Having turned herself into a genie and a crystal pony, Parcly Taxel now felt rather loose every time she walked down Corridor Six of the Department of Chemistry in the National University of Equestria, at the outskirts of Canterlot – her laboratory was located at its middle. She wasn’t concerned about that, though: it was her own doing and her own happiness proved that her spells were safe.

Then she tripped over glass shards carelessly thrown out by her pegasus colleague Camo Tessin, who was named after the chemotherapeutic agent camptothecin (discovered by the same chemists who found paclitaxel). A loud thud accompanied uncanny shrieking in echoing along Corridor Six, with Parcly thinking herself to have been hanged – the shards penetrated deep into her neck. Yet she felt nothing after that, and after a minute she started sprinting towards administration to report what she’d just landed herself into.

Something bizarre moved into her field of view – somepony looking exactly like her, but without the head. Her curiosity triggered, she ran for it, but four seconds later she felt her body careening into a wall. “What’s going on with me?” she muttered, her eyes locking on that creature she desired to investigate. Left hoof raised, she saw it move its own left hoof; the same correspondence happened when she kicked her right hind. “Hold on, this isn’t anything unusual… it’s me.” Shuffling her legs around, she turned back and hugged her own head. “Turns out I’ve become a headless horse myself.”