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// chapter 1. Hello! 
// Story: Becoming Fluttershy 
// by Hope 
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*Beep beep beep*

I throw my arm out on reflex to shut off the alarm that wakes me every morning, habit driving my motions more than any conscious thought. However the lack of a button in my fingers, coupled with the sound of the alarm hitting the floor hard make me roll over and force my eyes open to look down at the clock that shines “9:00 AM” for a moment, before flickering out.

That’s not good.

“Oops,” I whisper.

My long hair drapes in front of my eyes as I lay my head back down on the bed. I have to fight the urge to drift off to sleep, or at least try to get comfortable enough to, and lift my arm up to bump against my bedside desk. The nudge is enough for my computer mouse to pick up as movement, and the dual screens light up, flooding my half of the room with light, carefully aimed not to shine on Julien’s half of the room.

Nonetheless they are bright enough to hurt my eyes, which I squint and blink, trying to adjust to the change in illumination. After a moment of motionless blinking and yawns, I am able to see the screens properly, and count the number of calls they say I have received for work.

Five calls, excellent pay but certainly a busy day. It looks like I was right about this being a week of hard and dull work. Though I note with a smile that all of them are in California, which means I will likely receive less snide comments about my profession and gender being at odds.

I reach up to move the mouse, so I can click on the first ticket, but instead of grabbing the mouse I manage to knock it off the mousepad, not feeling anything more than a pressure on my hand.

I look down from the screen, but instead of an arm I see a pale yellow sausage. A fuzzy pale yellow sausage. 

Then I realize it is attached to my shoulder.

With a yelp, I fall backwards, away from my computer. For a moment I am frightened by the thing following me, until I try to look down at myself to try figuring out why I feel a pain in my rear, and all I see is a huge nose filling my vision.

“No! Nono, what the hell?!”

I turn my head to the side to see around my vision obscuring muzzle, and I see a yellow furred body, the legs kicking as I try to push myself away from what I am seeing. Worst of all, I can feel every breath I take, as I watch this foreign chest rise and fall, quicker and quicker.

“No!” I shout, unable to think of anything else to say, unable to comprehend what is happening to me.

I end up screaming, face buried in my blanket, until the shouts and screams in what I now can tell is not my voice subside into whimpers and sobs.

It takes me a very long time to force myself to confront the fact that this is not a dream. This is not some insomnia fueled nightmare, and the pain in the base of my spine stopped as soon as I rolled onto my stomach.

I pull my head out from under the covers, panting, trying to wipe the tears off of these cheeks with my new stubby limbs. I can feel ears on top of my head that catch on the blanket, that hurt from how hard they are being clamped against this head that isn’t mine.

Blinking away the haze of tears, I look up to see that Julien, my roommate who shares my room, is still asleep, not a single one of my outbursts or shouts having been loud enough to wake him up.

As I brace myself upright, I look down at what has replaced my arm, trying to understand it, or at least see what it is.

The limb ends abruptly in a layer of cartilage, covered with soft yellow fur almost to the tip, and a soft palm area. After a few moments I realize that I am looking at a hoof, though unlike any I have ever seen.

I cannot place what kind of animal would have such a structure, despite years of my mother’s horse obsession bleeding through into family life. In addition to the odd hoof, I notice that I am able to flex the arm with even greater range of motion than my arm had before. I sniffle once or twice as I sit back on my haunches, examining these many, drastic changes. 

I look down at myself, the light of my computer shining like a lamp as I realize that I am about the size of a large dog, not horse sized at all. My hind legs are the right bone structure for a horse, but all wrong in the hooves. Then, poking out from between my legs, I notice a swoop of pink hair. 

I turn to look behind myself, and see a curled soft pink tail sprouting from my hindquarters, and above it I see a wing.

I stare at this wing, twitching slightly as I take a quick breath of air in shock, my mind finally putting the pieces together as my eyes grow very wide.

I am a small equine with a quiet voice, yellow fur, a pink tail, and wings.

I am Fluttershy.

Fluttershy, being a character from the My Little Pony TV show, naturally does not exist. That would be absurd. My reality does not seem to agree, however, and I continue being Fluttershy right on through a panic attack.

I have a ton of work to be done, I’ve been turned into a pony, and I have not managed to gain either magic or social skills in the process, as far as I can tell.

I try for a bit to steady my breathing, my legs shaking a little with nerves as I stare at my computer screens, clearing my thoughts. What can I possibly do about this? How could I fix this, or at least cope with it? At least I still have my friends...

They can help me. I take one last deep breath through my nose, letting it out slowly before moving to walk across my bed towards Julien’s side of the room. 

As I reach the gap between our beds, my legs lock up, and I feel another panic attack coming on, just from looking down at the dark chasm between the bedframes.

“J... Julien!” I call out, my own voice sounding to my ears like a stage whisper.

“Julien!” I manage to speak this time, but I now sound like a little girl trying to wake up her parents, not a grown-ish woman trying to wake up her roommate.

With a groan, I reach across the black abyss to lay my forelegs onto his mattress, a quick hop and pull landing me on my stomach on his bed, and also on his foot, which jabs painfully at my ribs.

“Julien!”

This time I get a reaction, and his foot pulls away, the covers eventually being brushed aside as he sits up, towering over me, and staring at me in utter confusion.

We stare at eachother for a little bit, both unsure of what to say. He reaches up to brush a hand across his face, muffling a groan.

“Did you wish, really hard?” he asks, after a few half formed words are stifled by his hand, his hand falling to reveal a raised eyebrow and a half smirk.

“W... What? No!” I protest, crossing my forelegs in a defensive pose. “I had nothing to do with this, and it’s terrible, and I don’t understand what is going on!”

He just grins, shaking his head, in part from amazement and somewhat in disbelief.

“You go from being the goth girl to a pink and yellow pony. You’ll never live this down,” he teases, as my face reddens.

In my flustered state, more concerned with myself than him, I don’t give his quick acceptance of my transformation much thought.

“Thats not important. I woke you up because I have five calls to do today. I need your help.”

He gawks for a moment before he realizes I am serious.

“You’ve become a pony, a flying pony, and your first priority is to go to work?” he says incredulously.

I look down at my hoof and twitch my wings nervously, trying to think up justification for my determination to go to work, rather than deal with the problem at hand.

“If I miss these calls, I won’t be able to cover the rent that Dakota will inevitably miss, and I won’t be able to afford the cat food,” I say nervously.

Debt and a hundred other things are on my mind as well, but those two easily top the list.

Julien sighs, swinging his legs off the edge of his bed and resting his head in his hands to get his bearings. “Ok, ok. I don’t doubt those needs but can you even do your job?”

I nod quickly as I scoot a little closer on his bed, trying very hard to ignore the feeling of my ears rotating forward in a chipper and attentive position. “Thats why I need your help!”

He scoffs. “You want me to do your work for you?” he asks incredulously.

“Only the parts I can’t do as a pony,” I say confidently, trying to smile, but feeling more like crawling back under my blankets.

After staring at me for a second, he swings his legs off the side of his bed and stands.

“You take apart computers, so you can’t really do any of it on your own. But I’ll help.”

As he calls into his own job to let them know he won’t be able to come in today, I scoot back to my own bed, and across my sheets, trying desperately to block out these strange sensations that are assaulting me, as I try to move a body that isn’t mine.

I would say a silent prayer if I thought it would do any good, but I do smile a little in relief. Due to my habit of sitting on my bed while I use my computer I moved the desk to the side of my bed a week ago, roughly. If it weren’t for that lucky break I would probably be trying to balance on a swivel chair right now.

The first obstacle I face is actually the mouse, which I find fits pleasantly in the frog of my hoof, though I have to close my eyes and take a few deep breaths so I don’t starts losing it again, from feeling this appendage where I should have a hand.

Once I get over that, I have to confront my keyboard. Looking over the keys, I realize I might not have it so bad, as my keyboard’s keys don’t need to be pressed all the way down, and are nicely spaced. This convenience isn’t enough to justify the amount of money I spent on it, but at least I am able to peck out individual letters and numbers with the tip of... Well, I guess I cannot avoid calling it “my” hoof.

It only takes about ten minutes for me to sort through the electronic tickets I have received, and figure the route I will be taking through Truckee in California, about half an hour away.

Julien walks back into the room, his hair wet, but ready to leave.

“Already receding back into the world of computers? Am I going to have to drag you away?” He laughs as I just frown, scooting away from my keyboard and looking off the cliff that is the side of my bed.

After being awake for over half an hour, I now have to get out of bed for the first time as a pony. The concept is daunting enough to make me grab my blanket, pondering the upsides of living on welfare while hiding under it’s fluffy green covers. I do force myself to stand though, on the squishy bed.

At least on my bed it won’t hurt too badly if I fall over. The feeling of standing on all fours comfortably is confusing, and it feels as though I am sticking my butt into the air, even though I look back and see only that cutie mark that I now recognize so well.

I shiver even though I’m not cold, and take a few bouncy steps, thinking for some reason about how foals are able to walk within hours of being born. The thought slips away, and I bounce a little harder, my light frame barely making an indent in the covers and cushion.

I hear Julien chuckle, and my face feels hot, my bounces slowing until I am just walking again.

“Don’t forget flying. If the show is any indication you should be able to hover with very little effort,” he reminds me.

I look back at the clumps of feathers on my back, trying to remember all those times I have dreamed of flying. Cautiously, I stretch my back, feeling and watching the wings unfold and lay at my sides, like arms at rest. 

“Hm...” 

I manage to find the muscle I have to twitch to raise them, and with some trial and error I have a basic stroke figured out. Whole wing goes down, pull front edge up, level out, and then the full wing goes down again. 

My first strong flap sends me careening across the bed, bouncing gently off the wall. It is at this moment that I realize that I probably weigh less than twenty pounds, light enough to fly with very little effort. The next flap pushes me up about three feet, before slowing my fall with flared wings. The pattern repeats until I manage to stay roughly a foot above the bed, straining to keep myself up. 

It reminds me of swimming, stroking arms through the water. 

I look off the edge of my bed and glide carefully to the floor, stumbling and catching myself before I fall on my nose. I am able to quickly gather my work tools in my old orange backpack. The backpack is one of the last good things I have left from my life at my parent’s house, but the nostalgia isn’t enough to overcome the sour taste of the metal zippers.

I decide quickly that if everything tastes this bad, I’ll have to find some way to use these hooves to manipulate things, though that concept on it’s own is daunting.

Zipped up and full of tools, I offer it up to Julien, who slings it over his back while I exit the room, and meet with my latest obstacle. A set of stairs.

But it doesn’t take much time for me to realize that I can essentially cheat, by hovering down sideways. Julien chuckles as he follows me down to the ground floor.

“Lazy.”

“Nuh uh!” I object, smiling despite myself.

We sneak past a roommate sleeping on the living room bed, and we are out of the front door, into the silent world.

Gravel that I usually just run over grunches like glass under my hooves, and I look around at the buildings that line this road, curious what each one would think of me now. I wonder if any of them would still treat me like me?

A jingle like chimes brings me back to the current situation, and I see Julien is holding my keys, the rainbow dash keychain swinging too and fro.

“I think I should drive,” he says bluntly, not expecting me to object. I droop a little, realizing that I cannot even do the most basic thing required for my job anymore. I cannot drive.

I sigh and nod, climbing reluctantly into the passenger side seat, and strap in after some struggle with trying to grip the buckle.

“If we get pulled over you can just use the stare on him,” Julien says, chuckling.

“I wonder...”

When he turns back to face me, I’m doing my best to stare him down, but instead he just mimes a heart attack. “Too... Cute... Aaaarghhlbrbrb...”

I pout, crossing my forelegs in defiance. Julien just laughs as he pulls the car out of the parking spot and turns towards a giant yellow M on the horizon.

“We’re early enough, I figure some breakfast is in order.” Julien is right, really we left earlier than we have any reason to, and I start wondering if Fluttershy’s stomach came empty, as I feel a sort of stomach ache fading in.

“Good idea, I don’t know how long I’d be able to go without food.”

The drive through is thankfully open, without any cars filling the lanes, and he places his order with no hesitation, leaving me to stare blankly at the menu, before defaulting to my normal order.

“Hotcakes with sausage and orange juice,” I rattle off as I start fishing for my debit card in my work bag.

Once we get up to the drive through menu, and I pass my card to Julien, I get to see someone else’s reaction to this form for the first time. He seems to freeze, staring at me in a mix of confusion and disbelief. Luckily the cashier snaps out of it when he accidentally drops my debit card, and soon we are getting all of our food in crisp white paper bags.

Julien parks us in the mostly empty parking lot, under the shade of a small tree, before asking me “Are you sure sausage is a good idea?”

I stare at the brown-grey disc that sits next to those fluffy pancakes, trying to figure out why I ordered it. I can’t come up with a reason, but I do manage to find some flimsy justification for my actions.

“Well... I know that my mom has fed her horses meat before, in limited quantities, maybe it won’t hurt.”

Slowly, I take the plastic dish in my hooves and lay it on the seat, starting to really wonder about that sausage.

So of course, I try it first.

The car door pops open and I roll out, retching and gagging as I try to spit all of the nasty grease puck out of my mouth, while trying not to pay attention to Julien’s laughter.

“That’s not sausage!” I squeak in horror, moving back to the car so that I can drown out the flavor with orange juice, in between coughing.

“That’s just terrible...” I grumble, tossing the rest of the sausage out of the car, trying to forget the overwhelming taste of grease and bad salt.

“Won’t hurt, eh?” he echoes as I grumble.

“Pour me my syrup.” I demand, haughtily.

“Say please.”

This time The Stare seems to work, and I have my syrup.

No one messes with Fluttershy.