Myou've Gotta be Kidding Me

by DataPacRat

Spring in the Air

"Well," I said to Amethyst, "When you say that, are you letting me know as your friend, or asking my permission as your kind-of Alpha, or...?"

"Maybe," was all she admitted.

I couldn't avoid a quick eye-roll. "Well - a big part of the whole Enlightenment schmear of ideas is that it's usually a good idea to let whoever's closest and got the most interest in an issue be the one who deals with it. So - if, after you've thought about it, you want more kids - sorry, I mean pups - I'll support you and help you as best I can. If you think this isn't the time for that, then I'll support you in that, too."

As I expected, she didn't say anything to that, but did look thoughtful. I gently stroked the heads of John and George as they nursed, and let my own imagination wander a bit... and, for just a moment, opened the mental door to let myself imagine having a belly bulging with life growing within myself. I expected that, as usual when I thought about anything of the sort, I'd be somewhere between squicked out and afraid as all get out, and would have to put away all such thoughts before my emotions soured the taste of my milk and made the pups cranky. But... now that I was thinking about it, it didn't seem all that scary after all. Having a calf of my own, instead of nursing these adopted pups? Sure, the mechanics would be tricky to arrange, especially if I wanted to keep Cheerilee from being hurt. Hm, maybe I could talk to the Princesses about that gender-swap spell they'd used, and ask Cheerilee if she'd want to be a father...

I started blinking a bit, and looked around the cargo bay, where the air popped with hope, fizzed with promise, crackled with springtime, and all that jazz. Something was nagging at me... ah, yes. The last time I'd seriously considered having babies was... when...

Ah, heck.

"Um, Amethyst? You know what I just said? Forget about all of it. Don't do anything about getting pups just yet."

I gently eased off the pups, who complained a bit, then settled in for a friendly tussle with each other. I made my way to the speaking-tube. "Red, you there?"

"The Captain's not in yet," came Blanche's voice. "I'm Officer On Deck right now. What's up?"

"I'm activating the Twitterpating Protocol."

"... Er, you are? Why?"

"Blanche - taking the time to ask why isn't part of the Protocol; just get it started, and I'll give explanations soon as I can."

"If you insist." There was a pause, as she flipped open the rest of the bridge's speaking tubes, and announced, "All hands, all hands, all hands. Pink alert, pink alert, pink alert. Mind-affecting magic may be in effect. All personnel are advised to minimize their contact with members of the opposite sex. In case the effects strength, prophylactics will be distributed shortly. I repeat - we have a code pink."

---

Red joined us on the bridge, sipping from a coffee mug as she sat down. "Okay, Missy - I've shuffled our schedules to segregate the stallions from the mares as best I can, and the rest of the Twitterpate Protocol is being done. So what's gotten you in a tizzy?"

"Well - let me ask you this. A week ago, if, say, Stoke Red had made a pass at you, what would you have done?"

"Slapped him silly and sent him to scrub the deck for a week."

"Okay - now, imagine if he came up to you right now, and whispered in your ear that the two of you would make wonderful babies together, your names proving you're destined to be together, making the next generation..."

"Mmm...." A slow smile had spread across her lips as she stared into the distance.

"Captain. Red. Pepper!"

She blinked and focused back on us. "Er, sorry - what?"

"Red - I want to have babies right now."

"And? What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing - but in case you've forgotten, I've got certain gender issues. And the last time I wanted a baby was when a magic book made me want to have it impregnate me. So even if it's a perfectly natural development in my psyche - we're still running the Twitterpate rules, if for no other reason than as a practice drill while we revamp the activation triggers."

"Hm. I just had the oddest urge to snark at you - something about you being jealous, since we've got stallions but no bulls. That's not like me - sure, I'll trade insults with idiotic jerks, but with you?"

"We'll add that to the idea chart."

"You're really taking this seriously, aren't you?"

"If I'm right, I need to. If I'm wrong - then I still need to, to get it out of the way, so that I can have a calf without worrying about magical influence."

She ran her hoof along the papers strewn across the table. "Well - not much has changed aboard ship recently that seems likely to do anything like this, other than, maybe, your new magical artifacts. But I don't see what forcing people to obey orders, returning to you, or turning you into a bird has to do with making any of us want foals."

"Maybe they don't. But I've been doing things with the cloak that the regent never thought of trying - and it's been doing other things, too, like sucking up the magic in every gem I touch when I'm a raven."

"So... what, when the regent was wearing it, he was using it when it was completely de-powered?"

"Or almost completely. Maybe forcing people to obey orders rather than let them get killed was the closest it could come to fulfilling its real function, with the limited amount of power it had... and I've started feeding the beast."

Micro commented, "It's going to be tricky not to keep giving it more power. I'd rather you ended up pregnant than with the brain damage you'd get if your magical meridians stayed empty. And if it can make its way out of a locked and watched safe, across half the ship, then I'm going to bet that even just throwing it overboard won't do us much good."

Red had now started frowning, which at least meant that she was starting to take this seriously. "Okay - so if it can force the whole crew to obey the wearer's orders when it's running on empty... just how much can it do when it's got all the power it needs?"

I shook my head. "Not a clue. Anything from brainwashing all of us, to transforming all of us, to, well, for all we know, affecting everyone who comes near us to affecting the whole planet. We don't know if it's actually connected to 'The Lady', and even if it is, we've only got rumors and myths about what sort of Lady she is. Maybe an equivalent to Aphrodite? No, that doesn't quite seem to fit - this isn't just lust, it's more... familial. Maybe Hera? Or something more to do with spring and fertility, like Demeter or Ostara? ... Please tell me that you've never heard anything about egg-laying rabbits." Red and Micro said 'no', and Amethyst shook her head. "Good," I said, "Or I might have started having to bang my head against the wall for a while. For now - can we at least agree that certain practical difficulties to our trying to save the world would arise if we went about it with enormous bellies, and if the world ends, any kids, foals, pups, calves, hatchlings, or other offspring would be in as much trouble as the rest of us - so it's better if, even if we all agree to start the next generation, to wait a bit on that? At least until we finish giving those potential offspring a world to grow up in?"

The corner of Red's mouth was twitching. "You can rationalize pretty much anything when you try, can't you? Mares have worked through their pregnancies for centuries, took a few days off for the birth, and gone right back to work. Still - let's say you're right. What can we do to keep that cloak from... doing whatever it is it's doing?"

"Well," commented Micro, "if it's range is still limited - we could try minimizing its effects to just Missy, by dropping her off somewhere, like an uninhabited island."

"It's a start," I said, "but a temporary solution at best. How long would it take me to figure out how to use my raven-shape's wings?"

Red said, "Maybe it just wants somepony to get pregnant, and will stop as soon as the first of us gets knocked up?"

"Are you volunteering?"

"Mmmaaaybe."

Micro countered, "Maybe it just wants its wearer to get pregnant."

I counter-countered, "It keeps turning me into a bird. Maybe it wants me to lay some eggs. Maybe it wants to turn all of us into egg-layers. Want to risk spending the rest of your life sitting on a nest?"

Red said, "Calm down a bit. Let's get back to what we do know, instead of maybes. Can we figure anything out from what the regent got it to do?"

My forehead wrinkled, "Well - he said he got that to work by planning on killing anyone who didn't do what he ordered. So - maybe what it's pushing for is as many live people as possible, and with whatever power it's got, it can work out that forcing people to do what the regent said would keep them from getting killed? The brooch attached to the cloak is supposed to be able to arrange events to get back to the owner, which suggests that it can be subtle when it wants to be - or when it doesn't have the power to be flashy and just teleport itself out of the safe. Note that I'm anthropomorphizing it as if it had intelligence and wants, which may be completely inaccurate."

Red nodded agreeably, and said, "And how does any of that tie into turning you into a bird?"

I shrugged. "I haven't figured out any significant connection. Maybe there isn't one. Maybe the intended purpose of the cloak is just transformation, and everything else is just acceptable side-effects of however it was made."

"Alright, then. If that's what we can figure out about what it does - what can we do to stop it? Missy, you used a bunch of magic-canceling spells when you fixed Blanche - would any of them work on the cloak?"

"No idea - which is a lot better than a 'no'. I can give it a try, and see what happens. Before I do, though... if the brooch can arrange events to get itself dragged back to its owner... might it be possible that it's subtle and clever enough to get itself owned by a new master, when one comes along that better suits its purposes? Thinking back on it - was what I said to the regent really convincing enough to get an experienced, amoral politician to just hand over his most powerful magic item to a complete stranger? Or was I just the first person to come along who could give the cloak more magical power, so it nudged things so I could do that? If that's how this thing works... then trying the blunt-force tactic of countering its magic might cause it to nudge events to prevent that."

Red was frowning. "Like what sort of nudge?"

"Maybe something as blunt as a dragon attacking the ship while I get ready to try the counter-magic. Maybe something subtler, like a problem at the next village we stop at, which just so happens to most easily be solved be my re-powering the cloak and turning into a crow."

"If that's how powerful this thing is - then what do you suggest?"

"Well - for one, if I do just try going magic-to-magic with it, having the ship go to yellow or red alert before I start. But as another approach - maybe instead of fighting it, we could best achieve our own goals by going along with it, at least so far as finding some other poor schmuck to pass it on to?"

"Like who?"

I shrugged. "Haven't a clue. There is the minor matter that it can be used to force other people to do things, and I'd really rather not let that power wander around unsupervised and uncontrolled. At least the regent kept the medium-term future in mind - some random person might only think of the immediate short-term pleasures from forcing people to obey their every whim. If it came down to it - I'd rather everyone on board ended up pregnant, rather than let that happen. Of course, that might be the twitterpation nudging my values, so, well, I'd need to take the time to work that one through from basic principles again to see if full-on reasoning matches my current intuitions."

Micro had been scribbling for a few minutes, and now looked up. "Here's an assumption to question. You're a cow, so going without magic will eventually hurt your brain, right?"

"According to all the evidence I've got, yes," I cautiously agreed.

"So, does that matter while you're a bird?"

"What, you're suggesting I just... let the cloak use up its magic, and stay as a raven, for... how long?"

She shrugged. "Until we find some other poor schmuck to pass it on to, maybe?"

I looked at Red. She shrugged. I looked at Amethyst. She was staring with an uncharacteristically dreamy expression, through the bridge's windows at the bow of the ship, where the Musketeers were fiddling with a hatch. I looked back at Micro. "Well - I can think of a few tests we should run first... in fact, most of the ones I was planning to run today, to try and see what's going on with my cow biology while I'm a bird, and vice versa. But - if trying to dispel it doesn't do the job, then... it would keep the cloak from turning this into a maternity ship, and from falling into the hands of would-be evil overlords... so it might do the trick, if we can't think of anything better.

We stayed at the table for another hour; we didn't think of anything better.

---

That morning, we ran through some of my planned experiments, and got results consistent with one basic conclusion: the bird-body was completely independent of my cow-body, without any wounds or the like carrying over from one to the other; and with a bit of careful and creative timing, we determined that whichever body I didn't have at the moment, didn't seem to get any older - cuts didn't heal, it didn't get any hungrier, or my bladder any fuller, or anything of the sort. Essentially, while I was a bird, my cow-shape was sort of in suspended animation, and vice versa. Which implied that, while I was a bird, my cow-brain wouldn't suffer at all for any lack of magic.

So I spent that afternoon chanting counter-magic incantations over both brooch and cloak, draining them of as much magic as I could, countering whatever active enchantments they might be emitting, and so on. While everyone kept a nervous eye out, no dragons attacked, our engines didn't fail, and I didn't slip on any banana peels. We locked 'em back up, for all the good we expected that to do.

The next morning, I woke up in feathers again. I tried pushing myself back into my cow shape - no dice; I didn't have enough magic in me (or in the cloak, if there was a difference). I wandered around the ship, asking in extremely broken syllables what everyone thought about having babies - and when nobody seemed particularly interested, Captain Red canceled the Pink Alert.

"I don't mind if you ride around on my head or shoulders," she said, "but I'm not going to wear an eyepatch or say 'arr', and if you ever poop on me you can fly home under your own power."

"Gggot. Tcha."

Which is why when we flew over the giant, I didn't realize it at first - everyone already seemed to me to be a few hundred times bigger than they'd been before, and I still hadn't finished adapting to life at my new scale.

Comments

[Thardoc]

"whichever body I didn't have at the moment, didn't seem to get any older"

learn the secrets of that cloak and a form of immortality is yours :o

[Tyrant Molestia]

...you dont like Missy very much right now do you?

[JadeCriminal]

Called it. :P

Now... Arrange this chain of thought in proper order: Fertility, Life, Gaia, Hope, change

[strangephantasm]

Am I the only one terrified at the prospect of the cloak bearer giving birth to some hideous Lovecraftian horror?

[Ceraph]

1374232

You may not be the only one terrified, but you certainly are the only one who thought of it XD

[I Thought I Was Toast]

hmmm... interesting... the cloak and broach being smart enough to get a new owner? if it's that clever/subtle that might explain why the lady always gets it back, and Missy has an airship which is probably the most ideal transport in that land at the moment, all it has to do is cause enough chaos for them to seek the lady out and goal acomplished... At least that's what I expect will happen... The question is when it's returned what will happen? Will Missy use the event to her advantage and how?

Woah... would the cloak be subtle enough to affect world events miles away? such as making the attack on the village which brought Missy to the dragon's keep? Or even making Missy cross the ocean to the continent in the first place in search of magic artifacts? ( a category that happens to include that cloak )

Also that was a really awesome form of passive magic. Very disruptive, hard to notice, and no one ever really thinks of downsides of love/attraction. In a case like this where everyone's affected by everyone else, instead of the normal case where all incident's of attraction are individual cases that may or may not coincide with others, the result is chaos cause no ones coherent enough to think straight.

[DataPacRat]

Author's Note: No new chapter tonight. During my daily inspirational walk, had an idea; using it would mean I have to throw out some of my existing plans, but the story might still be better for it. Am taking a day off to rework my plans.

[Doctor Whooves]

1379109
No, not a day off!

You spoil us, really, with this update speed - I don't think we can get annoyed if you chose to publish only slightly faster than pretty much every other fanfiction author.

[DataPacRat]

1380251
When I started this, I set an impossible goal for myself: daily updates, of decent-to-read chapters, of around 2k word-length, of rationalist fanfiction. It's as much to my astonishment as yours that, more often than not, I seem to be meeting that goal.

I've finished thinking over the new idea - and I'm going to go for it. It should be easy to identify the moment where events change course from the previous plan, and I'm tempted to link to the sound of a record-scratch...

[BATTLEAXE]

Maybe it's a magical cloak that instantly turns any story it's in into a clopfic!

[UltraNerdPrime]

Hmm. Rereading this, I just realized that the brooch is rather similar in mode of operation to the Guide MK.II. If we've got reverse temporal engineering running around, then there are some serious problems coming up.