//------------------------------//
// 6: Twilightlicious 
// Story: An Equestrian Princess in New York 
// by Tallinu 
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	6: Twilightlicious

The ATM I tended to use for pocket money would have been closer than the bank I had to visit, but it wouldn’t have let me withdraw as much as I’d planned to. I was nervous the whole way, and had to restrain myself from looking over my shoulder every twenty feet. Suspicious behavior would not have helped me stay off the radar. Fortunately, my anxiety proved unnecessary. I made it home without anyone so much as looking at me funny.
As I rode the elevator up to the seventh floor, my phone rang. It was an unknown number, and I let it go to voicemail. But no sooner had it stopped than it started ringing again. I cursed and set it to ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode, sending all calls directly to voicemail except for my usual (very short) whitelist. There was no way I was going to talk directly to anyone who might be calling me right now unless I already knew them. There would be a time for that soon, I was sure, but not until Twilight and I were out of my apartment and somewhere sufficiently safe from unwanted company.
I opened my door and pocketed my keycard, calling out to my guest as I slipped inside. “I’m back! Don’t worry, it’s just me…” I didn’t want to get a taste of that paralysis spell again, or some kind of stun-blast. But what I got when I turned around after closing the door stunned me all the same.
Twilight walked out of the hall from the bedroom or bathroom, grinning smugly. I did a double take as she approached. I don’t recall her exact words, but I think she was asking my opinion and telling me something, and she turned in a circle so I could see everything.
She stood on two large hooves. She was still covered in a lavender coat. While her head was much more humanoid, rounder, with a flatter face and short muzzle, it was still very clearly equine. And while they were much smaller, she still had wings, barely visible behind her shoulders, and a slightly reduced horn as well. Her mane style had been adapted to human hair, but in the same colors, and her tail reached only mid-calf. But the rest of her…! Her arms and legs were toned and her body nearly as sculpted as some of the swimsuit models I’d shown her. She even had hands, with a full five digits and dark fingernails. But I’d be lying if I claimed any of those features were what my eyes finally came to rest upon, because she was still naked. And rather shapely.
I’ve never had a thing for furry art. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against it, but it just doesn’t do anything for me. I like my women to be normal human women. And I’d gravitated away from most shipping, although I had nothing against romantic elements in stories as long as they were more than just romance. I wasn’t attracted to cartoon ponies any more than I was to other non-humans. And even though I was quickly becoming accustomed to her, Twilight still displayed a number of behavioral quirks and physical attributes that just screamed ‘not human’.
But despite her obvious differences from a human woman, there was something about the way Twilight had changed herself… Something that had her appearance brushing against the fringes of that category, and she was quite unexpectedly pushing my libido’s buttons. Maybe it was the fact that she wasn’t just some drawing. She was alive, a warm body standing right in front of me, very real and very beautiful, even in a purely aesthetic sense. I was getting mixed signals, to be sure, but the ones leading to my pants were definitely present, and it confused me to no end. I really did not need that kind of confusion.
All of that reflection came later, of course. My initial reaction was to stare in dumbfounded shock, like I might if my pretty neighbor from down the hall had let herself into my apartment while I was out and greeted me in her birthday suit on my return. If I’d been carrying a bag of groceries, they’d have undoubtedly hit the floor and broken the tableau, but no such interruption came to rescue me. I was sure I was bright red by the time I managed to tear my eyes away and awkwardly clear my throat.
“Uh, Twilight, could you maybe…” But I remembered that she didn’t have any clothes to put on, and I was too befuddled to think of other solutions. If Twilight kept blowing my mind like this, I’d be lucky not to have an aneurysm.
“What’s wrong? Oh, I know I haven’t gotten the human illusion done yet, but that’s because it’ll be easy and I’ve been working on this part, since I kept finding little ways to improve it and I needed to get used to walking on two legs like this anyway. I tried keeping all four hooves, but picking things up didn’t look right at all with an illusion of hands, so I had to spend a little more time on proper hands. I’m still pretty clumsy with them, but I can make up for it with hoof-grip — or is that hand-grip now? Anyway, what do you think? Is there anything I need to fix?”
“No, it’s fine. I’m impressed… A lot more impressed than I expected to be. You look great. And that’s…” I didn’t want to say it was a problem, but it was certainly giving me a problem.
“What? Do I look too good?” She blinked in confusion, then thought about what she’d said and chuckled. “Oh, I see. You’re blushing! Are you attracted to me?”
“Hoo, boy. That’s a loaded question.” I rubbed my face with one hand and tried to make eye contact without paying attention to anything below that, especially not the pair of things my eyes wanted to focus on. “And I would never in my life have expected the answer to be yes, even with all the caveats I’m compelled to add to that answer.”
She laughed, bouncing a little, which made it even harder for me to keep my eyes off her bodies. Body! I turned into the kitchen for a distraction. I needed a drink of water anyway. Or a cold shower.
“Is it the nudity taboo?” I heard her hoofsteps following behind me. “I look human enough now that you’re embarrassed by it?”
“Yeah, pretty much. It’s also considered rude to stare at a woman’s… body, and you were making it hard not to.” I filled a glass as I spoke, and then downed half of it as she replied.
“So your people have all sorts of pictures of nude or barely dressed women to look at, but if you look at her instead of at pictures of her, it’s rude? I’m not criticizing, just confused.”
I frowned at the glass, considering how to explain. “Well, the picture is not the woman. And a picture of one person is rarely involuntary. Some places are willing to pay well to have attractive ladies model or act in… all the things I showed you, and plenty that I’d rather not. Even so, if you went up to someone you’d seen in a picture and started staring at them, like they were just some object? Yeah, it would be offensive.”
“I see… That makes sense. Okay, how’s this look?”
I glanced over my shoulder, then relaxed as I turned for a better look. Twilight had apparently conjured up a grey long-sleeved sweatshirt and matching pants. They must have been illusions, and they covered a lot more than really necessary, but I wasn’t going to complain. No longer at risk of death by embarrassment, I smiled and nodded. “Much better, thanks.”
“Rarity would have a fit if she saw me in something so drab and simple, but I can always change it later. It’s a lot easier to make a tighter outfit move correctly than something loose like a dress, and this was faster to whip up than something with more detail…”
“They’re fine. I appreciate it.” I went to pat her shoulder, hesitated, then did it anyway. Yep, definitely an illusion. It didn’t vanish or anything silly like that, and it hugged her skin… hide… coat… pretty closely there, but I definitely felt that instead of fabric. It hugged her in other areas too, although she wasn’t really all that voluptuous now that I could think about it with a clearer head. Still, she had enough to make the illusory fabric pull away from her torso in the usual places, and it did so in a surprisingly realistic fashion.
“Excellent!” She smiled, apparently dismissing my hesitation and lingering blush. “I think I’m done adjusting the physical transformation. Now I just need to pick an appropriate human disguise. Maybe you could help with that?”
It struck me suddenly that I was almost exactly eye to eye with Twilight now. I’m a pretty average height, about five feet ten inches, so it wasn’t too rare. But that put her on the tall side for a woman. I didn’t see a way for it to cause problems, though, so I didn’t feel it worth mentioning.
“Yeah, let’s use the couch.”
We sat down, side by side this time, and I brought my laptop out of standby. A bit of Googling later, Twilight had picked out features she liked from an assortment of images. We didn’t want anything too obvious, like a knockoff of the ways ‘human-Twilight’ had been drawn by various artists, or something that would look out of place in my company.
Finally she spent about a minute concentrating. I guess she was taking the time to make it as perfect as possible, unlike previous illusions she hadn’t planned to reuse. And it was undoubtedly a lot more complex a task than a flock of pigeons. This one would need to move exactly as she did while significantly altering her appearance. She might have said it would be easy, but I found it hard to believe.
“Okay, that’s got it! I’ll be able to recall this at will now.”
“Recall what? You haven’t done anything yet.”
“I’ve been… sculpting, I suppose you could call it, and painting, and altering an illusion spell to work with this shape.” She grinned and stood up. “And committing it all to memory, so I won’t end up a little different each time.”
“Ah, that would be important, yes…”
Twilight chuckled at my dry tone and rose from the couch. She swished her tail so it wrapped around her leg, and her horn flared to life for about a second. Then it vanished, along with her wings (which had been sticking through the shirt), temporarily leaving a glowing patch on her forehead like a ‘third eye’. Her image blurred, and then it was done.
Before me stood a lovely lady with lightly tanned skin, a round face with slight dimples from her smile, brown eyes, and wavy brunette hair that fell just past her shoulders. She had the same build as Twilight’s altered body, and was just as tall. Her feet were clad in high heeled sandals, and I realized that her hooves made that a more natural posture, helping to explain away several inches of her height. The grey outfit remained, for the moment.
“Wow.”
“You like it?” Her dimples became even more pronounced as she broke into a wide grin.
“It’s… outstanding. Fantastic. If I hadn’t seen it…”
I got up and reached out for her hand. “May I?” She didn’t understand what I wanted at first, but nodded assent, so I took it in mine and examined it gently. I could feel minor differences, and like the clothing, this illusion didn’t make the short hair on her arm feel like humans’ nearly-bare skin. I felt around her shoulder blade and found her feathery wing, making her twitch and pull away slightly. “Careful…”
“Sorry. Maybe we should try to get you some actual clothes. Would the wings fit under something, or would a low back or some holes be required? And what about your tail?”
“The tail’s easy enough to keep out of the way, I could probably wear regular pants or a skirt without any problems. I can work on the transformation some more later, and get rid of the wings. That won’t be a bother, since I’m used to it already. For the moment, I could probably use one of those sleeveless shirts with the narrow straps over the shoulder that I saw in some pictures, if that’s not too… provocative?”
I laughed. “No, that would be fine. You’d look good in one.”
“Not too good, I hope?” She arched an amused eyebrow at me.
“No, I was overreacting earlier, out of surprise mainly. I really hadn’t expected to see you like that, or to… um… have the kind of reaction I did.”
She chuckled softly and patted my shoulder the way I’d done earlier. “Well, I’ll do my best not to provoke more of the same, if it makes you so uncomfortable. Now, before I start getting too hungry from all that spellwork, I remember you wanted to pack some things before we left?”
“Yeah, definitely bringing my laptop and at least an overnight bag with some clothes. And you’d mentioned nonperishable food. While I’m doing that, why don’t you have a look in the kitchen and see if there’s anything that looks good. I’ll check it over before we go, since a lot of it might be unfamiliar.”
“Okay, I’ll get started on that.”
I was pleased to note that she was using her hands, though she clearly did need the practice. It was mostly little things, like pulling a cupboard open without curling her fingers around the handle, or holding a bottle without wrapping her thumb far enough around the other side, and whenever I noticed a mistake in passing I mentioned it so she could try to correct it. But I was busy enough with my own task, and shortly I was off to the bedroom to continue packing.