Earth Bet was an interesting place. Plenty of people, really big, endless amounts of conflict. But most importantly, just the right amount of capes for a certain draconequus to take notice.

Discord had been having some tea at Fluttershy's house and on a whim, decided he was bored because of the whole reformation shtick. To balance out the fact he was, officially, on the side of Celestia, it only made sense for him to cause a touch of chaos. Just enough to make things right again of course.

But he couldn't do it in Equestria, that would get noticed. So he poked his head out of that world a moment and start looking around. Eventually, he stumbled upon a curious little universe, one with its own multiverse inside of it. And what he found inside one of the most prominent of those mini-universes was too good to pass up.

Humans. Billions of them, all too accepting of a very odd group of people. But only when they were odd in a very specific way. Upon further inspection, Discord found this world to be much darker than Equestria. It amused him and a plan began to form in his mind.

Reaching out Discord found a golden figure that seemed to be at least partially responsible for this and plucked a shard out of him. Observing it, Discord found he couldn't really understand it. It wasn't magic, but it wasn't quite science either. Shrugging it off, he reached back over to Equestria and started plucking some hairs.

A heaping side of chaos magic later and Discord had something that was neither magical nor science, nor… anything else that could be explained he guessed. It was perfect.

Now all he needed was someone to shove this into. Someone with an already low self-esteem so they would simultaneously get destroyed and hopeful with his gift. Someone with issues with self-image so they would be equal parts horrified and grateful of his change. Someone with a mind capable of handling it all.

He found his target, sitting at an out-of-date laptop in her room looking at some sort of online message board. Even better, she already had a shard within her, inactive. He plucked it out of her mind and fed it to his abomination of a shard before shoving it back in her mind and body. Now, to find the perfect way to kick start his new shard.

Discord grinned as he found what he was looking for and willed some pop corn into existence and then a theatre chair.

"Oh boy, this is going to be good!" He said, throwing some pop corn down his throat.

It had been another long and irritating day at school. I sighed, tossing my back onto my bed. They had destroyed my mother's flute today. Stolen it right out of my locker and did who knows what to it. I was going to have to stop using it, maybe find another place to store my stuff. I certainly couldn't change them finding the notebook I recently began cataloguing their exploits against me. It was pretty light now, but I was certain it would build up over time. Then, I could use it. I wasn't sure how yet, but someday, somehow.

I opened the laptop my mother had made sure to get me and let its old systems boot up while I went and made myself some tea. When I had come back, it was ready for use.

Sitting down, the first thing I did was open up the PHO and look for any new activity in the city. Nothing just yet. But there was another story of Panacea healing yet another child with some sort of genetic defect. I skimmed over it, there were far too many articles like that to dwell on. But as I passed over, I noted that it had a picture attached of Panacea standing next to the family she helped. She didn't look well.

I had read that she couldn't use her power on herself so I guessed she could have been coming done with the flu or something, but the way her eyes were sunken in was somewhat concerning.

Moving on, I search local news for anything of note. But just like my search before, nothing turned up. No major cape battles, no large gang movement. Just an average day in Brockton Bay. Disappointing.

I reached for my tea, deciding it had enough time to cool as I had scrolled through the web pages. As I raised it to my lips, a headline caught my eye. Because of that, I was momentarily distracted and didn't think about testing to see if my tea was actually cool enough and ended up taking a large sip.

I spluttered incoherently as I spat out the scalding tea as it burned the inside of my mouth and I resisted the urge to swear, afraid the words would make my tongue hurt more. And then it hit me like some really weird emotional tidal wave. At that instance, burning my tongue was the worst thing in the world and no matter how I tried I couldn't think of anything much worse than it.

It was horrible, absolutely inexcusable! My mouth, my tongue, burned at the hands of some bitter leaf juice! It didn't even taste that good!

I clamped my mouth shut and moaned loudly in pain as I curled up into a ball on the floor. I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my fists, shaking as pain and rage ran through me. It took me some time to to get over the pain enough to stop groaning aggressively, but even then it took me at least twenty minutes to open my eyes. But even then it wasn't because I had become acclimated to the pain, it was because I realized I couldn't feel my toes. Or my hands. Or the draft that normally flowed through my room. Or the hard wood floor beneath me, instead I was feeling some sort of carpet when I know I didn't have one.

I forced my eyes open as soon as I realized all of this and the pain faded from my mouth as if that was all I needed to do in the first place. I blinked and tried to raised a hand to my face. I didn't have a hand.

I bit back a terrified scream as I looked at the… hoof that now stood at the end of my arm. Or leg now, I guess. Looking down I saw I had two more hind legs, each coated in a rich white fur.

A little unsteadily, I rose to my feet, or hoofs now. It was surprisingly easy to move them, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Basic knowledge on how to move the muscles was more intuitive. If it wasn't someone would have to explain basic arm movements to kids just for them to learn how to lift a block.

But being able to move my legs was different from being able to know how they should move. I collapsed on my face in the first few steps before pushing myself back up and deciding to master that art of standing before moving on to basic steps.

I looked around the room and got a sense of scale. The bed was taller than me, as was the dresser. It was hard to tell like this, but if I had to guess I was about one to two feet tall at best.

Great, I was not only a horse, but a midget one too.

After I decided I had gained enough balance I decided I would attempt a foot forward. But as I lifted a hoof off the ground, I felt yet two more appendages.

It was incredibly surreal to discover entire limbs of my body I hadn't even noticed before. And as I looked back I could only grimace as I confirmed what I had felt. Wings.

To correct my earlier statement, a midget Pegasus. Fantastic. Fan-flipping-tastic.

Shaking my head, I walked forward. This time, I closed my eyes and tried not to think about how to walk. I let my legs do what felt natural just like I did when I was human. It worked much better than my first attempt, until I opened my eyes and was promptly acquainted with the floor.

The third time, I was able to make it to the door of my bed room without another issue. I silently thanked whatever deity let me forget to close my door all the way when I last entered and pushed my way down the hall towards our bathroom. I wasn't so lucky with that door.

I only had to raise my head a little to get it up to the knob and bit it with my teeth. It hurt a little to turn my head that way, but I managed. As soon as I got the door open I cursed myself and tried spitting the flavour out of my mouth.

I made my way over to the sink and realized that I was too short to see over the top of it without jumping a little, and seeing how I didn't yet trust my legs enough to do that, I walked over to the toilet and climb on top of the lid. After some struggle, I managed to get up and then onto the counter of the sink. Then I carefully stepped in front of the mirror and almost screamed.

A midget winged unicorn.

It was horrifying. I had a horn, but it was just a little stub in the centre of my forehead, not even two inches long. My wings were about as impressive. The body I had didn't have the same lengthy slenderness my old one had, one of it few good traits. Instead, this one was short and pudgy, baby like in a way. I could have cried.

My coat of fur was all white, but for some reason didn't match my mane or tail. Those two were an extremely silvery blue and grey. Not to mention my mane seemed to defy gravity somehow and was rippling in a wind that definitely wasn't there.

But the worst part was that I was incredibly cartoonish. My entire body looked like it was drawn by some Korean sweatshop animator! My eyes were two-thirds of my face!

Without thinking, I jumped off the counter and onto the floor before sulking back to my room. My mane seemed to comply with my mood and drooped a little. As I nudged open the door all I could think was 'what the heck am I supposed to do?'

My first thought was to go to the Protectorate. They had plenty of ways to test this body and whatever powers came with it. Not to mention they could support me through this. With this kind of body, there was no way I'd ever be able to live a normal life, protect my identity, or anything of that sort. The PRT could accommodate that, let me live more or less normally. But that would only be inside their headquarters. I'd never be able to go out on my own, never be able to go to a store and purchase book or anything else again. I'd be a prisoner without a cell.

But I couldn't simply do nothing, my body just got turned into a cartoon horse of Celestia's sake. I had to-

Wait, who? Celestia? Why did I know that name? Why did it sound so familiar? Come to think of it, I haven't sworn once all through this! I opened my mouth and tried to say something.

"Mother Flipper." I choked back a scream. "Buster! Crud! Tartarus! Argh!" I shouted in frustration, stamping my feet. It was bad enough that I was forced to become some sort of cartoon horse thing, but it also took away my swearing? Why!?

I took a few deep breaths and calmed myself down. This wasn't helping. First and foremost I needed to make sure there was nothing wrong with this body. I didn't need any more nasty surprises.

I leapt up onto my bed, surprising myself with the skill to do it without messing up. In fact, I was so impressed with myself I wasn't paying attention when I reached over and started pressing keys on my laptop and they worked perfectly.

Wait, what?

I looked at my hoof, then at the computer, then at my hoof. I reached forward again and tried typing 'Bingo'. It worked fine.

"What is the point of having a hoof if it just works like it has fingers?!" I shouted at no one in particular. Seriously, what was the point of this power?

I typed in what I needed and did a quick search on the PHO. It took me a minute to sift through the spam to find the information I needed. The New Wave help hotline.

Quickly memorizing the number, I headed down stairs to get the phone. I had never thought about it, but I suppose recent triggers could go to New Wave for help if they wanted to be a hero but didn't trust the government or something. I really just want to know I was going to be okay.

I made it down stairs and was met with trying to get the wall phone from where it hung. After a few minutes of rearranging chairs, I made myself a makeshift staircase up to the phone. I took it off the hook, somehow holding it in my hoof, and punched in the numbers. Again, no idea why or how that worked.

The phone was picked up on the other end by the third ring.

"You've reached the New Wave helpline what is the nature of your emergency?" I felt a brief panic in my chest, I hadn't expected this to be like a nine-one-one call. I took a breath, surely there were other reasons people called the line. Like if they were witnessing a cape battle starting but weren't in any immediate danger. That would be the main reason this line was set up.

A little more relaxed, I cleared my throat and spoke up.

"Um, hi, I… just triggered and got powers and I…" I bit my lip. I shouldn't be this worked up about this, but I was a cartoon horse! I'll be a laughing stock of a hero.

"Ma'am?" The lady on the other end asked. "Are you alright? Did your trigger involve anything incredibly harmful?"

"No!" I corrected a little more forcefully than I should have. I suddenly remembered that my trigger event was burning my tongue on my tea. Dear lord, even my trigger event was laughable! "It's just that I think I might be a case 53 and I really need Panacea to look me over."

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "I see, can you describe your change to me?"

"I… am some sort of winged unicorn. I'm only about two feet tall."

"Alright, if you're not immediately injured I'll let New Wave know. Panacea will likely be several hours, if that is alright?"

"Yeah, it's fine," I mumbled. I gave her my house address before hanging up. I wasn't sure if all that was supposed to make me feel better, but right now I just felt lousy. I put the phone back on the hook and sighed, turning to walk down the makeshift stair I had put together when the front door opened.

"Hey, Taylor I'm-" My dad froze and went wide eyed when he saw me.

"Hey Dad," I said sheepishly. This was going to be a long discussion.

A/N: So, to clarify somethings. Because of thre weird shard thing of weirdness, the trigger event was scaled to what is considered to be highly traumatic for MLP, hence the tounge burning. Also, if it wasn't obvious at first, Taylor is an alicorn filly about the age of the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Going with the notion that age is children, and the mane six are proabably older tennagers, and Flim Flam, , and the princesses are all adults, it is clear that when horses get older in MLP their legs, horns, necks, and snouts all get longer and thinner. So yeah, Taylor starts off young like that and grows into full alicorn princess size. Fun.