> Free to Study the Torrent of Travesties Commonly Attributed to Love > by Petrichord > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Doki Doki Choad Won't Choke Ye > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was a bright and sunny Hearts and Hooves day. Love was in the air, and yet Gallus felt none. There was a huge amount lot of love in the air, though. No, seriously. That’s what happens when a confiscated bottle of Cadence’s “emergency bottled love,” designed to be diluted with well-water and given sparingly to demoralized soldiers during a military campaign to keep their spirits up, gets tossed like a buckball into a statue at the center of Ponyville. Love evaporates quickly, and in bright and sunny weather it catalyzes and spread like an airborne toxin over a fairly large radius, infecting the area for miles around with unfiltered love. This wasn’t a love poison, mind. The effects were temporary, and not physically crippling. Emotionally crippling, on the other hand, depended largely on how prudish any given pony was. To rephrase an earlier sentiment: It was a bright and sunny Hearts and Hooves day, and everycreature in town was fucking like rabbits. “I just don’t understand,” the obviously aged-up-and-totally-legal Gallus sighed. “Doesn’t anycreature else here figure that love is an artificial construct designed to sell physical objects and pop-culture ideals to gullible ponies?” Gloomily, he cast his eyes around town square. Yep, there was Sugar Belle pegging Cheerilee, same as she had been five minutes ago. The rote nature of base, animalistic impulses did not fail to fill him with disaffection and disgust. “You’re buying into a palatable delusion!” Gallus shouted at them. “The preconceived notions you have of meaningful interrelationships won’t be able to support the gradual realization that you’re emotionally incompatible with each other! You’re just setting yourselves up for decades of cruelty down the line!” No response, unless Cheerilee’s increasingly loud moans of “Take me, mommy!” could be classified as a response. Which, news flash, they couldn’t. “I just don’t understand.” Gallus reiterated. “It’s as if I’m the only griffon around here who understands that love is a fallacy designed to hurt you in the end. You think I enjoy coming from a place where everygriffon hates everygriffon else’s guts? No, I don’t. But what doesn’t kill your heart makes your brain stronger, and I need to be smart if I’m going to survive the trials and tribulations of the academy of friendship.” Gallus allowed himself a small, self-satisfied smile as Daisy caught up to a giggling Roseluck, tackled her through a lemon stand and began to shove one of the sunny-colored citrus fruits right up Roseluck’s sopping wet vagina. “That was poetic of me,” Gallus mused. “Miiiiiiighty poetic. Heck, I think I’m a genius.” His hand drifted down to the top of Twilight Sparkle’s head, idly ruffling her mane as he puffed out his chest in pride. “Don’t you think so, Headmare Twilight? Isn’t that good enough to put on a plaque and hang in the hallways of the School of Friendship for future generations of curious, open-minded and critically-thinking students?” “Mmmph.” Gallus looked down and sighed. Twilight was still fellating him as if there was any love left in his body to give. With a life as tragic and a heart as icy as his, of course, not even the sweet touch of twilight’s muzzle tickling his balls would be able to soften the tragic fortress of cynicism he had built around his hard, tragic brick after tragic brick, until his love was squarely locked away. “It’s not that you don’t feel good, Twilight.” Gallus shook his head as he accidentally slipped into the poet-ese dialect he’d never really been able to do away with since he had mastered it in Professor Rarity’s classes. “Truly, I doubt any being alive—except maybe for dear, sweet, innocent Silverstream—could ever compel my loins to such an enthusiastic response. I believe that, were you not a highly respected leader of a country, academician without peer and defender of the realm, you would be able to make an excellent living as one of the classiest of courtesans.” “Mmmph.” “At least, compared to some of the other ponies around here.” Gallus glared at Applejack as she topped Big Mac, bouncing on his thick, massive cock like the rodeo professional that she was.  “Your conduct is incredibly unprofessional, you know!” Gallus yelled at Applejack. “Ah’m comin’!” Applejack shrieked into the air. “Oh, biscuts an’ gravy, Big Mac, are you…?” “EeeeeYUP.” “And stop being stereotypical!” Gallus added. “Honestly! I’m not even a permanent resident in your country, and even I know that folksy familial incest is a dead trope!” Tragically, they ignored Gallus and his brilliant insights. Wrinkling his beak in disgust as Big Mac’s jizz dribbled onto the cobblestones below, Gallus turned back to Twilight and rubbed her bobbing head with his tender talons. “Heretics. They blaspheme against the very idea of love.” “Mmmmmmmph.” “Well, the very idea of stable long-lasting commitments built on solid foundations beyond mere erotic fixations, anyway.” Gallus shrugged. “Friendship. With benefits.” “Mmmph.” “I’m so glad you understand, Headmare Sparkle.” A strong, passionate feeling began to build in the pit of Gallus’ stomach. Or, well, he thought it was the pit of his stomach. He hadn’t felt this sort of intangible pride building inside him since… Well, he’d never before been able to wax poetic about his thoughts and feelings like the complicated, tragic soul that he was. This, then, was something entirely different: the cathartic baring of his soul to a wise, compassionate woman who also had a really nice throat and holy fuck please boop my balls with your muzzle again why don’t you... “Mmmmmmmph.” Gallus could practically smell Twilight’s eros in the air. The fact that even a divine goddess of a mare could feel such base sensations, well...he didn’t know how to feel about it. Was it a betrayal of the very idea of companionship? Or, better yet, was it an understanding of the fact that base physical impulses didn’t preclude earnest and heartfelt contact and commitments between two loving, caring individuals? Truthfully, down within the depths of his ice-cold heart, he wanted to believe the latter. If he could block out the implicit lies and the sight of the grey, bubble-butted pony grinding her fat ass against some beige, vaguely british-looking stallion’s penis, he’d like to think of a world in which physical love could be entwined with cerebral love to form a cohesive tapestry of affection. Guided by sensible, solid principles, of course—Gallus was far too complex and tragic a griffon to allow himself to be given over willy-nilly to the concept of love like some base… Gallus winced as a dollop of mare-jizz dribbled down onto his beak. “You’re destroying the idealism of your nation, you know!” Gallus squawked upward at a tangled pile of pegasi. Like the useless and ineffectual institution that they were, the Wonderbolts had flown in to try and help with the problem, only to fly head-first into the thick haze of lust permeating Ponyville. Currently, a makeshift cloud of bodies comprised of roughly a dozen different Wonderbolts—including, to Gallus’ chagrin, Professor Rainbow Dash—was drifting slowly over the town while conducting their own, private, aerial orgy. If Gallus had to surmise, it was that the trickle of mare-love came from the naturally uptight Wonderbolts captain Spitfire, whose true, unbridled nature was hinted at by the way the bottom half of her suit had been torn off and discarded entirely, and whose bared backside was now covered in a cocktail of the sort of love that the School of Friendship would have normally found disreputable. “Am I the only creature around here tragic enough to understand the inevitable tragedy to stem from such a situation?” Gallus huffed to nocreature in particular. “Is it impossible to consider the sort of dark outcome of this wanton and hedonistic town-wide display without a backstory full of implied suffering and loneliness?” “Mmmph.” Twilight grunted, bobbing her head up and down. “Of course. Of course you’d understand,” Gallus cooed down at Twilight as affection and pride kept building up inside of him. “I know the trials and tribulations you’ve suffered have...ooooh...made you sagacious beyond compare. I just wish that everycreature else would stop implicitly pledging themselves to the shallow, unfulfilling pursuit of sexual gratification.” Gallus would show them. Once everycreature else came down from their magic-induced stupor, the strength of his convictions would shine through, demonstrating clearly that he was the most important of the new elements of harmony. Only he and his tragic insights would stand alone among the crowd, untouched and pure like the protagonist that he was. He could practically feel the well-deserved pride building up inside him. Yes, this was indicative of his righteousness; only he, the griffon whose physiology and quiet dignity rendered the love draught harmless and ineffective on him, had the self-control necessary to warrant such pride. And his pride grew… And grew… Wait. Wait, that wasn’t— With an ecstatic squawk, Gallus unloaded his liquid pride right down Twilight’s throat. The alicorn, to her credit, did a very good job of swallowing it all down; By the time Gallus came down from his orgasmic rush and Twilight had fully detached herself from his shaft, only a faint trickle from the corner of her mouth indicated that Gallus had given himself over to his baser instincts after all. “I hope,” Gallus panted, “That the betrayal of my arguments doesn’t cause you to think any less of me. I still want to be the sensible leader of my little group. I’ll be able to overcome this downfall and rise to event greater heights after introspection and a couple of friendship lessons. That’s how it works in Ponyville, right?” Clearly not listening, Twilight spun around and began shaking her butt in Gallus’ face, chanting some strange incantation about awakening ladybugs and the clapping of hooves. “Of course,” Gallus replied as he rose up and straddled his former teacher. “I love you, too.”