Worked better in the ‘Safe Eros’, because there weren’t any changes in magical interactions in the body in that case.

Now that I know what went wrong, there are so many other things I can start experimenting with. Unicorn horn filings sound like an interesting point to work from; it could be interesting to try to work out my fear of magic. Or, I could work out how much of an eye from my ‘trophy’ would be necessary to give me the gaze of a cockatrice without killing me—the toxicity litmus kit revealed that all of it is highly toxic. Can only imagine how much fun I could have with that.

Good thing is that I’ve almost got the right ratio for a proper cloud-walking potion. This alone would likely be enough to make my grade, but more importantly, I can give Blossom a real special treat. It’s one thing to go for a roll in the hay, but what about going for a roll in the clouds? According to certain... texts I’ve read, sex in the clouds has an especially erotic sensation, and the use of cloud-walking charms and cloud beds is commonplace in honeymoon suites. Even if we don’t do it in a cloud, I could show her the world the way a pegasus sees it.

I also managed to convince Blossom to be a stallion for me for my birthday date. All I have to do is take her on a similar date as a stallion the next week. So there’s something to look forward to.

~ Silver Script, October 14th, 2002 PH

Dear Diary,

I finally got an opportunity to test a curative today. Not in the way I would have expected, which ideally would have been in a lab setting with actual physicians providing bacteriological samples and test subjects, but it was still something.

Basically, Gale showed up last night looking like shit. This morning, she was basically walking death—runny nose, dry eyes, cold sores on her beak, and a cough that could wake the dead. The girl looked absolutely miserable, and worse, she had a presentation to make that she couldn’t just miss.

My cure for the cold wasn’t tested, so I wasn’t sure I’d gotten all the bugs out of it, but I offered her the opportunity anyway. I didn’t exactly tell her that if this went horribly wrong, I’d essentially be giving her an autoimmune deficiency. It’s not really the sort of warning that instills confidence, you know? Granted, most of the danger lay in properly separating Gale’s red and white blood cells, blood plasma, platelets, and everything else from the bacteria, and that can be blamed on the false advertisement on the perfect magical centrifuge one of the professors in the medical groups granted me limited access to.

Needless to say, my cure didn’t exactly work as planned, but by no way was it in the bad sense. I didn’t give Gale the equivalent of AIDS, but I didn’t cure her cold, either. I can’t be sure what actually happened, but I can guess.

The potion I made was a modification of the blood cleansing potion that I killed the lamia with. Instead of using a clean blood sample as a basis for the purgative, I made it targeted a sample for purging, which is why I needed to be so careful to keep the sample isolated to bacteria. If even a single white or red blood cell got into the sample, she’d be in huge trouble. Seeing as I was unsure of how potent the potion would be without a stabilizer, I didn’t use the standard potency amplifier from the base potion.

What I think happened is that the potion’s yield wasn’t enough to kill every single bacterium in her blood, but left enough dead and weakened cells for her immune system to get a real advantage over the cold. It might even be worthwhile for me to leave this current iteration as the standard. Think of it like a vaccine, only it’s made in your body as the potion works its magic. Instead of purging the infection from your system, your body gets to learn how to better fight future infections of that sort because you left enough there for it to fight.

Unfortunately, in its present form and preparation, this is going to be very expensive to make. Sure, it can be used to ‘immunize’ anybody to pretty much anything, but unless you have a whole lab dedicated to separating samples and some way to economically mass produce this treatment. Without some major financial backing, only the rich would be able to afford such care. Even then, it’s not something you’d see becoming a part of the standard free healthcare in the next five decades.

Either way, Gale improved enough to be able to make her presentation this afternoon. I just hope she didn’t get me sick. My birthday date with Ice Blossom is just around the corner, and I don’t think I have enough leftover materials for an attempt at curing myself of a cold.

~Silver Script, October 19th, 2002 PH

Author's Notes:

Edited by Refro and Fourpony.

I swear to fuck I want to murder the shit out of the GDOCs to FIMFic import script. Kept leaving out huge chunks out of the first section all because I had the audacity to have inverted indents and only having half breaks by hitting shift enter.