> Sugar-Coated Sour (feat. Babs Seed)
>  by darf
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> I always hate the beginning of a story because nothing fucking happens
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The thing about a town like Ponyville, which was not so much small as it was quaint, and not so much gossipy as that everypony just happened to know each other, and so it was only natural they would share each other's business... You could tell Pinkie Pie something you wanted spread across town at 9:05AM and she'd have it in the ear of everypony in Ponyville by 9:07AM. 9:06AM on a good day1.

It was only natural, therefore, that when the new pony had arrived in town, it hadn't taken long for a few ponies to find out about it. Then those ponies told other ponies, and those ponies told anyone else who didn't know for the sake of wrapping things up nice and neatly, and before you knew it, the new pony was practically a long-standing member of the community, so familiar on the tongue you could drop her name and instantly expect a conversation about what she'd been up to the past few days, how she'd been doing, that sort of thing.

The new pony's name was Babs Seed. What she had been up to was sucking dick. And how she'd be doing it, or rather how she'd been doing, was finding a small apartment in Ponyville, 'convincing' the land-lord to let her stay the first month rent free, and then giving out her 'business card' to anypony who seemed interested.

'Business card' in this case was literal. Babs had printed them out a while ago. Her name, embossed on the center, gold sparkles on a black background. Not her real name, of course. That was just silly. She'd come up with a 'working name' a long time ago—her first day unofficially 'on the job', in fact, when she was just thirteen... 

Pixie Stix, it said. Because, she always said after handing it out and smiling devilishly, ain't I the sweetest thing you ever seen?

Now, in a more equitable, life-affirming, perhaps 'fair' universe, Babs Seed would have found her way to Ponyville under much more pleasant circumstance. Instead, after her parents third fight in a week over who had taken how much of the dust stash and used it when and who owed how much for it and who was cheating on who with whose dealer... Yeah. She had better things to do with her time than listen to two ponies who couldn't even figure out their own shit try to tell her what to do with hers. Not like her mom even wanted her to finish school anyway. 'You were born a working pony and that's all you're good for. The sooner you get a job, the sooner you can start paying your way around here. Raising a kid isn't cheap, y'know.'

Stupid bitch.

Though she'd assessed the town of Ponyville as a sleepy rural center without much going on besides dirt-farming and sun worship, mostly from the sideways stairs her dyed mane and spiked collar had gotten from stodgy-looking ponies on the train over, Babs had more-or-less immediately had her preconceptions corrected as she stepped out onto the platform and took in her first proper view of the town, standing so close to its center, the hiss of the train's steam as it settled behind her.

It had taken practically thirty seconds for somepony to approach her. He was older, as they usually were, and nervous, a little, though he at least seemed to have done the dance enough times to know what to ask for. He'd sidled up to Babs all friendly like, his eyes drinking her in up and down more than she could count, the little gothy skirt with the skull she liked to wear that barely covered her red-and-black thong... though, was she wearing underwear today? She'd masturbated before the train and might have forgotten to put it back on.

"Hey there. Sure is a-nice weather we're, uh, having lately."

Babs eyed the guy with a raised eyebrow. He was wearing a blue suit, brown briefcase, green tie, a pale white-blue coat and fuzzy brown mane that his pointed ears stuck out of. He was smiling, and he had big teeth.

"Yeah," she said, shrugging and stretching a foreleg over and behind her head. She yawned loudly, closing her eyes and opening her mouth wide. Unbeknownst to the guy, jerking her hips just-so to flip her skirt up, giving him a peek of the fact that yes, she had definitely forgotten to put her thong back, and where—oh yeah. She'd given it to the security guy before she got on the train. The look on his face was priceless. Babs couldn't help the smirk from returning.

The guy was sweating now. He pulled at his collar, seemingly incapable of keeping himself from falling face-first into the bear-trap directly in-front of his face. "You, uh, don't look like you're from, around here—"

Babs grabbed the colt by his collar and pulled his head down to her level, pressing her forehead up against his, their noses smushing, her hot breath hitting his face from inches away.

"Listen, bub. Cut the shit talk. Are you buying or not? I'm a busy filly, and I'm not gonna play grab ass with you for five hours before you tell me whether or not you're gonna pay me. Got it?" Babs gave the hapless business-pony a cold, hard stare, sinking the image of her green eyes into his head for as long as he was awake today and then some after if he wanted to start having nightmares about it.

"Um. I'm sorry. Yes. I've got it. I'll, uh, pay you..." The guy lowered his voice as he reached for his pouch of bits. "How much do you, uh—"

"Fifteen for a hoofy, twenty-five for a blowie, fifty bits for the front, two-hundred for the back, and an extra three hundred if you wanna fuck raw," Babs said loudly, ignoring the business-pony's attempt to avoid attention. An older mare who was walking her teacup-poodle overheard, and shrugged her shoulders, seemingly appraising Babs' rates, then nodded her approval. A middle-aged single colt taking his foal for a stroll began to walk quicker away from the train, but couldn't help but look back in Babs' direction and run into the ticket booth as a result. The foal was fine2.

"Uh... geez, I wasn't, I mean I hadn't really thought—"

Babs had turned away and started down the stairs before the business-pony caught up and put his hoof on her shoulder.

"Wait, wait, I'm sorry! I'll pay, uh... five hundred bits. For, uh..." He stammered off, rubbing his hoof against his other foreleg awkwardly.

Babs sighed, and shook her ass pointedly in the older colt's direction. "You wanna shoot a raw load in my cute little filly butt?" She asked, her voice dripping honey off each word.

The colt nodded frantically. "Uh-huh."

"Well, too bad." Babs snatched up the stack of bits and caught them in her hooves. She counted them lightning quick, smiled, and threw them in her own pouch, which was hanging off her back. "Because I don't have a 'little filly butt'.

Babs smirked, turned around, bent over, and lifted up her black skirt, giving the business-pony, and anypony else who happened to be on or near the train platform looking in her general direction—a full, perfect view of her ass and pussy.

She had a big filly butt. A luscious, tworkable, double-pair-of-buns sour-orange underage dirty slut filly butt. That was his, for just 500 bits.

"Come on," Babs said, flipping her skirt back down and taking the colt's hand before he had time to realign his jaw from where it had fallen and still remained. "I saw a hotel on the way into town. Nowhere in this town's gonna charge by the hour, but this one place was only fifty bits for a night." Babs gave a look, and the colt caught it.

"Oh. Right. I'll, uh, cover that..."

"No shit." Babs gave the colt one last flick of er tail, wafting just a little peek of her underskirt again before trotting off in the direction of the hotel, 500 bits richer and not even finished her first job.

Maybe Ponville wasn't going to be so bad after all.





"Nice place," Babs said, pushing her way past the colt as he opened the door to the hotel room. Babs took a seat on the end of the bed, an inoffensive looking double-mattress with red and brown blankets and white sheets. Probably a sun worship pamphlet in one of the drawers too.

"Yeah, it is," the colt said. He took a moment to study the room for beginning to awkwardly remove his tie and suit. "Do you want me to get you anything?" he asked, looking in Babs' direction. "Water, or a soda, or—"

"You got any smoke?" Babs asked, tilting her head back and shaking her mane for a second before looking back in the colt's direction. "It helps me loosen up, and my ass kinda gets crazy sensitive... I can squirt like a fire-hose if you gimme an 8th and a butt-plug on the right day." 

The colt immediately began stammering, tapping his empty suit-pockets in vain. "Smoke? Um, I mean, I want to, but, I, uh, I'm afraid I don't have, any..."

Babs sighed and flipped open her saddlebag. From inside, she took out, with her teeth, a tiny flip-case with a colorful and distorted picture of Princess Celestia wearing giant sunglasses on it. She snapped open the case and pulled out a long, thick joint, which for some reason made the colt look even more uncomfortable as Babs put the filter into her mouth.

"What?" she said. A lighter was procured from the saddlebag, and she lit the joint while still sitting at the end of the bed, four feet from the bright red 'No Smoking' sign on the wall. "I wasn't gonna use my shit if you had some." Babs inhaled deeply and held the breath inside her lungs, counting the seconds in her head: one, two, three, ahhhhh. Almost immediately, a cloud of sparkling, friendly bees took up residence inside Babs' head, resting on the clouds she had already delivered there.

"I think it's an, um, non-smoking, uh, room..."

Babs glared at the colt, shrugged, and took another hit from her joint. "Whatever," she said as she exhaled, her voice thinning, blowing a cloud onto the wall and towards the colt, who was standing next to the bed but still not on it. His tie and suit were lying on the table, folded. And he was standing there, nervous-as-all-hell, kicking his hooves at each other like a foal in preschool who had to pee but was too scared to tell teacher they needed to go.

After only two monster tokes, Babs' hefty joint was already a third gone. Shit. Was there enough smoke in the world to make this loser attractive? Maybe if she had dropped when she got on the train too...

Well, five hundred bits was five hundred bits. Furthermore, it was her first customer in Ponyville. And the poor guy seemed to be trying his best. Maybe she oughta cut him a break.

Sigh. Babs restrained herself from polishing the rest of the joint into ash in one go, and extended it, held in one hoof, to the colt, who stared at it as though it might explode into damaging shrapnel at any moment.

"Take it," Babs said, blowing out her fumes in a long, narrow path. "It'll help you loosen up. Just one hit though."

"Um." The colt put his hooves together, tapping them up and down against each other. "I've never... I mean I might be allergic—"

A kiss ultimately proved the most successful interrupter. Babs had leaned forward and pulled the dumb dork towards her by his tie that he wasn't wearing, or maybe just yanked him by his neck, she wasn't sure, but she had kissed him, was kissing him. With a mouthful of smoke. His mouth was practically wide from amazement anyway, so when she breathed, and the smoke went into his mouth, he seemed to inhale again out of shock. Babs broke the kiss, grinning like a teenage devil, watching the steps of realization: first shock again, then a more focused startlement, almost disbelief—then coughing, lots of that, yeah right, you can't be allergic to smoke3—and then, yes, there it was...

Acceptance. The slight closing and reddening of the eyes. The look of obstinate awkwardness melting into a detached, mellow determination. And, finally, a smile that didn't come with ten gallons of sweat attached.

"There," Babs said, grinning wide. "All better."

"If you say so," the colt said, and shrugged. He seemed largely less-invested in the outcome of the conversation, or maybe even getting his five hundred bits worth entirely.

Babs might have been a prostitute, but she was no criminal.

Meaning, she'd never been caught or convicted of a crime, that she knew of.

There had been a lot of blackouts, mind you.

Anyway.

"Get up on the bed," Babs said. She patted the billowy and fashion-blind red-and-brown blankets beside her. "Get up on the bed and tell me your name."

"My name is Suit & Tie," the colt said, helping himself up onto the bed with surprisingly few difficulties, considering his present state of mind. Altogether he seemed to be taking the dragon's kiss4 in stride, despite the dubiously consensual nature of the act. Maybe smoke was just good for someponies5.

"You're kidding. 'Suit & Tie'? That's like, a joke, right?" Babs finished off the joint and smooshed the tiny little end bit, which was mostly filter, aside the crispy burnt nub of perhaps a pea-sized worth of smoke. Still, she'd save it. She'd hadn't gotten where she was without making sure to take as much as she could from every opportunity. That applied to finished joints as well.

"No... my mom and dad picked it out of a book," he said, looking down at his hooves in an abstractly fascinated way. "Or... maybe it was my uncle? I can't remember right now."

"Nevermind," Babs said. She put the little bit of dead-joint into a tiny cloth bag, which she pulled tight with a string, then threw into the snapcase, which she also closed, and put in her saddlebag. Saddlebag, on the table. Door already locked. Let's do this, butt.

Though he was already close, Babs wiggled herself on the bed to get closer to Suit & Tie, who seemed not to notice at first. Babs scooted even closer, eliminating inches until there was no more room between them, her gothy black skirt-with-the-skull rubbing up against his legs. She wiggled against him a few times for good measure, draping herself over him, one foreleg on his back, her face pressing into his neck and shoulder, nuzzling him...

"Oh. Wow. That feels, really nice..." Suit & Tie said. He sounded like he might be visiting another planet for the first time.

Babs pulled her nose out from the colt's neck and smirked at him, her pink-blue spiky hair hanging down over her face and covering one eye. "Just you wait." As if at the start of a dance number, she sprung around and flipped her skirt up, once again giving a full display of her underage snatch and big accompanying booty to go with it. This time she spread her legs extra wide, getting lower to the ground, propping her ass up, and put one hoof on either side of her butt, giving it a little shake for good measure.

"There's a bottle of lube in my bag. Don't touch anything else. Just go get the lube and we can get started. Okay?"

Suit & Tie nodded several times, and mouthed the words 'just the lube' to himself as well. After a few more checks, he got up, headed to Babs' bag, retrieved the bright blue-bottle clearly labelled 'water-based lubricant', and returned with it to the bed and Babs' waggling butt.

Even for the brief moment the colt had been gone, Babs had felt compelled to find something to occupy herself with. And, since she may as well get ready, it had seemed only common sense to start rubbing her underage pussy up and down with her hooves, over and over, to get as nice and wet and turned on a she could before she got some stranger's cock up her ass.

"Slide it in slow. Don't make me hit you," Babs said with a growl as she felt Suit & Tie lining up his cock-head, now slippery with a copious amount of lubricant. She shivered as she felt a glop of the stuff drop down onto her butt as well, where Suit & Tie spread it somewhat gingerly, but still with admirable confidence, all over Babs' tight little filly butthole. And some on her big, bouncy cheeks too, for good measure. Because shiny.

"Oooh, that's not bad," Babs said. The colt had just started to move his hips forward, and, true to her instructions, was moving at a slow, gentle pace. Even though this wasn't the first time she'd had something up her ass, going too fast during anal was a recipe for a type of bodily catastrophe whose name could only be found in advanced medical dictionaries. Then there was a 'too slow', too, if they were moving just above glacier speed, it kind of felt like, fuck, just get on with it already... sometimes it depended on the size, too, like if the guy was really small, things could go a bit faster, because there was less damage to do, and if he was too big, sometimes certain thing just didn't work, or felt way better other times... but yeah. Right in the middle. Nice, so far.

"Okay. Don't be afraid to shove your whole cock in there though. I can definitely take it." Babs batted her eyelashes, a dumb valley girl porno look imitation, before giggling and reaching back to spread her butt wider. She realized she hadn't taken a chance to size up the other piece of equipment she was dealing with—but even as she looked back, the office pony who was paying to pound her teenage butt wasn't anywhere close to the biggest she'd been with. A healthy size, but nothing she needed to really prepare for. Enough talk. Let's get to bucking.

"Okay. Just lemme know if it hurts at all," Suit & Tie said. Following Babs' advice, he began to slide himself in slightly faster, until he was all the way in, bottomed out, balls-deep in Babs' ass, with Babs squeezing and grinding her butt back on him. "Wow," he said. Just seeing the entire length of his dick get swallowed up by Babs' fat, curvy ass had put him over the moon and into another dimension of 'fuck yes'. And Suit & Tie wasn't a pony who liked to cuss. There were just some things you needed to swear for. "That doesn't hurt one bit?"

Babs shook her head, looking back towards the colt and grinning. "Nope. I could take another one and then some. But you still feel pretty good," she said, almost hurriedly, padding the potential for hurt feelings just in case. "You wanna start fuckin' me now?"

"Uh-huh."

"Go for it then. Just lemme know when you're gonna shoot your load so I can... y'know. Get ready and stuff."

"What do you mean by 'get ready'?"

"I just like to be prepared and stuff, that's all! You ever get a hot load of pony jizz up your ass?"

"Um... no, I—"

"Exactly. So shut up and fuck my ass. My pussy's as hot as Tartarus and it needs my hooves back real quick. Fuck me."

"Yes ma'am," Suit & Tie said, his first humour of the night, or maybe in his life. Even Babs gave him a little smirk. Or maybe she just prefered 'ma'aam'.

So there wasn't anything left to do but fuck Babs' ass.

When there's a job in front of you, you do it.

Talking about fucking Babs' ass was talking about getting to fuck Babs' as—or, Pixie Stix, as she was known to some or many. The raw privilege of it—something about the curvature as she laid on stomach, like a perfectly sculpted half-sphere just sticking out smooshily from her back-side. Pillows came to mind, certainly,  but there was an angle in those butt-cheeks beyond the convention of words—something that elicits a flesh-response, the dumb-down urge deep in the primal self that goes from thinking and coherence and logically understand all the parts of sex to suddenly my dick needs this and by the sun and moon I will not rest until my dick has exactly that.

In this case, 'that' was the way Babs' perfect cheek's squished together around his cock each time he thrust in and pulled out. How it looked like it was sliding between the two big orange halves, plunging deep into the teen filly's hot, tight, lubed-up ass. How every time he bottomed out, even though Babs had seemed unconcerned with his size, she squealed out loud, possibly loud enough to carry through the hotel room walls, but really, was that much of an accomplishment in a hotel where a room for the night cost fifty bits? How, after he'd started really fucking her, Babs had joined in with her hoof, going to town on her pussy, and a much bigger and more glamorous town than Ponyville besides. She seemed to be able to focus on herself in a separate world away from the colt behind her, propped up and pounding her ass like a freight-train as she wailed away at her clit, rubbing it in rough circles and bucking her hips back and forth.

Suit & Tie had been with a few escorts before, nice ponies in other, bigger cities who charged, frankly, quite a lot more than Pixie Stix, and for a lot less as well. He remembered once paying a two thousand bits just for a unicorn in Canterlot to sit with him for one hour. She said she was originally from Prance, and didn't speak much Equestrian. The whole hour, she had traded between past him with her head tilted and a distracted look in her eyes, or tapping away in her magic mirror set, sending pictures of herself back and forth between filly-friends.

But none of them had seemed to enjoy the act of sex as much as Pixie did. She was losing herself completely, so far that she was coming back around and spilling onto the self she'd left behind. Despite herself, Pixie was showing her Babs, and Babs was staring to actually enjoy the act of being fucked in the ass by a relatively complete stranger she'd just met less than an hour ago. A stranger who seemed oddly sweet to her, and yet was giving her one of the best butt-fuckings she'd had in years. Maybe ever.

Maybe the guy just liked her ass. Maybe he was just overcome with the opportunity to get his rocks off in the hottest filly butt in a gothy skirt. Heck. Could have even been the dyed hair or collar. But whatever the reason, he was fucking her like he'd just gotten out of pony-prison, and her ass and cunt were loving it. His cock was just big enough to send a jolt through her pussy when it squeezed all the way in, probably somewhere around her g-spot, if ponies had one... maybe that filly prostate thing she'd heard about in a news report once... but that, along with her pussy, which was dripping and gushing on its own, mostly thanks to the endless attention lavished on it by Babs' insistent hoof... yeah. She was have the time of her life. And making five hundred bits while doing it.

Suit & Tie, as much of a trooper as he'd proven to be, was nearing his limit. There was only so much friction inside Babs' butt he could take. Each thrust was a test of endurance, finding ways to distract himself, taking deep breaths or slowly closing and opening his eyes, begging himself to hold on, to make the sensation of giving dick to this little filly last as long as possible...

"Shit," Babs said, suddenly, her hoof a blur on her clit. "I knew it. I knew it I knew  it." Her hips began to buck back and forth wildly, still mostly following the rhythm that Suit & Tie was setting with his thrusts, but teetering at the edges, barely able to hold on to her composure. Posture too, as her legs began to shake. "Fuck. I knew it. You're gonna make me buckin' cum." Babs bit her lower lip as her shaking hips became uncontrollable. "You're gonna make me buckin' cum," she repeated. She held her hoof suddenly steady, pressing down hard into her clit. Suit & Tie was slamming into, hard, shaking the bed and clunking it against the wall. "Buckets," she said, and thrust her ass backwards onto the colt's cock, bottoming him out and grinding herself from side to side.

True to her word, Babs gushed like a fountain onto the hotel blankets, bed-sheets, mattress, pillows, and complimentary mints. Her pussy twitched rapidly under her hoof as she squirted, spraying a stream of hot filly-juice down and around her stomach and hooves. Her coat got a bit wet with the splashback.

"Shit." Our stand-in protagonist was about to tap out as well. But before signing off, he pulled one of his hooves back, and smacked Babs right cheek hard enough to leave a bright, red print. Babs groaned as the impact shook her booty from side to side, and she wiggled even harder, grinding on the rod of hard pony cock still inside her.

Suit & Tie came in her ass raw. He wondered how he'd gotten away with this for only five hundred bits.

Babs' butt, which was hot, got even hotter. Cum mixed with lube, mixed with filly-juice, as Suit & Tie's sizable balls began to pump hot, fiery spurts of jizz into Babs tight, underage butt. Her butt squeezed him with every shot, as though Babs was begging for more, more each pump, draining his balls and letting him empty what felt like a lifetime's supply of sticky white goo, dribbling out of Babs' hole and down into the top of her slit, out onto her butt-cheeks and dripping down onto the bed to mix with Babs' fountain spray...

A load of cum dribbled out of Babs ass with a loud and viscous plop. Suit & Tie reluctantly pulled out his still resilient cock, rock-or-some-other-mineral hard and sticky with the same mixture of liquids currently oozing all over Babs and the bed. The size of his smile made him look like the only happy pony in Ponyville.

But Babs could be a close second. She hadn't cum that hard since grade school6.

"Good game," Babs said, lifting herself shakily up from 'fuck-me' position and dribbling out another half-load of cum onto the bed as she did so. She shook her head, flipping her mane about, a tad sweaty, but still mostly badass looking. "You're a nice colt."

"Thanks," Suit & Tie said. His hooves still seemed fascinating, but Babs was endlessly so, even though he'd already gotten his five hundred bits worth of 'performance'. Maybe, if she thought he was so nice—

Babs was off the bed and to the table. She picked up her saddlebag, clinking with scattered objects as she threw it onto her back. She searched around in it once, for a small stack of business cards, out of which she took several and laid them on the table where her bag had been.

"For your friends," she said. "If you feel like passing along a recommendation." While she could smile ultra-sweetly, the look would always be undermined by the collar, mane, and skirt. And the two gallons7 of horse jizz leaking out of her butt.

But those were just work worries. She was done work now.

Time to go home, shower, and then see what there was to spend bits on in this two-bit town anyway.

Hopefully something worth more than two actual bits.
> If you think this is chapter is an analogy for something you're wrong (but yes I am a prostitute)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Despite the cliche in sunglasses watching from a distance, Babs liked to stop and look in the mirror from time to time. In the morning, after she woke up, before her shower, or right as she was about to go to bed. Sometimes she'd just catch a glance of herself on the way out after washing her hooves. She liked to see what her response might be to a pony who looked exactly like her, staring back instead of forwards.

Noticing little changes... or big ones, as they turned out to be. The first time she'd dyed her mane, staring at the bright red in the reflective pool above her sink, and wondering if she was a completely different pony now that she could barely recognize herself. Then the piercings, the bridge of her nose, lower lip on the left side, and both ears, multiple times. Once she got started, it didn't seem to make any sense to go half-assed.

But then there was that cliche again. Was she really any different than the first pony? Was there any factor other than pure chance that would tell the difference between "Yeah, I'd fuck me" and "Clean yourself up and head straight to church you broken down harlot,". That was one of her words, no doubt. A lifetime of reading Celestial literature but not worshiping might do that to a pony.

There was something about her own space, too, even though it was dingy and desperate and smelled a little of urine despite the fact that she was assured the steam-cleaning had been done twice before she moved in. Anywhere was better than nowhere. Better than park-benches and that alley next to the old, out-of-business theater. Better than a dirt mattress and one blanket between you and the seasons.

But for some reason, all of that had been better than home.

Babs liked to eat cereal before bed. It felt kind of, in reverse, stocking yourself up with the meal you were supposed to eat right after getting up. But sometimes, or most of the time, she liked to go as soon as her eyes were open. No time to get ready. No bowl, cereal.

And maybe then, it was only some weirder, overarching thing... Babs tried not to think about those bits, that maybe would have stuck out like the edges of a puzzle waiting to be filed off so they could fit. She'd fooled around with a psych major once, who, aside from wanting to do a fuck-ton of weird shit on top of the normal (which, as long as he paid for it, wasn't really a big deal), loved to prod her with questions bordering on invasive, poking her more and more sensitive mental areas until she finally batted him away and got out with her bits.

Strangely, she missed him, and had always wondered if there was something she could have done. It wasn't normal to lose a client for good like that. Or to hear about it on the news, instead of in person. No family, thank Celestia.

It was the crazies who stuck out. Normal ponies were just crazy wearing a coat, but their dial was tuned in a different direction. You could indulge in the crazy, at which point it became commonplace, and asking for a hornjob in the school playground after school, while wearing a diaper and having Babs piss in your mouth, wasn't something that was a convention away from approach. You could just think of what you wanted, say it, and deal with the consequences from the standpoint that nopony was going to look at you normally after that anyway. Heck, they probably never had in the first place.

But burying the crazy, stuffing it in a closet somewhere or only letting it out on weekends with the window-blinds low and the deadbolt locked... that did something unhealthy to the crazy. It became like a gremlin, locked in a little box, scraping at the edges and polishing its claws and waiting for the moment after midnight it could finally break free and feast on whatever flesh was substituting for a proper meal that day.

And, so, you had to learn how to take charge in these instances, even when your mouth was gagged and all four of your hooves were chained to the wall in an elaborate and archaic stone sex dungeon. No, you may not use the iron maiden, and we will have a safe gesture as well as a safe word, and if there is one scar on me when I finish that I did not start with (because yes, I have counted them), you will be hearing from another pony much bigger and more prone to spontaneous acts of dismemberment than I am very shortly. Yes, that's right. Now let me step on them, you worthless little worm.

Babs sighed and took one of the few final bites of cereal. She liked to make sure to scoop out all the little bits at the end, then drink the milk from the bowl like it was some ancient chalice, supplementing her with tribute to the eternal Goddess. Celestia, probably, but with a less-coordinated wardrobe at the time when anypony went around calling her the 'eternal Goddess'.

Still. Things were going to go one of two directions.

There was slimy, desperate, and darker than the black hole at the center of the galaxy.

And there was vicious, asphyxiating, hedonistically self-indulgent madness, blooming from an underground, fiery place, to flower inside Babs' heart and drive her screaming hysterically off the cliff of sensibility and into the abyss of depravity below.

She knew the feel of both paths. Familiar to her hooves, as inadvisable as either might be. But there was also this—the sitting around, waiting for the flies on the wall to suddenly become more entertaining than they had been ten minutes ago—wondering if a storm might brew overnight and rain lightning bolts on the town and she would wake to an eviscerated city-scape laden with ash, and left to wonder if she was the only pony left alive. Could she dream herself to a permanent sleep, asking the question every moment she was awake in bed, and every moment she was sleep in the aether, and every moment after that and nothing else until the claws of shadows clutched her and dragged her to a sweet, eternal aftermath?

Milk. Much better after cereal. Much easier drinking than thinking. Much easier doing nothing than moving in any direction.

But there was this. Day to day. Trudging brick and lurking alleys and paying yourself less and less each time, imagining a business boom, a sudden tourist industry, a sudden flare of reputation that might let you work on demand instead of crawling, inch to inch, minute to minute, budgeting by food trips and rationing chemicals and wrapping the apartment around you like a shield. It was easier not to eat, to forget to breathe, whenever your body would let you. There was water. Tell yourself it was enough. Tell her.

There are plenty of ponies in this world who'd be grateful for what you have. Stop feeling so sorry for yourself.

Work. What was the distinction between that and being alive? What was the distinction between somepony who was qualified to know what to do to take care of themselves, and somepony who felt like the world was a strange theme park they'd never been given access to, and even sneaking in on weekends, all the rides were full, and every guard and guest and member of park staff spoke five different languages but none of them were yours. Fuck. She was burning out, too, three days since her last toke. It felt like every object connected by a thread to ten years in the past. Bottles strewn amongst take out bags piled with needles and ashtrays into corners of every room. Bags of white & yellow falling from the cupboard instead of her Honey Nut Cheerilee-O's, no cereal in the house for two weeks but plenty of money to keep her boyfriend of the same in a new stereo system and car tune ups. School as a purgatory between waking and sleep, anything in that house likely to require more lung strength and willpower than whatever the ponies on the playground were capable of. Clean up your room, it looks like a den of pigs lives here, with your fucking [crack]-pipe on the goddamn living room table the next morning next to the T.V. remote while her brother was watching his cartoons.

Stupid bitch.

She didn't like the words contained in either direction. Especially that one. Even as a kid, when he was around, and then when he wasn't, too, it was 'Dad', or 'Laden', from 'Laden Hoof', which was his full name, or 'Fuckface', which became more popular in the time before she'd decided staying in the house after dropping out made about as much sense as staying in jail after you'd broken out of yourself. She was on the train to Canterlot the next day, and Manehatten was a blur in the past the same way the screams in her head were after taking a drag of homegrown smoke.

But there was no smoke now. No blurring. Everything had a crystal clarity to it that she loathed. Knowing she might cut herself on it, edges polished to a diamond point on every object.

That was what everypony called them. Not 'sugar'... ponies.

The other side of the coin. Babs raised a foreleg, studied the scars on the inside. The ones that lead up almost to her neck. The few on the hidden part of her hind-legs, only visible when the lights were up high and she was spreading for somepony else to get a good look. The one that carefully traced a vein, stubbornly accurate, but, unfortunately, not deep enough to do the job.

Fine. She rolled the word in her mouth, testing her tongue's ability to keep down the struggling sense of vomit welling in her stomach.

Time to start the sting. Stop moving from hoofful of bits to food-checkout, stashing what you can in your saddlebag before checkout. No more hoof to mouth. Stretch it out.

Find yourself... ugh.

A sugar... daddy.





Locating the right pony would be like a mark in a crowded bar, someone you could cold-read at a distance just to learn their brand of watch and how many figures were in their bank account. You could get a wallet without much trouble just by batting your eyelashes and flicking your tail. But the colt had to be the right style, or rather, you had to be his style, and spotting that just-right mix between stodgy and desperate was a talent in-itself. Looking the part was a whole other matter. Playing the part, a lifetime of devotion. Babs looked up towards the clouds and stuck her tongue out between her teeth. She adjusted her skirt and checked to make sure her blue-silver thong was in place, pulled tight between her bright orange cheeks and lighter pink pussy lips. Showered already. Perfume applied, that stupid, sickly-sweet apple scent that everypony with a nose and set of balls seemed to go crazy for.

Now, just look. Look for the glint in their eye and the thinning of their hair. Look for somepony very rich and very stupid.

It took a few tries. False starts were common no matter the practice. The first pony was nice, nervous, eager, but evidently penniless, as he couldn't even turn up one night's fee as Bab coaxed him with his tie wound around her hoof. The second pony was loaded, judging from the receipt she'd snatched with his bank balance, but, no matter how hard she through her underage body at him, resisted with a curt and prompt manner that made her so mad she'd knocked his briefcase into a gutter before she took off, fuming and praying that she wouldn't have to work all day just to find one pony in Ponyville who could make the act of selling her cooch enough to live on comfortably, instead of coasting from day-to-day like a run-of-the mill pony hooker. In Manehatten, at least she'd been able to find work. It was just the territory it came in that she didn't agree with.

But, after she returned to the market for the third time, wild-eyed and ready to rip the throat out of her next potential target, a pony had stepped past her that seemed to fit every detail in her dream about a wishy-washy older colt with too much money and not enough conscience.

He had a kid, too. Strolling downtown, taking her for a walk, ignoring everything she said and leering shamelessly at any half-decent filly that walked past, regardless of age. No wonder: with a sexpot daughter like that, a colt was bound to build up repressed urges. Unless his daughter was cooperative, anyway.

But come on. This was either a cruel joke, or a sign from the same Celestia that ostensibly made the sun rise every day. His daughter was wearing a literal diamond tiara, both on her head, and as her cutie mark. His cutie mark was freaking  bags of money. You couldn't spell it clearer than that. And even Babs, who mostly checked the newspaper to muse despondently over the obituaries and make sure there were no typos in her classified ad, had seen Filthy Rich's picture in the news before. Richest Pony in Ponyville Makes Even More Money: Says He Won't Let It Go To His Head, and a big picture of Filthy Rich standing on top of a literal pile of bits. Of bits stacked to the ceiling.

If there was a time to pounce, it was now. Working around his daughter might be tough. But it was now or never.

There. She was distracted by a stall selling 'imported' necklaces. More likely made from local seashells and polished rocks. Not important. Time to move.

When she bumped into the old fogey, Babs made sure to make it a good bump, smooshing herself hard against his body, not to knock him off his hooves (though that would be pretty funny besides), but to give him a sense of how light Babs was—she could pack a lot more of a punch than that, but her body was young, and soft, and still wearing clothes you might see on a (suitably bad-mannered) school filly. Her butt was the only thing about her big enough to vote or purchase drinks. So she made sure to give him a good squish of that too.

"Oops!" she said, in practiced air-head. "I'm sorry, Mister! I wasn't watching where I was going!" Babs pouted her lip and made her eyes as wide and innocent as she could manage. A lot, surprisingly, considering the history behind them.

"Oh my. It's no trouble at all, er, miss—"

"Pixie. Pixie Stix." Babs smirked, and flashed her skirt, a plaid number she'd picked out to match her choker. She extended a hoof, and shook Filthy Rich's gently, as though she couldn't muster enough strength to even shake his foreleg. That's it. Reel him in.

"A pleasure, er, Pixie." Filthy rich wasn't sweating yet, but his eyes were roaming unaccounted for, dashing over the landscape of Babs' underage body like a colonialist with a flag. His eyes paid particular attention to Babs' low-cut top, not showing off really anything other than her bare coat, which would have been visible anyway... but her choker, and soft, youthful fur was a roadblock, and one he hung on for some time before stammering and awkwardly returning his eyes to face Babs, who was smiling at him obliviously.

"You too! What's your name?" Babs giggled, as though following the conversation was a feat she'd managed to accomplish at the height of her attention span, and was celebrating it by allowing herself to let out some of the empty-space floating around upstairs.

"Filthy... er, Filthy Rich, that is." Filthy adjusted his tie, straightening it, crookeding it, and then straitening it again, all with his eyes crossed for focus. Finally, content with the tie's position, he returned his eyes to Babs. "I don't suppose you've heard of me..."

"Oh! Are you that guy who like, has the pancake that looks like Princess Celestia?" Babs smiled sweetly and batted her eyelashes, hoof on her chin, recalling some nonexistent episode of Eye On Ponyville. 

"Um, no, I don't... what? No, I'm the richest pony in Ponyville. That's who I am."

"Oh." Babs batted her eyelashes again, staring forward blankly. "That's pretty cool! You must have, like, a big mansion or something."

"It is quite big, I assure you," Filthy said, missing the subtext entirely, and checking over his shoulder for his daughter, more to make sure she wasn't coming to interrupt his conversation than out of concern for her safety. Diamond Tiara was still preoccupied with the necklace stall, by now berating the pony for their quality and haggling their prices far below anything that could be called a living wage. Filthy Rich smiled. Following perfectly in her father's hoof-steps.

"Wow. I'd love to see it some time!" Babs turned up the sweetness an extra notch, getting far closer to Filthy Rich than necessary, rubbing herself up against him, the fabric of her black-and-white striped t-shirt rippling over her coat each time she pressed herself up against his side. It was blatant, but Babs knew she could feign ignorance on cue. No need to worry about something that hadn't happened yet.

"I... well, we have just met, but I suppose..." Filthy Rich did a quick glance around, utterly ignorant of his already existent, other well-known reputation as Ponyville's biggest philanderer. Specifically with fillies around his daughter's age. At last, a nervous sweat began to trickle down his brow, and a lump to accompany it appeared in his throat.

"It can be totally quick. I just wanna see the bedrooms, really," Babs said, hanging herself off Filthy as though she'd immediately assumed the role of his accompaniment.

"Well... but, there is, the issue of my daughter—"

"Why don't you just send her to see a movie? I think Mane Six: End-Game is still showing. Probably every other hour." Babs voice shifted slightly as her vocabulary and ability to direct her speech increased, but she slipped right back into her ditzy, affected vocal fry as soon as she'd finished getting the logistics out of the way. "That way you can show me your place, and we can, like, totally just hang out with each other for a bit. It'll be fun!"

"Hmm... that sounds... very agreeable. Ah, just one moment, while I collect my, er, daughter..." Filthy Rich waved a hoof over his head and shouted into the crowd. "Diamond! Come here immediately! And don't acquire any non-liquidatable assets! We'll just come back and buy them out or something... that's a girl."

Diamond Tiara returned to her father in a huff, her hooves full with the three necklaces she had bartered as a 'product sample'. Nonetheless, the victory was short-lived. Daddy telling her what to do was a pain in her plot... and who was this random filly, who looked like a cross between a school filly and an alternative porn model? Was that a... a nose piercing?!

"Daddy, who is this, and why are you—"

"Not now, my dear. This is a special friend of Daddy's, and he's going to take her back for a tour of the house while you attend the local cinema. Doesn't that sound wonderful?"

Diamond Tiara crossed her forelegs and pouted.

"Another special friend? What happened to Ruby Heels, from last month?"

"Well, you see, she and Daddy weren't having the best of times with each other any more, mostly due to an issue she was having with... it's all to do with something you'll understand better when you're older, in any case, dear."

"I don't wanna go to the movies," Diamond said. She stuck out her lower lip extra far and gave her daddy the best princess eyes she could manage.

But it was no use. She knew his dick would always steer him before his daughter did. Maybe one day she ought to fix that.

"Nonsense, dear. This one's very popular, all the ponies your age love it, I'm sure. So, take this—" he handed her a stack of paper bit-notes, which she snatched greedily, despite her protests. "—buy yourself some snacks, maybe take a friend or two. And Daddy will be back to pick you up in a few hours. Alright?"

"I want a new T.V. or I'm gonna tell mom about your new special friend."

"You know the agreement," Filthy Rich said, turning from his daughter and taking Babs' hoof in his. "You get one extravagant bribe per month, with an allotment of regular allowance and permission to skip school whenever you want. If you need to renegotiate, you'll have to contact our lawyer."

Diamond Tiara sighed. "But if you use our lawyer, who am I supposed to use?"

"I'm sure you'll figure that out, dear. You're a very industrious young filly." Filthy Rich waved to his daughter as he parted through the sea of downtown ponies, walking and walking until he was just a speck in the torrents, and then gone. Off to his mansion with a filly in tow.

Babs smiled the whole way.

Oh yeah. This was going to be a good one.





On the way to Filthy Rich's 'palatial estate', Babs spotted a thin white streak high above her in the sky. It grew longer and longer as she watched, and the tail started to melt into the surrounding sky, blending in with the passing fragments of clouds and the orange-red horizon where the sun was kissing the mountains.

Babs looked up at the white streak for a while. She knew there was a pony up there, making the white streak as it zoomed through the sky. Was it a pegasus jet-stream, or trail of chemicals, or something else? And the pony up there could look down, and see the entire town, and maybe know that someone else was looking up at them. But they had no idea who Babs was. They'd never know who she was. She was a speck of dust.





She was almost all the way to the old coot's bedroom before she had an attack. Well. She could call it that, or refer to it as something external, but really, it was inside her, and less of a direct assault than a slow, creeping death, that wormed its way around you and laced tendrils and tentacles in every one of your nerves and veins and didn't let you know it had taken hold until your last breath was struggling through your collapsed lungs.

In short, she was no longer horny.

Not that the prospect of fucking Filthy Rich, or stepping on his balls or pissing in his mouth or whatever he'd wanted to do with her for the afternoon, or foreseeable future. A comfortable living was worth a lot of negotiating over varieties of humiliation, in Babs' experience. But to work, you needed something to start. To light a fire, you needed a spark. And while Babs could let lube and the wrinkly pecker she was renting herself to do most of the work, there was no over-the-counter remedy for an inability to completely and utterly remove yourself from the situation.

When Babs was horny, even just a little bit, when she remembered that it felt good to touch her pussy every once in a while, even with grandpa's-age set-of-balls dangling in her mouth to make bits for the hour. It felt good to get fucked, even if she'd rather be alone in her apartment, high, thinking about anything besides what was necessary to eat and keep a roof for next month. Anything that could massage the equation of converting raw, sexual perversion into hard, usable cash. Anything that made her feel less like a difference engine for foalaphiles.

But when it hit her, everything went away. She could think of a fantasy and fit the bits and pieces and imagine herself as high or blitzed or faded out as she wanted, but nothing would dull the immensity of the context weighing down on her. The walls would close in, the windows would shatter and rain on her in endless shards and fragmented reflections. She was just a runaway filly, about to trade the last shred of her dignity for the only means of accomplishing anything in the world.

And Filthy Rich was telling her, for the third time, about the view from the backyard of his out of town palatial estate. His second one, of course.

"Do you have a bathroom I can use?" Babs asked? She flicked her mane with her hoof and batted her eyelashes in a practiced way.

Filthy Rich smiled at her, as he did every time Babs pulled her air-head routine. Some ponies were immune to it, but Filthy Rich was vulnerable on what seemed to be a genetic level. Mercy to Miss Tiara if Babs wasn't there to do the job. Only...

"Yes, certainly my dear. Of course the master bedroom is equipped with a state-of-the-art, highest quality linoleum bathroom, complete with the finest—"

"Yeah yeah. This door?" Babs prodded it with her hoof and tilted her head towards the inside.

"Oh. Yes, it's that one. Why don't you take some time to freshen up before we... hmm-hm, begin enjoying ourselves, hmm?"

It wasn't always that the waves of nullified desire came with the urge to vomit. This one had. Babs shut the door behind herself just in time to dive for the over-sized, probably ludicrously overpriced porcelain toilet. She'd skipped breakfast, so the upchuck was mostly water and smoke, which left a particularly unique nasty taste coming up instead of down. The toilet water was cool as it splashed up onto her face, launched from the steady stream of her initial throw-up. Two more followed, each decreasing slightly in intensity, until the fourth just came out as a wretching cough, and her nausea began to finally pass into the wave of shivering relief that washed through her body. She wiped a hoof across her forehead, drenched with sweat, and shook it off beside her, shaking droplets onto the linoleum floor, where they glistened under the overly-bright bathroom light.

Get it together. At least don't cough up an intestine.

Babs held both sides of the toilet seat with each hoof, head lowered, eyes closed, and took in her breaths slowly. Her chest swelled with the inhale. Exhale, and lowered again. She tried to stay there, eyes closed, slow breathing, until at least the sour taste and white pre-throw-up fluid in her mouth had dissipated.

This wasn't good. He was out there. Waiting. Probably popping a Hoof On pill right this minute. And his fucking old, rich, foal-fiddling dick.

Babs let out a long, low sigh. She opened her eyes and tilted her head upright. There was a mirror above the sink, rimmed with what looked like inset gemstones with lines of gold. Babs stood up. Her legs shook slightly, but she managed to make it to all fours, upright, where she could get a good look at herself in the mirror.

Hey, her reflection said. Need me?

"Help. I don't know what to do. I need your help."

"Pixie? Is everything alright in there?" Filthy Rich knocked at the bathroom door, blessedly leaving it closed.

Nevertheless, Babs turned around and pushed the handle in to lock the door.

"Fine. I'll be out in a minute."

"Take your time, take your time, dear! We have all day, after all, hee-hee..."

Do this. Get it together. Face up again. Eyes open. Look forward.

I can't just cast some magic spell and make everything better, you know.

"Dust," she said. "We still have some in our purse."

We haven't done the stuff since back home. The pony in the mirror tilted her head, mouth knotted in concern. You wanna go down that road again?

"We need this. We need help. We can't just turn on the urge to fuck like a faucet or we would.  Just do this with me. Let's get it together, okay?"

Stop saying that. I thought we agreed on a new phrase?

"Shut up. Are we doing this or not?"

Do you have a mirror?

"No. I don't have anything. I have this." Babs put the small makeshift plastic-baggie of white stuff on the counter. "Are we doing this?"

What do you need?

"Help."

The Babs in the mirror shook her head, eyes closed.

No, you need  drugs.

"Right. That's what I meant."

Is time a glue, holding everything together?

Babs cut the line with one of her business cards. Most of what was there. Bumped.

Then the rest. Sniff. She wiped her nose on her hoof, and then her hoof on her skirt. Probably getting dirty soon anyway.

Now she was here. In a bathroom. Down the only consumable she had left to either make her life more bearable or liquidate into something that could. She was in a bathroom, head on the counter next to the sink, wondering why seconds took as long to pass as they did. Why a second was the smallest amount of time you could count before anything important happened. Babs could count much smaller than that.

Give it a few minutes. You always get in your head about it anyway.

We don't have a few minutes.

Babs lifted her head and shook it a few times. She wiped another trickle of snot off with her hoof, hoof-to-skirt, and then ran the sink with a mix of mostly hot water, which turned near-boiling as soon as she let it run for more than a second.

Whatever. She splashed her face in it, waking up in a piping hot waterfall as opposed to a dumpster at the end of an alley. Shake your head. Get it together.

I thought you said—

"Shut up. I'm gonna go get our money."

You got this.

Shut up.

Stupid bitch.

Babs half-opened, half-collapsed onto the door back into the bedroom, where Filthy Rich was waiting, alternating between checking his elaborately expensive watch and gazing forlornly out the nearby window with a view of the entire palatial backyard. He snapped to attention as soon as Babs entered, tucking his watch away and staring deliberately in any direction than that of the timepiece.

"Ah, my dear, you look ravishing. Are you feeling up to returning to our get-together?"

"Yeah... right. You're real loaded and stuff," Babs said, rubbing her hoof over the right side of her nose and sniffing loudly. "So here's the deal. I'll do whatever you want, once a day, and in exchange, you pay for my meals, rent, and any expenses I happen to occur on the side." Babs walk-staggered her way over to Filthy's side of the bed and flicked her tail suggestively towards his face. "I'll do anything your pervy old brain comes up with, for as long as you want." 

She sat on the bed next to Filthy Rich, and stared into his eyes with a sudden intensity.

"But once I leave for the day, that's it. No calls. No letters. No cloud signals or carrier pigeons or anything. My work is done, my time." She let out a long breath, finally over the mouthful she'd been saving up to get ready for her next, much-less-pleasant-tasting mouthful. Hopefully once a day, anyway.

Filthy was flustered. He evidently wasn't used to his supposed 'prey' being so straightforward. But Babs knew how to fuck, and how not to fuck around, and she was very clear on keeping the two things separate.

"Well, I... that is, I mean, I suppose we could... but, just once a day, do you suppose you could—"

"Uh-unh." Babs shook her head and crossed her forelegs in front of her chest. "Once a day. That's it. Non-negotiable."

Filthy Rich held a hoof to his chin, pondering and letting his eyes wander briefly out the window, over the vast green fields that were only one of his livable assets among many. The collar was certainly a cherry on top, but to drive such a hard bargain... what to do, what to do...

"Hmm... I do believe we're unable to come to an agreement then, madam." Filthy Rich lowered his gaze to the floor, frowning and chewing his lower lip. "Without a sample of your product, I'm afraid I'm simply unable to make a judgement about the viability of your business proposal. Perhaps if, in the future, you're open to renegotiation, we can arrange another rendezvous—"

"No, wait."

Babs closed her eyes for a moment, sorting through the voices and flashes of lightning and brick wall of willpower she'd stood behind and in front of, as much of an obstacle as a beneficial barrier. One that had been there her entire life. The voices hadn't come til around twelve years old. And even then, not loudly, at first.

"What if I give you a... a sample." Ticking, gears clicking into place. Or just a sun, rising slowly over the mountains? "Then would you be open to... making a deal?"

"I believe my disposition could be swayed, given the right demonstration," Filthy said, half-interested, suddenly holding every card and the key to the master bedroom besides. "That all depends on your enthusiasm, I suppose, my dear." He chuckled softly, and looked at Babs, as if to say, 'Well? Are you that desperate?'

She was.

"Come here," Babs said, grabbing Filthy's tie and attempting to pull him towards her. The old colt proved surprisingly strong, and he chuckled again at Babs' attempt before 'giving in' to the tug and letting him yank his face forward until his lips were practically pressed against hers.

"Do you wanna kiss me?" Babs asked. She ran her hoof up and down Filthy's tie and traced it softly against his neck and chest. When she spoke, she lowered her eyes and licked her lips, looking very pointedly at Filthy's waist before returning to stare, as seductively as she could, back into his eyes.

Filthy grinned smartly, leaning back and away from Babs' hold ever so slightly.

"I think it's your job to kiss me right now, isn't it?" He chuckled for the third time. "Come on. Don't you want to give Daddy a big, wet kiss?"

There it was. The word.

For anypony else, maybe it was easy to think of something else. Maybe it was easy not to wonder where he went, or why he never said goodbye. Why he'd called, drunk, five years later, talking about Hearth's Warming presents and one time he'd taken her to the beach as a kid, and the two of them had gotten stuck as the tide came in, taking terrified leaps over half-submerged stones until they finally reached the safety of short, and Babs had refused to stop crying for at least half an hour afterwards. She cried after the phone call too.

But, yes. She had a new type of gag reflex, tested every minute she would have to deal with this pile of old bits and business slime. She had to fucking kiss him already.

"Of course I do... Daddy," she said, managing only a brief pause before the lurch hit her stomach, and she swallowed it, getting the word out without coughing or sputtering or feeling more than a little of that white fluid pooling in her cheeks. She swallowed it too.

Then she kissed him. It was hard to be interested. He licked her a lot, and left spit all over her mouth and chin. He grabbed at her ass under her skirt without much warning, and she rolled into an eager-sounding moan without the heartbeat necessary to remember what acting felt like. He seemed to take it as approval, because then his hooves went double time, both of them, kneading and squeezing her cheeks like they were a ball of dough being worked into a perfect knot.

What could you say—because of? despite the?—having somepony knead your butt felt good sometimes. Other times it didn't. Usually depending on how recently you'd gotten off. Other times, it felt like it was how lonely, or hungry, or how bad you had to go to the bathroom. You could either rinse them all away, or bury them in the warm, wanted-feeling that bubbled up in your stomach and chest when you had somepony's foreskin inbetween your lips. Or when they had you on their lap, caressing your body all over, exploring it like a forbidden paradise and giggling with glee every time they managed to elicit a genuinely pleasureful moan from the ministrations of their hooves.

You could want something, and see that it was very far away. It could be so far away, you might have a rule to prevent yourself from thinking about it, for special circumstance like these.

Babs closed her eyes and tried very hard to remember how anything involving the absurd and grotesque practice of friction-massaging genitals could qualify as something she could be interested in for more than the length of an orgasm. Maybe even just that long would be enough. Maybe he was all talk.

Do it. Do it. Just put your hoof on his stupid old cock. Step one.

Yes. There you go. He was hard—very hard—obviously taken something after all. And he was smiling at her, that condescending fucking smirk. 'Go on'.

She went on. Began rubbing him up and down, the most unenthusiastic hoofie imaginable. She hadn't even taken her skirt off. And her eyes were half-focused.

Filthy Rich feigned a yawn, and looked obviously at his watch.

"Lemme suck you, Daddy," she cooed, the words coming out on practice. The voice was there too, the everything could be there including her body, but the actual 'her' still somehow very far away, a distant galaxy where she was being crushed into her composite particles by a black hole of infinite size. Soon it would wipe out the entire universe. Then nothing but what had been before.

Despite his size, half-decent still for an old-timer (as though size decreased with age, but just got a little saggier around the edges), Babs fit Filthy into her mouth with ease, and began bobbing on him sloppily, lolling her tongue out and lapping up and down at the underside of his shaft and base of his balls.

"Ooh," he crooned, suddenly intensely interested in continuing the 'business demonstration'. "That's the stuff. Show Daddy how bad you wanted."

"Mmm-hmm," Babs murmured, slurping on his shaft and tonguing the underside of his head. "Yes, Daddy, I want it so bad." You could reflect it sometimes, like a mirror, like a trained parrot. There were little formulas hidden in everything, and sometimes, all you had to do was take a hold of something and squeeze to amplify it a hundred times.

She went from blowing him, to gorging on him. Diving down intense force easily mistakable for enthusiasm, hitting him on the back of her throat, making gagging noises and drooling obscenely, her spit pooling on his balls as it ran down every side of his cock. Yes, Daddy. Of course, Daddy. Anything for you, Daddy. 

"Do you wanna see my coochie too?" Babs asked, taking a moment to remove her mouth from Filthy's now overly-lubricated rod. 'Rod'. Do you want me to call it a cock every time? Shut up.

Filthy nodded with a hungry look in his eyes, hooves already raised to pluck whatever fruit was underneath Babs' covered orchard.

Peach fuzz, in this case. Babs lifted her skirt and turned around, bent over, waving her tail over her ass and pussy as she displayed them to her would-be suitor-slash-customer. She winked over her shoulder, then winked again, this time under the flick of her tail.

"Do you like what you see, Daddy?" she asked.

"Oh yes. Yes, yes, very much. Perhaps we can advance to the, erm, 'hooves-on' portion of the sampling, as it were..."

Babs flipped her skirt back down and turned around, smirking.

It was getting easier, whether everything was softer on two bumps of serotonin, or the prospect of a hot meal every day of the month was underneath, driving everything forward without stepping too hard anymore on anyone's libido. Babs even felt herself get a little bit wet, though she didn't feel anywhere near slick enough to 'advance the demonstration'. As it were.

But, she was prepared for that. A good working pony never went out to a job without their tools. Babs rustled in her bag for a moment before producing a long, tapered blue bottle of lubricant, which she opened and squirted onto her hoof without so much as a blink. She reached under her skirt and rubbed it over her prized, youthful entrance, making sure to get enough inside and out that there'd be no worry of harsh rubbing or chafing while she let her body become some old pony's personal plaything. There was the inside her too, the one doing the steering, making the mouth move and the hooves stroke and the body turn and do what it needed to do. But that part felt further away, maybe almost so far away she couldn't quite reach it, hovering above her head and pulling her along by invisible strings woven out of air. 

Sudden snaps. Like she was thinking two thoughts at once, and would catch the tail end of whatever was on the periphery just as it vanished beneath the shimmering surface of an infinite pool. Too many words to use to describe what was utterly and inescapably physical. You had a body, you used it to get what you needed. You were a pony, or you were a means to an end: a gussied-up cum-sleeve, at the end of the day, when you got right down to it, a gloryhole on hooves, a portable fetish generator and semen remover, whatever conscious you had left could be shredded into pieces and relieve you of five month's wages worth of bits at the same time. It could punch you in your jaw and take your bits anyway, if you mouthed off.

So why was she... why did she always ask? Why did it always feel like a choice?

Because she still felt like she was the one doing the steering, maybe. With no map. Back in the black hole's infinite void.

Babs shook her head and sniffed loudly, then coughed, holding a hoof to her throat. She shook her head twice more and opened her eyes wide, first to nothing but straight distance, and then to Filthy Rich, staring at him almost unblinking.

"You wanna pound my pussy, Daddy-kins?"

"Get your little ass bent over the bed now," Filthy Rich said, a low growl in his voice. He got up onto the bed, prepping himself in mounting position, stroking his shaft a few times to straighten it out and make sure he was still nice and hard. The right doctor's prescription could really do the stuff.

"Yes, Daddy," Babs drawled. She hopped up onto the bed the same as Filthy, turning herself in front of him and flipping her skirt up again to give a view of her lubed-up pussy, with a few drips dangling off her lips and onto the bed for good measure. She reached back with her hooves and spread herself, showing off the underage pink and the hole that Filthy was about to fill for as long as he could until he got his rocks off. A 'thorough sampling', in other words. 

"That's my girl," Filthy said. He put his hooves on either side of Babs' ass, grabbing her cheeks and squeezing them for a moment before taking one of his hooves to line up his cock to Babs' gaping entrance. He slid the tip in effortlessly, and groaned as the rest of his length was swallowed up, gulped inside just as eagerly as Babs' throat had taken him earlier. "Yes, that's what Daddy likes..."

"It feels so good, Daaaddy," Babs said, drawling on the last word as long as she could, as long as it would take to get the taste out of her mouth forever, ptooey, unless she spit. Maybe later. He was all the way in now, bottomed out, not hitting much in particular but still giving that 'full' feeling, that 'stuff-me-up-and-move-in-and-out' feeling on the barely visible edge of the horizon. Babs remembered that sex felt good, but not why it felt good, or why it felt like knowing so and telling her body just that was the only way to bring back the feelings that eventually led to an orgasm. But the acting was separate from all that, and something she probably could have done if she was being vivisected instead of fucked for the benefit of someone's incest fantasies. "Rut me harder... make me a mare, Daaaaaaaddy."

"I'll make you a mare, you little slut," Filthy said, panting and wheezing under his breath as he thrust in and out of Babs' cunt. "But right now you're a dirty little filly, and dirty little fillies get what they deserve." Filthy pulled his cock out suddenly, and, with no warning, lined it up with Babs' asshole, tucked between her luscious buns. Equally unwarned, he slid inside with only the lube from Babs' pussy to assist, making the journey much less comfortable than it could have been. But Filthy was determined to reach his destination, and, with a final grunt, he buried his cock in his third hole of the hour, his hoofs still gripping tight on both of Babs' buns.

Fuck, she wanted to say. You fucking piece of shit. You don't switch to my ass right from my pussy with no warning. You don't do it period. You didn't go to health class in grade school, where they teach you about that shit? I bet you'd look nice with a broken bottle shoved in your mouth, you can suck it like you made me suck your shriveled up grandpa shrimp-dick, you absolute—

"Oooh, that feels so good in my ass, Daddy," she said instead, rolling her eyes out of Filthy's view and reaching underneath her stomach to rub mindlessly and pleasurelessly at her lubed up slit. "I love the way you rut me."

Filthy gave no response besides grunts. He seemed taken away by finally having his hooves on the prize, focused entirely on the curvy half-circles bouncing up and down with each thrust. His eyes remained locked on the point of entry, savouring each time his dick would pop out of Babs' tight young asshole, then disappear as it slid all the way back in, grinding against her insides and slapping his balls against her tiny cunt.

Just like that, he was pulling out. Yanking her by her mane, hard, and jerking her face towards his cock, fresh out of her ass and still dripping with twice-used lube.

"Suck it," he grunted, shoving his cock clumsily towards her face. "Suck it and drink Daddy's cum like a good filly."

Babs nodded, wasting no time on dialogue when the finish line was right in front of her. She closed her eyes and gave what she hoped was a sensuous moan, murmuring as her lips slid over Filthy Rich's cockhead and down his shaft. He was still obtusely hard. Babs stroked at the base of his shaft with one hoof while she played with his balls with the other, squeezing and stroking them gently to coax out the load that might have her next pay-cheque attached.

As he had before, Filthy grabbed her mane and yanked, this time forcing her down full-force on the full length of his cock. Not normally enough to make her choke, but at force, and without warning, had finally brought out the gag reflex, and Babs started choking and sputtering spit as the first gush hit the back of her throat like a kinked-up fire-hose.

"Take it all, you little slut," Filthy hissed. He yanked Babs' mane even harder and jerked his hips forwards in little bursts, shoving deep each time he felt a spurt of jizz work its way out of his balls, up his shaft and spurt from his cock-head. With the last burst of cum, he let out a long, low groan, and closed his eyes, pressing Babs' face down with both hooves. She was gagging in full-force, struggling to breathe, maybe even flitting on the edge of consciousness, as her hoofs began to kick in less and less enthusiastic jerks...

"Gaaah!" Babs let out a long, loud gasp, Filthy yanking her up again by her mane and and letting her breathe, but also bringing her close to study his handiwork, the deposit of salty white goo he'd left lodged in her mouth and back of her throat.

Sure enough, Babs couldn't help herself from drooling the stuff down her face and chest like an idiot. She coughed wildly, and spat some out onto her hoof, mixed with phlegm and a little of what looked like maybe blood.

It took about a minute to finish coughing, steadying herself on the bed and taking drinks from the water glasses on the bedside table. Two, both of which she downed, wondering whether she'd better bother to ask for more or just throw herself out the window and see what story she was on when she landed.

"Well," Filthy said, straightening his tie, which he'd failed to remove for the entire encounter. "I must say you have an unprecedented talent, practically a prodigy, at your age. You did say you were...?"

"Fifteen," Babs said, and spit into a garbage can on the floor near the bedside table. "I'm fifteen."

"Fifteen! My goodness, but you look so... well, nevertheless, all things considered, we've already come to a judgement, and I'm afraid we'll be declining further use of your services at this time." Filthy stood from the bed, tie in place as though he hadn't moved it an inch, mane slicked-back with a mix of sweat and freshly-applied hair gel. "Do stop by some time if you're in the neighbourhood and want to arrange a consultation, however. We're always open for consultations." Filthy smiled, revealing a single, diamond-studded tooth in the right of his mouth.

Without speaking, Babs got up off the bed, picked up her bag, and walked out of the bedroom. She went down the stairs in the main entrance, out the enormous set of double doors, and down the long driveway to the end of the road. Then she walked home.

When she got home she had a shower and a glass of water.
> What ever happened to Chris Pennie?
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Instead of watching the days go by on the calendar, Babs liked to measure the passing of time by the color of the water in her smoke pipe. Clear and flecked with the remnants she couldn't clean off was day one. Half-yellow and filmy was day two. On day three, when the water had begun to grow the same grimy shade of brown as the rest of the pipe, she emptied it out, dislodged what chunks she could from the down-stem by poking them with a toothpick and bit of toilet paper, and then filled it back up, clean and ready to go for another three day cycle. That was all under the assumption that her consumption remained regularly and unadjusted, as well as her supply. Lately, instead of three or four times a day, she'd been using the thing once, maybe twice if she could scrape together enough resin to feel worth an attempt, and even then, it left her hacking and coughing with a black wash on her lips that felt like it was still on even after she'd wiped her mouth off several times. It stained the toilet paper, after all. The inside of the pipe. Maybe it was staining her inside, too deep to notice or ever clean out.

She liked to watch out the window too. Not for anything in particular—just to be occasionally overwhelmed by the sensation that the entire world would spin regardless of who or what she was, and that if tomorrow meant another pack of dehydrated noodles and a mid-afternoon toke that was more twigs and ash than smoke, the sun that would rise in the morning didn't care one bit. It greeted her every morning just the same, creeping in through the window on which she always left the blinds up and the glass half-open to let in the night air as she slept. 

Nothing seemed to fashion or propel itself in the same way since she'd moved to Ponyville. Talents she'd banked on for certain in Manehattan, storing them in her repertoire safe with the knowledge that they could never be improved, now feeling like a filly who had missed years of spelling lessons and was now being asked to write a master's thesis. 

It turned out, that a lot of ponies could suck dick. A lot of ponies had underage butts that seemed designed by Celestial forces specifically to tempt the gullible and easy-spending. A lot, a lot, a lot of ponies, could give you a version of whatever you wanted for a lot cheaper than Babs was asking for.

Even cutting her prices hadn't helped. Nor had cutting herself. The razor felt like an old friend's handshake, but the blood seemed to real now, screaming little voices seeping from her skin, reminders that she was defacing her 'merchandise' for the little jolts of serotonin that the simulacrum self-control provided. Even when she kept the lines to the insides of her legs, or places mostly tucked away in her normal posture, they'd always surface again to somepony who was looking close enough under the light.

Like talking to two different ponies over her shoulders at once, Babs found herself interrupted by flashes and different angles of the scenery and its slow-moving occupants. When she awoke in the morning, bitless and knowing that no meal would come unless she earned it with the same service that would necessitate washing out her mouth in the first place. And even though there was a silent web choreographing everything, where she would stand in the alley or roam around town, the looks she would flash and the ponies she would pay the closest attention to—somehow, it all felt more pure than anything, and certainly more than being alone in her apartment following the wisps of grey as they dissipated into the sunlight and swirled around her head. She wondered sometimes if it was only the smell that mattered, that would throw her memories somewhere they could only tread with the scent of the smoke wreathed around their bodies. The first time she had ever inhaled, wondering why anypony would want something to come in through their head and chest and change everything they thought and saw and heard, and then how words could only really paint around the moment of it, it, like a pillow that encompassed her entire body, or the sensation of time stopping not in a lurch, but a decelerating crawl, creeping by inches, and then finally held above your head to flicker like a shard of mirror under the sun.

She could steer in any direction, but she couldn't change the inherent nature of water. It would always flow downward, and time was more of a stream than a highway. When she closed her eyes, a tiny mote of hope whispered inside her chest, wondering if the weightlessness could just continue, just for a moment, and her mind would be free, and empty, and as clear as water.

Music helped a little. Ponies who would sing about love and souls and a time in Neighbraska they'd slept in a car parked beside the venue of their show. Water helped a little too, though she had to remind herself to drink it even still. Reassure herself every time she went to the sink to top off her bottle. It is a joy to refill water.. Somehow, the most absurdly true lie she'd ever uttered.

Something has to change. It will, whether or not you want it to, but it has to anyway, and wouldn't it be better to go along with it?

Babs downed the last of her water, then went to the sink to refill it. Muttered the mantra in her head, took a sip before she went back to her bed and put the bottle on her bedside table.

"I know," she said out loud to the empty room. "But I don't think I can change. Would anypony really want to be stuck like this? Running through the same cycle over and over again until their body decides none of it is worthwhile and gives up spontaneously overnight? And that's just if I'm lucky." Babs ran a hoof across her forehead and brushed her bangs behind her ears. "More likely some pissed-off stallion will choke me to death in a fit of passionate rage, or because he's got a snuff fetish, or maybe both." Babs yanked the blankets up on the bed and curled herself inside them, hiding away in the warm, artificial darkness.

And you're saying that's a bad thing?

"No. I'm just saying."

It's not impossible for you to get up. You've done it before.

"And once I get up, what then? I do something to get money, which is to get food, which is to get [smoke], or [dust], or whatever the chemical of choice is to give me enough willpower to push out every piece of memory I have left, everything that makes me 'me', and pretend I'm a blank slate that barely qualifies as a conscious being." Babs sat up, looked around the room, then fell back onto the bed, throwing her forelegs up amongst the pillows. "All value is meaningless. All forms of art and love and beauty are excuses to fuck."

You're doing the nihilism thing again.

"So? You do it all the time."

Right, but when one of us does it, the other one is allowed to let them know.

"Fine. Let me sleep on it."

I always do.

The period before unconsciousness was the most special waiting room of Tartarus that Babs could have envisioned with a lifetime of preparation. Only [smoke] made the haze come quicker, the flashbacks vanish more expediently into the fog of dreams. And there was none left for today. Not even a bag of twigs.

So, instead, Babs grabbed the small, squishy stuffed-animal frog she'd bought over the weekend as an impulse by. It meant halving her [smoke] purchase for the day, but the frog had remained in her bed since she acquired it, while the [smoke] had been ground up and inhaled into a place that could no longer be counted. The frog was very soft and smooshy. Babs had named him 'Rutger'. She didn't know why. She didn't remember ever having heard the name before.

Babs cuddled Rutger as she waited for sleep, alternating between squeezing him close with her eyes shut, and staring out the window, thrashing underneath the blankets, deciding every few seconds whether the sound of hissing insects and your mother's howling voice was a threat that needed to be addressed immediately. Hitting yourself in the head with the same fact, over and over, that you could never trust an impulse, that your own body had been programmed to lie to you in a way you could never untangle and rewire. 

When sleep finally came, it was half-past three, and Babs slept until the evening, when the growling of her stomach could no longer be ignored even in the gentle smog of her dreams.





You have to get up and do the thing.

I know.

If you get up and do the thing, you can smoke.

I know. I don't really care.

If you get up and do the thing you can eat.

I know. Don't care about that either.

Can you at least get up?

Why bother?

She got up anyway. The apartment smelled like burnt candles and dish-soap. Fresh air was supposed to be better anyway.

"I'm just going out there to put myself on display," she said to herself, putting on her jacket and straightening her skirt, which hadn't been washed in three days. Not impossible as long as you took it off first or got them to aim somewhere else. "I'm a fucking genital display case. A piece of meat conveniently shaped like sexual repression and power dynamic issues. Ponies pay me to rub their genitals inside me until they arbitrarily fall over an imaginary line and land face-first in some stupid euphoria that's supposed to be a back-end evolutionary reward for procreating. Their body is lying to them, and it's doing it with chemicals stronger than anything I can buy on the street."

Are you angry at orgasms again?

"Yes. Why do I come attached to a set of buttons that stop me from doing anything else when you touch them? Why does everypony in existence seem to have a switch in their brain that turns them from compassionate, rational individuals into slobbering fetish-monsters, detached from all reality as long as they can get their hands on whatever it is a corner of their brain has twisted into their sexual spectrum?"

We may as well have the 'why do I need to breathe air' conversation again.

"Don't even get me started on breathing," Babs said. She slammed the door behind her for good measure, and locked it extra hard as well, turning her key so fiercely it was a miracle it didn't snap off inside the lock.

Then it was downtown to evening Ponyville. A town so small, the only red light district was yours if you brought a set of strong candles with you. Babs had tried setting up shop everywhere—outside bars, inside bars1, she'd even pulled in a few customers standing in front of the local church... but eventually, maybe just because she liked the place the most, the nightly prowl became a stroll past the train station to the market district, which was always closed at night. Nevertheless, Babs found not only more than occasional clientele, but also competition, in the form of other fillies who would leer at her from their corners or places in the shadows, sometimes showing off their own goods back at her for good measure. Sort of like butterflies flashing a false face to ward of predators, it seemed to Babs.

Tonight, however, would require a reroute. The Ponyville market district was blocked off for repairs on every side.

"Pretty big fucking construction to block off every damn entrance," Babs said. She kicked one of the 'DO NOT CROSS' signs and winced as her hoof bounced off the hard metal. But the jolt of pain came with a different type of jolt between her legs, and she clenched them together even as her hoof began to throb smartly from the agitated collision. She wished for the razor instead, but it was all the way back home.

Whatever. There was always somewhere to work if you had the willpower to find it. That particular currency was Babs' most persistent worry—that whether she had the bits, or the smoke, or the food and drink and anything else she could by that would numb the rusty saw-blade of existence as it sliced dully into her skull, that she would somehow still find herself without the force of will to simply stand up. That every time she would ask her body to move, the force behind her eyes would answer 'no', and she would lie like a paralytic corpse, decomposing out of sheer inability to bring herself to live another second under her own control.

But she made her way to the bar. There was always somepony drunk and lecherous there, as long as the place was open. Even if it was the owner. And Babs could stomach another hoof-in-ass play if it meant something to dull the sensation that came when she had no purpose. Not that she could find what was truly a 'purpose' in any of this—just that, when she had something to do, something that was agreed upon, or felt necessary, everything fell into place much more easily. Dishes would wash themselves when they needed to be washed. As long as somepony, herself included, could assure and reassure her that they needed to be cleaned, she would clean them. When they piled high in the sink and began to collect standing water and the fruit flies migrated in and multiplied in the thousands over hours, if still nopony had settled it for her, there the dishes would remain. When she refused to listen to her own voice, whether it was in the mirror or just between her ears. When, blessed, the blackouts came, which were less and less all the time these days.

Enough. She was going to wait inside the bar. Fuck, she may as well spread her legs on the bar itself and start shaking her ass for tips, or maybe just to get a few mouths watering before one of the old codgers watching spilled over into insatiable lust and paid her for an hour in the hotel upstairs but only used ten minutes before his wiener went limp. That was a best case scenario, and even still, Babs felt like the bits she'd earn were just as worthless as she was holding them. No substance or sustenance she could buy would erase another memory for good. Only hold them at bay with barricades that were crumbling more every day. The ocean was getting in.

"Hey." A voice from behind. High, and soft.

Babs spun around with enough speed to shake away the pony's hoof as it reached for her shoulder. Just as quick, Babs' hoof went to her saddle-bag, the crisis kit for a street-pony in any delicate situation.

"Woah, chill. I'm just saying hi." The pony who had come from behind held up their forelegs as a sign of peace, showing they were holding nothing. In the mix of street, star, and moonlight, Babs could see a green mane atop an orange coat, and a unicorn's horn standing atop their head like a point to guide the stars. Their makeup looked like something Babs would have worn a few years ago, when she'd had worse taste but put in more effort: purple eye-shadow, matching lipstick, dark and heavy eyeliner, and... well, not makeup, but, was that a choker? With studs?

"What's your deal sneaking up on me?" Babs asked. She took her hoof out of her bag and studied the unfamiliar unicorn with narrowed eyes, ready to snap back into her bag if the need arose.

"Sorry, I wasn't trying to... I just, uh, have seen you around here before, and I was wondering if, uh—"

"Fifty bits a throw," Babs spat instantly. She took a pack of gum out of her bag and popped one piece, then another into her mouth and began chewing instantly, smacking the gum loudly and getting it loose and ready for bubble blowing. "Fifty extra if it's raw. Anything else we can talk about after we get started." Hard times required innovative pricing structures, in Babs' experience.

"—what? No, no! That's not what I was going to ask at all! Actually, I, uh... well, you see, I've been, kind of in your, uh, position, before..."

"Can you just say what you're gonna friggin' say? You talk like you're impersonating an anime character or something."

Visible even under the haphazard light combination, the orange unicorn blushed, and held a hoof to her mouth bashfully. "Really? An anime character? I do?"

"Either tell me what you want or leave me alone. I've got work to do."

"But you don't have to work," the unicorn blurted, then covered their mouth, as though they'd suddenly cursed without meaning. "I mean... that kind of work. Do you?"

"I'm leaving," Babs said. She turned back towards the bar and started towards the door.

"You could stay at my place. No charge. While you... figure something out."

"No such thing as a free lunch," Babs countered, stopping and spinning around to face back towards the unicorn. "Besides, I just met you. How do I know you're not gonna kill me and bake me into cupcakes or something?"

"I'm either a really good actor, or you're really gullible then."

Babs eyed the pony up and down. Sure enough, there didn't seem to be a dangerous bone in front of her. The way she'd blushed about being called an anime character was an indicator, for a start...

"Alright. I'll come with you. But if your place is wack, or you try to feel me up, or it's a fucking sex dungeon or something, I'm bailing."

"Does one set of handcuffs count as a sex dungeon?" the unicorn asked. She smiled as she turned and began to lead Babs away from the bar, towards the residential area where her house was ostensibly located.

Babs laughed. "Pfft! No! If it did, you'd be looking at the world's first portable sex dungeon and then some." She shook her saddlebag to let its contest clunk and clang against each other for demonstration. If you listened closely, you might just make out the sound of delicate chain on chain.





"So this is the place. It's, uh, kind of messy at the moment—"

"It's a fucking pig sty," Babs interjected as she opened the door and pushed her way inside the small apartment. It wasn't much bigger than hers in the entrance room... but then, there, it had an actual kitchen, and what looked to be a living room, a hallway, maybe even to bedrooms and a bathroom... alright. She was decidedly outclassed. Maybe that's what had made it necessary to jab. 

But she was being honest. The place was filthy.

A sink full of dirty dishes was one thing. But dirty dishes piled up on the kitchen table, plates and bowls and spoons and remnants of lunch and dinner and at least three meals with cheese still stuck to them? Flies, miraculously, seemed absent, but the smell was overpowering, and it was joined by urine-soaked cat litter and the perpetual funk of unwashed carpeting. A small layer of cat hair seemed to cover every available surface that contrasted the dark black accents. And a goldfish bowl, so murky its occupant (if there was one) was entirely invisible. A thin film of fish-food-flakes floated on the surface of the water, a few of them soaking up the water and dribbling to the bottom of the bowl in a steady stream.

"Uh, well, I was gonna clean, uh, but then Pipsqueak, my roommate—"

"Your roommate's name is Pipsqueak?" Babs turned her head and raised an eyebrow, but the unicorn just shrugged and nodded back. "They sound like a real winner." Babs rolled her eyes and began to search for somewhere to sit. She eventually turned up a relatively clean portion at the end of the couch, while the rest was overflowing with dirty laundry and what seemed to be empty DVD cases. The unicorn took a seat awkwardly at the other end of the couch, sitting a bit up on the arm and on-top of the neighbouring laundry-pile as a cushion.

She smiled nervously at Babs, looking away whenever she noticed Babs looking back at her directly.

"Did you even tell me your name, or did I just forget that already?" Babs asked. "I mean... fuck it, I may as well tell you this. I haven't had anything to eat today, or smoke, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm starting to black out for the not-as-fun reason."

"You can help yourself to whatever you want from the fridge. I think we still have leftover pizza, and like half a jug of milk for cereal."

"What's the cereal?"

"Honey Nut Cheerilee-O's—"

Babs got up from the couch and immediately went to the kitchen, beginning her search for one even moderately clean bowl and spoon amongst the detritus of two weeks worth of accumulated meal debris.

When she found a clean spoon, she held it in the air like an ancient sword pulled from the earth. The bowl was a compromise, finding the one that looked the easiest to clean, which was the remains of somepony else's cereal left over from (hopefully) this morning. Babs drained the warm milk into the sink before scooping the mushy obliterated 'O's into the nearby trashcan, which was, as well as being almost completely empty, the cleanest item in the entire kitchen.

"My name's 'Glitter Shell', by the way," the unicorn said, raising his voice to make sure it carried to Babs, who had her head buried in the pantry cupboard. She emerged with the bowl of 'O's in question, and poured them into her bowl with a hungry smile that bordered on delirious. Milk. She yanked open the fridge door, seized the carton and poured the whole thing into the bowl, overflowing at the edges and dripping onto her hoof as she held it. She lowered her face to the bowl and, finding a place for her lips amongst the dancing circle shapes, began to suck up some of the milk, draining it until the fill line was below the rim of the bowl. When she raised her head, she let out a satisfied 'ahhh', her lips white until she licked them off a moment later.

"Glitter Shell?" Babs said absentmindedly. It didn't sound like a cereal brand. Oh. Or it was a pony name. That made more sense. "Right. Thanks for the, uh, cereal. And milk."

"No problem," Glitter Shell said. She pushed the crumpled laundry pile into itself a bit and managed to squeeze her way onto one of the couch cushions beside it. "I could tell you need some help, and I feel like I'm in a position to pay back what somepony else gave me once."

"A bowl of cereal?" Babs was halfway done her bowl and already eyeing the box for seconds. She'd take three or four spoonfuls to her mouth before crunching them up, leaving as much milk as possible for her sugary sacrament at the end.

"Well, yeah, I guess. But more like a place to stay, and not have to work, um... out there." Glitter Shell turned her head away and brushed her hooves together anxiously. "You know."

"You used to do what I do?" Babs asked. She slurped up the final, delicious aftermath of her super-sugary 'O's and sighed as it ran down her throat and into her stomach, filling it up with a warmth something like the exaggerated sensation she imagined her customer's believed she was actually feeling. The dirty talk didn't do much to convince them of the truth, anyway.

"Yep. Pretty much. I didn't work by myself, but I know what it's like." Glitter Shell adjusted herself on the couch, trying to find a suitably comfortable sprawled out position, but eventually settling just for cramming back in next to the laundry pile, using the top-most collection of garments as a makeshift pillow to rest her head on.

"That still doesn't really explain you just offering to let me live here and shit rent free," Babs said. She filled up her bowl with more cereal and dumped another waterfall of milk over-top. Spoon to mouth occurred instantly, as did the crunch-a-munching.

"I already asked my roommate—"

"Pipsqueak," Babs interjected, wiping a hoof across her chin to get a spot of milk.

"—right, Pipsqueak... I asked him already, and he said it's okay. He knows what it's like too. Ponyville's not the nicest town when you're young and... yeah. Anyway."

"Listen, this is real nice and all, but I don't think I can really accept your offer." Babs finished off the second bowl of cereal and rinsed her utensils in the sink, doing her best to avoid the moldy-looking towers standing intermittently like landmines. She even managed to find the soap, which she dolloped under the water, praying that science didn't need to be understood to work.

"Why is that?"

"Because I'm a nut-job, for one," Babs said. She raised her skirt not to show off the usual goods, but to point her hoof to one of the few parallel lines she'd carved a few night's previous in her thigh. They were easy enough to hide when clothed, but bare, under the apartment light, they glowed red, ghastly, like they were threatening to burst into a stream of fresh blood. "This gets apartments messy. And I have a smoke habit like you wouldn't believe." Babs sighed, doing her best to bury the ticking timer in her chest that was already screaming twelve hours past overdue. It had been that long since she'd lit and inhaled anything. Probably longer. Where was the rush of abstinent self-empowerment and sublime sobriety? It just felt like crawling through the contents of an outhouse without a nose-plug. 

"Pipsqueak has you covered for that. He's who I get all my stuff from anyway." Glitter Shell kicked her hooves against the couch, bouncing them up and down in a vague rhythm. "Do you just need smoke? Not dust? Shiny? Orbit?"

"What the fuck is orbit?" Babs asked. She'd returned to the living room and was standing next to the table in the center of the room, pacing in small circles and refusing to sit.

Glitter Shell shrugged.

"It's just another name for shiny, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe with like, softer edges? If that makes any sense?"

"Shiny makes me feel like the back of my brain has a wisdom tooth-ache," Babs said, rubbing the back of her head. "It feels like chewing a battery with your sinuses."

"Pipsqueak loves the stuff," Glitter Shell said, and shrugged. "But he likes eyefire, and that's about as much fun as it sounds, in my opinion." She shuddered. "Should have called it 'fricking needles in your eyeballs."

"I'm just interested in smoke right now," Babs said, "unless anything in there has a guarantee of removing the last fourteen and a half years of my memory, and then letting me rewrite the last half a year."

Glitter Shell studied Babs, searching for her beneath the hurt. Wondering if anything she said was true, or just the dark side of a coin she had turned up in her hoof beforehand. 

"If you could really do that, do you think it would help?" Glitter Shell asked.

"I'd do it anyway."

A gun. What you're thinking of is a gun. And we both know you're too much of a wuss for that.

"I'm not. Give me one right now and I'll pull the fucking trigger. The 'go-to-sleep-forever button'. Fuck me."

"Uh, Babs? Are you talking to me?"

"What?" Babs' eyes snapped in and out of focus, grabbing onto points in the invisible horizon and flinging her back into the foreground, aiming in Glitter Shell's direction, but unable to hold on to the outline of her for more than a second. "Huh? Oh yeah. Sorry. I was just thinking about something."

"You can have some smoke if you want. You can sleep here too, I'll clear off the couch—hey!"

Babs had pushed Glitter Shell onto the couch, tumbling atop the pile of laundry, and landed directly above her, body planted square on Glitter Shell's crotch underneath her own black-and-purple skirt.

"Lemme lick you," Babs said, grinding herself into Glitter Shell's body and rocking herself back and forth with her pussy pressed against as hard as she could. She held Glitter Shell down against the laundry pile with her forelegs as she began to lower herself, face over Glitter's chest, then the waistline of her skirt, pulling at it with her teeth—

"Hey! Stop it. You don't need to do anything like that—"

Babs was still moving, ears deaf to the hysterical tone ringing in her ears like the specter of death. Shame, shame, shame on you. Give up yourself and everything, to take pity on you, to be worthy of even a tiny scrap of what you have been given.

"Come on, yes I do, I owe you, just lemme make you cum a few times..."

Glitter Shell began to struggle, kicking her legs up as Babs pushed up underneath her skirt, raising it and reaching with her hooves to her tight, violet panties, stretched against her front and back, even as Babs attempted to push them away. Glitter Shell swatted with her hooves, but it was no use, Babs was already in place, already feeling with her hooves what there was to feel.

"Huh," Babs said, her head still under Glitter Shell's skirt. "So you've got a... one of those." Babs didn't move her head, but fiddled a bit with her hooves, running them just a little up and down the sides of the shaft she'd found hiding in Glitter Shell's panties.

"Yes," Glitter hissed, glaring down with her eyes half-full of tears. "I do. Let's have your stupid overreaction."

"No, it's—"

Glitter Shell took advantage of the distraction to finally pull herself away from Babs, regaining a shred of her composure and pulling her panties back into place, flattening her skirt and wiping some of the tears from her eyes.

The room was quiet for a bit. The hushed silence filled only with breathing, alternating between the two ponies, and Glitter's soft sniffles, wiping her tears away as they came onto her hoof, and then the couch.

Babs pulled herself to the opposite end of the couch and sat for a while, hooves bunched between her legs, head staring down to the unwashed carpet.

"Hey," she said after a while longer.

"Yeah."

"I'm really sorry."

"Okay."

"No, like... I mean it. Really. And I'm not... I'm not grossed out or anything, I just... I felt bad, because, I was, you know—"

"Right."

"Oh, for fuck's sake. I can't do this right. I'm fucked up. I fucked up, big time. I should probably just leave."

Glitter Shell sighed and turned to face Babs at the other end of the couch.

"No, listen... I understand, you were feeling scared—"

"—I was, and I felt like I owed you so much—"

"—right, so you tried to show it in the wrong way, I get it, but that still—"

"—still doesn't excuse how I acted, I know, so if you wanna kick me out—"

"—not gonna kick you out, but like... ugh."

The two of them both stopped and stared at each other.

"Do you wanna go for a smoke?" Glitter Shell asked, gesturing with one hoof towards the deck door, which Babs hadn't noticed yet, nor the deck behind it, with what looked to be a table set up for smoking, covered in scattered implements and ashtrays.

"Yes," Babs said. She got up off the couch and dusted her skirt pointlessly. Some stains you couldn't see, and were even less likely to clean. 

It was her voice, in the back of her head, when she'd fallen into place like a broken marionette. Using her body for the only thing it was good for.

Stupid bitch.

Glitter Shell opened the door to the deck and stepped outside. Babs followed her after a few seconds, and she slid the glass door closed behind them, leaving only the chilly outside air and the starlight high above.

"You do realize you haven't even told me your name yet, by the way," Glitter Shell said as she unscrewed the lid of a small container and fished for the crystal-shimmering green substance inside. She scooped out a small portion onto her hoof and shuffled it with her other hoof into the bowl of a small pipe, which she offered to Babs.

"It's Pix—actually, it's Babs," she said. She took the lighter Glitter handed to her next and used it to light the pipe, torching the bowl and inhaling the stream of hot smoke in a single drag. When she blew it out into the night's sky, the wisps vanished like flickers of starlight, leaving only the dim scent of trees and chemical magic behind. "Babs Seed."

"I like it. Sounds cute."

"Speak for yourself."

Babs passed the pipe back, and Glitter Shell refilled it and passed it again, offering the second helping to Babs without having taken her own hit.

"You sure?" Babs raised an eyebrow as she took the pipe, but Glitter smiled at her and nodded, and the second drag came as easy as the first, just as hot, just as sweet, just as white and blurry and memory obliterating.

Babs exhaled, her eyes closed. When the last tendril of smoke had left her lips, she turned to Glitter Shell and smiled, her first genuine one in what felt like weeks.

"Thanks," she said.

Glitter Shell's smile seemed as bright as the stars.

"Don't mention it."