> Decoy
>  by terrycloth
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Day 0: Intake
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The purple changeling dozed off a bit, cheek resting on one hoof as it waited patiently in the office, sitting in front of the desk. It was a really boring office, with the usual filing cabinets and bookshelves and knickknacks and a diploma on the wall that it didn’t bother to read because it knew that no one really cared what it said. There was a whiteboard full of boxes and arrows and buzzwords that it didn’t really understand and that probably wasn’t possible to understand without the context of whatever discussion had been going on when it had been marked up. There was also a big leafy plant that it had to assume had seen better days because it couldn’t possibly have grown that big without ever being watered.

Its wings twitched, under its elytra. With a sigh, it got to its hooves and poked its head out into the hallway –

“I’m coming!” said a mousy brown pony with glasses and a file balanced between her wings. “Sorry for the wait, I needed to get your file from the mail room. I know I should have gotten it earlier but –”

“It’s fine,” the changeling said, sitting back down by the desk. “I’m not in any hurry.”

“So,” the pegasus said, sitting down behind the desk and opening the file. “Miss… Decoy? Mister Decoy? It doesn’t have a sex listed.” When Decoy didn’t respond, she frowned. “Are you a colt or a filly?”

“I’m a shapeshifter,” Decoy replied.

“Yes, but do you consider yourself a changeling stallion or a changeling mare?”

“I consider myself a shapeshifter,” Decoy said. As the interviewer continued to wait expectantly, it sighed. “Fine. Mark me down as a mare.”

She smiled. “Miss Decoy – can I call you Dee for short? Dee, I’d like to ask you a few questions about your work history. It says here that…” she paused, and flipped the page. “Sorry, like I said, I only just got my hooves on this file. Maybe you can tell me about your prior experience? Were you a construction drone?”

“Oh, in the hive?” Decoy asked, blinking. “No, I was a troubleshooter. I thought you knew this.”

“I wasn’t originally meant to handle your entry interview, but you know how it is. Auger had a last minute ‘family emergency’” she made air quotes around her head with her wings while saying that “so I have to fill in…” She smiled at it. “So you took care of problems that popped up around the hive?”

“Sometimes,” Decoy said, smirking. “Usually it was problems outside the hive though.”

“Oh?”

“Ponies,” Decoy said. “I took care of problem ponies. Put them in a cocoon, drained their love, shipped them off to the Kludgetown slave markets.”

The pegasus stared at it, frozen.

“We always got a good price – love-drained ponies are really easy to enslave. Then I’d take their place for a few days, and either fake my death or have them ‘move out of town’.” Decoy used its hooves instead of its wings to do the air quotes, since its weren’t as mobile as a pegasus’.

“But this was before you reformed,” the pegasus said, taking a deep breath. “I imagine you were very sorry –”

“Not especially?” Decoy said, wiggling a hoof. “They were enemies. Most of them didn’t know they were enemies, but being discovered would have ruined our infiltrators’ work and we all would have starved. Starved more, I mean.”

“But those poor ponies...”

“Uh huh,” Decoy said, unimpressed.

“So… would you still cocoon and enslave ponies now?”

Decoy shrugged. “The princesses are in charge, so they can disappear their own problems. Like me. I got disappeared into a hundred-year indenture contract, which I guess you bought? I’m not sure why you’re interviewing me now. It’s a bit late to send me back.”

“I’m afraid I can’t comment on our recruitment strategies,” the pegasus said, flipping a few pages and then frowning at what she saw. “I can say that, aside from dragons, changelings make the best workers in a desert climate. We’d have really preferred you to have some experience, however. Construction work is skilled labor.” She closed the file, and looked Decoy over. “How is your shapeshifting?”

“Pretty good,” Decoy said. “I can do a maulwurf or a diamond dog, if that’s what you’re asking. Also assorted animals, plants, inanimate objects, and of course any sort of pony.” It let the flames wash over it, and changed into a duplicate of the interviewer, straightening her posture and adjusting her wings to match the pony’s body language.

“Please don’t impersonate other employees,” the pegasus said, in clipped tones, her face hard.

“Okaaaay,” Decoy said, flashing back to its default form. “I was pretty sure you were going to be able to tell which one of us you were.”

“There are rules,” the pegasus said.

“Yay. Rules.”

“You are expected to follow the rules at all times –”

“Wow, you ponies don’t know me at all.”

“—or else you will be subject to disciplinary action.”

Decoy rolled its eyes.

“This is not a joking matter,” the pegasus said. “Since we can’t fire you, we’re allowed to impose drastic penalties, including withdrawal of privileges not strictly necessary for your survival, corporal punishment, and imprisonment.”

“But you can’t drain my love, leaving me a withered husk, and then feed me to the tatzlwyrms,” Decoy said. “So it’s still better than working for Chrysalis. Look,” it added, “I don’t want to be here. I don’t know why you want me to be here. This is making it really hard for me to take this interview seriously, but I’m not going to…” it trailed off. “I’ll go along with whatever sort of job you assign me to.”

“So you’d be willing to do construction?”

“Of course. Every changeling learns the basics as a grub. I’m sure some of it will come back to me.”

“How about security? Guard duty?”

It crinkled its muzzle. “Sounds boring, but whatever.”

“Paperwork? Data entry?”

“Eh,” it said. “Sure.”

“How about sex work?”

“Sounds fun.”

The pegasus paused before checking off the box, quill still perched between her lips. “Do you actually mean that, or are you just glibly agreeing to whatever I ask so that it’s as hard as possible to find an actual placement?”

“Sex isn’t a big thing for me,” Decoy said. “We weren’t raised that way. Pony attitudes just seem… weird? And sad? I can pretend to have pony sensibilities about it but I would have to care enough to put on an act and I don’t. If you want me to fuck random ponies then I’ll shapeshift some genitalia and go to town.”

She paused, staring into its eyes, then checked the box. “It wouldn’t be a full-time position – we’re not running a whorehouse. You’d be working a few extra shifts servicing the occasional visiting official or their staff. It’s one of the few things we can pay indentures for.”

“Alright. Any other options?”

“Janitorial duties?”

“Boooring. But easy. Sure.”

“Landscaping…”
> Day 1: Experiment
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was assigned to construction, of course. Any sort of desk job would have been a waste of its natural abilities, and the skilled workers could get a lot of mileage out of directing it around like a piece of machinery. Despite the desperately dry and dead conditions, there weren’t any other dragons or changelings on the crew – except for a single overworked diamond dog, it was all ponies. Mostly earth ponies.

“Up!” shouted one standing on its head as it lifted a heavy iron plate as a maulwurf. “Up a little more!”

It strained to get another foot out of its poor, abused arms. Maulwurf arms weren’t really supposed to unbend that far, and while the plate was resting against the framework of a wall, most of the weight was still pressing down on it.

“There! Hold it right there!”

“Ugh…” it groaned, closing its eyes and thinking of Chrysalis’ sadistic gaze as it struggled to ignore the burning in its muscles. There was nothing better for enduring agony than imagining what she’d do to you if you failed.

“Alright, you can start riveting now.”

…then again, there was no reason for it to endure this agony. Why use muscles to hold things in one place? Muscles were for moving things. If it fused its bones, with some long tendons strung along the arm and hooked to its spine and hips… the fire burning along its arms changed in texture, as it adjusted its internals to something more suited for holding a heavy weight at full extension. No need to get complicated, since it was already in the right position.

“Hey! Dee!” somepony said, kicking its side.

It vaguely realized that this wasn’t the first time the pony had shouted at it, and turned its head to look.

“Finally! Are you okay? You were looking really spaced out there.”

It blinked. “This isn’t a natural position for a maulwurf. I was concentrating.”

“Yeah, I know I’d feel like my shoulders were going to tear themselves out of their joints if I tried to hold something up like that. Just a little longer, though.”

“I’m fine,” it said. And it was. In its altered shape it could hold the thing in place all day.

The pony laughed. “Good, because we’ve got another fifteen of these to place today, and I’d hate to think we’d worn you out after the first one!”


===


It bunked with three ponies – all mares, of course, because it had been marked down as a mare. Two earth ponies and a pegasus, who loudly refused to take the top bunk. Not that it really mattered, since both earth ponies wanted top bunks, and Decoy didn’t really care. It did feel a bit more at home with a ‘ceiling’ in close, although it was still agoraphobic compared to a sleeping nook in the hive.

“So, did any of you sign up for the sex thing?” asked the mare who was supposed to be sleeping above it, but who evidently wasn’t tired after a long day riveting.

“I hope not,” said the pegasus, looking up from the book she was reading. “I mean, you all heard what happened to that poor filly…”

“I signed up,” Decoy said. “Was that a mistake?”

“Only if you don’t like being raped and murdered,” the pegasus said.

“I signed up too!” the pony above him said cheerfully. Her hoof reached down over the side of the bed, and Decoy obligingly bumped it. “That was, like, one thing that happened once. Everypony’s blowing it completely out of proportion, because they don’t want to admit that ponies actually have sex sometimes.”

“Can we not talk about this?” said the mare in the bunk above the pegasus, holding her pillow over her head.

“What, sex?” came the chirpy voice from above.

The cringing mare pulled the pillow down harder.

“Sex sex sex sex sex sex sex!”

“If I have sex with you, will you shut up and go to sleep?” Decoy asked.

The mare’s face peeked down over the edge of the bed. “I don’t know,” she said, squinting. “If you’re too tired to talk, how are you going to screw me properly?”

“I’d eat your lust for energy,” Decoy said.

She blinked. “So… then I’d end up with, what? Less lust? That doesn’t sound very fun.”

“Trust me, you’ll make more,” Decoy replied.

She giggled at that, and flowed down into Decoy’s bed, straddling it with the blanket between them. “Does some-changeling need looooove? I thought you colorful ones made your own now.”

There was a whimper from the top bunk across the room, and then the pegasus was out of bed, yanking the mare off of Decoy and onto the floor by her tail. “No. No sex in the room. I don’t want to watch it, I don’t want to listen to it, and I really don’t want to smell it all night. If you two want to screw, go find somewhere else.”

“Can we cuddle?” Decoy asked.

“What?” the pegasus replied.

“I kind of do need some love. We make our own, but that’s for other changelings to eat. We can’t eat ourselves.” It paused. “Cuddling is a good way to absorb a little, without anypony feeling drained. And I don’t think she was serious about screwing me anyway.”

“I guess we’ll never know,” giggled the flirty mare. She ducked her head and nuzzled he way under the covers, and up Decoy’s body. Decoy shifted to give her a bit more room, as the rough-furred, muscular mare pressed herself against it. “Big spoon or little?” she asked.

It didn’t answer, instead wrappings its hooves around her, front to font, and shifting to be a softer, silkier pillow for her to cling to, while it buried its head in her shoulder, letting her curly mane slide through its head-frills.

She gasped, and cuddled closer. “Oh wow, you’re so –”

“Shh,” it whispered into her mane, stroking her slowly. Somewhat to its surprise, she quieted down, and the two of them slowly ran their hooves over each other, feeling each others bodies and warmth, and listening to the other’s breathing and heartbeat as they slowly calmed down, and at some point they slept.


===


They woke up before dawn, relaxed and refreshed and really, really sweaty. The worker dormitory was heated, and the thin blanket they’d been given was a lot warmer than it looked. Decoy headed to the showers to rinse off, and wasn’t too surprised when the mare followed it into the large bay meant to serve six ponies at a time. There weren’t many other ponies showering in the morning – why get clean before a day spent sweating in the hot desert sun? – so they had it to themselves.

It wasn’t too surprised when she started soaping it up after it turned on the water. It shifted itself a horn so that it could levitate a bit of soap over to return the favor.

“Oh!” the mare said, around the string holding her bar of soap. “I was going to ask if you missed your horn, but I guess you’re a shapeshifter after all.”

“Mmm,” Decoy said, enjoying the warm water cascading over its carapace, face held up into the stream. It felt the pony soap up its back, and flanks, and then reach down beneath its tail to search around.

“Huh,” she said.

“I can put something there if you’re interested,” it said. “Pussy, cock… tentacles?”

“Tentacles?”

It shifted a soft, wet opening that briefly looked like a vagina, before a series of slick black tentacles emerged and started to wrap themselves around the mare’s hoof, giving her a quick squeeze. She squealed, and pulled away, hooves clopping loudly against the tile as she danced around, giggling.

“Is that what changelings normally have?”

“We normally have nothing,” it said, slurping the tentacles back inside itself and then shifting that part back to the default smooth expanse.

“No no, bring them back!”

Decoy glanced back over its shoulder, then sat down and rolled over to brace its back against the wall, lettings its hind legs sprawl to the side, and shifting the tentacles back into place.

The mare gingerly took a step towards it, leaning her face closer to get a good look. Decoy had one of the tentacles boop her nose, then stroke against her cheek, leaving a trail of slime.

“Wow,” she said, grabbing a second tentacle with her lips, and sucking a loop of it between her teeth where she could give a gentle nibble.

Decoy let out its breath in a quiet gasp.

The mare took that as encouragement and started nibbling her way down towards the base… until the other five tentacles wrapped themselves around her head, and yanked her muzzle into its crotch, squeezing and pulsing as Decoy convulsed around her.

She squealed, and struggled, hooves scrabbling at the floor. There was another sudden shift, and her entire head was pulled inside Decoy’s body.

“Stop!” she screamed.

Decoy released her, and she staggered back, eyes wild, panting madly, and her mane and face-fur completely coated in slime.

“Did I go too far?” it asked.

She panted for a few more seconds, then held her head under the shower and rubbed a hoof around to rinse out the slime. “What in Celestia’s name was that?”

“I don’t know,” Decoy said. “I was improvising. Nopony actually tried to play with the tentacles before.”

“I thought you were trying to eat me!”

“I was,” Decoy said. “I was going to pull you inside, and shift a big space in my torso for you to squirm around in. Maybe shift some leg-holes and hollow out my head so you could wear me like a suit.”

“That’s…” she stared at him. “Is that even sex?”

It levitated the soap over, and helped wash out her mane as it got back to its feet. “I don’t know. I’m not the princess of sex.”

She laughed. “Maybe you should be.”
> Day 2: Party
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It spent the next day digging trenches in a sprawling sandstone outcropping, which was something that the base maulwurf form was perfectly suited to. A lot less taxing physically, replaced instead by the tedium of slowly, carefully scraping tiny bits of off the sides until the trench was close enough to perfect to satisfy the unicorn walking alongside supervising.
It eventually got bored enough to start playing with the maulwurf’s mouth and vocal cords until it could talk. “What is this trench for, anyway?”

“It’s part of the perimeter,” the unicorn replied. “You missed a bit here.” His horn lit, illuminating the offending protrusion.

Decoy turned and carefully scraped it level with the rest of the trench wall. “Perimeter of what?”

“Just concentrate on your work,” the unicorn said.

Decoy did its best.

Eventually the bell rang to signal the lunch break. Decoy shifted back into its normal shape and flew up out of the ditch. “Want a lift?” it offered, hovering near the unicorn. “It’s a long walk back to the mess hall.”

“We’ve got time,” the pony replied. Which was true enough – the company was generous with its break times.

A familiar mare intercepted them about halfway back, however, somehow managing to gallop over the loose sand. She skidded to a halt, grinning, and as the plume kicked up in her wake settled to the ground with a soft hiss, she dropped the basked she’d been carrying and shook out her curly mane. “Miss me?”

The unicorn smiled at her, and conjured a small picnic table out of thin air. Decoy gingerly took a seat, poking at the weird material with a hoof.

The mare tossed the basket onto the table, and started setting out the food. “Every time I see you do that, I wish that I was born a unicorn.”

“It’s not that hard of a spell,” he said, blushing a bit and sitting down across from her, next to Decoy.

“I know!” she said. “I could totally learn it, if I was a unicorn.”

“It’s pretty handy,” Decoy said, wondering if it should have spent more time learning unicorn magic.

She stuck her tongue out at it. “Oh please, you can have magic whenever you want!”

“Changeling magic is a bit different,” it said.

“You could make a table out of slime?” the unicorn suggested.

“That’s not –” Decoy started, then shrugged. “I guess I could.”

“How are you and Dee getting along?” the mare asked. “We’re bunkmates now.”

The unicorn nodded. “She takes direction well enough,” he said. “You have to share a room now?”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” she said, making a face. “I knew it was coming, though, what with all the new workers coming in. Do you still have your private room?”

“So far,” he said.

There was a bit of silence as the three of them munched on their mushroom patties. They were a bit dry, but well-spiced, and the odd fruit juice that came with them was refreshing enough.

“Did I tell you?” the mare said. “I signed up for the sex work.”

“Seriously?” the unicorn asked.

She lowered her eyelids and nodded. “I hear most of the ‘visiting officials’ give really good… tips.” She giggled.

The unicorn kept a straight face, as he said, “Well, if you want some tips, you know my door is always open.”

“Mmm, so is mine,” she replied, shimmying a bit in her seat.

Decoy watched them flirt, nibbling on another patty. It wasn’t an expert on pony relationships, but it suspected that it was supposed to be getting jealous. In reality, it felt more relieved that its new friend had other outlets. It vaguely wondered if she was setting them up for a threesome.

It didn’t say anything, though. This wasn’t its conversation.

“I don’t have anything planned after work –” the unicorn started.

“Sorreee,” the mare sing-songed. “I’ve got my first extra shift tonight. Charity came by to let me know a couple hours ago.”

“Uh huh,” the unicorn said, chuckling.

“A delegation from Saddle Arabia.” She shivered. “Have you seen how big they grow them there?”

The unicorn winced. “Try not to die.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll give you allll the details!”

He wrinkled his nose. “Please don’t.”

“I’d like to hear them,” Decoy said, wiping off its mouth with the back of a hoof. “I might need to service them at some point.”

“They’re probably saving you for the Abyssinians,” she said. “Or maybe the landsharks. But don’t worry, I’ll tell you everything!” She leaned over the table, and gave it a kiss on the cheek, then started shoving the trash and leftovers back into the basket. “I’d better head back.”

The unicorn had to prod Decoy a couple of times to stop it from staring after where she’d disappeared.

“I don’t understand her,” it said.

“I don’t think anypony understands her,” the unicorn said. “All you can do is hold on for the ride. Have the two of you… done it?”

“I’m not sure,” it replied. “She played with my tentacles.”

Blue light from the unicorn’s magic wrapped around Decoy’s muzzle and held it shut. “Stop right there, that’s already too much information.”

Decoy nodded, and they headed back to the trench.


===


The pony – Charity presumably – didn’t come around to mention to it that it was expected at the party until shortly before dinner. “One of them mentioned changelings at a meeting today; it sounded like they were curious.”

“I can probably work with curious,” Decoy replied. “Are there any rules I should know?”

The pegasus frowned. “You don’t have to do anything that you aren’t comfortable with, but don’t tell them ‘no’. Be polite.” She leaned forward and sniffed it. “And take a shower. You smell like you’ve been rolling around in the sand all day.”

It frowned. “I have been?”

“It was a joke,” she replied. “Nevermind, just be there before sundown.”

That left it quite a lot of time to kill, even after washing up, so it tracked down its roommate to ask for her advice – and ended up helping her with her clothes and makeup, since it had access to magic and she didn’t.

“We get to go together!” she said, fiddling with one of the bows they’d tied into her mane. “This’ll be so much fun. I’m sure they’ll split us up for the really fun part, of course – it’s a formal dinner, not a sex party.”

“It’s a formal occasion?” Decoy asked. “I don’t have anything to wear. I thought that would be fine since I’m being invited as a curiosity, but if it’s a formal event they might expect me to be wearing something.”

“No no no no no,” she said. “You definitely have to go naked. They’re going to want you to shapeshift and do clothes work with that at all?”

“I could shapeshift to look like I’m wearing a dress, maybe,” it replied, concentrating and adding what looked like a bright yellow ribbon around the base of its tail.

“What happens if somepony tries to undress you?”

“It won’t come off,” it replied. Although… could it? There needed to be some connection to its body, but it didn’t need to be durable, and something inert like a piece of cloth wouldn’t need constant maintenance. Still, that would be letting ponies tear off pieces of its body for vanity’s sake. With a flash of flame, the ribbon vanished. “You’re right, it’s a bad idea.” 


===


They arrived before any of the guests, and were shown to their seats. It looked like a small affair, with about a dozen seats for guests and a huge buffet set out by the side of the room. The food, at a glance, looked a bit nicer than what they usually served in the cafeteria, although it had doubtless come from the same ovens. The décor was about as fancy as you could manage with office supplies – plastic candle-holders, sparkly decorations hung on the walls, and soft music from a phonograph set up in the corner.

“Are you nervous? I’m nervous,” the mare whispered to it.

It just shrugged in reply. Its own feelings were there – it had felt them, and was feeling some now – but for most of its life it had lived without them and it still wasn’t confident giving them names.

Then the Saddle Arabians arrived, and a cold ache formed in its abdomen – yes, it was nervous. They were huge! The smallest was as tall as Chrysalis, and at least twice her bulk. Oddly, they were all stallions except for a lone mare who looked as intimidated as it felt.

“So nervous,” hissed its roommate through her frozen smile.

The pegasus who’d recruited them was with them, leading them in with a much better fake smile on her face. Her gown was white and lacy, constrasting beautifully with her dust-brown wings and coat. As the Saddle Arabians found their seats, she moved to stand behind Decoy and the mare, placing a hoof on each of their shoulders. “I’d like to introduce you to Puffball and Dee, who’ve agreed to be your entertainment for the evening.”

The other mare brought in as entertainment gave a nervous wave, and Decoy nodded its head politely, glancing around the table at the towering horses, still having to look up at them despite the height advantage given by its chair over their cushions.

One of them stared at Decoy with particular interest. “What manner of creature are you?”

“I’m a changeling,” it replied. “We’re colorful now.”

“They reformed, didn’t you hear?” another of the guests added. “They’re good now.”

Decoy let the flames wash over it, transforming into the black, sharp-edged figure that it had been under Chrysalis’ rule. “Is this better?” it asked, its voice modulating with the multi-toned resonance that ponies found so terrifying.

Judging by the look on the stallion’s face, it was exactly what he wanted, but the Saddle Arabian mare gave a sigh, and looked away. “Please, we’re here to eat. Leave the theatrics for after dinner.”

It shifted back.

The pegasus chuckled. “As I said, they’re here for your entertainment. Feel free to use them however you wish!”

“And what about you, my dear?” asked the stallion at the head of the table. “Are you on the menu?”

“It’s not part of my job description,” she replied, but smiled and stroked his cheek with her feathery wingtip. “Ask me again after I’ve had a few drinks.”


===


After everypony had had their fill of the food – leaving most of it uneaten, of course – the party moved on to the conversation stage. Decoy felt a hoof rest on its back as it headed back towards its seat from the garbage pail, and stopped to glace at the owner.

“Such an interesting texture,” the stallion said, stroking down across its flank. “Ever since we heard of the changeling attack on Equestria, I’ve wanted to meet one.”

“I hope I can live up to your expectations,” Decoy replied, turning towards him and prancing around, to let the hoof wander over its elytra and through its head-frills.

The stallion stared into its eyes, lifted up its chin to examine its teeth, then made a twirling motion to indicate that it should turn around, and lifted its tail. “Nothing?” he asked.

“Anything,” Decoy replied, shifting a vulva into place for him to gawk at.

“But it’s not real,” the stallion said, disappointed.

“Oh, it’s better than real!” called the earth pony from across the room, the conversation near her pausing as she butted in. “She’s really good at shapeshifting, just having her make a vagina is a total waste of her talents.”

The stallion chuckled. “What, should I ask for two?”

Decoy obligingly added a second alongside her first, shifting them both to be better balanced horizontally. “Easy,” she said, as she readjusted her internal organs to make room for a pair of cocks.

“Oh, you want a challenge?” asked another Saddle Arabian. “Make ten then! One for each of us!”

“Why stop there?” the curly-maned mare suggested. “I bet she could do a hundred!”

Could she? It was an interesting problem. The surface area was certainly there, but surface area was only half the story – that many vaginas, large enough to handle a Saddle Arabian penis, wouldn’t leave her much room for anything else. But was that really a problem? She didn’t have organs when she shifted into a rock, and the only real effect from that was a slightly increased magic drain. One by one, she started to add the requested vaginas, each with a pony-like opening in her shell, shifting away her internals until she was a mostly-hollow mass of cock-sleeves. She shifted away her wings and elytra into a mere discoloration on her back, adding four more openings on each side, flanking her spine. Her legs only got two or three each, and that was at the cost of most of her strength – leaving only enough to stay standing. Three in her chest, replacing her heart and lungs, a ring of four spiraling their way up her throat… and she was only to sixty six.

She opened her eyes, to see everypony in the room staring at her, in one sort of fascination or another.

“How does that feel?” the stallion seated next to her asked.

“Empty,” she replied, then shifted one of her eyes into another vagina, curling through where she normally kept her brain. Then the other. A ripple of movement ran from beneath her tail, visiting each of the sex organs festooned across her shell, making them wink in turn as she imagined them all being somehow filled, ending with the ones replacing her eyes blinking in unison. “Aroused,” she added, then shifted her mouth into one last vagina.

She was about to shift back, when she felt something press against one of her eyes – which stretched, as it was designed to, a shivery pleasure that only increased as the cool, smooth object nestled into place inside her. It was firm, but not hard, thick and rounded… she squinted around it to give it a squeeze, and felt a hoof brush over the corresponding clitoris, briefly.

“What are you doing with that cucumber?” the Saddle Arabian mare asked. Decoy’s ears were just frills that gathered sound, so she had left them alone and could still hear.

“We need to make sure she isn’t cheating,” the stallion replied, his hoofsteps heading over to the buffet and coming back with another vegetable, sliding it slowly into her other eye. It didn’t want to fit inside her skull, but she managed to twist her head to the side until one of them angled down her throat. A third soon joined them, inserted into her erstwhile mouth, forcing her to stretch her neck out straight.

She tried to whimper, but had no voice. She’d had sex before, but only with one vagina at a time, and maybe it had been a mistake to make each of them as sensitive as the first, but this was the kind of mistake she needed to make more often… ooooh, there was a sharper, rougher vegetable, sliding in under her tail. A carrot? Her legs buckled, and weak as she was she collapsed to the ground, only to be lifted by strong hooves, which rubbed against other slits as they laid her out on the table, making her twitch with orgasm even before they started adding more and more vegetables to penetrate her from every angle.

She quickly lost track of time, becoming a leaking, twitching pile of sex as the emptiness inside her gradually filled, until at last the final hole had been plugged, and she was left to squirm against the tablecloth, squeezing around the now-warm vegetables filling every corner of her body. She vaguely heard the Saddle Arabians cheer, although she was too far gone to listen in on their words.

They left her there for a while, trying to hold still enough to come down from her high when the slightest movement shifted the mass inside her and sent her into another round of orgasms. She heard her roommate crying out in pleasure on the table next to her, as one of the guests screwed the mare in a more conventional fashion.

After an eternity of helpless pleasure, she felt one of the cucumbers slide from its sheath. “Alright, Dee. The party’s over,” her roommate said, nuzzling into another set of labia and feeling around for the carrot inside with her tongue.

Decoy shifted into a rock, then back into its default form, scattering ruined, slimy vegetables across the wreckage of the table and clattering to the floor. The curly-maned mare covered her face with her hooves as the vegetables went flying, and managed to avoid losing an eye to the hurtling projectiles.

“I only managed sixty nine,” Decoy said, its mind still numb and spinning from too much pleasure.

“Still very impressive,” the mare said, grinning. “I only managed six, and that was with them taking turns.” She gingerly sat down on the cushion she’d been standing on, and winced. “Oh, Celestia, I’m going to be sore for a while. But in a good way!”

“That’s good,” it said. “I think. If you can call this thinking. I –” it paused. “I may have overestimated my stamina.”

“All sexed out?” she asked, grinning up at it.

“No,” it replied. “I’m still incredibly aroused, even though I don’t even have anything to have sex with at the moment.”

“Then why’d you go and change back all at once?” she asked, pouting. “I was looking forward to emptying you out myself… one… at… a… time…” she licked her lips, still slick with juices from the openings she had had a chance to shove her muzzle into.

It dangled a foreleg off the edge of the table, twisting it to turn the frog face up, and shifted a single set of sexual organs into the already-sensitive flesh at the base of its hoof; just a small one, suitable for licking.

The mare didn’t disappoint.
> Day 6: Frustration
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

A few days passed without anything remarkable happening. Its tasks varied from day to day, but rarely required anything more interesting than turning into yet another Maulwurf – there were Earth Ponies on the crew that could break rocks with their hooves and dig with a shovel a decent percentage of the speed a diamond dog could manage, but nopony was as strong as a giant mutant mole monster, or even a changeling facsimile thereof.

The mare spent most nights in its bed, cuddling it in its cuddle-form, but the showers usually had other ponies around, which made her a bit self-conscious about going any further. It thought about ways that it could get her alone, since she seemed to be increasingly frustrated, but then she finally managed to get her unicorn friend to spend the night with her, so it considered the onus to keep her satisfied passed.

Sex was still on its mind a disturbing percentage of the time. Sometimes it worried that the Saddle Arabians had broken something, but it didn’t feel broken. Just… hungry. Still, it had decades of experience resisting hunger much worse than that.

The mousy pegasus who seemed to be in charge of its work assignments called it into the office one morning. “You have a package,” she said. “I’m afraid company rules require us to have an agent present when you open it, to make sure it isn’t something to help you escape.”

“Alright,” Decoy said, sitting across the desk from her. It glanced at the small box sitting in front of it, which seemed to be made of changeling slime. “Can I open it now?”

She nodded. “Please.”

It picked up the box and examined it for any markings to reveal who exactly it was from, but it wasn’t familiar enough with the new leaders of the hive to tell whether it was from Pharynx or Thorax. Surely it was one of the two of them, though. It sharpened its hoof with some subtle shapeshifting and sliced the box open.

A large beetle squirmed out of the slit and dropped to the desk, legs skittering against the wood as it turned to face it.

“Ah!” The pegasus rolled her chair back against the wall, shielding herself with her wings.

It looked up. “It’s just a communication beetle,” it explained. “Thorax must want a report on how you’re treating me.”

“So it’s trained?” she asked, relaxing a little, or at least recovering her composure. “Like a carrier pigeon?”

“Sort of,” it said. It tapped the beetle lightly. “Connect.”

The beetle lit up with a bright green glow, and a loud chime resounded through the office… but nothing else happened.

“It might take a while for him to get to his own beetle,” Decoy said, staring expectantly at the glowing bug, which chimed again. “Chrysalis always sent us with a set of three, so we could stare at her giant head while she ordered us around. With one we’ll only be able to send our voices.”

After a few more chimes, the glow faded a bit, and the beetle crouched down closer to the desktop. “Hello?” came Thorax’s voice. “Hello? Who is this?”

“Decoy,” it replied.

“Oh! That got to you faster than I expected. Are you okay?”

“I think so,” Decoy said. “I’ve been spending most of my time as a Maulwurf, but the food is good.”

“That’s good to hear,” Thorax said, with obvious relief. “Have you been getting enough love? You haven’t tried eating your own love, have you? Princess Twilight thinks that might reverse your reformation, and that’s the last thing we need.”

“I have a cuddle-buddy,” it said, “and plenty of pony food, so I don’t need much. Maulwurfs are huge but they’re relatively mundane.” It paused, uncertain whether to ask. “Have the riots –”

“They’ve calmed down,” Thorax said. “We still have to watch out for protesters, but Pharynx has it under control.”

“Dee’s location is being kept confidential, as you requested,” the pegasus added. “We don’t want trouble out here any more than you do.”

“Dee?” Thorax repeated, chuckling. “What a cute nickname! Is that your cuddle-buddy?”

“No, she’s my… boss?” it looked over at her.

She shook her head. “Caseworker. Your ‘boss’ is whoever is supervising you at the day’s work site.”

“Well, miss caseworker. Do you have any complaints about Decoy’s behavior?” Thorax asked.

“No, she’s been very cooperative so far,” the pegasus said. “Occasionally sarcastic, but that’s not actually against the rules.”

“What about you, Decoy? Any complaints?”

“Um…” Decoy said. “I’ve been thinking a lot about sex. It’s distracting.”

“What about sex?” Thorax asked.

“I’m hungry for it,” Decoy said. “I had an intense sexual experience and now I can’t stop thinking about it. Is this something to worry about?”

“Hmm,” Thorax said. “I don’t know. Feelings are usually a good sign, but I’m not so sure about feelings of hunger. Does having sex satisfy you?”

Decoy flattened its ears, which it was pretty sure meant that the unpleasant sensation crawling across its skin was embarrassment. “I, um, haven’t. Since the event.”

“I think you should try it and see,” Thorax said. “Consider this an assignment – try to have enough sex to satisfy your hunger, and we’ll talk again in a moon.” The beetle’s glow flickered. “Ah, we’re almost out of time. Goodbye, Decoy! Remember to make friends!”

The glow died completely, and the beetle stood up and started walking around on the desktop. Decoy glanced at it, then up at its caseworker.

“Do you have somewhere to keep this safe?” it asked. “It’s valuable.”

“You don’t say,” the pegasus said. “I don’t suppose they’re for sale?”

“You’d have to ask Thorax about that,” it replied. “This one obviously isn’t, since he wants me to report in again once it recharges.”

“Alright. Wait here.” She left for a few minutes, leaving Decoy to herd the beetle back into the center of the desk whenever it approached the edge, then returned with a cardboard box with air-holes punched in the top. She held it open, and Decoy shifted itself a horn so it could safely move the beetle into its new home. “What does it eat?”

“Ambient magic,” Decoy replied.

She nodded and put it up on a shelf. “So, about your… assignment… you’re allowed to have sex with other employees, as long as you all obey the rules. Have you read over the employee handbook yet?”

Decoy shook its head.

She sighed, resting her forehead on a hoof. “Well… the rules about sex are pretty much the same as anywhere else, I guess. Just use common sense.”

“So, no sex in public?” Decoy asked.

“Definitely no sex in public.”

Decoy looked around. The office had no windows, and the door was closed. “This is private. Want to have sex?”

“I’m not into mares,” she replied.

Decoy changed into a stallion. A Saddle Arabian stallion, towering over her and her desk, his huge, erect cock sitting at about head height. “I’m not a mare,” he said, trying to give her a seductive smile.

“Ah… stop that,” she said, closing her eyes and breathing heavily.

“What’s wrong? I can tell you’re interested,” he asked, lying down on his side to bring his head down level with hers, and get the penis she supposedly didn’t want out of her line of sight.

“It’s against the rules,” she said, shaking her head.

“I won’t tell anypony,” he replied, smiling at her.

“I don’t want to stake my career on that,” she said. “Especially when it would give you blackmail material you could use to force my cooperation, covering up for worse offenses.”

It changed back and clambered up into its chair.

“Thank you,” she said. She glanced at the empty package. “That’s all I had for you today, other than your current work assignment…”


===


It was digging the trench again. They’d run out of sandstone, so the task was a bit different – shifting tons of sand, while the unicorn followed behind and solidified the walls. It considered changing into a better sand-moving form, maybe with a rotary digging wheel instead of arms, but the Maulwurf was fairly good at the task and it wasn’t sure it could get it right on the first try. Since there wasn’t a way to gradually go from one form to another, getting it wrong would be both obvious and embarrassing.

Besides, the unicorn was distracting. “Do you find me attractive?” Decoy asked, in a deep rumbling voice after giving the Maulwurf vocal cords.

The unicorn looked up, although he maintained the spell gradually working its way along the trench behind it. “I’m not into giant moles, no.”

Decoy rolled its eyes. “You’ve seen what I really look like. And you know I could change into anything, if it’s something physical.”

“You’re… not bad to look at,” the unicorn said. “The wings are cute, when you bring them out to buzz them.”

Decoy wasn’t aware that it had ever done that. It shifted itself a set of wings on the Maulwurf’s back, and buzzed them for the unicorn, who chuckled at the display.

“What brought this on?” he asked.

“Do you want to have sex?” Decoy asked.

“We have a job to do.”

“I meant after work,” Decoy said. “Unless you think we can fit something in during lunch?”

“We’re kind of exposed out here,” the unicorn replied. “And I’m seeing Puffball tonight.”

“That’s fine,” Decoy said. It had no problem sharing with Puffball. Or sharing Puffball. However you wanted to look at it. Then it focused on its work, to ignore the hunger. It was easier with the promise of relief at the end of the day.

During lunch, it hopped over to the unicorn’s side of the little table he’d made, and leaned up against him while they ate, growing its tongue all long and sticky so that it could pick up its food without having to move its head from the unicorn’s shoulder. It wasn’t sure about the look the unicorn gave that, but he did reach up and stroke its back with his hoof, which seemed affectionate enough.


===


It met up with the mare after work, and followed her to the showers where they had the big mirrors she used to put on her makeup.

She smiled to see its face appear besides her in the mirror. “Oh Dee! Can you help me with my makeup? I want to look nice for Grounder.”

“Of course,” it said, levitating the brush up and putting delicate accents on her cheeks. Should it doll itself up as well? The makeup was all the mare’s and only really suited to her colors, so it turned into a near-duplicate of her, with green eyes instead of blue, and pegasus wings.

The mare giggled, as her near-duplicate started putting the makeup on herself as well. “Are you seeing somepony tonight too?”

“I was going with you,” Decoy replied, considering shifting herself some ribbons to tie back her crazy mane. “I asked the unicorn today, during our shift.”

“And he said yes?” she asked, looking confused.

“Well, I said yes,” Decoy answered. It didn’t remember exactly how the conversation had gone, but remembered that it was the one who’d agreed to the mare’s presence.

“Wow, I didn’t know he was that forward,” she replied. “I had to basically corner him in his room and tell him I was going to screw him to get him to quit dancing around the issue.” She lifted a hoof and ruffled Decoy’s mane. “Nice choice in a shape. He’ll get a kick out of seeing two of us!”


===


Decoy had never been to the building where the senior employees had their private rooms, but barely spared a glance for the slightly-less-bare-bones décor as she followed the mare up to the third floor where ‘Grounder’ lived. Her fur was fluffed up, her tail held high, and her body tingled with anticipation. It was all she could do to keep herself from vibrating, and she heard her pegasus wings ruffle from time to time as they made their way through the halls.

The other mare with her didn’t seem as wound up – but then, she’d been screwing the unicorn all week, right? Her tail was half-lifted, and her ears perky enough that she was clearly happy about the situation, at least. When they got to the door, she knocked loudly three times, then turned to Decoy. “Play along, she said,” then reached around to pull her into a kiss.

Decoy was very happy to play along, stroking the other mare’s back and sides with her soft fluffy wings, and wrestling their silly slippery pony tongues.

Eventually the door opened. The mare gave a momentarily tighter squeeze, which Decoy took as a sign not to react right away. After making out for another thirty seconds, the mare pulled away, breathing heavily, and smiled up at the unicorn.
Decoy panted a bit, sitting down on the tile floor with a lewd squelch.

“Hey there, lover,” the other mare said, leaning forwards and nuzzling at the unicorn’s shoulder. “Tonight’s the night, right?”

“I –” he said, staring at her, and then at Decoy. He tilted his muzzle down to affectionately nuzzle at the mare’s curly mane, and his horn lit slightly with the nearly inaudible tinkle of a spell.

What are you doing here? his voice came in Decoy’s mind. I told you I was seeing Puffball!

And I said I didn’t have a problem with that, Decoy thought loudly, hoping that that was the proper way to reply. Her wings started to droop.

“Mmm, we should take this inside,” the mare said, slipping along the unicorn’s side, making sure to keep contact the whole way, and bump his shoulder with her hip. “Don’t want to break any regulations.”

Decoy looked up at the unicorn as he took a step back, ready to close the door. She scrambled to her feet, and lifted a hoof towards the entryway, stopping halfway and tilting her head a bit.

The unicorn shook his head, and closed the door in her face.

Fire flared brightly as Decoy returned to its normal form, slamming itself back into the familiar shape with three times the energy it took. It burned, and not just with hunger. There was anger – a feeling it knew well from its pre-reform days – and what it had identified earlier as embarrassment. It wanted to scream. It wanted to tear down the door, and make the unicorn reject it to its face. It wanted to go knocking on doors desperately begging for somepony, anypony, to screw it.
It settled on screaming, but made sure to fly far out into the cold desert night before giving into the urge, screaming an un-pony screech until its throat got sore, then shapeshifting stronger pipes to put out stranger wails. It could see eyes watching it from the darkness, but none of the desert monsters came closer to offer themselves up as an outlet for its frustrations.

It wasn’t sure if it would have fought them or fucked them. Maybe both.

It crawled back into its room fairly early, for all that. The shy earth pony was still out, and only the grumpy pegasus was there, reading a trashy adventure novel in her bed.

“I don’t suppose you want to have sex,” it croaked, flopping onto its side on top of its covers, half-curled up and facing the wrong way.

“How could I resist such a seductive offer,” she replied, not looking up from her book.

It shifted itself a cock and a vagina as it lay there, just in case she wasn’t being sarcastic, but if she noticed she didn’t say anything.
> Day 7: Fear
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The mare didn’t come back to cuddle with Decoy that night, which it noticed when it woke up in the morning, penis painfully erect and vulva dripping. It shifted them away and headed to the showers, since it had made itself dirty again going out in the desert to whine, and hadn’t taken another one since then.

She met it there, having also made herself filthy with the unicorn’s help, and they washed each other off. “Sorry it didn’t work out,” she said, while scrubbing its side. “You really should have asked first though.”

“I thought I had,” it said. “Sometimes I misunderstand ponies.”

“Well, I chewed him out on your behalf but it turns out he’s, you know, super monogamous. So as long as I’m seeing him I can’t see anypony else.”

“Can we still cuddle?” it asked.

She had to think about that. “Probably shouldn’t risk it. If he knew he’d be super jealous.”

“I don’t see what he has to be jealous about,” Decoy grumbled, finishing up with the mare’s flank and moving to wash under her tail.

“Eep, no! I’ll get there!” she said, kicking it away.

That day was another spent digging trenches with the unicorn. They didn’t talk.

After work there was a little daylight left, so it explored the site from the air, trying to figure out what they were building. It couldn’t make heads or tails of the design – parts of it looked like a magic circle, while other parts were clearly factories or silos or mysterious square buildings covered in technological greebles. As night fell, some of the buildings lit up with steady or blinking lights, mostly red or yellow, in no particular pattern. It landed before it was completely dark, since flying at night wasn’t safe unless it turned into a bat or something.

All its roommates were in their bunks when it arrived.

“Are you going to be okay?” the mare asked, leaning down over the edge to talk as it fidgeted in its bed, trying to get comfortable. “I know you were feeding off me…”

“I’ll have to find somewhere else to get emotions,” it said. “It’s not urgent as long as I stick to simple transformations.”

She frowned. “Don’t they have you as a Maulwurf most of the time?”

“It’s big, but mostly mundane,” it explained.

“Can’t you just eat your own emotions?” the pegasus asked. “I thought that was the whole deal with you being reformed and all.”

“Being reformed means we can feel emotions,” it explained. “Which means we can eat each others’. Eating my own would be really dangerous, and might change me back. The whole way the curse kept us hungry and evil was to trick us into eating most of our own emotions before we could feel them. We couldn’t feel love because we’d eat the seeds of it before they had a chance to sprout. Or embarrassment, or happiness, or fear… except for Thorax. He can’t eat fear, so he could still feel it. We all thought he was a coward and picked on him… now all of us can feel fear, and he’s the bravest because he has the most practice.” That wasn’t entirely true – Pharynx was still as brave as ever, and Decoy suspected that he’d been able to feel fear too, all along, and had just reacted with aggression instead of by cowering. It’d been too afraid to confront Pharynx and ask if it was right, though. 

“But you can eat fear?” asked the quiet earth pony, from the top bunk across the room.

“Of course,” it said.

“Because if you came up here and cuddled with me, that would be really really scary.”

“She said it wasn’t an emergency,” the pegasus said kicking the bottom of the bunk above her. “You don’t need to sacrifice yourself.”

“You aren’t one of the ponies I’d want to make suffer,” Decoy said.

“No, no!” she said, turning to the side and looking down at it. “I woudn’t be suffering! I mean… I would be but not in a bad way? I…” She squirmed a bit, then scrunched her eyes closed and said rapidly, “I like being scared! I mean, when I know in my head that it’s safe, I like feeling scared in my heart. If that makes sense?”

Decoy flashed into a scarier form, and buzzed up into the center of the room, holding its head level with hers. “Alright then,” it said in the multi-toned voice of an unreformed changeling.

The earth pony opened her eyes and squeaked, retreating against the wall that her bunk was set against. Decoy followed her into the cozy nook between the bunk and the ceiling, and as she sat there quivering and tense, wrapped itself around her – she went mostly limp at it’s touch, and it carefully arranged her as a pony-loaf in the middle of her mattress, settling down atop her, the sharp chitin of its hole-filled legs pressing against her soft fur on either side, while its weight rested on her back.

“You should probably have a safeword,” said the pegasus, who’d climbed out of her bed to get a better view.

The flirty mare shrugged. “If they don’t have a safeword, the safeword is ‘stop’.”

Decoy felt the energy flowing into it and ran one of its jutting fangs across its victim’s ear. “Do you want me to stop,” it hissed.

She shook her head, slightly.

After a while, the pony in its grasp started to relax. “All done?” it asked, making her tense up again.

“It would be terrifying,” she said in a quiet voice, “if the evil changeling that captured me was a male, and… took me while I was helpless in his grasp.”

“No!” shouted the pegasus, who’d gone back to bed at some point. “No sex in the room!”

“Oh come on,” said the mare on the other top bunk. “You know she needs it.”

“Please, Tsunami,” the mare beneath it said.

“I think you’re outvoted,” giggled the mare across the room.

“Ugh, fine,” said the pegasus. “But if this is what we’re going to be doing, then I’ve got next.”

Decoy noticed that no one had asked it, but then again, it hadn’t been subtle about what it wanted. Obviously, they knew it wouldn’t mind. So while there wasn’t any such thing as a ‘male changeling’ – not physically, at least – it grew an appropriately hard and spiky penis – not sharp enough injure, but something that would feel scary going in. He slid back, sliding his fangs to either side of the quivering mare’s neck as he bit down on her mane, and hissed as he pressed the tip of his cock against her folds.

She squeaked, but didn’t move away.

Decoy chittered, buzzing his wings, and shifted his hips to slowly slide inside her. She was incredibly wet – apparently when she said she ‘enjoyed being scared’, it included becoming aroused – and he hadn’t made himself particularly big, so it was an easy fit, and one thrust let him slide all the way in, soft warmth and wetness engulfing his shaft, twitching around it each time she squeaked as one of the ridges or blunt spikes rubbed across something particularly sensitive.

She whined and squirmed as he held it in place, so he started moving, thrusting in a rough, jerky rhythm that would be most in character for a changeling abusing his prisoner. After a few thrusts, she stopped pretending to be scared, and moaned loudly as she pressed back against him, and they worked into more of a standard sexual rhythm, with a few rough thrusts and a gradually increasing pace to try to get her to climax.

When she finally did – shouting loudly and jerking beneath him – he let himself roll over the edge of orgasm he’d been floating at, and exploded inside her, sharing her ecstasy and making a few more jerky thrusts as he slowed down to sit motionless inside her again. She whined and clenched around his shaft as another shiver ran through her body, and he shifted it away, shifting out of the scary changeling form entirely as she turned towards it, and then into its soft, squeezable ‘snuggle form’ as she buried her muzzle in its fluffy fur.


===


It woke in the middle of the night, still in cuddle-form, to the strange feeling of a pony licking the fluff between its legs. The tail in front of it was from the fearful pony whose bed it had drifted off in, now apparently still clinging to it but facing the other direction, so it gave itself a sheathed penis for her to coax out and suck on for a while, while it slowly licked at her sex.

Neither of them had an orgasm that time, but it felt really good.
> Day 8: Jealousy
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Decoy was in a much better mood in the morning, and finding out that it wasn’t going to have to work with the unicorn who’d stolen its cuddle-buddy didn’t hurt. It was on metal-plate duty again, since one of the cranes was in the shop (again) and they didn’t want to get behind schedule. It was tiring but satisfying work, even if it had already developed the optimized lifting form and didn’t need to do anything creative.

Even better, one of the ponies it worked with was up for a quick bit of sex during lunch, hidden away in one of the outhouses. It only lasted for a few minutes, but a few minutes of clinging to a grunting, sweating stallion while he unloaded himself in its vagina took the edge off – and they were right there in what passed for a restroom, so cleaning up was simple.

“Hey!” came an angry voice from the sky, as the two of them emerged. “I said I had next!”

“And then you said you wanted to wait until after work,” Decoy replied to its surly pegasus roommate. “I’m letting you have the spot you wanted, isn’t that enough?”

“Ugh, fine,” she growled. “You’d better make it up to me tonight!” She stormed off, leaving behind a crackle of static and a slight scent of ozone.

“Ow!” yelped the stallion Decoy had just fucked, shocking himself on the outhouse latch. “What’s her problem?”

“I don’t think she really has a problem,” Decoy said. “She’s like that all the time.”

Two minutes after the shift ended, the pegasus swooped down and grabbed Decoy by its ear. “Come on,” she said. “We’re burning daylight.”

“What about dinner?” it asked, stumbling along after her for a few steps, then shifting its ear out of her grasp and trotting alongside.

“We’ll eat when we get there.”

The first stop was evidently not ‘there’, since there was no food. It the train station that it had originally arrived at, a private spur off the Appleoosa/San Palomino line mostly used for construction materials. The pegasus led it over to a small booth, with a sign reading ‘Disbursement’.

“We need some spending money,” the pegasus said to the clerk, once they got to the front of the line. “Fifty bits from my account – do you have any money?” she asked Decoy.

“I should,” it replied. The caseworker had told it it would be paid for the sex work.

“Fifty bits from her account too.”

“Alright. Place your hoof on the pad,” the clerk said. The pegasus complied, and was handed a small bag of bits. “You have four hundred and sixteen bits remaining in your account, Miss Tsunami.”

“Your turn,” she said, lifting up Decoy’s hoof in her mouth and setting it on the pad.

The clerk watched an automatic abacus as the beads snapped into place, then shoved five beads in the second row from one side to the other, and handed Decoy another small bit bag. “And you have two thousand, three hunded and sixteen remaining in your account, Miss Decoy.”

“Woah, you’re rich,” the pegasus said, hovering up to look at the abacus, as if to confirm the clerk’s reading. “I should make you pay for everything.”

“How do I have that many?” Decoy asked. “I only get paid for sex work, and only did one party.”

The clerk spoke up. “I don’t have access to the records, but if I had to guess, one of your customers was a really good tipper.”

“Makes sense. They don’t invite people over unless they’re super rich,” the pegasus said. “Come on, we don’t want to miss the train.”


===


They didn’t miss the train. The pegasus declined its offer of some quick sex in the outhouse while they waited, but let it stroke her back while she preened her wings to pass the time.

“Ugh, I hate this,” she complained, after a half hour had passed. “Now I remember why I never go to San Palomino.”

“It’s not very far,” Decoy said. “We could probably just fly there.”

“And arrive all sweaty? No thanks. We’ll fly back, though.”

They weren’t the only workers waiting for the train, when it arrived fifteen minutes later. A few dozen ponies got on with them, packing into the passenger car tacked on at the end of the mostly empty cargo train. At least they didn’t have to pay – tagging along on the outbound trip was free for employees.

“How is everypony else getting back?” it asked. Most of the other ponies on the train were earth ponies, and couldn’t just fly back.

“There’s a return trip in the early morning,” she explained. “You party in ‘Palomino, pay for an overnight hotel room, then scramble for the early train so you don’t have to gallop back in the dark. Or else you miss your shift.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s daft. Nopony in their right mind would even try it, but look at all these fools.”

Decoy looked around at them. None of them seemed to be paying any attention, and the train’s rattle was loud enough that it wasn’t easy to overhear them.

“Now. We have a few minutes before we arrive, so I’d like to change you into my dream date,” the pegasus said. “I can’t be seen with you like this.”

“Alright,” Decoy said. “Describe them?”

“A unicorn, of course,” she said. “Male. Dark grey fur, black mane and tail. Medium length and messy.”

Decoy changed to fit her description. It was odd coloration for a pony, but not entirely unheard of.

She looked him over. “Hmm… make the horn curved a little, can you? And red on the tip?”

“You could just say you wanted me to look like King Sombra,” Decoy said, shifting into his best Sombra impression.

“No!” she said, blushing. “I mean… it’s a good start, but it’s not enough.”

“Enough what?”

“Wings. You should be an alicorn. Make the feathers have the same red highlights as your horn.”

Decoy formed blood-edged wings, as requested. The rest of the ponies on the train were definitely watching them now. “What about a cutie mark?” he asked, in Sombra’s surprisingly whiny voice.

“Ugh, no – that voice is just… make it deeper. More gravelly.”

“Cutie mark?” he asked again, in a deep rumbling voice that even he had to admit was pretty sexy.

The pegasus had to think about that one for a while, then perked up. “Pony skull! With a bloody axe in it, chopping it in half.”

Decoy formed the mark requested, but had to ask, “If it’s chopping skulls, why would the axe be bloody?”

“What? I don’t –” the pegasus sputtered. “It doesn’t matter! It just needs the blood to look right with the rest of the colors, okay?”

“Whatever you say,” Decoy rumbled. “How about a personality? I’m guessing you don’t want ‘obsessed with crystals’.”

“Obsessed with me” the pegasus said.

“As you wish,” Decoy said, wrapping one of his wings around her.

“What are you doing?” she hissed as he cuddled her to his side, squirming a bit but not hard enough to break out of the surprisingly firm grip.

“I’m keeping you safe from these ruffians,” he replied, glaring at the ponies around them. “This one is mine! Find your own princess to court.”

She giggled at that. Most of the other ponies also took it as a joke, and went back to chatting amongst themselves. One still looked angry, but didn’t feel like pressing the issue. Decoy counted that as a flawless success.


===


Decoy had been to San Palomino before, but never as a red and black alicorn. It started out okay, without only a few strange looks from the ponies at the supply depot, but the ponies got denser and denser as they walked with the rest of the construction ponies towards the town’s commercial core, and he still stood out.

“Mommy!” screamed a colt’s voice.

“Ha, look at them,” the pegasus with him said, grinning as she hovered down the street next to him. “They’re jealous that they don’t have a date like you.”

Decoy thought that they might be more worried that he was about to usher in a new reign of darkness, but as long as it was just staring and the occasional mutter, he was willing to let it go.

She took him to a fancy restaurant – fancy for San Palomino, at least. The waiters and maître d’ all wore dresses and suits, but the clientele were naked as often as not so they obviously didn’t have a dress code for customers.

“Party of two?” asked the maître d’. “I’m afraid the wait time is around thirty minutes, but I can add you to the list.”

“I have a reservation, for Tsunami,” the pegasus said, holding her head high.

“Is that so,” the unicorn at the desk said, flipping through his book. “Ah, yes! Here it is. You have a reservation for one.”

“You don’t have any tables that seat one that don’t seat two, so I figured it would be okay to bring my friend here,” she said, smiling at him sweetly. “My new coltfriend.”

Decoy held out a hoof, and introduced himself. “Bloodaxe Deathbone. Pleasure to meet you.”

The unicorn looked him over, frowning. “You aren’t planning on terrorizing any of our other guests, are you Messier Deathbone? We have a strict no-disintegration policy.”

“I care nothing for these peons,” he rumbled in reply. “Now cease this delay! My lady has delayed her evening meal for long enough.”

The maître d’ nodded, and showed them to their seat, which was in one of the back rooms. “Where did you find him?” hissed the unicorn to the pegasus as they passed through a narrow tunnel, out of view of the other guests. “And how much does he charge?”

“Ew, I’m not paying him!” the pegasus said, pressing up against Decoy’s side.

“The lady and I have been forced by circumstances to share an abode,” Decoy explained.

By that point, they were back out in public and the unicorn had to slip back into character, showing them to a tiny table tucked away in a dark, private corner in silence. “Your waiter will be by shortly to explain our menu this evening,” he said, once they were seated, then bowed his head and returned to the front.

The pegasus was still a bit ruffled. “The nerve of some ponies! Thinking I’d pay for a date.”

“What’s wrong with hiring professionals?” Decoy asked. The only money he had at the moment was from getting paid for something fairly similar, and she hadn’t seemed to care about that before.

“Nothing, I guess,” she said, calming a little. “But nopony’s going to be jealous that I paid for a date. They have to think that you’re a real date.”

“Is this not a real date?” Decoy asked.

She counted down on her wing, folding her flight feathers as she listed off, “You’re doing it to humor me, you’d sleep with literally anypony who asked, and I was your last choice out of everypony in our room. So yeah, it’s pretty fake.”

A unicorn in a white suit arrived after a few minutes, setting a plate of bread and vinegar on their table. His blank expression didn’t last very long, slipping easily into a frown. “Tsunami.”

“Porter. Fancy seeing you here,” she said, smirking at him. “I finally decided to use the reservation you gave me. Wanted to show my new stallion a good time.”

“I suppose that would be the only way,” the waiter replied. “Where did you find this… thing?”

“It wasn’t hard,” the pegasus replied.

He sneered. “I suppose it isn’t, if you’re willing to lower your standards enough.”

Decoy extended a wing, and slapped the waiter in the face.

“What?” he turned towards him, shocked.

Decoy slapped him again. “Apologize.”

“Like Tartaros!”

Decoy stood up, towering over the pony, and added a soft glow to his eyes. It was only firefly luminescence, but in the dim lighting it was sufficient. “I will not stand idly by while you insult my lady. Apologize to her, or suffer.”

Instead, the waiter lit his horn, but at close range that was countered easily enough. Decoy flicked out his tongue and wrapped it around the glowing spike before the spell could form, leaving behind a shell of slime that would keep him from casting for a while – and a nasty feedback headache, from the interrupted magic.

“Oh. My. Celestia,” the pegasus said, resting her face on her hooves. “You are such an idiot.”

“I’m sorry,” Decoy said, “but he intended violence.”

“Not you!” she clarified.

“Gah… what… ?” The unicorn tried casting again, giving himself another shock to the horn as it fizzled out. “What did you do to me?!”

“Go wash off, you moron!” the pegasus shouted. “Then send over a real waiter, if you can’t do your job.”

The unicorn stumbled off, bumping into the walls as the pain blinded him. Decoy sat back down as soon as he was out of sight. “Maybe we should run.”

“No way,” the pegasus said. “The food here is killer.” She laughed. “And good job with Porter. Although I think he’ll figure out you’re a changeling once he sees what you did to his horn.”

“I don’t think anypony with the slightest bit of intelligence could fail to figure out my true nature, just from my appearance,” Decoy replied.

“Yeah, okay, maybe I went a bit overboard,” the pegasus admitted, “but he’s an idiot.”

Eventually, another waiter came to take their order, and dinner proceeded without further incident. It was, in fact, quite tasty.


===


After the meal they walked around the shopping area for a bit – the restaurant bill had used up most of their bits, so they didn’t bother going in any of the stores or anything. The pegasus seemed proud to be seen with her alicorn date, and chatted about the city (apparently she’d grown up in San Palomino) and the job (she had no idea what they were building either). She was very easy to talk to, since Decoy didn’t have to say much of anything for her to ramble on with this or that complaint. The weather ponies were lazy, the city was overrun with ponies from the rest of Equestria now, the wilderness was boring since they’d driven away all the monsters. 

Eventually, it was time to fly home. The sun was down, the moon was up, and the stores were starting to close. The air was getting chilly, but the city’s stone buildings and roads held heat better than the surrounding sand, which made for a nice updraft to start them on their way.

“So are we going to actually have sex at some point?” Decoy asked, as they circled around and around each other to gain altitude, in something not entirely unlike a dance.

“You don’t have to,” the pegasus replied.

“I want to, though,” Decoy said. “I’ll be disappointed if we don’t. Coming out here was fun, but I’ve been thinking about pinning you down and making you scream until you’re too exhausted to move and I can cuddle your sweaty, limp body against my own for the rest of the night.”

That made her falter a bit. “Ah… yeah, I can see that,” she said, flapping harder to make up the altitude she’d lost. “I don’t know if I can un-see that.”

“I’m sure you won’t want to un-feel it,” Decoy said, grinning.

She was quiet for a bit. “Is it safe? I’m not – I don’t use birth control. It gives me cramps.”

“I won’t get you pregnant unless you ask me to,” Decoy said. There was a little tube that connected the balls to the penis, and he’d been trained to leave it disconnected by default, so he wouldn’t be getting anypony pregnant even if he’d had the form long enough to make sperm in the first place.

“I want to and I don’t want to,” she said, after thinking about it for a while. “And we’re high enough, come on.”

They glided through the night sky together for a while, both of them dark-colored enough to be almost invisible except where they blotted out the stars. Decoy was completely lost at this point, but trusted her to know where they were going.

She led him to a tower of stone, with no ground route to the top and a halo of withered brush around the edge concealing a bowl of soft sand in the middle. “I used to bring all my dates here,” she said, prancing around to get a better look at the place. The sand was white enough to shine in the starlight, and Decoy couldn’t swear that it didn’t glow faintly. “I mean, except for the ones who’d bring me here.” She kicked at a crumpled bit of greasy paper from a street-vendor’s carrot into the bushes. “Looks like the tradition is still going strong.”

“I guess we’re lucky nopony else is here tonight,” he said, walking over to her and stroking her back with his red-tipped feathers. “We have it all to ourselves.”

She turned and spread her own wing to stroke his side, while she nuzzled at his neck. “Urgh, I can’t stand this,” she said. “It’s not like I’ve never had sex before. Why am I so afraid?”

“Ponies put a lot of importance on it,” Decoy said, nibbling at her ears, gently. “There might be a good reason. I’m not the pony to ask.”

“You’re not a pony,” she said, nipping his hide.

“I could be less of a pony, if that would make it easier,” Decoy suggested.

She backed up a step, so she could look him in the eyes. “Like how?”

Decoy shifted his fur to be black as night, and matte, so that he became a hole in the world, and put the firefly bioluminescence back into his eyes so that they glowed faintly green. He spread his wings wide against the sky, then shifted the flight feathers into shiny tentacles that extended to the sides and then curved towards the pegasus mare.

…who leapt into the sky, and hovered ten feet up and back. “How is that easier!?!” she shouted, panting heavily.

“Because you don’t have a choice,” Decoy said, in a voice like three ponies whispering just slightly out of sync with each other. “You can be captured, and struggle against my grip…” The tentacles slowly reached up towards her, but she backed away.

“No, stop! This is worse!” she said.

Decoy engulfed itself in flames, and returned to its default form. “Oh. I thought it was the sort of thing you’d like.”

She thumped to the ground next to him, and smacked him on the cheek – not very hard, but it stung. “I want to be in control,” she said.

Decoy frowned, but had an idea. “Then how about this?” Flames engulfed it again, and when they stopped it was gone, except for a thick black tube, sitting in the sand.

The pegasus picked it up with a wing, and laughed as it flopped slightly to the side. “A dildo?”

“We can do inanimate objects,” it squeaked, using the hole at the tip of the penis-shape as a tiny mouth. “And then animate them, if we want. But this way, you’re in control.”

The pegasus sat in the sand, then rolled back to spread her legs and expose herself to the night sky. “Alright, I guess I can try this…” she said, slowly lowering Decoy towards her nethers.

It waited patiently while she lowered it into place, sighing internally as it felt her fuzzy fur brush over its sensitive tip, again and again as she slowly caressed herself with it. Eventually, her grip shifted and she pressed it between her lips, into the slick warmth of her folds… and again, caressed herself with it for a while, sliding it across her labia and coating it with her juices. When she pressed the tip of it against her clit, Decoy squirmed a little, and she cried out, but didn’t pull it away for a good twenty seconds.

When she did, she held it up to her face and licked it, sending more of the squirmy pleasure through what passed for its body. “Alright,” she said. “You can fuck me. As yourself, I mean.”

Decoy’s fire didn’t burn her as it transformed in her grip, growing a changeling body attached to the increasingly less-rubberized penis. “Myself with a dick, I assume?”

“Yeah, obviously.” She wrapped her lips around its cock, and slid it into her mouth, although the angle was bad for getting it very deep.

It still felt really, really good, and it let her play with it for a while, until she backed off and just started stroking it with a hoof. It took that as a sign to step back and position itself to enter her properly. It nestled its cock into her folds, and leaned down to kiss her as she stroked its sides with her wings, its own wings up and buzzing.

She moaned as it slipped inside, slowly pushing itself into her and subtly reshaping its cock until it perfectly fit her hole. Her forelegs clutched at its neck, her knees clenched against its flanks, and it started to thrust into her repeatedly, smacking the chitin of its crotch against her fuzziness just before it would have painfully bottomed out, the little spikes and ridges it usually added to a ‘changeling penis’ scraping against her insides and adding pleasure for them both.

It wasn’t sure if she ever climaxed, or if so how many times – her cute little squeaks and moans and cries of ‘yes!’ built to a crescendo several times, usually followed by a long low groan as she gyrated her hips around it… after several of those, it stopped holding back, letting its pleasure build until its rhythm disintegrated into a frantic burst of thrusting, followed by the twitching release as it pumped its load deep inside her.

She let go of it after that, wings and other limbs limp and sweaty, just as it had predicted. She twitched as it slowly extracted itself, then started stroking its ears as it lied down on top of her, resting its head on her chest, while a hoof played with her thigh.

“We should head back,” she said, after they’d shared a timeless expanse basking in the afterglow. “We won’t be able to hear the wake-up bell from here.”


===


When they got back, the construction site was silent. The pegasus slowly opened the door to their room, and they slipped inside, closing it behind them just as slowly.

The earth pony who slept above the pegasus was asleep, and didn’t seem to have stirred from their entry... but the mare who normally slept above Decoy was nowhere to be seen.

It was too tired to do more than wonder at that, though, and slipped quickly into dreams of chopping up skeleton-ponies and having them explode into fountains of blood.
> Day 9: Technicalities
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Decoy paused at the door to its case worker’s office. It looked like she was busy with another client.

“No, I don’t know where she is. She was seen getting on to the train, but by the time it arrived she must have taken another form.”

“We are extremely disappointed by your incompetence,” said the dark blue alicorn standing in front of her desk. She looked angry – her star-strewn mane and tail were agitated despite the lack of wind indoors, and she was wielding a giant, jet-black spear. “We thought the alarm we set around the perimeter was mere paranoia, but if we hadn’t done so, when exactly would you have noticed they were missing?”

“She’s kept on a tight leash. I meet with her every day to give her her assignment. It’s just not a physical leash, because we don’t have the authority to restrain ponies like that. This isn’t a prison.”

“That doesn’t mean the prisoner you agreed to monitor is here on the honor system!” the alicorn replied. “We will find them for you, and bring them back, and –” she’d turned, and seen Decoy waiting at the door. Her anger faded a bit, replaced with confusion.

“Oh!” Decoy said, finally figuring it out. “You were talking about me, weren’t you.”

The pegasus pushed past the alicorn to shout in its face, “Where have you been!”

“In… my room?”

That didn’t end her shouting. “No! We checked your room! It was the first place we looked when Princess Luna appeared in front of me and told me you’d escaped!”

Decoy was not happy with this situation. Their anger was completely unjustified, but nearly anything it did would just make them angrier. Cowering might work, but it wasn’t sure that would set the right precedent. Did it want to have to knuckle under to this sort of emotional manipulation for the next hundred years?

Apparently, saying silent while pondering the proper response was not, in fact, the correct response. The pegasus placed her hoof on its nose. “Where.” Boop. “Were.” Boop. “You?” Boop.

Decoy recoiled a step, and answered simply. “San Palomino. Didn’t you already know that? You knew I was on the train, and that’s the only place the train goes.”

“You might have gotten off mid-trip,” Luna pointed out. “What were you doing there?”

“Shopping,” Decoy said. “Dinner at a fancy restaurant. I was paid for the extra shift I worked, and there isn’t anywhere to spend money on-site.”

“There’s a company store,” the pegasus said, a little more calm now that the alicorn looming over her was calming down.

Decoy smiled. “Oh, I’ll have to find that then. I didn’t know.”

“You aren’t supposed to leave the site without an escort,” the pegasus said.

Decoy considered mentioning his roommate but wanted to make sure before exposing her to trouble. “If I’d had an escort, it would have been okay?”

“If you’d had an escort, and the two of you had come to me and asked for permission to go off-site, and given me a written itinerary so that when Princess Luna teleported into my office, I could tell her with confidence that you had not escaped and were instead on a supervised excursion…” she took a deep breath. “Then it would have been okay.”

Decoy nodded. “I’ll be sure to pay more attention to the technicalities next time.”

The pegasus twitched, her wings spreading halfway. “Technicalities? You think –”

“Stop,” the alicorn said, in a normal tone of voice, that nevertheless instantly silenced the pegasus. “They’re a changeling. This is how they think. If they came back of their own accord, then this was most likely naivete or, at worst, mischief, rather than malice.” She focused her gaze on Decoy. “I am a bit surprised that you came back.”

Decoy lowered its head. “We all agreed to stand trial and suffer your judgment, to appease the ponies. I may not like my sentence, but I haven’t been mistreated; why would you expect me to flee, and ruin everything?”

“I expected you to fake your death,” the alicorn replied. “That was your job, wasn’t it?”

“That was my job a long time ago,” Decoy said. “Now my job is mostly digging trenches and lifting heavy things. It’s a lot less dangerous.” It paused, then added, “Everypony saw me stand up in front of your court and explain that my job was to impersonate missing ponies and fake their death. What would possibly make them believe that this time it was real?”

The alicorn frowned. “Nothing, most likely, which could be a problem if you were to actually perish. So try not to die.” She sighed, and shook her head. “Or if you do, make sure to leave some sort of gruesome trophy we can throw to the crowd.”

“Nopony’s going to die!” the pegasus said, frantically. “We have a very good safety record, and unicorn medics on staff with a full supply of magical healing potions. Our worker attrition is far below the average for the industry –”

The alicorn merely nodded, then her horn glowed, and she turned into a swirling cloud of black mist which quickly spiraled in on itself and vanished.

The pegasus collapsed against the wall, slumping into a pile with her hooves held over her face. “Why do you do this to me? What did I ever do to deserve this?”

Decoy frowned. “Would it help if I licked you for a bit? I always relax after a few orgasms.”

“No sex. I’m your caseworker.”

“Right,” Decoy said. “Technicalities.” It paused. “Would you like a hug? Hugs aren’t sex. Technically.”

“Just… take the day off. You’re suspended without pay until we decide how to punish you for leaving the site.”

Decoy tilted its head. “But you don’t pay me.”

“I don’t make the rules,” the pegasus said. “Just try not to get into any more trouble.”


===


Decoy tried not to get into any more trouble. It searched for the company store, a hunt made trivial by the many signs that pointed the way, now that it was looking. The selection was rather sparse – some luxury snacking food, some nonessential toiletries, a small selection of books and records, and various doodads like scarves (scarves? In the desert?) and playing cards with the company’s logo prominently displayed. Nothing that it actually wanted to spend money on, especially at the somewhat inflated prices the store charged.

Its second thought was to find somepony to have fun with, but it took a while before it could find anypony who wasn’t working. Eventually it spotted a pair of earth ponies who were just standing around chatting, while the other ponies in their group worked on something delicate-looking. There was a third who was supervising, but she was obviously actually paying attention and watching for something to go wrong.

“You don’t look very busy,” Decoy said, settling to the ground in front of them.

“Heh,” said the mare. “We’ll be busy in a little while, once they’re ready for our part.”

“Five minutes out of every hour,” said the stallion, with a sigh.

“That doesn’t sound very efficient,” Decoy said. “Maybe you need multiple teams working on the slow part?”

“Please don’t give them ideas,” the mare smirked.

The stallion chuckled. “We actually tried that on one site, you would not believe how many problems it caused! We weren’t bored, though.”

“If you’re bored, do you want to –”

“Have sex?” the mare interrupted.

Decoy nodded eagerly. Apparently, it was getting a reputation. Convenient! At least for the moment, while it was still interested in sex.

“Sure,” she said. “Lay it on me.”

Decoy looked around. “Is there a room where we could have privacy?”

“Now you’re modest?” she asked, turning and lifting her tail, exposing herself to it. She waggled her hips. “Come on, dig in.”

“I’m not allowed to have sex in public,” it explained. “It’s against the rules.”

“Well, horseapples,” the mare said. “We can’t leave the job site or we don’t get paid.”

“Ever,” the stallion added. “We’d be fired.”

“You could go on break,” the supervisor offered.

“Breaks are only fifteen minutes,” the mare complained.

“That’s enough time, if we’re quick,” Decoy said.

“Technically,” the mare said, frowning. “Oh, just forget it. Logistics really kills the mood.”

Decoy sincerely wished that that were true.


===


It came back and found her at lunchtime and stole her away to a quiet room it had scouted out in one of the finished buildings near enough to the cafeteria not to waste much time. It was sure that it was technically off-limits, but it also wasn’t technically marked ‘keep out’ – instead the sign on the door said ‘construction workers only’, but that described both of them.

It had never had sex as a manticore before, but the mare had a magazine with plenty of pictures of all the relevant bits.


===


About an hour after lunch, a runner approached it and brought it to the administration building, where it was led into an air-conditioned meeting room where the pegasus who gave it its tasks sat with six other ponies, all positioned around the outer edge of an arc-shaped series of tables, with a single chair in the middle. It had participated in a trial before, and knew that it was meant to sit in the lone chair, but hesitated – the last trial had not been a pleasant experience.

“Sit,” said the unicorn in the middle of the arrangement.

Decoy sat.

“Miss Dee,” she said, glancing down at her notes, “do you know why you’re here?”

“I left the work site without following procedure, and the blue alicorn was nervous enough to come down here and bother you.”

“By ‘the blue alicorn’ she refers to Princess Luna,” its caseworker qualified.

“I’m sorry, I’m not good with names,” Decoy said.

“You’re here because we need to decide on your punishment,” said a unicorn stallion two seats to the left. “Why did you leave the site?”

“I heard that there was a train to San Palomino and back, that was free for employees,” it replied. “I saw many ponies taking advantage of that opportunity. It didn’t occur to me that I would be an exception.”

“Heard from who?” the stallion pressed.

“Is that important?” Decoy asked.

“Stop it,” the pegasus said. “We know she got on the train with Tsunami. She obviously doesn’t want to get her friend in trouble.”

“Honesty is a virtue,” said the stallion. “It’s one of the elements of harmony.”

“So is loyalty,” the pegasus replied.

“Discretion is not an element, but it’s crucial nevertheless,” said the unicorn in the middle. “This also covers her use of a disguise while in San Palomino.”

“Yes,” Decoy said, clamping down its elytron to keep its wings from buzzing. “We were… discreet.”

The earth pony seated immediately the unicorn mare’s right yawned, struggling to stay awake.

“I really think we should let her off with a warning this time,” its case worker said. “I informed her of the proper procedure if she wants to go on another excursion.”

“It would be easier to simply ban such trips,” suggested a unicorn mare, this one to the pegasus’ immediate left.

“We have her for a hundred years,” the pegasus replied. “She’ll go stir-crazy if we try to keep her on site the whole time.”

“This job-site isn’t scheduled to last a hundred years,” the unicorn stallion on the left said. “Sooner or later we’ll be selling her contract.”

“You all have good points,” said the unicorn in the middle. “Why don’t we confine her to the work site for… let’s say… one moon? After which we can restore the privilege of properly supervised excursions, assuming she hasn’t caused any trouble in the meantime.”

Another unicorn, this one on the far left, objected. “I wanted to take her with us on the trip to Kludgetown. That’s in three weeks.”

“That’s fine,” the middle unicorn said. “The restriction would only apply to trips taken of her own volition, not work assignments.”

“Alright then, I’m on board.”

“Any objections?”

There were none.

Decoy accompanied its pegasus caseworker to her office, after the meeting. “That seemed like a lot of trouble just for that one mare to declare that she’d do what she was planning to do all along.”

“You picked up on that, huh,” the pegasus said. “It’s all about procedure. Procedure is what separates us from the ponies who actually get work done.”

Decoy blinked, trying to figure out what she meant by that.

“Alright,” the pegasus said, when they got to her desk. “I’ll need you to sign this form acknowledging that you were given a hearing, and that the decision of the panel was to restrict your off-base privileges for a persiod of one moon.”

“That seems like an odd requirement,” it said, looking over the form, which seemed to say exactly that. “I don’t understand this procedure. I would prefer not to participate.”

“I can’t let you leave this room unless you sign it,” the pegasus said. “Please don’t make this difficult.”

Decoy sat back in its chair. “I don’t know, it’s nice in here. Much cooler air than outside.”

“Sign the feathering form, or I’ll open a window.”


===


“And that’s why you missed dinner?” asked the earth pony who bunked above it.

“Eventually she grabbed my hoof and moved it around like a puppet,” it confirmed. “I’m pretty sure that was a gross violation of the rules. It also didn’t look anything like my signature.”

“You must be really hungry.”

“Yes,” it replied. “I would love to devour you in one of several mutually satisfactory ways.”

The other two glanced at them expectantly, from across the room.

The mare above it gave a heavy sigh. “Grounder’s still giving me the run around, you know.”

“Still?” the pegasus across the room asked. “What is wrong with that pony?”

“Didn’t you spend the night with him?” asked the pony above her.

“Yes. We spent the night cuddling,” she wrinkled her nose. “It’s not nearly as fun to try to sleep cuddled up to somepony who can’t shapeshift away the extra legs.” She paused. “Or the boner.”

The pegasus was angry enough to fluff up her wings. “So first he turns down a threesome with the changeling, and tells you you have to be faithful, but, what, is he saving himself for marriage?”

The flirty mare winced. “Oh, Celestia, I hope not,” she said. “He knows I’m not a virgin.”

“Maybe your entire relationship with him should wait until marriage,” Decoy suggested.

She laughed. “I’ve been doing nothing but complaining, haven’t I? I really do like him. I’ve liked him for months now. We have fun together when we’re not failing to have sex.”

“You could have fun with him without being his romantic partner, couldn’t you?” Decoy asked. “Or is that something he wants to control as well.”

After a few seconds, she flowed down out of her bed and into its, standing over it, the thin blanket a barrier between them. “So. These ‘mutually satisfactory’ ways of devouring me. Are there any that aren’t a euphemism for sex?”

“Maybe,” Decoy replied. “If cuddling counts as sex, then no.”

“Cuddling isn’t sex,” said the quiet mare from across the room. “You need orgasms for sex.”

“Or at least attempted orgasms,” the pegasus said. “He’ll still be jealous, though.”

“Let him be jealous then,” the mare standing over Decoy said. She looked down at him, bumping noses. “What did you have in mind?”

“It starts with cuddling…”

It actually started with her standing to the side so that it could remove the blanket, then lying in bed together, with the mare as the little spoon. Her back pressed against its chitinous belly, and she wiggled a bit as if to scratch an itch. Decoy took a few seconds to alter its internal structure, then clung to her tightly as it split open its chest and belly, pressing the slimy contents against and around her.

She yelped, and squirmed, but it held her firmly in place, its mucous-coated tentacles slipping around the sides of her barrel now, jet-black and glistening.

“Why do they have to be slimy?” she asked, squirming in its embrace as she started to sink into the clamshell-like opening that clamped around her, the tentacles ‘licking’ her all over her body as they pulled her into place.

“To prevent chafing,” Decoy said, as its legs, one by one, opened in a similar fashion and molded themselves around hers. “Also, it’s more fun.” It wrapped its tail around hers, spiraling it tighter and tighter until the tail hair was compressed into a thin, wiry strand, coated in a tube made out of its tail.

“It’s so squirmy!” she whimpered.

Decoy didn’t answer, pressing its chin firmly against the top of her head, until it cracked open lengthwise and tentacles poured out around her face and mane, slicking the latter down as it finished absorbing her into itself.

It lay on the bed, its appearance returning to normal, aside from being quite a bit larger, and its limbs and torso twitching and squirming unnaturally. “Calm down,” it whispered into her ears, which were slicked down flat against her skull.

“I can’t see!” she whined, squirming.

Decoy formed two holes in its now-hollow skull, covering them with semitransparent membranes – mirrored from the outside, but only slightly darkened for its occupant. It had already left a hole for her mouth, since otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to breathe. It placed a soft padded surface against her nethers, sticking it in place over them for minimum stimulation, since this was specifically not supposed to be sex.

“If you stay calm,” it whispered, “I can try to adjust things so that you can control our movement.”

The pegasus across the room was still watching, her eyes wide and her expression uncertain. “Is this some changeling combat maneuver? Protective battle armor?”

“This is completely impractical,” Decoy replied. “Hollowing out my insides doesn’t make me magically tougher. I just thought it would be fun.”

The mare inside it had calmed down, so it started rethreading tendons through its limbs as a sort of harness around her legs, and let the tentacles holding her in place dissolve into a mass of cushioning goo. “Alright,” it whispered, “give it a try.”

She leapt out of the bed and scrambled to her hooves, prancing a bit to get her balance. “It’s like walking on stilts,” she said. “And I can’t feel anything.”

Decoy considered the second problem, and shifted the goo to let her hooves rest directly on the top of its own.

“Yeah, that’s better,” she said, tapping a hoof a few times. “Tsunami, come and pet me.”

She didn’t even argue, joining her in the aisle between their bunks and stroking her wing over their back. Decoy felt the feathery touch and wanted to arch into it, but it was letting the mare inside it control everything.

“Yeah, I can’t feel that at all,” she said, disappointed.

“I can,” Decoy whispered, as the pegasus continued to stroke it.

The mare inside it giggled. “Then grow a penis for me.”

“What?” the pegasus asked, taking a step back.

“Come on, you know you want to,” the mare said, her attempts to move seductively a bit muted by the changeling surrounding her.

“I think that would definitely be crossing the line with your coltfriend,” the pegasus said, continuing to back up.

“No, crossing the line will be when I get another shift to go screw the Saddle Arabians or whoever,” the mare said, following along and not giving her any distance. “This is just watching, basically. I won’t feel a thing.”

The pegasus ran out of room to retreat, rolled her eyes, and turned to brace herself against the wall, flipping her tail to the side to expose herself. “It’s your funeral.”

Decoy shifted a penis, as asked. The mare had it lift its front hooves to brace against the wall to either side of the pegasus, pressing its belly against her back and wings. She thrust her hips, and its penis painfully jolted against the joint between the pegasus’ thigh and crotch, eliciting a yelp from her and a pained hiss from it.

“Sorry, I’ll get it, just…” she shifted, sliding its tip across the pegasus’ rear end but failing to catch it on anything. “Huh, this is really hard.”

“Wait,” Decoy said. It shifted itself a horn and used magic to adjust itself until it was resting against the pegasus’ opening.
As soon as it had lined it up, the mare thrust firmly, jamming the penis into the still-dry crotch of their roommate.

“Easy!” she squealed, “Not so hard!”

Decoy exuded a layer of slime from its cock to ease its passage. The mare slowed down, and with lubrication was able to slide inside more gently. Decoy moaned in her ears as it felt the warmth of the pegasus slip around it, and the pegasus stopped complaining and caught her breath.

What followed was not an epic adventure in sexual pleasure. It was only slightly more pleasurable than the quickie it had had in the outhouse, despite it being the one that got to orgasm this time. The mare inside it didn’t notice that it had popped, and kept thrusting, quickly and firmly but a bit arrhythmically, and it braced itself and endured as the pleasure turned to slight discomfort. After an interminable five minutes, she got tired and had it step back.

The pegasus shivered a bit as they pulled out. “Satisfied?” she asked.

“I’m satisfied that I’m not getting anything out of this,” the mare replied. “I think Dee liked it at least.”

The pegasus was still in position, presenting herself. “Can you finish me off with your tongue? I was close, but I couldn’t quite get there.”

“Um… it would be my tongue,” the mare said. “So no. That would be cheating.”

“I can help,” said the quiet mare from the top bunk, who’d been watching in silence the whole time.

The mare took Decoy back to their bunkbed, and leapt into the top bunk, wiggling their limbs until they were under the covers. The soft noises from the bunk across the room didn’t keep them awake for long.
> Day 14: Creepy
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

A few days passed pleasantly, the construction work tiring but satisfying, with the occasional opportunity to sneak off with a pony and fuck. At night, the four roommates would find something sexy to do together, although the mare who slept above him stayed away from any actual sex. She kept flirting with the edge, though – kissing a pony while somepony else went down on them, or helping hold them down while they orgasmed.

Decoy was past the uncontrollable hunger stage, and while it still enjoyed sex, it had mostly stopped actively seeking it out. For better or worse, though, it had acquired a reputation, and ponies would come to it when they wanted a quick screw and didn’t want to risk the other pony saying no. So it never said no, unless there was no way to fit them into its schedule.

Some of the ponies wanted very strange things. A couple of them wanted to hurt it, the sight of it in pain what got them off. Neither of them was at all bothered by it turning down its sense of pain until it was something bearable, as long as it didn’t hold back its screams and struggles.

“You like that, don’t you,” said one of the sadistic mares, her teeth locked painfully onto the back of its neck. “I bet you’d come right now if I just crunched down and crushed your spine.”

Decoy doubted that, even though a certain amount of pain was… if not exactly pleasant, or arousing, then at least satisfying to endure. Still, there was no reason for that sort of injury to cause it any more pain or damage than the usual kicks and bites. A little bit of shapeshifting to support the scene, and it would just be a slightly more visceral bit of playacting.

“Do it,” Decoy moaned, as the mare twisted its elytra painfully. “Do your worst.”

“Um…” she said. Letting go of it. “Seriously?”

“If you warn me ahead of time, I can endure it without serious injury,” it explained.

“Can I… tear off your leg?”

“Sort of,” it replied. “Watch.” It held up a foreleg, and shifted it away, leaving a blank spot on its shoulder. Then a new leg grew, identical to the old one, except for being a ‘new’ limb with no proper analogue. “This isn’t really my leg. You could do whatever you wanted to it, and I wouldn’t be hurt.”

She took it in her teeth, and wrenched it painfully, tugging and twisting. Decoy gasped, playing up the muted pain like it usually did, and closed its eyes and looked away. She continued to work at it for half a minute or so, leaving it with aching muscles and tendons, but failed to actually remove the fake limb. “Ugh. This is harder than it looks.”

“Ponies aren’t fragile,” it said. “Realistically, you’d need tools.”

She was too embarrassed to approach it again, at least for the next few days. It was a little disappointed, since the challenge she’d presented was interesting, even if the sensations hadn’t been pleasant in the traditional sense.


===


One morning, the roommates were woken up by a knock on the door, followed by it magically unlocking itself and swiftly opening. Decoy was in the pegasus’ bed, having been trapped there when she fell asleep on top of it after a long session of slow, gentle lovemaking the night before. It had altered itself to be a softer cushion for her, and its hooves were stuck to her sides (although that was a natural changeling ability and not something it had had to shift).

“So it’s true,” said the unicorn coldly, staring down at them.

Decoy looked back up, twisting its head 180 degrees to face him right-side up.

“What are you talking about?” groaned the flirty mare, from where she’d slept alone in her bunk. It was a little earlier than any of them would normally have awoken.

“Did you really think you could keep it a secret? Everypony in the building knows what’s going on in here. Sooner or later one of them was going to mention it to me.”

“Yeah, they have sex,” the mare said. “Oh no, you discovered that we’re all adult ponies. I’ve been keeping out of it, though, like you asked.”

“You really expect me to believe that?” the unicorn said. “Vertical said she heard your voice talking while the… while the noise was going on.”

The pegasus had been awake but frozen since the unicorn had barged in, squeezing Decoy tighter and tighter. Now she stood up over it, sliding it’s cock out of her with a messy splash of fluids, and shouted, “Get out of my room! What do you think you’re doing barging in here? Do we look like we’re ready for visitors?”

The unicorn scoffed “So now you’re pretending to care about decency?”

“Argh,” the mare said, squeezing her head between her hooves. “Why can’t you just trust me?”

He looked down at Decoy, then back up at her. “You want me to trust you? Fine.” His horn lit, brightly, and the mare squealed as she was lifted slightly off of her bunk. There was a brief flash, and she settled back onto the mattress. “Don’t lie to me again,” he snapped, turning to leave. “I’ll know.”

“What a creep,” the pegasus said, as the door closed and re-locked itself behind him.

“What did he do to you?” asked the mare above them, who’d been huddled silently through the whole confrontation.

“Something that makes my crotch tingle,” she said, rolling on her side and rubbing at it with a hoof. “Not in a good way.”

“Probably an alarm spell,” Decoy said. “I’ve heard they itch.”

“Do you want me to murder him for you?” the pegasus asked.

“I’ll let you know at lunch,” the mare said. “If it’s still itching then, get your axe.”


===


Decoy didn’t get to check in with them at lunch. A runner called it back to the office to talk to its caseworker. She wasn’t in her own office, instead standing in a conference room with a large, scarred landshark and his dragon bodyguard. Decoy eyed the bodyguard suspiciously – was she really a dragon? Dragons were notorious for being unmanageable as employees unless you trained them from a young age. Then again, the nearest population of landsharks was in Kludgetown, a notorious haven for slavery and crime, and they certainly wouldn’t be above kidnapping a baby dragon to do just that.

“You understand that she’s not a slave,” the pegasus said, probably for Decoy’s benefit.

“Yeah yeah,” the shark said. “Indentured for a hundred years, though. That’s basically the same thing. How much?”

“We couldn’t let her go for less than five hundred thousand bits.”

“You’re fucking with me,” the shark said. Turning to his dragon, “She’s fucking with me. Doesn’t she know what happens to ponies that fuck with me?”

The dragon smiled, showing off her glittering fangs, and flexed her claws. “Obviously not, boss.”

“She’s a valuable member of our team,” the pegasus said. “Easily as productive as a master builder, although not in the same way of course. If you calculate the present value of her contract, assuming a 10% return on investments as the opportunity cost, you get a figure in that ballpark.”

“You’re wasting her talents,” the shark said. “You have her building crap. Seriously? That’s the best you can think of to do with a shapeshifter?”

“So…” the pegasus said, “you’re saying we should charge more?”

“No, I’m saying that you have a moral duty to sell her to me,” the shark snapped. “You’re never going to keep her attention for a hundred years. You’ll be lucky to get one! I’ll pay you ten thousand, cash on the barrel.”

“That’s… significantly less than we paid,” the pegasus said. “Absolutely not.”

“Twenty thousand, then,” the landshark said, leaning towards her and baring his teeth. “That’s an offer you cannot refuse.”

The pegasus didn’t flinch. “Bite me.”

The shark stared at her for a few more seconds, then backed off. “I’m so, so tempted, sweets. You got guts, at least. How much do you think you’d go for?”

“I’m not for sale.”

The shark laughed. “Yeah yeah, but you could make a lot more working for us than you do at this joint. Straight work is for suckers.”

“This conversation is going nowhere,” the pegasus said. “I called Dee down because you said you wanted a demonstration of her skills, and I thought you were going to make a serious offer.”

“We’re deadly serious,” said the dragon, puffing a cloud of smoke at her, that she dispersed with a flap of her wing.

The pegasus narrowed her eyes. “Then let’s get right to the demonstration. Dee, please remove these ruffians.”

“Dragons are problematic,” Decoy said.

The landshark laughed, and took a step towards the pegasus. “Bad move, sweetheart. Guess she wasn’t as good an invesss… muh… wha?” He spun around, putting a hand to the sharp sting on his neck, then collapsed, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, although his chest still rose and fell with his breath.

“Landsharks are easy,” Decoy said, now in possession of a scorpion tail, “but I can’t pierce dragon scales.”

The pegasus looked down at the shark, then up at the dragon, who looked like she was about to get over her shock at seeing her boss taken down and attack. “I’ll pay you two hundred bits to take your boss and leave. Nopony has to get hurt.”

“You’ll regret this,” the dragon said, scooping up the much larger landshark and slinging him over her shoulder. She left without taking the bits.

The pegasus let out her breath and seemed to deflate, although she stayed standing. “That could have gone better. But I’ll take it.”

“Would you really sell my contract to a Kludgetown slaver?” Decoy asked.

“This is a business. We’re literally in it for the money,” she said. “You’re a valuable member of our team, specifically one valued at approximately five hundred thousand bits.” She sighed and shook her head. “If I thought there was any chance of ever getting you back, I might have offered a rental.”


===


At dinner, it met up with its pegasus roommate to ask about the potential murder of the unicorn.

“It stopped itching, so she’s going to talk to him about it instead,” was the answer. “I hope they’re breaking up. He’s such a creep.”

“I think the relationship is bad for both of them,” Decoy said. “I liked him before they were a couple.”

“Maybe it’s just relationships that are bad,” the pegasus said. “I haven’t been in one that didn’t go down in flames. Just screwing around with friends is so much easier.”

“That’s how changelings deal with sex,” Decoy admitted. “You’re a pony, though. You’ll eventually want a weird pony relationship. Ponies always do.”

“I guess I do want foals, eventually,” she said. “And we don’t get to just dump them in a hatching chamber for somepony else to raise.” She pouted. “I don’t suppose you can bite me and turn me into a changeling?”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” Decoy said. “If we could do that to ponies, it would have been a lot easier to make them disappear.”

“What did you do instead?”

“I thought it was common knowledge now?” Decoy said, frowning at her. “We gave all the details at the public trial. There were thousands of spectators, and journalists and everything.”

She shrugged. “I don’t pay much attention to politics.” She grinned. “Did you kill them? With a bloody axe?”

Decoy shook its head. “We sold them into slavery in Kludgetown. The bits were useful.”

“Wow. You were really evil back then,” she said.

Decoy was somehow smart enough not to defend its past self, this time.


===


Decoy, shifted into the form of a cursed, black changeling, hissed in the quiet mare’s ear. This time it failed to elicit the desired reaction, even when it nipped her ear with its fangs.

“Oh, this isn’t working at all,” she said, fidgeting under it. “I think we used this shape too many times, it’s not really scary anymore.”

“She could bite you for real?” suggested the pegasus. She was sitting in the other top bunk; not hers, but it gave her a better view, and the mare that sometimes slept there was still out talking to her coltfriend.

The mare under it squeaked, and tensed up a little, but shook her head. “There has to be something else you can do!”

“Spiders?” it suggested, shifting into a big fuzzy tarantula with all eight legs clenched around her sides.

“That’s… not that creepy,” said the pegasus. “That’s adorable.”

The mare under him didn’t seem to agree, whimpering slightly. She started to squirm when a swarm of smaller spiders emerged from its fur and started to crawl their way over and around her, one of them crawling down her forehead to perch on her nose, turning to wave its pedipalps an inch from her eyes.

“No, no no no no no no!” she squealed, squirming and shifting and – “No, stop! Stop!” she rolled over, nearly crushing it as it scuttled off her and onto the wall, then thrashed around flinging the smaller spiders every which way.

“Too much,” Decoy said, gnashing its fangs in frustration. This was hard to get right.

“Oh no!” the mare said, calming down a bit and finding several smashed spiders in her bed. She held one out to Decoy on a hoof. “I crushed you!”

“It’s fine, they were only puppets,” it said. “I didn’t put many pain receptors in them.” Most of the rest of them, that hadn’t been crushed, had torn free and were ‘dead’ now, curling up and ceasing their movement. With a flash of green fire, it reabsorbed the few that it still could.

The mare lay on her back, panting. “That was too scary,” she said, then looked up at it and smiled. “Do it again!”
> Day 17: Second Chances
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

A few days later, Decoy (and other ponies who’d volunteered) were called away from work early to get ready for a big party. Investors from all over Equestria and the surrounding lands were going to be there, to hear the company’s CEO give a speech about how well the construction was going and how much money they were all going to make.

“And then the sex?” Decoy asked. She was a unicorn mare for the night, since her caseworker had been worried about the Kludgetown representatives making a play (another play) to foalnap her. It meant keeping track of a new identity for the night, which had never been Decoy’s specialty, but all the other (actual) ponies volunteering as party favors would be using assumed identities too, and they weren’t changeling infiltrators either.

It also meant wearing a dress and makeup, and all that nonsense that didn’t generally apply to changelings. She enjoyed that part, though. It was sort of like shapeshifting with tools.

“If they’re interested,” said the mare that officially still slept above her, although she hadn’t been back to the room since the incident. Apparently she and her coltfriend hadn’t broken up after all. “Some of them will just want company and conversation, or maybe a blow job or something.”

“I’m surprised to see you here,” Decoy said. “Won’t the unicorn get jealous? We don’t want him barging in on the party.”

She sighed. “We talked. It wasn’t entirely his fault, I was doing things to make him more jealous since I was annoyed he wasn’t putting out. So now, well, I’m sleeping with him so that he doesn’t have to imagine what I might be up to in my room, and he’s sleeping with me so that I don’t get so frustrated that I start clopping to my roommates fucking each other.” She smiled. “He’s saving actual sex for marriage, but we’re kissing and cuddling and going down on each other. He really likes eating pussy. It’s adorable.” She shivered. “And he started experimenting with his magic… I think this might work out.”

“But,” Decoy waved her hoof around. “This?”

“I don’t think I’m ever going to be completely monogamous,” she said. “So this is a test. He knows all about the party, and that I don’t have feelings for anypony-or-whatever I might end up having sex with here. If he still gets super-jealous, then we’ll know we weren’t meant to be.”

Decoy was pretty sure they weren’t meant to be, but she had to admit that part of her certainty might have actually been jealousy, which wasn’t an emotion to wallow in, even if it was one of the ones she hadn’t been able to feel before reforming. “I think I like the other format better,” she said instead of following that thought.

“Hmm?”

“A few of us for a group of creatures,” she said. “One on one seems like a lot of… work? Social work? Emotional work?”

“What do you mean?” the mare asked.

“Being a toy for a group to play with is easy,” Decoy said. “And fun. Being a person to talk to is something completely different.”

She laughed. “Don’t worry, nopony’s expecting us to be good at that part.”


===


The party started, for them, after the big speech, when all the important ponies and other creatures were mingling. Decoy wasn’t sure if it was the ballroom’s acoustics, or if parties were just always like this, but she couldn’t hear anything that anypony was saying over the general cacophony. She wandered around, in her sexy little dress that meant that she was open for anypony to claim as their companion for the night, smiling and trying not to run for the corner and hide because after she did that the first time one of the waitstaff had come over and scolded her for it.

So instead, she started looking around for anypony familiar, not counting the other mares and stallions doing the same job as she was supposed to be doing, only much more competently. Her eyes locked on a familiar dragon, standing in the middle of the room by herself, arms folded and stance daring anypony to approach. As she watched the dragon looked over at her, and their eyes met. Decoy blinked, and looked away, but it was too late. The dragon was headed her way. Decoy sighed.

“You,” the dragon said, when she arrived. “What’s your name?”

Decoy’s mind went blank. She couldn’t use her real name, but she didn’t remember the name they’d given her. “I don’t remember,” she said. “We’re not supposed to use our real names.”

The dragon laughed. “Alright, I’m claiming you. C’mon.”

Decoy followed her back to the center of the room. The party swirled around them, the noise no less impenetrable with a dragon standing next to her.

“So what are we supposed to do here?” the dragon asked, loudly enough to be heard over the others. “I haven’t been to one of these before.”

Decoy had been briefed on this. “We talk for a while, then dinner. Then more talking if you want. Afterwards you can take me back to your room for the night, although I’ll probably have to leave before morning.”

“Wow,” she said. “No games?”

“I don’t see any,” Decoy said. “To be honest, this is my first time at a party like this, so I might not be the best guide.”

The dragon puffed a little ring of smoke. “Eh. You didn’t run away when I approached, so you’re better than the alternatives.” She plopped a claw on Decoy’s back, and started combing her claws through her fur. “So soft…”

“I’m glad you approve,” Decoy said, taking a sideways step to lean against the dragon’s warm scales. Both of them were wearing dresses, but neither of them were wearing dresses that covered much.

“It’s nice, but makes you kind of useless,” the dragon said, continuing to pet her. “For sex, I mean. I’d break you if I got into it at all.”

“Oh,” Decoy said. “That’s a shame. Maybe we could do something with magic?”

“Eh. Maybe,” the dragon said. “I was hoping to find that changeling. Word is she’s on the list for parties like this.”

Decoy carefully forced her muscles to relax, and silently recalled the first rule of lying: ‘Don’t tell the truth’. “I don’t think they bring everypony on the list to every party,” she said. Crap. That was the truth. “Maybe they were worried one of the guests would try to kidnap her?” Also the truth. This was harder than it sounded. “If she was here, she’d be in a disguise, so you wouldn’t be able to tell her from anypony else.”

Decoy closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. She really, really wasn’t cut out for being an infiltrator.

“Heh,” the dragon said. “So what was your name again?”

“Why don’t you pick one?” she suggested.

“Alright. How about Deee…light?”

Decoy stared back up at her. “Okay,” she said. “That sounds like the kind of name they were giving out.”

The dragon laughed. “Wow, they didn’t even let you pick your own names? No wonder you forgot.”

Since the dragon didn’t feel like approaching any of the ongoing conversations – creatures standing in little circles to talk, each with a decorative pony clinging to their side and only occasionally joining in – she ended up talking to Decoy for a while. Decoy did her best to describe what unicorns did on a construction site, and usually remembered to use the first person. The dragon mostly complained about ponies, and Kludgetown, and especially the hippogriff navy, which was being a pain in the ass for legitimate traders based in Kludgetown.

“They’ll just stop you, right there in the open air, and demand to inspect your cargo for contraband,” she said. “We’re not even shipping to Mt. Aeris! Where do they get off deciding what’s contraband.”

“What do they think is contraband?” Decoy asked.

“Damn near everything,” the dragon said. “I’ve seen them confiscate potions, weapons, clothing, food…”

“Slaves?” Decoy prompted.

“I’m sure they would, but we don’t ship slaves anymore. With the changelings shut down and the Storm King gone, everyone knows it’s a bad idea to get caught with a claw in that business.” She snorted. “Kind of puts us in a pickle. We can’t just free the slaves ‘cause they’d turn on us and want revenge, and can’t just get rid of them since if the ponies found out we slit their throats and dumped them in the ocean? Yeah, it’s bad all around.”

“What about the diamond dogs?” Decoy asked. Before the Kludgetown slave markets, that’s where the Changelings had always dumped their problem ponies.

“What about them?”

“You could give your slaves to the diamond dogs. They’re always looking for slaves.”

“They wouldn’t pay us anything for them though,” the dragon said. “They’re too stupid to understand trade.”

“They’d pay you in being the place the princesses blow up when they decide to shut down the slave trade.”

“I like the way you think,” the dragon said. “Have you ever considered a career in piracy?”

“Doesn’t everypony?” Decoy replied. “Until they grow up enough to realize just how many ponies they’d have to hurt or kill when they don’t play along with the ‘getting robbed and enslaved’ narrative a pirate captain tries to build with her targets.”

“Good thing I’m a dragon. Born with a big pile of not giving a fuck about what happens to idiots.”

“You should enroll in friendship school,” Decoy said. “They can fix that.”

The dragon laughed. “But then I’d have to find another line of work!”


===


Dinner was expensive, and fancy, and still far too loud to hear much of anything over the constant talking. It also featured a floor-length tablecloth, and many of the pony companions slipped under the table to tend to their masters-for-the-night in something that almost passed as secrecy. Decoy offered to do the same for the dragon.

“You would die,” the dragon said, snagging another fancy, spicy pancake from the serving platter. “I would literally crush your skull with my thighs. Don’t ask me how I know this.”

“How do you know that?” Decoy asked.

“I told you not to ask,” the dragon growled, munching on the pancake. When she was finished, she added, “I tried to use a lever as a dildo once. Bent the metal all out of shape when I came.”

It wasn’t her specialty, but Decoy lit her horn and made a patch of tactile magic appear on the dragon’s side. She slid it down under the tablecloth, and circled around her thigh, slipping under her dress. The dragon picked up a roasted carrot, and started wrapping her tongue around it, slowly drawing it into her mouth, while her eyes watched Decoy’s face as she concentrated.

She stroked the dragon’s thigh a few times, then slipped it inwards towards the crotch… then slipped it around, under her tail and up her belly, searching for anything that resembled a vulva. She could feel the scales, and the gaps between them, but couldn’t find any that she could pry apart, and using more force just made the spell evaporate.

“You tried,” the dragon said, after crunching up the carrot in two bites.

“You do actually have one, right?” Decoy asked. “Or do dragons make eggs by breathing magical fire on specially painted rocks or something.”

“Hah. No, we’re not changelings,” the dragon said.

Decoy had enough presence of mind to remember that changeling reproduction wasn’t common knowledge. “Is that what changelings do?” she asked. “I didn’t even know they could breathe fire.”

“Okay, I’m getting bored of talking now,” the dragon said. “Let’s go find one of those rooms you mentioned.”


===


Decoy led the dragon to the private rooms, since while this was the sort of party where ponies would have sex in public, that part wasn’t mandatory. The dragon herded her inside, then closed and locked the door behind them.

The room had a large, comfortable couch, and an even larger, more comfortable bed. Everything was various desert tones, except for the pale blue walls fading into the darkened ceiling. The dragon, somehow already naked, hopped onto the couch and rolled over on her back with her legs spread, hooking one leg over the back and letting the other rest on the floor. Her crotch remained a smooth, featureless expanse of scales, until she brought her claws in, hooking them into an invisible slit, and pulled it open, revealing shiny flesh within.

Decoy planted her tactile magic on the dragon’s thigh, then slid it over her scales and claws until she could feed it inside, caressing the edges of the slit and wiggling deeper as she pushed and twisted.

The dragon grunted. “More.”

Decoy set her hooves, and pointed her horn directly at the dragon’s sex, pushing more magic into the spell, pulsing the force in and out, a little deeper with each thrust.

“Ah, yes,” the dragon said, throwing her head back and lolling out her tongue. “More like that…” she squeezed back around the magic – and it snuffed out in an instant, the backlash sparking off Decoy’s horn.

Decoy cried out and collapsed, curling up around her burning horn. Magical feedback was the worst!

“Fuck,” said the dragon. “You okay?”

Decoy whimpered.

“Just shift into something without a horn,” the dragon said.

Decoy changed back to its normal form, and the pain faded quickly with no horn to plague. “Um…” it said, looking up at the dragon as it realized its mistake. “I can explain.”

“You explained earlier,” the dragon said, grinning. “I knew it was you!”

Decoy had put some thought into what it would do if it met the dragon again. It shifted into a guardgoyle, an animated statue made of stone, used as the guardian of Tenoctitlan temples. It felt a bit of regret as the dress it had forgotten it was wearing tore to pieces, but the scraps that ended up wrapped around one of its forelegs didn’t slow it down any. Before the dragon could react, it leapt on top of her, pinning her to the bed. She brought her arms up to its shoulders, claws scraping against the stone surface, but it was impervious, as it had planned. Even her stronger hindclaws were… not actually digging into its belly. Instead, her knees gripped it around its sides.

“Yeeeah, that’s the stuff,” the dragon moaned, grinding her crotch against its stone belly. “Come on, you did give this thing a dick, didn’t you?”

It had not, but after a moment of disorientation Decoy decided that playing along was the safer path for everyone involved, and reconfigured itself appropriately. His stone cock – more of a sharp, vicious spike – sprung out from his crotch with a ‘chunk’, stabbing the dragon between her legs. She still had to wiggle back and forth against the spike to open herself for it, but once the tip was inside he was able to thrust it inside her in a single, brutal motion.

“Oh fuck…” the dragon said, thrusting back against him, helping to drive it deeper. Decoy hissed, and retracted it partway before letting the mechanism slam it back inside, this time thrusting his hips to pound it in harder. The dragon’s insides were slick and smooth, and impossibly hot, but yielded only before the amount of force a stone construct could provide – and when she clamped down on him, trying to keep him inside as he pulled back, only the tapered shape and slick polish of the penis he’d chosen kept him from being trapped by her impossible grip.

She hadn’t exaggerated. A pony would have been crushed.

But he wouldn’t be crushed, and she wouldn’t be injured by his weight or his strength or the gear-powered piston mechanism he’d attached to his cock. He went all out, losing himself in the sensations of the wiry, scaly dragon squirming underneath him, the diamond-hard claws leaving only the smallest scratches in his stone surface, and the slippery heat of her inner flesh as it alternately parted and clenched around him. She came quickly – as pent up as she’d implied from years of frustration – but he didn’t stop. He had no need to stop. He was a machine. She cried out, her moans turning to whines, and whimpers, and finally another climax, and then another after that, but he didn’t stop until her strength was exhausted, and her claws fell limp at her sides.

His cock retracted into his crotch, a stone covering slipping back into place with a click. He let go of her neck with his teeth – he’d clamped on like a vise at some point, but hadn’t even been able to restrict her breath. He folded his stone wings, and sat up in what was left of the couch – splinters of the frame and shredded remnants of cushions, bits of cloth and cotton stuffing everywhere.

The dragon groaned, and pulled her legs back under her, rolling into the folded leg sitting position bipedal creatures used sometimes.  She lifted her arms over her head, and stretched, opening her mouth in a wide, slow yawn. “Okay, that was worth the trip,” she said, still looking tired, but recovering quickly. “Can you be a pony again? I want something to pet.”

“Or something easier to carry off with you,” Decoy said, warily, his voice low and rumbling in this shape.

“Would if I could,” she said, with a smirk. “But that was my boss’s stupid plan, and all he got out of it was uninvited to the party. I should give you the sales pitch, though. I need something like you in my life.”

“I’m not going to say this is an easy transformation, but it’s something most changelings could be taught,” Decoy said. “It’s magically powered but internally consistent. You don’t need practice in partial transformations. You should go to the hive and talk to Pharynx. He’ll know if there’s anyone who might still be willing to work with Kludgetown.”

“Yeah, well, we need you for more than just being my fuck toy,” she said. “I can’t give you the details unless you agree, but I promise you won’t be bored.”

“That’s not a very good sales pitch,” Decoy replied. After a second, he shifted back to the unicorn form she’d come in with, and lowered herself into the dragon’s grasp. There was no reason to burn magic if she wasn’t planning on trying anything, and… actually, her reserves were fine. She’d managed to absorb more from the dragon than she’d spent, somehow. Cuddling as a unicorn was still more efficient, though.

And claws petting her fur was one of the nicest sensations that wasn’t sex.

“You wouldn’t be a slave,” the dragon said, combing a claw through her mane while the other caressed her flank. “You’d get paid, like anyone else. Plenty of cash to buy anything, or anyone, you wanted. Fuck being a prisoner for a hundred years. Fuck Equestria’s laws.”

“Fuck the hive,” Decoy said.

“Yeah!” the dragon said, enthusiastically.

“No,” Decoy replied. “We went to stand trial because we needed the ponies to trust us again. Now I’m serving this sentence so that every time they get angry about what happened to the ponies we hurt, they can remember that there’s a changeling somewhere being punished.”

“So?” the dragon said. “Fake your death or something. Wasn’t that your specialty?”

Decoy whined, “Everypony knows that was my specialty!” She took a deep breath. “And I don’t want a life of crime. I’d settle for that if I had to, but I have feelings now. Empathy.”

“Oh, nothing you’d do would be against the law.” The dragon put her claw under Decoy’s chin and lifted her muzzle to meet her gaze. She was grinning. “I promise!”

Decoy just rolled her eyes. “There are no criminals in Kludgetown, because nothing is against the law.”

“Ha,” the dragon said, letting go of her head. “Maybe you’re too smart for this scheme. You might end up running the thing.”

“Still not interested.”

“So…” the dragon said, slipping her claws under Decoy’s tail, and rubbing across her slit, pressing one claw slowly inside her. Gentle as she was, it felt even better than the petting, if a bit… dangerous. A few exploratory strokes, and she was soaking the dragon’s hand with her arousal. “If I threatened to burn down the hive, and kill everypony you cared about, could we have more angry sex?”

“No,” Decoy said, pressing her side against the dragon’s warm, firm belly and closing her eyes as the claw continued to slip in and out, in and out, another claw resting, just resting over her winking clitoris. “I’d have to kill you.”

“Then I guess I won’t do that,” the dragon said, continuing to work her claws gently against Decoy’s sex, and gripping her cheek to pull her up for a kiss.
> Day 24: Happiness
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

About a week later…

Decoy woke up in a tangled mess. It tried to open its eyes, but didn’t seem to have any. It also didn’t have any ears, but it could hear the soft breathing and steady heartbeats of several different ponies. It could also feel their warm fur pressed against its skin – its soft, damp, hairless skin – and oh my, that wasn’t pony fur touching that part. It squirmed the tip of that tentacle a bit to feel around, and determined that it was, in fact, a pony’s pussy, damp with what tasted like a mixture of sexual fluids.

Oh yes, now it remembered. Tentacles. It had transformed itself into a giant mass of tentacles the night before, and apparently everypony involved in the resulting experimentation had fallen asleep still wrapped up in them.

The pony it had squirmed inside stirred, and her hooves grasped at a different tentacle, which she started to lick. In response, it moved the tentacle inside her with more purpose, slithering it deeper in and twisting it against her inner walls. She moaned, and twitched, and her hind-hoof kicked out involuntarily, waking up one of the other ponies… the pegasus, this time, who gathered a bundle of tentacles to her chest to snuggle them, wrapping her legs around a different group and squeezing.

Decoy obliged her by coiling several of them around her to return the hug… followed by gentle insertion into her sex, which clenched around it… and her ass, which relaxed as the slippery tip of the tentacle licked across it, allowing it easy access… and of course her mouth, the tentacle there sliding between her lips, across her tongue, and down her throat until she gagged, at which point it pulled back and let her control the depth of that intrusion. Others tried to complete the set, prodding at her nostrils and ears, but it didn’t leave the former blocked for long, and the latter got only a token penetration, since it didn’t want to damage anything.

The third pony, vaguely on the bottom of the pile, although Decoy supported the others enough that she wasn’t crushed by their weight, struggled feebly as if trying to escape from its grasp. It recognized this role-play, of course, and let her make just enough progress to see the open air before it wrapped up her limbs and muzzle and pulled her back inside of its coils, more and more of its tentacles sliding around her until she could barely move… and that was when it penetrated her as well, thrusting firmly inside her with a single, large tentacle, providing the best approximation of ordinary sex of any of them, including the tip opening and spraying her insides with slime as all the stimulation finally brought it to a climax. Most of the other tentacles didn’t have that feature, but Decoy was still one creature, despite its current form, and they all convulsed in orgasm simultaneously, the sudden jerky motion driving the other mares to climax as well.

Extricating themselves from the resulting tangle – and washing off the slime and other fluids that absolutely soaked all four of them – took long enough that they missed breakfast, but nopony was complaining.


===


Once they were clean, Decoy headed to see its case worker to get the daily assignment.

“I think I’ll put you on ditch-digging with Grounder today. If that’s alright with you.”

“And if it isn’t alright?” Decoy asked.

She shrugged. “I could assign a different unicorn. I know the two of you have had issues.”

“No, it’s fine,” it said. “This isn’t a large enough camp to avoid him entirely, so we should probably talk.”

“As long as you can work together, it’s fine with me,” the pegasus said. She scribbled out the assignment form, and hoofed it over. “Oh, one more thing. It hasn’t been a moon, but I think your bug is recharged. It’s glowing.”

“I probably shouldn’t bother Thorax ahead of schedule,” Decoy said, after thinking it over for a few seconds. “I don’t have anything critical to report.”

“Okay then. See you tomorrow.”


===


The unicorn was professional, and quiet. Eventually, Decoy had to be the one to speak up. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out between the two of you.”

“No you’re not,” he said.

“I am,” Decoy repeated. “The ideal outcome would have been for you to realize that your jealousy and possessiveness were unnecessary and join us all in the exploration of shapeshifting and casual sex.”

The unicorn almost growled his reply, “That isn’t my ideal.”

“I know. The world is like that, with ponies working at cross purposes because they ultimately want different things. It’s annoying. Things would be a lot easier if everypony was flexible enough to…” it waved a large clawed paw around in the air, “weave it all into one web of satisfaction.” Decoy paused to focus on its digging a bit more – the unicorn was steadily fusing and shaping the edges of the trench behind it, and it wouldn’t be a good idea to let him catch up.

“So you’re not sorry, then,” the unicorn said. “You’re not admitting that you did anything wrong. You’re not admitting that you hurt me. You’re not even planning to do anything different in the future.”

“No, I’m not apologizing,” Decoy said. “What would I even apologize for? I was trying to be sympathetic.”

“You’re gloating, because you got the filly.”

“I don’t have her,” Decoy said. “I play with her. I play with our other roommates too, and they want the same thing that you do, eventually. To find one mate, to have foals, to own and be owned.”

“It’s not ownership,” the unicorn snapped. “It’s about building a family and being loyal to each other.”

Decoy tried to think of it that way. It was hard. “Like a really, really tiny hive?”

The unicorn snorted. “Clearly not, since you’re willing to fuck anything with a pulse.”


===


About two hours after lunch, their work was interrupted by a dragon dropping out of the sky, thumping into the sand with a soft ‘flumph’. She watched them dig for a while, before remarking, “Wow, this is thrilling. I can see why you didn’t want to give it up.”

“If you’re here to join us, then I don’t know who you should go to to sign up, but I’m certain that it’s not me,” Decoy said.

The dragon shuffled nervously, glancing up at the sky, then back down at the Maulwurf-shaped changeling. “I need to talk to you in private.”

“I’d say to come visit me in my room after dinner, but I bunk with three ponies,” Decoy replied. “Also, you break furniture during sex.”

“I need to talk to you now” she said. “Without him listening in.” She pointed to the unicorn.

Decoy sighed, changed back into its normal form, and told the unicorn, “Apparently I need to take a break. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, I’ve probably been foalnapped.”

They flew around until they found a secluded spot that wasn’t full of workers.

“You need to come with me,” said the dragon. “This is your last chance.”

Decoy stared at her.

She growled. “I’m not threatening you, I’m warning you. There’s creatures out to hurt you, and the ponies here won’t be able to protect you.”

“Can you be more specific?” Decoy asked.

“There’s another stupid party, this time in Kludgetown. They’re going to take you there to show you off. You’re never going to leave.”

Decoy nodded. “Okay.”

“Don’t ‘okay’ me,” the dragon said, poking it in the chest and knocking it back a step. “They have spies here watching you. They know what you can do, and they’re not worried. You should be scared.”

Decoy considered that. It was feeling an emotion, but ‘fear’ didn’t match up. No, this was excitement. “They can’t plan for what I’m going to do, because I don’t plan what I’m going to do,” Decoy said. “I improvise. You’re the most dangerous thing I’ve seen in Kludgetown, and I have three different ways to take you down.”

“That sounds like planning,” the dragon said, folding her arms.

“I just made up two of them on the spot.”

The dragon gave it a look. “You’re being stupid, and you’re going to die. Fuck, this was a waste of time.” She threw her arms up in the air and turned her back on it.

“I’ll be careful,” it said. “I would have been careful anyway, being sent to Kludgetown, but I’ll be extra careful because you warned me.”

“That isn’t going to – screw it. You’re coming with me for your own good,” the dragon said, suddenly lunging for it, arms outstretched.

Decoy coughed in her face, spraying her with dragon-sneeze pollen. The dragon pulled her arms back to clutch at her throat, coughing and wheezing, eyes red and tearing up. Decoy stood over her, and watched while she collapsed against a nearby rock, each breath labored but steady. “I have to get back to work,” it said, leaving her there once it was sure she would be okay.

It looked around for her after its shift, but she was nowhere to be found. That was a bit of a shame, but it was still happy that it had apparently made a new friend.
> Day 28: Betrayal
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“This is a mistake,” said its case worker. The pegasus had informed it of the ‘extra shift’ (although it was replacing a normal day’s work, this time) and brought it to the airfield, but hadn’t been invited along on the trip this time.

“Don’t worry,” said the stallion holding Decoy’s leash. This was an actual leash, attached to a harness, made of magically unbreakable material. It was supposedly for Decoy’s protection – taking it to a party in Kludgetown was a risk, but there were few other volunteers and it had been specifically requested by the Very Important Creature who supposedly had a thing for changelings.

Decoy could have easily shapeshifted out of it, of course, but it had been ordered not to. For its own protection.

The few other volunteers were already on board, as was most of the company’s delegation. Only Decoy, his erstwhile handler, and some security guards were still waiting to board.

The stallion shook the leash. “Besides the protective harness, we’ve got three different tracking spells on her. She’s not going anywhere.”

“If they do try something, am I allowed to fight back?” Decoy asked. “I know the normal rule is not to disobey or harm the customers.”

“Yeah… don’t fight back,” the stallion said. “Leave any fighting to our security squad. They’re trained, equipped, and insured.”

“I am not signing off on this,” the pegasus said. “This is your idea; you can take the blame when it all goes wrong.”

The stallion smirked. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure any credit or blame is distributed appropriately.”

After they boarded the airship, Decoy sat next to its handler in their private cabin. There was a window, but nothing to see out of it yet that it hadn’t seen a hundred times.

“This does seem reckless,” it said. “Even ignoring my own situation, travelling to Kludgetown is always a risk. There are no laws. All of you could die, or worse.”

“They make too much money off of us to fuck with us like that,” the stallion said. “Speaking of fucking, it’s a long fucking trip. Why don’t you practice your oral?”

“Is that allowed?” Decoy asked.

“Fuck if I know,” the stallion said, shifting to lie on his side and expose himself. “If you’re worried about the terms of your contract, don’t be. I’m high enough up to make exceptions to the rules.”

“Okay,” Decoy said, slipping to the floor to get into position. It always enjoyed sucking cock.

Decoy licked at the stallion’s tip a few times, then slithered its long changeling tongue out to wrap around it and squeeze. He grunted, and quickly grew fully erect. Decoy glanced over at the stallion, who reached down to pet its head with his hoof. It opened its mouth wide, showing off dozens of needle-sharp teeth… then closed its mouth around the stallion’s cock without letting any of them touch it.

It cheated. They were retractable. But the stallion didn’t need to know that. Oral sex was more fun when Decoy had control, and the notion that a wrong move could mean a penis full of needle-teeth kept him from trying anything. From how fast the stallion climaxed, it seemed that leaving the changeling in control might have been more fun for him as well.


===


All too soon the sunlight dimmed, as they entered the Kludgetown smog cloud. Decoy was relieved, since the stallion had had it playing with his cock for hours, and that was far too much of what had started out as a good thing. It pulled back, letting the semi-erect length slip from its throat to glisten in the open air, and hopped up onto its seat.

The stallion reached down with a hoof to rub at himself, as Decoy pulled back, but his stamina had run out long ago, and his penis shrunk back into his sheath.

“Do I pass?” Decoy asked.

“Fuck yeah,” the stallion said. “I almost wish I could keep you for myself.”

“If you can change the rules, I imagine you could assign me to pleasure you,” Decoy remarked.

“Yeah, but at that point I’m misusing company resources, and that would be hard to explain to my boss,” he said. “Do you need to clean up?”

Decoy licked around the inside of its mouth. It had been a while since the stallion had ejaculated, but still, “I could use some water.”

The stallion looked around the cabin, but there was nothing. “They’ll have refreshments at the party,” he said. “Come on.”

They met up with the rest of the delegation in the lounge, waiting to disembark. Everypony but Decoy was dressed in expensive suits or dresses, extremely slutty ones in the case of the other volunteers. Decoy didn’t recognize anypony, and its own dress being nothing but a magical harness didn’t exactly put it at ease. “Am I playing a slave?” it asked. “For the purpose of this activity.”

“More of a pet,” said one of the businessmares.

“Try not to talk,” said the stallion holding the leash. “If you could make weird bug noises, that would be a plus.”

Decoy unfolded its elytra, and rubbed them against each other, making an ear-piercing chirp.

“Okay, maybe not that sort of bug noise,” the stallion said, rubbing his ear.

Eventually the door opened, and the stench of thousands of unwashed carnivores – and their food – rolled over the party. Decoy was expecting it and had muted its sense of smell in preparation. The others tried to hide their reaction, but most of them made a nasty face, at the very least.

“Ah, my pony friends!” said a grinning mole… thing, waiting at the bottom of the ramp. “Welcome to Kludgetown! I’m so happy you accepted my invitation!”

“We wouldn’t dream of refusing, Verko,” said the mare who seemed to be in charge of the expedition. “We know how important your support is.”

“And you brought it!” the mole said, turning its tinted goggles to focus on Decoy. “The changeling I’ve heard so much about! I hear it can do a Maulwurf?”

Decoy nodded.

“Well, show me!”

Decoy glanced at the harness. “I –”

“We’re keeping her restrained for her own protection, for the moment,” the stallion said, smiling. “Once we’re in private, we can set her loose, and then she can turn into anything you want.”

“But first, I believe we have business to discuss?” the mare asked.

“Of course, of course, business before…” he leaned close to Decoy, and leered, broken, rotting teeth on full display, “…pleasure.” He waved to a pair of parrots, “Show them to the playroom, girls. The adults have things to discuss.”
While the higher-ups followed the mole creature, the parrots led Decoy, his stallion, and the volunteers in another direction. They took an open doorway from the rickety landing platform, which led them into a somehow even less safe-looking hallway.

“Why are you dealing with slavers?” Decoy asked the stallion. It recognized the mole from the bad old days, although it seemed like the mole hadn’t recognized it. This wasn’t surprising, since not only did it look very different from its old, cursed form, but it had always dealt with Kludgetown business in disguise.

“Everypony here is involved in the slave trade in one way or another,” the stallion said, dismissively. “We’re not buying slaves from him, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m more worried about selling.”

The stallion laughed. “Well, we’re not selling you. Half the office heard Charity spouting off how much you’re worth.”

It didn’t take long for the parrots to lead them to a fancy, if still somewhat filthy chamber – a private bar, the walls adorned with pelts and bones and horns. The only staff present was a grungy old pegasus bartender, with maybe a dozen remaining feathers between both his wings.

The stallion led Decoy up to the bar, and the changeling obediently hopped up onto a stool, that felt like it was made of real leather. The bartender stared at it, then at the stallion, raising one eyebrow.

“She worked up a thirst on the way over,” the stallion said. “Got anything good for changelings?”

The bartender nodded, and slowly reached under the bar, filling a glass with a glowing blue liquid. Decoy couldn’t stop itself from turning to focus on it – the scent of liquid love cut through the general squalor. “Where did you get that?” it asked.

The bartender didn’t answer, simply pushing it over in front of Decoy with a hoof.

“Drink up,” the stallion said expectantly.

Decoy flicked out its tongue to get a taste, just a taste, and then guzzled down the rest quickly, both hooves holding the glass up as it poured it down its throat, and licked at the last dregs until the glass was clean.

The magical poison mixed in with the drink had disabled its shapeshifting before it was halfway done, but that was fine. It had done all the shifting it would need before they’d put the harness on it, figuring that would be the trap that disabled its shifting. The dragon’s warning that ‘they knew what it could do’ didn’t have a lot of ways to be interpreted. Since the harness had been mostly inert, it had spent the flight over quietly adding a few new tricks while it sucked the stallion’s cock. It wasn’t sure there was room to shapeshift any more contingencies, at least not without being obvious.

And no changeling could turn down a drink like that, even now, years after the end of the hunger. “More,” it croaked, staring forlorn at the empty glass.

The bartender laughed. The stallion laughed too, and it wasn’t a nice laugh. He yanked on the leash and dragged decoy back behind the bar and into a back room.

“Hey, what’s going on?” asked one of the volunteers.

“Mind your own business,” snapped the stallion, shutting the door and leaving them alone in a large, dark room with stacks of broken chairs and a dusty pool table.

No, not alone. There were ponies in there with them… and a landshark, and a dragon.

“We locked her into this form,” the stallion said, then lit his horn and a spell snapped into place against the walls. “And we’re soundproofed.” He tied off the leash to one leg of the pool table. “She’s all yours.”

“Idiot,” the dragon hissed, scowling at it.

“Yeah, things are going to go differently this time,” the landshark said, swaggering over towards Decoy, pounding a fist into his other hand. “This time –”

Decoy bit him. The venom dropped him as quickly as it had the time before. It hopped up onto his body, hissed dramatically, spread its wings, and made some of the ear-piercing chirps that the stallion had asked it not to.

“Yeah, I’m not going anywhere near that,” the dragon said, backing away.

The lurking ponies seemed like they might be inclined to react in the same way, until a unicorn with a cracked horn stepped forwards. “We’re never going to get a better chance,” she said, horn sparking as she lifted an axe off the floor, and clenched it in her teeth. “I’ can’ ge’ all of uth!”

Decoy planted a hoof in her chest as she charged, and a spring-loaded spike shattered her sternum. It dodged back before her wild swing could take off its ear, them stomped on the floor to snap the spike back into place. Two ponies circled around behind it, leaping on it and grabbing for its hindlegs, so it buzzed its wings and sprayed them with poison dust, quickly knocking them unconscious.

…but they didn’t let go, and while the unicorn with a shattered sternum was out of the fight, there was another pony right behind her to pick up the axe. “Do you even remember how many of us you sold?” asked one of the others, still hanging back. “And they just let you walk? Because you said you were ‘sorry’?”

Decoy squirmed, but the particular poison it had used on its wings had apparently locked their muscles into a death grip on its hindquarters, and it could barely move. “Actually, I was sentenced to a pony lifetime of indenture, because I refused to apologize,” it explained, although it knew it would be useless.

“Were you now,” the pony in the back asked. “And do your new masters beat you every day? Work you until you drop, then whip you until you get back up or die because you can’t?”

“No, your grudge is legitimate,” Decoy admitted.

“Then die!” screamed the pony who’d picked up the axe, swinging as wildly as the unicorn before her. Decoy tried to use the same trick, but the pony was expecting that and brought the axe down on its outstretched limb, crushing the chitin and dislodging the spring from its track – Decoy screamed as its hoof exploded, shards flying everywhere, and collapsed in pain.

“No more tricks!” said the pony, bringing the axe down on its neck. It had reinforced its armor over vulnerable areas, but the force of the blow dropped it to the ground, and with only one free leg it wasn’t able to get back to its feet before the next blow, or the next. Eventually, something cracked, and the axe blade sank into it with a spray of blood.

Acid blood, of course, but blinding the pony holding the axe would have been cold comfort even if it had been in any state to notice. Instead, all it could do was writhe in agony and flop like a fish until the axe finally severed its spine, and it lay still… after half a dozen compartments opened randomly from various parts of its body. A shower of spines flew out from its side to embed themselves in the ceiling, puffs of various poisonous pollens emerged from its bodily orifices, and its belly plate split along hidden seams to disgorge several limp, spiky tentacles. Without a mind directing it, none of this accomplished anything.

The pony didn’t stop chopping until its head was completely severed. Then she collapsed, the flesh melting from her face and chest as the acid that now completely coated her front half continued to eat into her. The pony in the back ignored her plight, grabbing decoy’s head with her hooves and holding it up, triumphantly... careful not to let it drip on her. “The monster is dead!”

The remaining ponies cheered.

“Let’s go tell the others that their pain can finally heal!” There were more cheers, and the ponies dumped the head in a sack and headed for a back entrance. “You. Dragon.”

“I have a name,” the dragon hissed.

“I don’t care. You did nothing, so I’ll call you useless.”

“One more word and I’ll show you useless,” she growled, smoke drifting from her maw.

“Just get rid of the damn bodies,” the pony said. “Make sure nothing’s left. NOTHING. Especially of the changeling. Burn it to ash.” He paused. “You can eat the others.”

“Whatever,” the dragon said. She headed over and started slinging pony bodies over her shoulders. There were only two dead – the ones it had poisoned were still alive and breathing, so she left them in a pile with her boss, slung the acid-dripping changeling corpse over her other shoulder, and headed for the fire pit.

“Dragons don’t eat ponies,” she grumbled, slinging the corpses into the pile of bones and ash. “We eat gems. Fish. Pancakes.” She took a deep breath, and a torrent of fire washed over the bloody mess.

Once the ponies were down to charred bones, she focused on the changeling. It really didn’t want to burn – the chitin had a layer of fireproof rock. She cracked it open and breathed her fire directly into its body cavity, hollowing it out until nothing was left but the shell. She gingerly took a small bite – then spat it out and tried to wipe off her tongue to get rid of the taste. No, she was not eating that.

She watched the shell suspiciously. “You’re still alive, aren’t you.”

The small pile of crumbling rocky plates didn’t respond.

“Say something, or I’m smashing you into little bits.”

The vaguely changeling-shaped, hollowed out charred mass failed to react in any way.

So she went over and stomped on it until it wasn’t recognizable against the other debris, then turned to walk away, flinging the remaining bits onto the bone pile with a sweep of her tail. “Such a waste.”


===


Once the poison finally wore off, Decoy stayed still. The small, dense pebble that represented its ‘real’ body was buried in the crushed remains of its left rear hoof, and between the beheading and the incineration its link to the changeling-shaped puppet body it had been driving around was thoroughly severed. It had cut the link itself as soon as it realized its head was off – no sense suffering any more pain than it needed to to keep up the charade – but at this point there was nothing left to reconnect, which meant it was running blind.

Sound was an easy sense to add, without changing anything visible. Hearing nothing, it slowly extended a tendril through the cracks and gaps until a miniscule eye could look around. There was no sign of any creature watching it.

An ash-colored beetle crawled to the edge of the pit, then spread its wings and flew off into the desert. It was a long way to the Badlands, and it wasn’t looking forwards to the flight… but at least it would take less than a hundred years.
> Day 32: Placing Blame
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna stomped around Thorax’s office. “Of course they faked their own death!” she shouted. “That is what they do!”

“Well, they sure did a really good job of it this time,” Thorax said. “Kludgetown still has their head up on a spike.”

“And how closely are they watching it?” Luna asked.

“Last I heard, there was a whole pack of grubs throwing rocks at it,” Thorax said frowning. “It’s completely irresponsible! Who would raise their children in Kludgetown?”

“Somepony’s going to lose their job over this,” Luna said.

“Not me, I hope!” Thorax said, with a silly smile. Luna did not smile back.

“This is unacceptable,” Luna said, stomping some more. “I will not have my justice mocked!”

A pale cream changeling hovered at the doorway, staring at the angry princess, a clipboard hovering in her magic. “Is this – this is a bad time. I’ll come back later.”

“You!” screamed Luna, pointing at her. “I haven’t seen you around before. What’s your name?”

“Um… Surprise?” the changeling said.

“That’s not a real changeling name!”

“I asked Thorax to rename me,” she said, taking a step back.

Thorax moved to stand between Luna and the newcomer. “A lot of changelings want to cut ties with their past,” he said. “This straggler came in just yesterday – can you believe a changeling went this long without rejoining the hive? It was certainly a surprise to me.” He smiled nervously, and presented her with a hoof. “So… Surprise?” He took the clipboard from her and looked it over. “I have her in charge of inventory. We never really had things before, so we didn’t have anyone keeping track of –”

“You!” Luna said, bowling Thorax over and looming over Surprise. “Change back this instant!”

Surprise squeaked, and ran for her life, Luna right on her tail.

Thorax sighed and sat by the window. A few minutes later, he watched a whole swarm of identical cream-shelled changelings flying in formation, Luna close on their trail. They scattered, laughing and cheering as she swooped around going after one and then another until she screamed with frustration and teleported away.

“She really thinks I’m that poor changeling that died,” Surprise said, quietly stepping back into the office. She’d dropped out of the chase early, not being the strongest flier, especially with her wings still sore from the long flight to the hive.

“It doesn’t matter,” Thorax said. “In the end, she’s on our side. And the protests are quieting down, since nopony wants to look like they’re supporting such a brutal murder. This’ll all blow over.”

“I hope so,” she said, looking down at the floor glumly. “I came in because I was afraid that I’d be next… I didn’t mean to lead the trouble back to the hive.”

Thorax smiled, and pulled her into a hug. “Even if you did, it’s okay. Sending out a decoy to lead the trouble away is too much like the old hive. I’d rather face the trouble together.”