I was wrong.
Apparently. That girl? The one I was absolutely sure couldn't be an ancient fish lady of old timey doom and stuff? The really nice one whose sisters were kinda rude with ridiculously poofy hair?
Well color me embarrassed. Those three were exactly who I was supposed to be looking out for. And then overlooked and made friends with. Sort of. One of them, anyway. Or did I? Was she just silently laughing at me as I blundered along?
"-is by playing a musical counterspell!" Twilight declared loudly, drawing my attention. The 'gang' had pretty much all sat down on the front steps of the school, looking right at the portal statue thing that had a giant marble horse on top of it. Subtle.
"You mean, like a song?" Fluttershy asked tentatively, brushing her hair out of her eyes.
"Uh-huh," Twilight replied, falling back onto her default of 'hold hands like hooves' as she continued. "And in order to free everyone who's been exposed-"
Aaaaaand I lost interest. Magical gobblydook. I sure as heck wasn't going to be much help unless turning into a rat or a pony was somehow going to 'magically' confuse them or something. I really should test out if I could still go pony, actually. Go pony. God... no. No, Wade, just no. You ever think that specific combination of words again and I'll crawl in there and punch you in the face. Morph into a pony. There. I'll use that wording. Now I feel less like digging through my eyeballs to carve out sections of my brain.
Regardless, I could hardly see how I was going to be much help in all of this. Especially if they were going to start singing at them. I couldn't pass that option off as one that absolutely wouldn't work due to the video Rainbow Dash had flashed of her... 'becoming empowered' while playing a guitar solo. There was obviously magic at play. And heart-song was definitely a devious little jerk that could potentially be used. Not around me, that incident of me belting out 'singing in the rain' in another Displaceds' Equestria is something I am never going to be repeating again if I can help it.
My voice sounds horrible. I hate it when I try to sing. Which is why I don't sing in public anymore. In the privacy of ones own house, maybe. Being forced to sing out in the middle of a bustling city street in the middle of a drizzle by some sort of pervasive magic force? Screw that world. Never going back. It's near the top of my shit list, the top being Donkey Kong. So there's that.
A flurry of excited giggles and whoops rang out, the majority of the group getting off their butts and circling around Twilight. I missed something again. They all looked happy, but Sunset looked like someone just shot her dog in front of her. Momentarily. As soon as she noticed me staring the expression was gone, hidden behind a fake smile.
"So, what do you want to play?" Pinkie asked, pulling out a bevy of instruments from seemingly nowhere. "Theremin?" she finished, waving her hand over a table looking thing as it let out a mysterious tangle of sound. "Soooo magical," she cooed.
"I might take a little too long to play something with these," Twilight stated, wiggling her fingers before returning her hands to their 'hooves' position. Weird. Was she doing that on purpose, or was it just natural for her to hold her hands like that? "I'll just sing... what about you Wade?" she asked, directing their attention to me.
"What?" I so eloquently formed, trying to form my response. "Oh, no. No no no no. No thanks. I'll just watch. I don't sing."
"What about-" Pinkie started, before I was thankfully able to cut her off. Thank god.
"I used to play the trumpet back in middle school," I admitted sheepishly, a wave of heat rushing to my face, "but I honestly have no desire to pick up and play anything again. It would just take too long to get used to after all this time, you know?" I reasoned, which seemed to placate them. Sorta. Pinkie kept looking me over and mouthing the word 'trumpet'. Like she was going to silently osmose me into playing it or something.
They seemed to resolve that part of the conversation off pretty well, with a slight bit of animosity I could see between Applejack and Rainbow Dash. Who cares whose band it is, really?
"-It's only temporary," Twilight assured Rainbow over her displaced position of 'lead singer', "and we don't have to win the battle of the bands, we just have to perform during the first round of the competition," she ended confidently.
"So lets get to learning that musical counterspell!" Rainbow Dash proclaimed, pumping a closed fist in determination.
"Well that's just it," Twilight admitted sheepishly, "I don't know any."
Well shoot. Blind leading the blind here, ain't it? I might as well get on it and tutor Spike regarding how to properly use magic. Yeah right. Shit, Twilight just seemed to dig holes for herself regardless of what version of her I was dealing with.
A collective groan of disappointment ripped its way through the group, before Twilight did her best to placate them. "But I'm sure I could figure out how to write one," she assured us.
"Totally," Spike agreed, piping up to give her a reassuring pat on the ankle. "Twilight can write a spell like nobodies business. That's pretty much how she got to become a princess in Equestria."
"Technically I helped finish a spell," Twilight argued, "and there was a little more to it than that, Spike."
"Yeah, whatever," he said dismissively, giving her a big doggy grin.
"I've got this. C'mon," she stated, picking up Twilight and moving toward the school steps.
Before she got too far, Applejack called after her, "Where're you goin'?"
Twilight turned back, already half up the first stair. "Well last night we were here, Spike and I spent the night in the library."
I actually let loose a loud chuckle at that. When I realized I had once more attracted attention to myself, I tried to explain. "Just... that's so Twilight. Portals open, she could have just headed back through and slept in her own bed, but decides to bum it in a library."
That got another sheepish grin from Twilight, causing a wave of giggles to roll through the group.
"Well you don't have to do that this time, we're besties now. Slumber party at my house!" she squealed, wrapping Twilight up in a tight hug that nearly crushed Spike in between them. I don't think he minded that much.
"And where are you goin'?" Applejack repeated, stopping me in my tracks a foot away from the portal.
"Uh," I oh so eloquently responded once more. "Back? I guess? If Twilights gonna party with you guys... well I'd rather just spend the night in my own bed. I'm sure she managed to find a couple gym mats or something that made a suitable bed for herself-"
"Actually, we made a bed out of books," Spike cut in.
I goggled at him for a few seconds. There wasn't any possible way he was serious. Even Twilight wouldn't be silly enough to spend her night on... wait, who am I kidding? Of course she would.
"Of course she would," I muttered, fighting to keep the smile off of my face. "Well myself on the other hand, I think I'd rather sleep in an actual bed. Welp, toodles!" I once more tried to make my way through the portal, only for my forward motion to be halted once more. This time by a certain pink tinged hand wrapped around my own. Following the arm up to its owner, I could see that Pinkie Pie actually looked kinda hurt by my words.
"Don't you want to come and have some fun?" She asked earnestly, refusing to let go.
"I..." I stopped, trying to figure out if she was joking or not. By the expression on her face, it was more not than anything else. "Er... you do have parents, don't you?" I asked.
She nodded, so I continued. "You can't seriously have me believe that any father would just go ahead and let some random boy he doesn't know not only come over unannounced, but to spend the night as well?" I asked incredulously.
Her face fell even more, realizing the truth of my words.
"Oh... yeah. My folks are also kinda... old fashioned."
Well there you go, now I can just go home and come back in the morning.
"Oh!" she let out, and I could almost see the lightbulb go off above her head. "Why don't you do the morphy thing, the cross fusion thing you did with AJ and Dashy?" she asked hopefully.
Gah, time to nip that in the bud. "Sorry, but that's a no go," I tried to think up a specific reason why to base my assertions behind. "Your parents would still probably think a girl wearing clothes made for a guy was weird. Add to that the fact that I don't really like that form all that much due to the excess of hair. It's super annoying."
They seemed to buy that for a few seconds, a huff of disappointment cycling its way through the group. Twilights face worryingly lit up, though.
"What about that one morph of yours?" she asked, forcing me to suppress a wince. What morph was she asking about? "The human sorta 'crystal gem' one you told me about? What about her?"
Ha! I could easily shut her down if that was the best could bring to the table.
"Wouldn't work. I get that trying to discern age between different humans might be a bit difficult for you at this point due to not seeing very many of us, but Pearl looks like she's in her late twenties. Anyone with eyes that only half functioned would be able to tell something was up."
Her smile fell once more, signalling my eminent success. Then she got that look in her eye. That one look that meant she had an idea. That one look that so many different Twilights had right before they completely unraveled my carefully laid counter-arguments.
"Can you at least try it, real quick?" she asked, looking at me with a hopeful sideways glance.
"Fine," I muttered, triggering the morph. My skin slowly slid across itself, my bones compacting inwards as they melted slowly. My scalp crawled as my hair grew and shortened itself at irregular intervals, finally replacing what had been short brown messiness with a short blonde coif. My clothes had morphed as well, reforming into the same set that my 'Pearl' morph had worn before. Why she got her own personal set of clothes made no sense. I'd have to look into that as well. I guess that answered the 'can I morph from one morph directly to another without changing back to my base form' question. Or maybe the teenage variant counted as another base form while I was over here? Really should experiment with all this stuff.
A sharp gasp of excitement punctuated the air, forcing me to open my eyes to focus on the person now invading my personal space. For once, it WASN'T Pinkie Pie. No, this time the honor went solely to Rarity. She was gleefully poring over my 'new' outfit, even going so far as to pull up my sash to look more closely at it. During all of this, Applejack adopted a thoughtful look.
"Yeah, I can see what he was sayin'," she noted, nodding as she did so. "She don' look any younger than twenty, no way Mrs. or Mr. Pie won't be askin' questions."
"That and she has a rock for an eye," Rainbow Dash proclaimed.
"Wait, I can work with this, just see if this works, k Wade?" Twilight asked, waiting for me to give her a tentative nod. With that she gave me a short smile, and a rough shove.
I windmilled my arms as I fell backwards, trying to catch myself on something. My efforts were in vain, and I slipped backwards into the portal.
This was boring. It was soooooo boring. She should have just let them come with her, and especially Rainbow Dash! She could handle anything that weirdo world could throw at her, even another pony that looked like her, but human! She probably wasn't as fast as her, but really, how could anypony be faster than Rainbow Dash? Even another Rainbow Dash couldn't possibly stand up to the original!
Still. There had to be better things to do than just sitting here, bored out of her mind as she every so occasionally looked over at the still active portal.
Suddenly, activity!
A messy bundle of tangled limbs tumbled from the portal, coming to a stop a few hooves away from the glowing doorway. The pony appeared to be a mare, green with a blonde mane, wearing some sort of frou frou dress. Almost like something Rarity would make. And then force her to stand still and model for her for hours at a time, there was no greater torture.
"Hay," Rainbow Dash prompted, helping the floundering mare to her hooves. "Who're you?" she asked bluntly, noting with interest that one of her eyes appeared to be made out of a jewel. Maybe she was a human that had stumbled their way through the portal. Twilight said that she became a human when she went over there, maybe the humans became ponies when they came over here? Twilight would probably want her to just shunt the human back on through, but there was no reason she couldn't try to get a measure of her before she left.
"Wade," the mare muttered, massaging her forehead with one of her hooves. She then stopped, looking at her hoof in interest. Rainbow adopted her own look of surprise, Wade never told them he had a pony formph that looked like this.
"Why're you wearing a dress?" Rainbow asked, trying to fight the laughter back.
"I wasn't," he replied testily. "I don't get why the... oh. Oooooh, so thats why she..." he trailed off, muttering under his breath as he stared off at nothing.
Rainbow hated when ponies exempted her from a conversation, even more so when the pony in question was just having a conversation with himself. Or would that be 'her'self, now? Rainbow fought back a wry grin, preferring to just insert herself back into the silent conversation the human turned mare was having with himself.
"Hay! What do you mean, 'oh'? Oh what? Come on, tell me what the heck you're mumbling about..."
He looked surprised by her outburst, a properly chastised expression gracing his feminine muzzle. "Oh, sorry. Just working it out. Pretty sure Twilight shoved me through to test out a theory, based off of my different forms."
Rainbow nodded, prompting him to continue. It was easy enough to follow so far. Unlike Twilight, Wade had a tendency to not overcomplicate a sentence with stupidly long words. He just said everything like it was. Which was nice.
"So the general assumption is that anything going through the portal to over there gets tweenified, and apparently," he made a sweeping gesture of himself, "anything that comes through to your side gets the 'colorful pony' treatment. I bet Twilights hoping that I can augment my existing forms to give me more of them."
Rainbow nodded. Sounded like something Twilight would do.
"Do I really want to go back though?" he murmured, looking back at the portal. "It's just gonna be awkward and weird... If I stay I can sleep in my own bed... Oh hay," he suddenly started, turning to address Rainbow. "Twilight apparently needs to create some sort of magic counterspell thingy. With song. Don't ask, I haven't the slightest. Can you ask around town or something, see if someone knows anything about counterspell songs?"
Rainbow gave him a snappy salute. "You can count on me, Rainbow Dash is on the case!"
"Uh... okay. Good, I guess. I think I'm gonna head back now, see ya later," he stated abruptly, turning and jumping back through the portal.
"What a weirdo," Rainbow laughed, standing vigilant in front of the portal once more. She'd tell the others about Twilight needing them to go find the song counter or whatever it was Wade had said. Till then, she'd stand guard, and send back anypony else who managed to find their way through the portal.
Within five minutes, the tremultuous sounds of her snores filled the chamber, the rainbow tinged pegasus dead to the world. At least she was comfortable.
I popped back through the other side, the light searing my eyes briefly. Twilight should have put the portal in a better lit room. As it was, my eyes had adjusted too darned quickly to the dimly lit space.
"It worked!" I heard Twilight crow as I continued to blink the glittering motes of light from my vision.
"Well I'll be," Applejack agreed, "I'll be honest, I didn't rightly know what you were tryin' to do, but I gettchu now."
"That really is uncanny," Rarity added her own two bits, momentarily touching my face supposedly to position it to better see . Needless to say, I quickly batted her hand away. Lightly of course. She looked appropriately mortified as I did so, realizing that she had overstepped her bounds.
"Sorry darling, but to see the years literally vanish from one second to the next, it really does leave a girl quite jealous."
"Only you would focus on something like that Rarity," Rainbow sniped, grinning once she saw she had gotten Rarity with her jibe.
"Is it really that different?" Spike asked, looking up at me in confusion. "Looks the same to me."
"Trust me Spike," Sunset piped in, "The difference is night and day. So is that all settled then? Can we go?"
"Two hips and a hooooo-" Pinkie stopped, jackknifing so excessively that she almost looked folded in half. That she was technically facing away from me, while also looking me right in the eyes was kinda disquieting. She kept waiting, leading me to believe she wanted me to finish her sentence.
The silence grew ever deeper between all of us, the others expecting me to play along.
Fine. If I had to.
"Raaaaaaaaaaa-dio," I finished, meting out my own personal level of defiance.
"Hip hip hooradio!" Pinkie trumpeted out, bouncing away as she pirouetted. Complete with bouncy sounds. I have no idea how she did that.
So apparently Applejack owned a van, complete with her own licenses. You can get one at the ripe old age of fourteen over here. Huh. Hope they were safer since they started earlier.She made her rounds, stopping at pretty much everyones house to gather up sleepwear and sleeping bags, along with laptops and surprisingly enough slippers. A pair of slippers for everyone. Kinda weird.
Pinkies house looked... relatively normal. Normal suburban street. Normal assortment of houses. The weirdest part about it was that the front yard looked immaculate. Like, professional grade. Giant rock surrounded by assorted plants. Really pretty.
"And this is my mom!" Pinkie crowed, introducing said lady to Twilight. The prim looking lady matched her husband to a tee, both of them with old fashioned haircuts, wearing clothes that looked like they had just walked straight out of the 50's.
"So this is that Twilight girl you've been telling us about?" her mom asked in a clipped, but pleasant tone. She peered over the top of her half moon glasses, taking in our appearances in turn. She only gave Sunset and the rest of the girls a cursory nod, apparently she had already met her before.
"Yeppers!" Pinkie enthusiastically replied, "And this is Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-" she froze, looking back at me. "-aaaaaaay out there Weiss?" she ended, giving me an apologetic look. "She lives way out there. She's visiting with Twilight, they're shacking up with Sunset for the next few days, I was wondering if they could also spend the night?" She ended hopefully.
Hmm. Okay, so I guess 'Wade' isn't exactly the most 'girl-like' name, but why make me respond to a completely new one? Dang it, now I was gonna have to dedicate that much more brain power to reacting to a name not my own.
Her mom momentarily froze upon seeing my face, "Your... eye," she stuttered, her eyes drawn to the chunk of rock jutting out from my face. Great idea Twilight, this morph was probably even more noticeable than just a simple gap of age. It was the same morph really, but still. Should have just morphed Twilight, tried to pass myself off as her sister or something. Actually made me wonder, what would my flutterbat morph look like? Would it look almost exactly like this worlds Fluttershy, or would it end up looking nothing like her? Slightly shifted, maybe?
"It's prosthetic," I quickly stated, pointing up at my eye. "So my skull doesn't sag inwards due to the space being hollow." I knew some stuff. Weird, random stuff that didn't really come up in regular life, but I'd be crazy to call this 'regular'.
"Oh," she hummed, obviously uncomfortable about that line of thought. "And your nails?" she asked, drawing my attention to a feature I myself had forgotten about.
"Press ons," I lied, holding up one of my hands so the emerald nails caught the light momentarily. "Wanted to match the eye."
She nodded at that, humming slightly. "Weiss, was it?" she asked, tilting her head slightly. I nodded in confirmation to Pinkies made up name, "Hmm. More gruner than weiss though, aren't you?" she joked, the faint traces of a smile poking at the edge of her lips.
"I... guess?" I replied. The hell was a gruner, and how did that relate to a weiss?
"Hmmm, yes, quite," she tutted.
"Ooh ooh ooh come on, I gotta show you both my room!" Pinkie said excitedly. Twilight and me both found ourselves pulled along in a near iron grasp, one of us slightly less willing than the other. I know I should have just stayed on the other side of the portal.
The rest of the night followed swiftly, Pinkie showing us around and getting us situated. At one point I got shepherded out of the room, a loose fitting top and bottoms pushed into my hands.
Both were cotton, yellow tinged with decals of pink butterflies dotted here and there. I guess she wanted me to wear them? I think they might have been Fluttershys. I mean, they did fit her color scheme and her mark. Maybe they got left here one time?
I wasn't about to change in the middle of the hall, neither was I going to barge back into the room while they were changing or ask for the rest of them to leave during that time. God, girls -read, teenagers- are just so much more difficult to deal with than a reliable guy friend. With a guy, changing is a quick affair where you just shuck your jeans and slide on a pair of sweats. No awkward staring, no awkward stretches of time where you have to wait for the other guy to put their hair up 'just right' so that it doesn't get mussed up when they put on or take their shirt off... just... It wasn't... it didn't feel like such a hassle.
Bathroom was empty. Small one too, only had a standing shower and a half sink. Not even a towel cupboard. I probably missed the big one. Or maybe this was just the mid room bathroom. It didn't look like Pinkies room had an attached bathroom, anyway.
It was here I found out something novel about this morph. The clothes it came with weren't exactly... removable. That is to say they fit like normal clothes, but trying to slide my fingers under one of the edges showed me that in fact, there were no edges to slide under. The clothes were basically a second fabricated skin. Poking around, to the best of my knowledge, I didn't have privates in this form. No nipples anyway, and definitely nothing downstairs. Not even anything... 'facing inwards'. How the heck was this form supposed to go to the bathroom? Did it just... not? Whatever.
I finished up in the bathroom, the ends of my sash poking out of the waistband. The 'clothes'/skin bunched up under the pajamas -regardless of how skintight it originally seemed, they seemed quite content in bunching up under the pajamas-, making them kinda uncomfortable. It was at that thought that they... shrunk. They retreated, growing smaller by the second. By the end, I was left with what could tenuously be considered a pair of boxer shorts, topped off by the seemingly irremovable sash. Up top just had a band of cloth covering what might have been naughty bits, if this morph had naughty bits in the first place.
The pajamas were a whole lot more comfortable now, though.
Returning to the bedroom saw that everyone else had gotten changed in my absence. Looking around immediately affirmed my assumptions that I was wearing a pair of Fluttershys pajamas. Further corroborated by the fact that the pair Twilight and Fluttershy were wearing were almost exactly the same as the pair I was wearing.
Same shade of yellow but with pink hearts for Twilight, while Fluttershys pair were a muted green with white winged butterflies. Besides that small distinction, all three were practically the same pair. Collars, cuffs and all. Guess she saw a style she liked, so she bought in bulk.
Rainbow Dashes' and Pinkie Pies' pajamas were actually fairly similar, despite how much they varied from each other. They both wore pajama shorts, Pinkies stopping just above the knee while Rainbows traveled about an inch beyond it. From there, Rainbow was wearing a normal t-shirt while Pinkie was wearing some sort of... nightgown half shirt thing. I dunno, I don't know anything about womens fashion, much less sleeping wear fashion.
Speaking of, Rarity was wearing a lacy bit of cloth that I almost felt embarrassed for looking at for the scant few seconds that I did. Blue and purple, with these white lace shoulder thingies. Didn't look all that durable, but again, what do I know about clothing?
Sunsets and Applejacks looked the most practical to me. Sunset was basically wearing some snug sweats while Applejack was actually wearing a onesie! Haven't seen one of those in years. It was worth the giggle. Weird thing was, even though she was all kitted out for sleepy time, she was STILL wearing the cowboy hat. There's got to be a time she takes it off... but when?
Rainbow was still wearing her armbands as well, which was just weird.
"Does any version of you ever take the hat off?" I joked, drawing Applejacks attention.
"Psshaw, for shame. This hat stays right with me, after all," she flashed me a wink, "how else would I cover up my horrible third arm iffin' I didn' have my trusty hat?"
A huge gasp emanated from Pinkie Pie, predating an almost blinding flash of pink as the pinkette swept Applejacks hat from her head. What followed was a disappointed sigh from the excitable pink girl, along with a grumbling Applejack retrieving her hat.
"But, if you had another arm, you could get one of those double neck bass guitars!" Pinkie argued, gesturing wildly "Then you'd be even more awesome!"
"With an arm," Applejack mimed, posturing with one of her arms stuck up behind her head, "Stickin' straight outta mah gourd? Don't care what you say Pinkie, that just sounds uncomfortable, no matter what."
I kinda lost track of the conversation from that point, the words flying around at near breakneck pace. Rainbow defending how and why a head arm would be awesome, Sunset playing devils advocate for as to why it would be awesome, but also putting forth suggestions for why it wouldn't. Pinkie arguing valiantly her original point while Applejack refuted it with every breath.
"Excuse me," came from the alabaster skinned version of Rarity. It was actually kinda weird seeing a human-like figure with skin that pale. Almost like a geisha, but I heavily doubt she spent much time changing her skin color in the morning. Somehow, coat colors just didn't look all that natural for skin, especially in this situation. "I don't mean to disturb you from..." she gestured at the debate still ongoing, "evening entertainment. I was just wondering, would you mind too terribly if I took a closer look at the clothes you were wearing? They just caught my eye earlier and I have not been able to stop thinking about them!" she gushed.
"Uh," I mumbled, hooking a finger in the shirt collar and pulling it down slightly. "Turns out the reason why this form comes with its own clothes is that... they aren't clothes. Just skin that looks like clothes. Sorta."
"My word..." she let out, eyes tracking the slight view I gave her of my shrunken shirt, before glancing behind me to look at the sash that still poked out the back of my shirt. "So... you can't take it off?"
"Take what off?" Rainbow Dash broke in, apparently bored of arguing the merits of head based limbs.
"The clothes she was wearing before-"
"He, please," I pleaded, cutting her off. "While I look female, I would prefer you not refer to me as such. While I may not have any such bits right now, I still do have a bit of an attachment to my male pride."
"Says the guy that looks girlier than 'I' do," grunted Rainbow.
"Do I have to make a crack about how 'that isn't very hard' or something along those lines?" I threw back, with just as much vitriol.
I got a few laughs out of the group, seems the head arms debate had fully died and switched to something slightly more interesting. Which just my luck, happened to be me.
~yay~ for being popular...