Mandatory Motherhood
By Dargondarkfire
Ch. 14
July 22nd. This morning I was cooking breakfast while Starla played with Amore in the living room. It was hard to keep my eyes on breakfast because the two of them were just so adorable. I had just turned the stove off when I heard Chris scream from the bathroom causing me to sigh. Did she make a mess or hurt herself? She's usually a bit clumsy in the morning because she doesn’t sleep much.
Starla and Amore had stopped playing and looked down the hall toward the bathroom. I rolled my eyes and made my way around the island in the kitchen to check on her when Amore started growling a moment before the bathroom door burst open. Toiletries and toilet paper flew out the door before I heard somepony say “Ouch, stop!” as something tumbled out of the bathroom and ran down the hall crying. “I’m sorry!” as it reached the living room Amore pounced on it and pinned it down.
I stared at what Amore had pinned to the floor and… it wasn’t a mare, a pegasus mare with s peach yellow colored coat with pink splotches in her coat, her mane was a matching pink to her splotches and she was wearing a pony-fitted business suit? I was utterly baffled and very worried. Pony-fitted clothing on earth? Is she one of the cultists? How did she get into the RV? The door and windows are locked!
“I’m sorry! Please let me go! I didn’t mean to scare anyone I just wanted to say Hello!” She began to bawl as Amore bared her teeth and growled louder pushing her muzzle closer to the mare’s face.
I spotted Chris zip out of the bathroom shortly after hearing the toilet flush with a towel draped over her flanks, looks like she didn’t take a pair of shorts with her. “W-who are you and how did you get into the bathroom let alone the RV?!” She was clearly flustered, which would normally be cute if we didn’t have a potential cultist in our house.
The pegasus mare continued to bawl and Chris and I looked at each other unsure of what to do, It things felt like we were tormenting a random mare and not catching someone who broke into our home on wheels. The tense situation was broken as Amore yelped and jerked her head up as Starla jabbed her stubby blunt horn into her muzzle pushing her way up to look at the mare before hugging her around the neck while cooing softly.
Amore looked baffled and was trying to figure out what to do until Chris let out a sigh and said. “Amore get off of her.” Amore looked and Chris and let out a low growl. Chris gave Amore a hard stare back. “Don’t argue with me, get off of her.” Amore shrunk back but took her time slowly get off of the mare.
When the mare was free she slowly hugged Starla back, the act made Chris and I tense for a bit but we calmed down after a bit seeing the mare seemed to calm down as Starla hugged her. When the mare completely settled down Starla jumped off of her and started gleefully babbling loudly in baby speak. While the mare pulled herself onto her haunches and dried her eyes. “Your daughter is absolutely adorable. She is definitely a cuddle bug!”
Chris grunted and rolled her eyes. “Starla is not my daughter.” The mare stared at her before looking at me. “Colgate isn’t her mother either.”
She looked at us in confusion. “Where iss her mama then?”
I raised an eyebrow at her questioningly. “You don’t know what's going on?” The mare shook her head.
Chris and I looked at each other for a long while making the new mare really confused. “Well, do you know where everyone else is?”
She shook her head but said something that surprised us. “Nope, other than my boyfriend your the first people I have seen since I woke up to find myself in such a cute form!”
Chris and I rubbed our ears. “Sorry, did you say your boyfriend?”
She nodded furiously with a big smile, the antenna-like hair strands hanging from her head violently flopping with her motions. “That's right! Though he wasn’t at first, since we are the only ones here, or at least were the only ones here, it just fits.”
Chris gave her an odd look. “Why isn’t he here with you then?”
The Mysterious yet weirdly bubbly mare… why does she remind me of somepony? Mmm well doesn’t matter, chuckled and motioned off in a direction with her hoof as her head tipped sideways as Starla bit her ear and yanked her head down. “He's busy at the base.”
“The base?” I asked in confusion.
Chris face hoofed and attempted to get Starla to release the mare’s ear. “The airforce base, we have been so busy checking the city I didn’t think to check the base.”
Chris finally detached Starla from the mare’s ear making both the filly and pegasus giggle. “Really, you missed all of the lights?
Chris and I looked at each other in confusion. “Lights?” we said simultaneously.
The pegasus nodded and bounced back to her legs. I crunched my face at her bouncy actions as the mare pointed out the window. “Yeah, The generator at the base lets us have lights on. Keeps the mean animals away. You seriously haven’t looked outside at night?”
Chris shook her head. “There hasn’t been a reason to go out at night except to check on the generator before we sleep.”
I chuckled nervously. “Honestly we should have looked around for light sources at night, it would have been a sign of other ponies.”
I suddenly found the peach pegasus’s face pressed right up to mine her eyes staring right into me with a hunger… oddly reminiscent of twilight?. “Ponies? did you say ponies?! Is that what we turned into?! MAGICAL PONIES THAT ARE ALSO UNICORNS AND PEGASI!?” she jumped back and gasped before screaming. “THIS IS AMAZING!”
Chris smacked the screaming pegasus on the back of the head and pointed to Starla who looked on the verge of tears. “You're scaring Starla, so please refrain from shouting at the top of your lungs.”
The pegasus rubbed the back of her head and looked at Chris sadly. “I’m sorry.” She then gasped again before calming down as she eyed Chris raising her hoof. “I just realized we haven’t introduced ourselves yet! Your daughter is Starla? Oh, that's so cute! It must be short for Starlight? I’m right, right?!” She quickly ran in place on her tippy hoofs.
Chris face hoofed and grumbled. “I’m Chris, as in Christopher. I used to work retail.” Chris looked off to the side with a raised eyebrow and smiled. I and the pegasus looked to where Chris was looking in confusion, why is she smiling at the fridge? “But I’m not Starla’s mother.”
The pegasus looked at me expectantly. “My name is… let's just go with Colgate.” Chris smirked and the mare looked at me weirdly. “Well my real name is Minuette… but Colgate is a nickname and I’m a dentist so… why not?” She looked between Starla and me and I quickly shook my head. “I’m not Starla’s mother either.”
The pegasus looked concerned. “If you are not her moms, where is her mom? I have only seen the two of you.”
Chris and I looked at each other before Chris sighed. “Gone, like most of humanity, and we don’t know when she will come back. I found her on the day after everything happened, she was in the nursery at the hospital in Gillette where I came from.”
The pegasus thought for a bit before nodding her head. “Ok, I think I understand. We can talk about that later.” Uh, what? “Allow me to introduce myself my name is Cynthia Hallbrook and I’m a psychiatrist. You can call me Nia for short.”
Chris and I looked Nia up and down, I decided to speak up. “Hey Nia I have to ask, Where did you get clothing to fit a uh, pony perfectly?”
Nia squealed in delight at my question. “I made it myself!”
We were taken aback by her response. “You made it yourself? How?”
She smirked and used inserted the tips of her wing into her poofy mane and pulled out a box of thread. “These wings can be pretty precise I’ll have you know. Also, I used to make and repair my own clothing when I was still human.”
“So how are you getting around so easily?” Chris asked. “It took me forever to walk around that well.”
Nia chuckled nervously while looking away. Is she actually one of the cultists? “I uh… I’m a… furry.”
I looked at her in confusion. “A what?” I noticed Chris was groaning and covering her eyes.
Nia looked at me upset while blushing in embarrassment. “A furry, I like to imagine I’m an animal and make fur suits for my different fursonas… and one was a bit more animal-like and uh for adult reasons and so I had practice walking on hooves…”
Chris shuddered. “ I don’t want that image in my head please!”
“Same! Caw!” Archie squawked from the top of the cabinets. “AWKKKK!!!” He suddenly screeched as Nia shot up and hovered in the air flapping her wings while looking directly at him.
“Oh my gosh! A blue macaw! Wait can Macaws be completely blue like this? He speaks so well too! Did you train him?” Her hovering didn’t appear to be stable and she gradually came back down to the floor.
We just stared at Nia for a bit before Chris squeaked as Starla tried to get milk from her. That reminds me breakfast is getting cold. Chris spoke up as she looked around for a bottle of formula. “His name is Archie and no We didn’t train him, he's a human just like us.”
Nia stopped in an unnatural manure, then slowly in a robotically jerky manner turned her head to look at Archie. “Hes, uh what, human, how?! Why is he a parrot? A bird? Not a bird horse but a bird?!” She looked really heartbroken. “I’m so sorry Archie, tell you what, I’ll set aside sometime later and give you some personal sessions ok?”
Chris looked visibly upset as she nabbed the bottle I had prepared off the counter. “No, you are not going to stuff him full of weird drugs!”
“What?! No no no no! I would never do that!” Nia shot back defensively.
Chris had managed to scoop Starla up and gave her the bottle. “That's what all your head shrinks do, you put people on dangerous drugs with tons of side effects that almost never actually help people with their problems and drag them along for money.” Starla smacked Chris in the face with the bottle. “Please Starla, we don’t have anything else.”
Nia visibly got upset and I noticed some tears in her eyes as she shot back. “I don’t do that! I have almost never given out medicine, and when I have it was only to get someone back from the brink.”
Chris still looked upset. “Ok, then what do you do?” She kept giving the bottle to Starla who was getting huffy.
Nia straightened herself out and turned her side to us and pulled her... Uh, skirt? Up to reveal a cutie mark! It’s a brain striped white and red in a candy wrapper. “I care about people, my mother told me ‘never to work for money, you should work to help others and find joy in what you do.’ ” Her anger turned into a proud smile. “My greatest joy is to see people leave my office confidently with smiles on their faces, to know I have brought them from the darkness of their minds and into the light to continue their lives. When they're healed I see genuine smiles and those make me smile.”
I sat there with my mouth hanging open at what I had just heard. Chris looked at her for a while before sighing. “Fine, if he wants to I won't stop him from accepting.” She winced as Starla smacked her in the head with the nearly full bottle. “Starla, this is all that's left. Nia looked at Chris and Starla worriedly.
Archie had stayed silent the entire time. He suddenly turned around and hopped to the back of the cabinet. “Rawk…I think about it… rawk.”
I shook myself and sighed. “Can we just have breakfast now? It’s getting cold.”
Nia shouted. “Breakfast!” and ran for the table.
I hadn’t cooked for three… and
I had to make more for Nia. Chris let me know that the voice had finished sealing the spell in her. This confused Nia and me worried but Chris hadn’t fallen over dead or anything. Nia asked out loud “Voice?”
Chris waved her off and said she would explain what little she knew later.
We decided to follow Nia back to the airforce base to meet her boyfriend. While we were getting ready Nia played with Starla and tried to get her to drink some more. When we got back to the living room Nia was holding Starla out with her hooves. “Ok Starla, there Mama, can you say mama?”
Chris sighed and rolled her eyes. “Not this again, I’m not her mom and I don’t think she is old enough yet to say-”
Chris Stopped as Starla said “Mmmm… Mmmm”
Nia urged her on. “You can do it come on, Mama.”
Starla reached her hooves toward Chris who looked torn and continued. “Mmma… Ma… ma… Mama!”
I couldn’t help but smile and Nia squealed happily. Starla giggled and kept saying, Mama. I thought Chris would finally break down and accept being Starla’s mother right then and there but that wasn’t what happened. Chris’s expression wasn’t happy, it wasn’t sad or upset, her face was just blank and emotionless except for her eyes which were going bonkers, changing sizes becoming staticy and distorted. Nia was confused and a bit upset but I knew something was wrong and by the time I realized what was about to happen, it was too late.
I felt a cold snap in the magic in the air as Chris’s magic surged. It came so fast I couldn’t get the ring from my bag before being flung off my hooves. From the floor, I watched the magic pulse outwards as Chris looked panicked and in shock. She looked at us and as another wave of magic burst from her it suddenly rolled backward into Chris, she shut her eyes tightly with tears streaming down her face. In a burst of light and a loud popping sound, Chris had vanished.
Starla was bawling, Crying out Mama over and over in the spot Chris had just been in. Nia pulled herself back up confused as to what had just happened and where Chris had went. I had to fight to calm Starla down and managed to gasp out in a scared voice. “Chris just had a magic surge, and… I think it just teleported her.”
Nia Started at the spot Chris had been in clearly in a mixture of panic and disbelief. “Why would she do that? How? Where did she go?!”
I shuddered as tears leaked from my eyes. “I doubt she did that on purpose, she definitely doesn’t know how to teleport. If anything I think she just pulled the surge back in on herself to protect us. As for where she went? … I don’t know… But it has to be somewhere in this city or maybe on the outskirts.
Nia was trying to keep herself under control, if anything this definitely proved she wasn’t from Equestria with how little she knew. “Do you have any ways to find her? Cheyenne is a fairly big city.”
I gulped and shook my head. “No… not really, and we have two other issues. She could have drained all her magic from the surge and teleport and could be suffering from mana burnout, or teleported herself inside of an object.
Nia looked scared. “What do we do.”
I motioned to the door while promising Starla that Chris loves her and that everything will be ok. “I’ll explain some… things in the car.”
I wonder if I should just toss everything to the wind and tell Nia about Equestria and the spell. I’mi can’t get in more trouble with the princesses, can I?