Date: 02/05/2406 7:12
I jerked with a start, sitting up in bed and throwing whatever remained of the blankets that I had. In doing so I nearly smashed Celestia in the face, had she been standing closer to me than she already was.
“What happened?” my eyes darted around the room before settling on the older princess while Luna merely curled up tighter in her blankets next to me.
“I am pleasantly surprised to see you’re still clothed.” Celestia remarked as she stepped back to let my throw my legs over the edge of the bed and work myself awake.
“You were expecting otherwise?” I smirked and glanced at Celestia while rubbing at my face. Taking a second to do so, I adjusted the throat mic and translator unit partially hidden by my shirt’s collar.
Taking a deep breath, I began to feel something wrong with my breathing, as it was much more raspy and laboured than I was used too. Pressing my hand to my chest, I attempted to feel what was wrong with my lungs while my breathing grew harder and shorter; the feeling of additional weight in my chest giving me reason for alarm.
“Is something wrong?” Celestia looked concerned and the comment made Luna shoot upright in bed to stare at me with a similar look.
“Can’t…” I gasped out, now feeling like I was suffocating as my lungs were filling. “Breath…”
Luna took a magical hold of her sister’s head and brought the back of her neck before her eyes, before those blue eyes expanded and her horn fired up in it’s blue glow. The backs of both sister’s necks glowed slightly, just long enough that their air spell could take place, before the air quality began to change around us.
“You broke the air seal in here, Tia!” Luna announced with anger while my lungs no longer felt like they were filling, but instead like they were just filled with fluid. “He’s been breathing in our air!”
“Dammit, I apologize profusely as I was not aware there was such a seal!” Celestia frowned and back pedalled away from me to let me stand and stumble towards the door, still clutching at my neck as though it’d help me to breath better.
“Get…” I gasped in a short breath. “Suit…”
“Right away!” Celestia galloped out the door around me while Luna took hold of me to lay me down on my side to try and recover.
“What can I do?” Luna demanded quickly, high stepping on the tips of her hooves in eagerness to help.
“Purge… My lungs…” I wheezed as my breathing grew more and more laboured. “Empty… them…”
“How?”
“Vacuum... in my throat… Draw out… everything…” I remarked and coughed up a bit of blood. No telling what the xenon was doing to my lungs but it couldn’t be good. At this point Celestia reappeared in the door with all the parts of my suit in her magic, sliding to a halt to take the corner into the room.
“But, then you’ll be left with nothing to breath!” Luna protested, but I held a hand up to calm her.
“That’s… the idea…” I gave a weakened smile and laid out on my back with limbs spread out. Luna looked conflicted, but soon sleeted herself and nodded agreement. With her horn sparkling, I could feel something going on in my throat as the ability to breath grew even more difficult. Gasping for air, choking on the lack of it, I could feel the suction begin to pull the dense gas in my lungs out freeing up space for pure air which should appear sooner or later.
With Luna in tears as she continued to hurt me, I kept my eyes on her to try and comfort her, despite that my gasping and inability to breath was technically killing me. Spinning my hand to tell her to keep going, I felt my face begin to turn different colours and fought the ever powerful urge to tell her to stop in order to breath again. If I did so, all the Xenon would just stick in the back of my throat and prevent me from breathing entirely, so I’d be boned either way.
Soon, and at the point that I was reaching black-out, I felt my lungs finally lighten up enough that I motioned to Luna to pull the vacuum from my throat. She did this, and from my mouth came the vortex of life-giving oxygen and the colourless wisps of the xenon. As soon as the suction was far enough away from me, my drank in deeply of the life of oxygen around me and coughed up a couple more lungfuls of blood. That wouldn’t stop till I could see my medical-station.
“Are you alright?” Luna helped me get onto my side while I sucked down oxygen and coughed up more fluid. “What now?”
“Now...” my throat felt extremely coarse and my lungs burned from the damage done by the gas. “I need to get to my station.”
“I’ll teleport us, hold on to my sister please.” Celestia announced firmly and set my suit pieces down on Luna’s back to fire up her horn for the teleportation. My hand met Luna’s hoof, taking it firmly which she held in return.
A bright light and severe disorientation later, I was laying on the cold metal floor of my cabin in the middle of the room. Couching, shaking my head clear of the confusion, I stood to unsteady feet and aimed myself towards the auto-doc in the corner of the room; opposite the pile of my discarded exo-frame.
“Welcome to the Keen Medical centre, state your emergency.” the auto-doc requested while the operating table spun to give me access.
“Heavy gas poisoning, severe lung damage.” I coughed back and let the artificial gravity of the operating table hold me to the plate.
“Confirmed, please prepare for emergency operation.” the machine requested, giving me time to pull my shirt, mic and translator unit off and toss them to an anxious girlfriend. Once I was laying on the table completely, the table spun on it’s hinges and doused me in darkness.
Once the table was secured, a needle injected me with a full anaesthetic before the rest of the machine's workings selected scalpels and immediately intubated me from the throat. Taking a deep breath of pure oxygen, I closed my eyes and let the machine do it’s work.
~*~*~
“I certainly hope he’ll be alright. It would be tragic if anything happened to him.” Celestia sighed and took a seat on the nearby couches, joined by her sister who set the clothing on her back into a pile on the couch cushion next to her.
“You make it sound like you’re threatening him.” Luna growled back before sighing and dropping to a lying position with her head on her hooves. “I’m sorry, I know you didn’t mean to poison him.”
“It’s quite alright. I will admit that what I said did sound like a threat, so I apologize for that.” Celestia bowed her head for a moment before bringing it back up again. “So, how did last night go?”
“Nothing happened between us, if that’s what you're wondering.” Luna smirked at the notion of having something cheerier to talk about, distract her with. “We did share a dream, however.”
“Oh? What about?” Celestia settled in for a conversation, figuring the girls would be there for a while while the Pilot was operated on.
“It was a location from a story that he’d written before he left his home-world. Apparently he’s a published author. It was absolutely beautiful, being there.” Luna began, looking back on the dream. “There were two suns that the planets orbited around, and the other planets of the system were close enough to make out clearly.”
“A binary heliocentric system? That must have been a sight to behold.” Celestia raised an eyebrow at the mental picture, imagining the model of the imaginary system.
“Oh it was. I’m tempted to ask the pilot to find us a new home with a similar system environment.” Luna grinned back but continued. “Anyways, the grass was vibrant. Not bright and colourful like ours, but full of life and remarkably soft to the touch. There was a massive forest nearby, it’s trees stretching for kilometres before the foliage even began.”
“Those trees must have been extraordinarily wide to support themselves then.”
“Probably, we didn’t visit that particular forest so I can’t say for sure. Next to the forest was a mountain range. It was like the Smokey mountains here, but with clear skies all around them and the whitest snow-caps I’d seen.” Luna remarked and spun herself to lay on her back, her hooves in the air and her head hanging upside down from the end of the couch.
“Please, this is most interesting. Continue.” Celestia requested with a air-bump of the nose.
“I don’t know much about the rest of the landscape, unfortunately. But I can tell you about it’s people and wildlife.” Luna announced, then continued with a silent urging from her sister. “The wild animals there are called monsters, or mobs for short. They’re all feral, like those in the Everfree or beyond our borders so they can’t be reasoned with.”
“I suspect that them being feral is important somehow.” the white alicorn raised an eyebrow at the conclusion but dropped it when Luna nodded.
“Yes, when I arrived there the Pilot was in the process of hunting a pack of feral wolves that were threatening a nearby city.” Luna sighed and lifted her head to rest it on the couch and stare up at the ceiling while her mane tried to swirl against the material but just ended up as a mess. “He had to explain to me why he was hunting them in the first place, even after I protested.”
“Understandable.” Celestia eventually conceded the point, figuring that there would be a chance that they’d have to hunt packs of feral animals on their new world in order to claim plots of land for new settlements.
“After that, he took me into the market districts of the ring city to turn in the pelts of the wolves for profit.”
“He sold the bodies of the dead wolves?” Tia raised an eyebrow at this.
“No, just the furs. He skinned them and took a few of their teeth. Apparently they were worth a bit of gold in his story. I just figured that all that was part of his culture so didn’t ask about it.”
“Probably wise to do so, I guess.” the elder princess huffed but edged her sister on with a hoof. “Continue.”
“Right, so after a brief scuffle with a pair of male humans who were trying to buy me, the Pilot dissuaded them with a pair of black knives, we ended up back outside the city and aimed to clear out one of the early dungeons of his story.”
“How’d that go over?”
“Well, I turned into an attractive female human so I could help -even wore what he called Dark Knight armour. Didn’t get to the actual combat because he woke up from being poisoned.” Luna sighed and did her best to cross her hooves over her chest, though that kind of failed.
“You were a human female?” Celestia raised her head in surprise at the news. “What was it like?”
“Honestly, it was like I had been human all my life. I didn’t have any issues with balance like I thought I would and I was already so used to having hands that I didn’t even think about it when I drew my sword and shield.” Luna remarked while staring down at her hooves, imagining them as hands and feet again. She imagined wiggling the little digits, the feeling of holding the leather-bound hilt of the weapon and the leather thongs of the shield. She went further to imagine the feeling of the weight on her chest and body from the armour, how it hugged her body perfectly without restricting most of her movement like her pony armour sometimes did.
“Remind me, sister, don’t we have a transformation spell?” Celestia smirked and glanced at Luna who perked up at the thought.
“I’d completely forgotten about that spell!” Luna beamed and spun from her back to standing on her hooves to hop back up onto the couch, sitting like a human would. Pressing her hooves to her head, Luna delved into her mind in order to recall the spell sequence to try and use it.
After a minute of deep sea diving, working through thoughts of the Pilot and the warm fuzzies she felt whenever she thought about him, Luna smirked to herself and fired up her horn with her tongue slightly flopped out from the side of her mouth.
“I see you’ve remembered the spell.” Celestia chuckled to herself and watched the horn of her sister in order to try and decipher the spell details. Meanwhile, Luna had the spell going and began to recall the look of her human body: its curves and details like how her skin felt and what her hands and feet looked like. She even went so far as to remember what the makeup and clothing she was wearing at the time looked like.
“This is a lot more difficult than I remember a thousand years ago, sister.” Luna grunted with the exertion but did her best to keep her concentration. Soon, she had the entire body built in her mind and the spell took over.
A burst of light and Luna’s body underwent the transformations, the bones in her body grinding into their new places drawing screams of pain from the princess. Her muscular structure began to shift and rearrange themselves, stringing new configurations together while her leg bones basically just spun around within the meat of her hind legs.
Luna’s face began to shorten, her teeth in some cases growing out and sharpening while others were removed altogether to make room for the others. Her hooves, all four of them, split along the walls while the frog of her hooves took over most of the new limbs and began her toes and fingers; the hoof walls shrinking down into fingernails already painted dark blue.
On her back her wings shifted slightly, taking their new place on her new shoulder blades while the wings’ span increased with the added size of the large features to accommodate her new body. Luna’s fur began to stitch their fibres together, with the outer two panels brightening to it’s slightly brighter shade of blue before it all fell off and became her new full length dress.
As a last minute change, Luna kept her physiology properly adjusted so to accept the xenon in the air, rather than risk poisoning herself if she went down to the ground below.
“By my stars, that hurts just as much as I remember.” Luna panted heavily, steadying herself with a hand on the couch cushion beneath her left. She was quickly distracted by the fact that she now had a hand and could actually feel the texture of the cushion on her bare skin. “But it’s worth it!” she grinned and leapt to her feet before stumbling around a bit. Celestia leapt up from the couch to help her sister, who now stood as tall as she and the Pilot was -head included, and steadied her with a wing. “Look at me! I’m gorgeous!”
“You are remarkably attractive for a human female, indeed.” Celestia agreed and stepped back to view her sister fully, even if she had nothing to go off of or refer to in terms of human female attractiveness. She would admit, though, that she thought Luna was quite pretty in her dress. “How’s it feel? In real life now?”
“Just as I remember, only a bit disorienting since it’s not a dream and I can’t instantly acclimate to the new form.” Luna grinned and looked herself over, spinning in place slowly so as not to lose her balance. “I did have to leave a few parts of my physiology the same from my pony form, in order to be able to speak and breathe our atmosphere.”
“Can you speak his language?” Celestia piqued an eyebrow at the curious thought, figuring that with the new body that her sister would be able to speak the human language now that she should be compatible.
“I can try.” Luna shrugged back before clearing her throat and trying to think of a few Basic Galactic English words to say.
“My…” Luna began in the human language, Celestia unable to understand her fully. “Name… is… Luna.” she announced and stood up straight, proud of achieving that small feat. “I… am… human…”
“Seems you can speak his language. I can’t fully understand you, but I get the idea.” Celestia reported and returned to her seat. Luna did the same, smoothing her dress out against her backside in order to sit properly without killing herself. “Say, do you think you could use that same spell on me? Create for me a similar body?”
“Probably? Do you want me to?” Luna shrugged back and gripped the front edge of the couch with her hands while her horn fired up in blue. Celestia looked uneasy as she considered the implications of her request, now starting to regret making the question. “I can probably create a similar body for you from mine. We’d look kind of like twins afterwards.”
“I… am curious what it’s like to live in the shoes of a human. I’m just slightly concerned about the pain involved.” Celestia remarked, shifting her jaw around in thought. Luna nodded in agreement, dropping her head while she let her sister think. “Oh, to Tartarus with it. Let’s do it. It’ll make for a great surprise for when the Pilot get’s done.”
“Agreed.” Luna nodded and fired up her horn and closed her eyes to build her sister’s new body. “Just sit back like I was, sit like a human.” she requested. Celestia obliged and swung around onto her backside, sitting like that strange teal mare back in Ponyville.
Luna’s face contorted as she continued to build the body of her sister, hesitating to make Celestia shorter than she was in order to be the big sister for once. She eventually gave in and made her body as tall as Luna was, plus a few inches more.
Moving into clothing, Luna turned the mental picture of her dual blue dress into a white and gold panelled version with the same design as her crown, turning her collar gold and decorated though she lost the pauldrons on her shoulder. Adding a light shade of pink over Celestia’s eyes and keeping the flared liner, Luna’s head physically turned slightly as she judged the final product and deemed it acceptable.
“Done!” Luna grinned and opened her eyes. Celestia gave a half-hearted smile in return, her heart racing faster and faster as the spell was cast.
The changes that Luna went through, happened in the same way to Celestia and to the same end of screaming in pain. Eventually, Celestia’s glow faded away and in her place sat the new human body of Princess Celestia now dazed and uneasy.
“My word, that was absolutely painful in the worst possible way.” Celestia sighed and placed a hand against her forehead, then realized she had a hand to place against her forehead and began to examine it then her arms and followed by everything else about her new body. “Oh, fingers.”
“Yes, quite useful little things, aren’t they?” Luna grinned and looked at her own lithe hands in detail. Celestia gave a hum of agreement as both women examined themselves, going so far to have a look at their bodies down the necks of their dresses.
“The mammaries are certainly larger than I’m used too...” Celestia sighed and stretched herself out having completed her checks, yawning at the same time. “Imagine what the staff back at the castle will think when I show up for court today?”
“I think they’ll very likely have a conniption.” Luna giggled back and flopped back down onto her back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling before lifting her feet to take a look at her legs as the skirt of her dress fell to reveal the silky white skin. “That is, of course, if you can manage to walk into court at all.”
“I suppose walking would be an important part of being human, yes.” Celestia giggled back and made the first attempt at standing. Luna leapt up to help her sister like her sister had done for her, offering hands to keep balance with. Celestia gradually rose to her feet, her hands taking her sisters to help as she learned to stabilize her legs and remain steady on her feet.
“Just trust your body to know what to do. It’ll do everything for you.” Luna instructed, carefully letting go of her sister and hesitantly stepping back just out of reach. Celestia kept her eyes on her feet before raising them to the face of Luna and took a small step forward before coming crashing down into her sister.
“You know, I remember when I was teaching you how to walk. Now look how the roles have shifted.” Celestia announced with a chuckle and tried again, standing first before taking a step away from her sister but falling to the couch behind her. “And how the difficulty has stepped up.” she added with a groan before standing again.
“I completely agree. It is a very strange feeling, teaching my older sister to walk on two legs. I find it remarkable that I’m able to walk so simply, though I suppose I may have had a bit of advantage through the lucid dream.” Luna nodded and placed her fists on her tilted hips to watch her sister before offering hands again.
Celestia took the help, but instead of taking only a step before letting go again, both women walked Luna backwards a couple steps with Celestia following after while watching her feet.
“It helps if you don’t watch your feet. Your body follows the direction your head is facing.” the Pilot explained, having appeared suddenly from the machine and no longer sounding like death. His arrival startled both women, making them both jump at the sudden appearance and sent both women to the ground in a pile of womanly goodness.
***
Approaching the women from behind, I offered both a hand up and hauled them to their new feet. I was quite surprised to see Luna in the same body as from the dream, complete with the same body proportions though I had to say: much better in real life. Helping Celestia to her feet, I gave her a once over as well, figuring that her body had been shaped to be very similar to Luna’s in almost every way.
“Luna, you know my birthday was two days ago. I can’t imagine what event would come up to warrant such a pleasant surprise now.” I grinned and let go of Celestia to wrap my arms around Luna’s waist from behind, planting my head on her shoulder as she grinned and wrapped her arms around mine.
“Maybe I just wanted to surprise my colt-” Luna held herself short, instead opting to use the human lingo. “Boyfriend?”
“It was your birthday two days ago?” Celestia raised an eyebrow and focused on balancing before taking a few uneasy steps towards us to place a hand on my shoulder. “You should have said something, we’d have thrown you a party! Happy belated, however.”
“Yeah, it’s reasons like that that I didn’t tell anyone it was my birthday. It’s not exactly my favourite date.” I sighed and swayed both Luna’s hips with mine, shifting our weight around while Luna cuddled into me further smiling. “But thanks anyways.”
“I see. Then I will leave your birthday be.” Celestia nodded and crossed her hands over her lap while she watched Luna and I sway in silence. “Think we can head down to ground level and visit our subjects? Afterwards, could I get a lift back to the castle in time for Court?”
“Absolutely.” I nodded back and planted a kiss on Luna’s neck and ear before releasing her to the sound of protests to lead the ladies both to the door so I could get dressed in my namesake suit.
Both women joined me at the door, Luna helping to connect my airhose to my helmet from my pack just because she could. Soon I was dressed in my suit, leaving the exo-suit behind as we all stepped out into the morning light and aimed for the Wyvern.
“I’ve been wondering,” Celestia began as she strolled on my left while Luna latched onto my hand on the right. “Why haven’t you been wearing your framework like you used to?”
“I’ve been living on this planet long enough that my body is strong enough to resist the increased gravity.” I explained and first helped Luna up into the craft before leading Celestia round to the other side to help her in. “I don’t wear the exo-frame because I don’t need to.”
“That is quite beneficial for you. I wonder if it’s possible for you to become accustomed to our atmosphere as well?” Celestia grinned as she fixed herself into the seat with the six-point harness. Both princesses threw up protective shields around their bodies in order to resist the environment of flight and engine exhaust while I climbed up into my cockpit and got everything firing up.
“If this morning is any indication, probably not.” I chuckled back through the radio now that I was able to while running through the checklists I had. Lifting off from the ground once i’d remembered to unlock the landing gears, I aimed the ship towards the mountain side where the mining town sat and released the inertial dampeners once the nose dipped towards the ground.
With the weight of the ship providing acceleration and the winglets of the ship providing lift, I brought the nose of the craft back up and let the wings do their job. Bringing the craft around the face of the mountain, I just let the craft do it’s own thing as we made the final approach towards town to begin preparations for landing.
The approach of the craft alerted to our arrival and to my surprise a massive welcome back party had been almost instantly thrown together, aching my eyebrows at the event below us. Reactivating the inertial dampeners, I worked at setting the ship down as gently as I could for the passengers before shutting everything down.
Climbing out of the cockpit, I noticed all the eyes on the rear of the vessel and chuckled slightly. Approaching Celestia who’d gotten herself unbuckled but remained seated to wait for me, I lifted a hand and helped the princess down and let her dust herself off. Luna, hunched over, crossed through the craft to hop down into my arms afterwards before planting a kiss on my lips, creating a rolling hush over the crowd.
“Uhm, Princess Celestia? Princess Luna? Is that you?” a pony at random inquired as he bravely stepped forth from the crowd around us.
“It is us, yes.” Celestia announced, drawing gasps and hushed conversation from the gathered. “After a shared dream between the Pilot and my sister, Princess Luna and I have opted to try and spend a day in the shoes of a human.” she explained with a smile. Luna remained in my embrace, her hand on my suit’s chest while my arm wrapped around her.
“But what about Princess Luna’s behaviour with the Suit? What’s going on there?” another pony, female, asked.
“Us?” Luna pointed a finger at herself before grinning and pulling me into a hug. “We’re together, obviously.”
“You’re courting the Princess?” the same female pony remarked, aiming the question at me. I nodded once I’d gotten the translation and wrapped my free arm around Luna’s shoulders to prove it. “Congratulations, I guess.”
“We thank thee and appreciate the support!” Luna announced. The goodwill and questions were interrupted when Twilight appeared in a ball of light, materializing from her teleport looking anxious.
“Princess Celestia! Princess Lu…” Twilight began hurriedly before actually getting a look at the princesses. “...na?”
“What is wrong, Princes Twilight?” Celestia remarked, her voice making Twilight’s jaw drop and her ears flatten.
Shaking her head and putting everything aside for the time being, “Princesses, I just got reports from Cloudsdale that there’s a massive force of Griffons and Emerald Changelings heading towards us! It’s an attack force!”
“There are different coloured changelings?” I whispered to Luna who nodded.
“Yes, the Emerald changelings belong to Queen Chrysalis. They will not be joining us on the colony ship because of their hostile tendencies towards all other creatures.” Luna whispered back, surprisingly in broken English, once she’d brought her head closer to mine. I silently ‘ahh’d’ in return.
“Are they sure it’s an attack force? I was sure that we’d already dealt with the griffons back when we rescued you.” Celestia crouched down and placed a hand on Twilight’s back, ignoring the strangeness of the feel of the act.
“Yes, I’m sure. I flew over and checked myself! It’s an entire army of creatures loyal to the Ambassador. They’ve also got a mix of other races in their ranks, minotaurs as well!”
“This will not bode well from the Taurs.” Celestia sighed and stood to turn towards me. “It seems we require your help again.”
“You have it, but if the enemy force is as large as Twilight reports, I’ve got work to do before I can do that.” I replied, my voice translated into Griffic to be heard by all. “Twilight,” I turned to the smallest princess. “I need you to bring me Rainbow Dash, Spitfire and the entire Wonderbolt fleet.”
“Seriously?” Twilight gasped and even both princesses raised eyebrows at me. “Why?”
“I need Dash and Soarin to fly the Wyvern while the rest of the Wonderbolts and I finish up my work.” I explained. Twilight nodded after a moment of considerations and teleported away. I turned to Luna, “I need you and your sister to return to Canterlot and stay safe there. You’ll be needed for diplomacy with the Taurs after all this.”
“I want to stay with you. It has to be safer with you than at the Castle.” Luna replied, latching onto me again. I remained silent for a bit before giving up.
“Fine, but I'll be relying heavily on you and your magic okay?” I replied and earned a vigorous nod from Luna while Twilight reappeared with Rainbow Dash and the Wonderbolts all in uniform.
“Woah, what happened to the Princesses?” Dash remarked, completely out of place before snapping to attention with the rest of the ‘Bolts around her. “Rainbow Dash, reporting for duty!”
“Dash, you and Fleetfoot are flying the Wyvern. It’s already armed and you're going to distract the incoming army while I get everything prepared.” I instructed, earning a salute from everyone around me.
“What army?” Fleetfoot replied, looking as confused as everyone who wasn’t already told.
“There’s an army of Emerald Changelings, Griffons and even some Minotaurs who’re coming to attack us. Probably going to try and make space on the colony ship by killing the ponies here.” I explained calmly and simply. Rainbow Dash’s and Fleetfoot’s eyes widened before taking to the air to get the Wyvern fired up behind me. “Spitfire, you and the rest of your Wonderbolts are coming with Luna and I up to the top of the Smoky Mountains where I’ve set up. We’ve got work to do before we can join the fight.”
“Why? What’s up there?” Soarin’ inquired which earned an elbow in the side from Spitfire. “What?”
“He is for all intents and purposes our commanding officer right now!” Spitfire hissed back before returning to attention. Soarin smartened up and snapped into a similar, proud stance like his partner.
“That’s fine, I'm no hard-ass military type. I’m just the engineer.” I shook my head and lit my jetpack’s fires while Luna spread her wings. Celestia gave us our best and disappeared in a flash of teleportation while Twilight did the same, following her ex-mentor. “Come on, we’ve got work to do!”
“Sir, yes sir!” the Wonderbolt fleet all called back and took to the air after Luna and I.