Applejack had never realized how much strength it took to walk. She pulled herself forward through the sparse crowd with only her front legs, while trying to appear nonchalant.
The hindcart upon which she lay was unobtrusive, made from thin golden rods and brass fittings. It was well made, didn't squeak at all, and was clearly made for indoor use only. With her now lighter hindquarters hidden by the tail of the dress, and the subtly colored wheels spinning silently on either side, it almost appeared that she was gliding along in ease and luxury.
She could tell because one wall exiting Doctor Eraser's booth was covered entirely in mirror.
Now that she was in the club proper, Applejack could see that Club Eraser was a larger building than she had thought. It was laid out like an indoor market or department store, with various sections for various purposes. One section, lit with calming white light and sectioned off with frosted glass, had a neon sign above the entrance: "Put Up Your Hooves Spa." Another section seemed to have daylight; a few ponies in sporting gear (and most missing at least a hoof) were visible stretching near a racetrack. The stencil-painted sign nearby said "Three-Quarter Horse Gym."
But the section of the club that caught her eyes was marked, simply, "Rooms." She glanced down at the big brass key on a ribbon around her neck.
Fear had driven her here, but now that her original objective was met, she found herself with four hours to burn. Truth be told, she was somewhat curious. What drove a pony to pull off a perfectly good limb? She'd had some vague ideas about teenage rebellion or secret perversion, but she really didn't know. She didn't want to go around interrogating ponies, and truthfully, she felt like being alone with her new-found sense of peace.
She flipped room key "8" up into her mouth, and paced down the hallway. "Four, Six..." she muttered in as Manehattan an accent as she could through clenched teeth.
She had placed the key in the lock of room eight, had turned the doorknob, and was about to step through the enlarged doorframe when she heard the worst possible thing she could have imagined.
There was only one pony in all of Equestria whose surprised gasp could convey recognition, joy, and anticipation of total, mindbendingly fun entertainment ahead.
Applejack clonked her head on the doorframe. So much for new-found peace.
"Ohmygosh Applejack whatareyoudoinghere whydoyouhavewheels ooh a hindcart whatchagotunderthedress?"
With her eyes closed and her head resting on the doorframe, Applejack sighed. Despite the futility of trying to convince this particular pony of an untruth, she spoke in a clear Manehattan accent, "I don't know to whom you are referring, my dear. I am Miz Orange, proprietor of a small produce shop on the corner of Fifteenth and Vine."
There was blessed silence for a moment.
"Roleplay? I can get into it! Arrr!"
Applejack opened her eyes and turned to see Pinkie Pie in the most outlandish getup she'd ever... no, she corrected herself, one of Pinkie's typically outlandish disguises.
Pinkie's hat was a giant black tricorner. Underneath it, her curly pink mane was pulled around her face in imitation of a beard. She wore an eyepatch adorned with a stylized drawing of a pony skull.
She was grinning almost as widely as the skull.
"Miz Orange," said Pinkie in a "pirate" accent, "I be the dread pirate Pinkbeard, captain of the Jolly Ridgling. I heard o' ye an' yer family fortune. I hereby kidnap ye, forsooth and anon, come high tide or low water, 'till ye take me and my jolly crew to yer buried treasure. Arr!"
Applejack's gaze passed down the lines of her friend's body. Pinkie also wore an oversized blue coat with gold trim, and epaulets on the shoulders. Her hindquarters were covered by a pair of tight-fitting white pants. On her right hindleg, she wore a big black boot. Where her left hindleg should have been, the white pants were tucked around the top of a wooden pegleg.
Applejack sighed again, and muttered in a low voice, "Fine, Pinkie. But pertend Ah'm who Ah say I am, 'cause Ah don't want no one to find out Ah'm here."
Pinkie tilted her head slightly. "Why wouldn't you want anyone to know you're at the most funnest place in all of Manehattan?" she asked in a stage whisper.
"Ah gots mah reasons," said Applejack, glancing down the "hotel" hallway toward the main lobby.
"Say no more, friend'o'mine," Pinkie proclaimed in the loudest whisper yet. She cleared her throat and spoke louder. "Yer own quarters should suffice fer me first line o' questionin'. Arr!"
"Oh no, I am being kidnapped by a dreaded pirate," said Applejack, deadpan, as she led Pinkie inside room number eight.
Room eight was a tastefully old-fashioned bedroom, with lace and frills and wallpaper. There was a window looking out onto a small diorama of a sleepy village on the coast.
It was the kind of bedroom Applejack might expect to find in any of her cousins' homes, aside from the wall-length mirror that continued across the ceiling.
The bed was large enough for about four ponies to sleep comfortably. Applejack scrunched her muzzle, her earlier thoughts about city-folk perversions coming back to mind.
"Arr!" said the dread pirate Pinkbeard, "Stand aside, ye landlubber!"
Applejack felt a poke on her rump, and reared up instinctively. Instead of simply standing on her hindlegs, however, her weight left the center wheel of the hindcart, and balanced on only the two big offset wheels, she found herself scooting backward into the hallway.
There was a muffled thump, and Pinkie said from underneath her, "Ow. I'm okay."
Applejack quickly pulled forward into the room, and turned around. Pinkie was wiggling on the floor of the hallway, trying to stand up. Her hat had come off, and she looked at it sadly.
Applejack saw something she'd missed in her earlier cursory evaluation of the pink earth pony. With her coat on, it was hard to see that BOTH of her left legs were wooden.
"Sorry there, Pinkie," said Applejack, trying to figure out how to help her up without falling over herself.
"Arr, the dread pirate Pinkbeard, oof, ain't interested in th' sympathy of a captive, uff. Hold on." Pinkie stopped wiggling, and rolled onto her other side. With the momentum of her roll, and with her real right legs curled under her, she easily popped up on all fours. With a trumphant grin, she picked up the brim of the hat in her mouth and flipped it back onto her head. "Now, into th' cabin with ye, scalliwag. Yer escape attempt has failed, as all such attempts shall while Pinkbeard is captain of this vessel."
With both ponies in the room, and the door closed behind them, Pinkie grinned. "Well, that was sorta fun."
Applejack was still flustered from the minor accident. "You sure you're okay, 'Pinkbeard?'"
Looking at herself in the mirror wall, Pinkie turned a circle. "Yup, everything's ship-shape." She she brought her right forehoof up and scratched her chin in thought. "Well, it would be if we had a ship. But we're just pretending this is a ship. But if this is a ship, wouldn't the wall be a wooden slope instead of a mirror straight up and down? I wonder if they have a room here that's ship-shape?"
Applejack let her friend babble on. She had come down hard on the cushion of the hindcart when she'd reared, and was now growing tired of the constant pressure on her chest and belly. She supposed she could get used to a hindcart eventually if she ever lost her legs for real, but there was no sense in sticking it out if she didn't have to.
She reached her long and flexible neck along her side and pulled the release for the hindcart's strap with her dextrous lips. With a *click*, the strap came free, and she took a deep, relieved breath. Without further ado, she pulled herself onto the bed and lay there on her belly, grinning stupidly. "Well, Ah'm yer prisoner now, Pinkbeard. Do yer worst."
"Do it in the voice! Do it in the voice!"
Still grinning, 'Miz Orange' said in her Manehattan accent, "You ruffian, you'll never get away with this!"
Pinkie jumped onto the bed and rolled around giggling.
Feeling the bed bounce underneath her truncated barrel, Applejack tried to adjust her position on the bed.
Her lack of rear legs, even of lingering stump, made her lean onto her side instead. This change in her center of gravity wasn't something she'd had to get used to while on the hindcart, but now that she was rolling free, she had to make do or she might wind up on the floor.
She felt another poke at her rump. A glance at the mirror above showed Pinkie was pressing that front pegleg against her thigh. Or rather, where it would otherwise be.
"Hey AJ-- I mean, arrr Miz Orange, yer present condition tells yer tale poorly. If ye plan to keep yer head, I require a better tellin'."
Applejack tapped her chin with a forehoof. "Several months ago, I was visiting my cousins at the ancestral homestead of Sweet Apple Acres," she said, maintaining the accent. "I was caught up in a debacle involving a crazed mare, a unicorn who commandeered the entire town. She pulled my legs from my body, and the magics proved irreversable."
She rolled onto her back, showing the somewhat intricate underside of the dress. As with most formal designs, the sides were loose folds while the part that would have covered the knees was shorter, in case a pony had to run in it.
It was strange for Applejack to look up at a mirror; she felt a bit of vertigo, as if she was about to fall down on top of herself. She shook off the feeling, and using her forelegs, pulled up her dress.
The edge of the dress came up, first revealing her tail, tied with a green ribbon instead of red as part of her disguise. Next, it revealed a short white slip, silky and shiny. The contours were unfamiliar, and she gulped nervously. If she didn't actually see what lay beneath, it was still somewhat in the realm of a fantasy or a dream.
Pinkie Pie's wide eyes spoke volumes. "Arr, that be neato and strange," she said, pointing up at the mirror. "I see she left nary a lump nor a stump upon yer rump!"
Then, Pinkie pointed her hind legs, both the real and the false, forward along her belly in what resembled a yoga pose. With a swift motion, she leaned forward with her mouth and grasped the pegleg in her teeth, pulling it off with a jerk.
With her teeth still clenched, she said, "Ar rarrk ra ree..."
Applejack rolled her eyes.
Pinkie spit the prosthetic to the side. "I said, I like to leave a bit of a stump." She pointed with her right forehoof to the now-empty left leg of the tight-fitting white pants. "It gives me more options for fake legs."
She kicked the boot off her right hindleg, and then wriggled both thighs as if she were trotting. The right pants leg ran as expected, while the left leg's cuff flopped around. "And it gives me something to play with!" With her one forehoof and the fore pegleg, she expertly tucked the cuff back up the leg, and wiggled it some more to demonstrate.
Applejack's gut clenched. Seeing things missing from herself and Pinkie was one thing, but seeing the results in motion did something to her insides. It wasn't exactly unpleasant; in fact, it felt more like a yearning, gnawing hunger to see more.
She turned her attention back to her own torso, and while she still had the courage, pulled up the silky slip.
There was the dock of her tail, the small bit underneath which was covered in coat hair, not tail hair. There were the usual modestly fuzz-covered bits she expected to see.
To either side, the shape of her hips looked squashed, like the area around the bottom of a tomato. Gripped by a sudden impulse, she tried to make her hindlegs trot. Her pelvis wriggled a bit, and her tail moved, but nothing else happened.
She reached into the slip and ran a forehoof along her rump, then along where her thighs should have been. Her mind mapped the sensations of that stretch of skin as the area around her thighs. The deeper pressure against her thigh socket in the odd hollow was so alien that she reached in with her other hoof and pressed symmetrically against the other hollow.
She stayed like that for a good thirty seconds, just gently rubbing her forehooves where her hindlegs should have been, looking up at her reflection and just drinking in the moment.
Applejack let her forehooves drop from where they had touched the hollows of her hips.
"That is th' weirdest sensation Ah have ever felt."
"Tell me about it," said Pinkie, "The first time I tried a bilateral hip disarticulation, I was falling on my face all over the place. That was before I knew how to do a front hoofstand."
Applejack let the slip drop back around her. If she didn't look too closely, it almost appeared as though she still had her hindlegs. "So, Pinkbeard, tell me a little about yerself. How'd'ya misplace yer appendages?"
Pinkie giggled. "Weeeeell, me left hind were an appetizer fer a fierce alligator in the swamps way doon south." She wiggled her left thigh stump inside the white pants. "An' if ye help me off wi' me blouse, ye'll see fer yerself what be left of me left foreleg."
She scooted closer to Applejack, and sat up on the bed with her back to her. Applejack held the collar of Pinkie's jacket with her teeth, and said, "All set."
With a smooth motion, Pinkie pulled free. Underneath was a poofy silk blouse. It coordinated with the off-white pants and their black belt.
The poofy sleeve was tied taut with a thin pink ribbon where the wooden leg emerged from it. Applejack could see the outline of how shortly Pinkie's foreleg was amputated. Only the upper half of her upper foreleg remained.
"When the Jolly Ridgling was under fire from Canterlot's Air Cavalry fer stealin' the Golden Apples from Celestia's garden, I ordered return fire. Th' cannon weren't gettin' high enough, so I ordered extra powder. Even th' Long Tom weren't made fer such powerful charges, and he blew."
She undid the buttons on her shirt, which hung limply around her. "Um, AJ, can you help me with this one too? Ribbon first."
Applejack pulled one side of the bowed ribbon, and the knot slid free, loosening the sleeve. Then she held Pinkie's collar again. "Set."
Pinkie scooted forward on the bed. The blouse stayed in Applejack's teeth.
Pinkie stood up on the bed. Now she was garbed only in her black tricorner hat, eyepatch, and white pants. A cuff secured her upper foreleg to the pegleg.
The cuff was held in place by a web of three straps which wrapped entirely around her torso. There were buckles and connections and cross-straps, and Applejack's head started to spin. It was so much more complicated than the rear pegleg.
"We were captured that day, aye, but me leg was attended to by th' court physician herself," continued "Pinkbeard." She reached back with her flexible neck and tugged at the fastener on one of the straps. It came free, but two more remained.
"She said she didn't know how I'd kept me other legs with all that shrapnel flyin' about th' deck, but she swore that I'd stand before Her Majesty an' give an accountin' of th' misdeeds I'd committed."
She strained to reach the other fasteners, but she couldn't reach them. This time she flopped down, her upper back a few inches from Applejack's head. "Could you get the last two?"
Applejack reached out with her teeth and pulled one, and then the other. "Doncha think you shoulda got a quick release button of some sort?"
"Silly, then I couldn't have you help me with this!" said Pinkie. "Okay, watch this." With a wiggle and a shake, the straps fell loose. Pinkie sat up again, and this time the prosthetic arm stayed on the bed.
Unlike the unbroken, smooth fur of Applejack's limbless hips, the stump of Pinkie's upper leg ended in a bald patch with scars cutting across the skin. Applejack pulled back. "Dangit, girl, that's some realistic lookin' healed wounds there!"
Pinkie pursed her lips coyly. "Wanna.... touch it?" She lunged at Applejack, surprisingly spry for missing two legs.
Applejack backed away instinctively, grimacing. "Pinkie!"
A grin spread across Pinkie's face. "You shoulda seen the look on your face! You were all, aaaah!"
"Ah do NOT wanna touch yer stump. Now that's jest gross."
"Awww." Pinkie's grin faded into a pleasant smile. "But did you see what you did?"
Applejack looked up. The mirror overhead showed that she'd backed away using only her forelegs, which were still braced against the bedspread, ready to back away again.
"Huh." She turned to Pinkie. "Ah guess Ah'm gettin' used'ta' this, somewhat." She muttered, "Don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing."
"Sorry I freaked you out, Applejack," said Pinkie, "I'm used to the other customers being a lot more stump-touchy. This your first time here?"
"Yep," said Applejack, glancing again at her lopsided friend's foreleg skin. "Ah been a mite distracted lately 'cause'a what Trixie done to me that one time. Now, she put my legs back on right, but they ain't made fer such strange magics. They're strong, dependable earth pony legs and they's supposed to stay where they were made." She sat up and touched the fabric of the long blue dress where her legs should be.
"I've been here a few times," Pinkie said, "I heard about it from Rose, who heard about it from Lyra, who heard about it from someone in that human club of hers. I love new ideas that make me feel funny at first, so I dropped in last year, and I've tried a lot of the variations."
"So," said Applejack hesitantly, curiosity finally getting the better of her, "Mind if I touch it now?"
Pinkie tilted her head. "No problemo, my stumpy friend." She held out her missing leg, balancing precariously with her right legs and her left thigh.
Applejack sat up, noting how strange it was to sit without legs or stumps. She balanced herself on one forelimb and reached out the other.
Pinkie's skin was smoother than she expected, even on the scars. Tender, new skin. Applejack supposed it was all part of the artistry of The Eraser Club. "Weird," she said, and shivered. She put down her leg. "Well, Ah'm pretty much done here. Ah did what Ah came to do, and Ah'm jest about ready to put on mah legs an' head home."
"Ask me about the eye patch, Miz Orange, and I'll help you onto your hindcart!"
"Fine," said Applejack in the Manehattan accent she'd practiced every night for the past week. "Pray tell, oh dread pirate Pinkbeard, I simply must find out what happened to your eye."
Pinkie rolled off the edge of the bed nearest Applejack and stood on her remaining right legs. She leaned against the bed for support. "Arr. The miserable sea birds, they be roostin' in the rigging all day long. I made th'mistake'a lookin' up just as one'a'them scurvy sea-rats let loose with a big fat white one. Right in my eye she went."
Applejack grimaced. "So, your eye got infected and had to be removed?"
"Pinkbeard" shook her head. "Nay, matey. Ye see, t'was the first week I'd had me hind leg off!"
She made a quick forward-back motion with her left rear stump, and it took Applejack's imagination a moment to picture Pinkbeard scratching at her eye with a hind pegleg.
If the rooms of that hallway hadn't been well soundproofed with the best magics money could buy, the management would have had a dozen complaints about the raucous laughter that night.