The Tunes Are A-Changin'

by ShadeJak

Never Gets Easier

“What the FUCK?!” I demanded, feeling the horn that was growing from my forehead.

“Vinyl, please, I’m freaked out, too, alright?” Olivia pleaded, putting her hands on my shoulders.

Hold the phone, what did she say?

“…The hell did you just call me?” I asked, surprised and more then a little confused.

“I…” Olivia sat there, confused for a moment. “D-didn’t I call you what I usually do?”

“I swear you said “vinyl”,” I replied. What kind of name was that? Sounded like something a person trying too hard to be punk-style would call themselves at a rave. “Look, I may be a freelance deejay who plays for clubs and such but I haven’t been an active raver in a while, Livvy!”

Olivia shook her head. “That’s weird, it just seemed natural.”

“Great,” I muttered, falling back on the sofa. “We get freaky music-themed tramp-stamps, crazy hair, animal parts like some fuckin’ anime fetish, I grow a fuckin’ horn and now you’re callin’ me weird-ass names?!”

“You think I have an explanation for this?” Olivia asked, apparently deciding my justified panic and frustration was reason enough not to criticize my language.

“If you got any, Tavi, I’m happy to hear ‘em.” I said, facepalming.

A second later my eyes widened and I looked at Olivia, who looked more then a little shocked.

“You just called me “Tavi”…” she cocked her head in confusion. “We both had strange dreams, right? They seem somehow connected, right?”

I nodded.

“This happened to us at the same time, and we seem to be experiencing very similar symptoms.” Olivia explained. “Right down to calling eachother strange names.”

“Oh god… Your parents! They musta cursed us or something! You know how pissed they were!” I shouted.

“Cursed?! What?!” Olivia demanded. “My parents have been uptight, God-fearing British conservatives their entire lives, Vic. Even if voodoo or sodding witchcraft were real they’d be the last people who’d go near the stuff.”

“But what about the freaky dragon-thing from our dreams, Oc—Olivia?!” …the fuck was I about to call her?! “What about that? Someone summon that to do this to us?”

“I…” Olivia began, and suddenly she looked rather… drowsy. “Vic… I… don—” with that, her eyes closed and she slumped over on me, and soon after I could feel a light-headedness hit me as well, like I’d just been hit with the world’s worst caffine crash and it wasn’t long till I was out like a light as well…

~

A sudden light hit my face through the window, prompting me to shake my head and turn away. Rubbing my eyes and realizing my new blue ‘do had gotten longer then before, I grumbled a little and turned towards the small digital clock that sat on the nearby table.

“Noon already?!” I cried out, causing Livvy to stir as well next to me and I promptly remembered us both falling asleep on the couch last night… well, more like passed out, but still.

My eyes widened for a second when I realized my voice seemed different. I was barely a baritone but my voice sure as hell wasn’t as high or… girly… as that sounded.

“For God’s sake, Vinyl, go back to sleep!” Olivia muttered in protest as she threw her arm over her eyes when she turned towards the sunlight.

Wait, she just called me that name again… “Excuse me?” I asked, surprised by my voice again.

“I said—“ Livvy’s eyes snapped open and she turned to look over at me. “…What in the world is wrong with your voice?” she asked, raising an eyebrow in confusion.

I tried to clear my throat. “Dunno…” I tried clearing my throat a few more times, but my voice stayed the same, “Okay, seriously, I get a horn and my voice goes from a low tenor to… alto?! What the hell’s next?” I asked as I got up from the couch… and promptly fell over from the unfamiliar feeling that came when what should have been my feet touched the floor.

Turning, I saw Olivia staring at me, or more accurately where my feet were. Positioning myself as though I were doing the front half of a push-up, I turned and looked, and needless to say yesterday’s weird changes clearly had gone into some new and creative ways.

My feet were gone, replaced by white fucking HOOVES, with a soft-looking white fur growing up to about halfway to my knees. Clearly coming to the same conclusion I did, my girlfriend turned and looked at her own legs while I turned over and sat myself up.

Olivia’s stockings were torn below the knees, her feet having gone through a similar change though they were a slate-gray instead of the white I had.

“I just had to ask…” I muttered with an eyeroll. “What in the hell’s going on?!”

“You think I’m not wondering that myself?!” my girlfriend asked, getting off the couch and attempting to stand, albeit rather wobbly at first. “I’m getting online. It can’t be just us, I’m going to see if anything new has come up.”

“Good luck,” I replied, trying to stand up as well. “I’ll be right back.” With that, I awkwardly stumbled and staggered my way down the hall towards the bathroom to take care of some business.

The first thing I noticed came when I passed the mirror, causing me to freeze in place. My eyes looked a little larger, and my face was devoid of even so much as a five o’ clock shadow. My jaw, the curvature of my features looked very… feminine.

“Damn… if it weren’t for the ears and stuff I’d pass for a chick…” I muttered, feeling my smooth face before remembering why I came in here. Wobbling clumsily to the porcelain altar, I undid my belt and prepared to do my business.

~

“Vic?! What’s wrong?!” Olivia shouted from the other side of the door, making me realize I’d forgotten to lock it as she turned the knob and carefully entered, balancing on the door frame.

I didn’t move from where I sat. I just kept trying in vain to slow down my breathing as I stared down at my latest discovery that had prompted the loudest scream I think I’ve ever made in my life. “L…L-Livvy?” I stammered.

“What is it, Vin—... I mean, Vic… what’s wrong?” Olivia asked, slowly approaching.

“Livvy… I think we got something in common, now,” I mumbled, pointing between my legs. Normally Olivia was far too refined(read: prudish) to dedicate a lot of her attention to what I had below the belt, but apparently she decided to humor me long enough to see what I was talking about, and I gotta say, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her eyes get that wide before.

“Vic, how… what… WHERE?!” she stammered, reasonably astonished.

“Three questions I’d like to fuckin’ know!” I shouted indignantly, hurriedly pulling my cargo shorts back up. “Well, three outta four. The last one being how flexible you are with your preferences but somehow I doubt that one’s important right now…”

It was petty, no question about it, but at this point I was losing everything! My manhood, my humanity, no doubt my life in the long run if this freakish mutation kept going, Olivia… she was the one part of my life I couldn’t bear to lose over anything else.

Olivia stayed quiet for a moment, she was always the rational, logical one who tried to keep calm in any situation; it was a trait her parents practically programmed into her along with her more uptight tendencies. Finally, she spoke up. “Vic…?”

“Yeah, Tavi?” I asked, wincing when I realized I’d called her something else. “S-sorry… I… god, what’s happening to us?! Did you find anything online?”

“In the entire three minutes you were gone? No,” Olivia replied flatly. “Look, if you’re up to it, we can take a look.”

Sighing, I walked towards the mirror, trying to keep my balance and noticing my clothes were slightly more… limp-looking on me. Was I getting smaller? For a moment I felt a little captivated by what looked back at me. I really did look like an… unnervingly reasonably attractive young woman, now. A young, flat-chested woman with hooves, a tail, and animal ears, but still… no, this wasn’t something I planned to ever be in the fifty or so years I expected to still have left and it just left a bad aftertaste, animal-hybrid-thing or not.

“Vic? Are you alright…?” Olivia asked, before presumably realizing how silly the question was. “…enough to at least come with me?” she added.

“Yeah, sure.” I muttered, looking down at my legs again… weird, did the white fur just get… higher up or was I imagining it? A quick glance at Olivia’s legs told me she was experiencing the same thing.

~

“What in the world?” Olivia muttered a half hour later, staring at the odd posts when she ran a search. “People turning into… ponies? What sort of rubbish is this? Why ponies of all things?!”

“Retro-virus that turns people into animals?” I asked.

“Vic, that’s absurd… even for this. Something like that would require the re-awakening of dormant genes in the human body and regress us on an evolutionary level. We’d turn into several levels of primate long before anything remotely resembling a horse,” she explained matter-of-factly.

“Well aren’t you quite the geneticist,” I mused.

“Only because one of us didn’t sleep through their mandatory science classes in college,” she answered. “At any rate, let’s see what this one’s talking about…” she said, her hand a little clumsier then usual with the mouse.

“You alright?” I asked, noticing her odd delays in clicking and pointing the small tool.

“Yes, just… weird, my fingers feel kind of… numb for some reason,” she said, holding up her hand. “What in the blazes…?!” she said, and looking at her hand I could have sworn her fingers looked smaller then usual, and her nails seemed thicker as well. Fearing the same for myself I raised up my right hand, inhaling deeply when I saw I was experiencing the same thing.

“So this is what’s happening to us?!” I asked. “We’re gonna lose our hands, too?”

“I think… I think so…” she replied, clicking on a link that led to images from that silly girls’ show.

“No, no way, those are TV characters!” I said. “They’re made up! These people are just crazy fanboys obsessing over a show for girls!”

“Look at the bloody evidence, Vic! I know denial’s kicking in for you, you think I want to believe this either but even I can’t deny this anymore because it goes beyond anything logical! Strange tattoos, hair changing color and length, hooves, ears, horns, tails… other things…” she gestured just below my belt.

I looked down, brushing back my wild blue hair… or was it a mane, now? It seemed to be running down my neck as well, now. I couldn’t live in denial about this, ironically one would have expected Livvy would be the one having a harder time believing it but what I discovered went missing this morning had been… well… the big cherry. As Sherlock Holmes once said about the logical and the illogical…

“Hey, maybe we can, I dunno, get an idea of what we’re gonna look like when this is over,” I muttered. If I was going to get through this, and try to keep myself as rational-minded as possible to be the strong one for Olivia… I wanted to slap myself, I’d been so pathetic back there, arguing and denying what was right in front of me, grieving over my loss… as grievous as it was… “The tattoo things, what did they call them when we looked this up yesterday?”

“Cutie marks,” Olivia answered. God, that word sounded ridiculous just thinking about it. Seriously, who names it that?!

“Right, those things. If ponies from that show all have them, maybe they got a collection of them, we can find a match to whatever pony has it, they seem to think they’re turning into characters who were in that show.”

Olivia complied and did a search, and we found a… cutie mark… motherload. Scrolling through them, we finally found a purple treble clef one and clicked on it. The image had the caption “Octavia Melody’s cutie mark” written underneath. Curious, we gave it a click and we were treated to an image of a gray mare with a flowing black mane, somehow managing to play a cello with her hoof.

“How is she even holding that thing?” Olivia asked.

“Ya know, it’s kinda weird, it says she’s a cellist from some upper-class orchestra in a place called Canterlot,” I said, reading the description and grimacing at the ridiculous pun in the city name. “Sound familiar?”

“No, Vic, it…” Livvy’s eyes widened in realization.

“You grew up in a family of high-and-mighty rich people, and you’ve been into that boring classical music your whole life… no offense… and hell, you play the cello!”

“Well then…” Olivia muttered, running her hand through her long, raven mane. “If it’s not some coincidence, what does it all mean? The show came out back in 2010, I’ve had an interest in performing classical music a great deal longer,” she went back to the cutie marks gallery and began scrolling again. “Why don’t we see which one yours connects to…”

“Whoa…” my eyes widened when the blue-maned mare in sunglasses came onscreen. “Wait, I recognize her! She was in that episode I flipped through!”

“Says here she’s a deejay who likes that same horrid noise your customers ask you to make,” Olivia answered. “Well, I wouldn’t happen to know anyone like that,” she said, looking at me.

“Okay, yeah. I… jeez…” I stared at the pony on the screen. “That couldn’t have been what I’m gonna look like… is it?” Forget having a job or even a life, then. Me and Livvy… we’d never be able to leave the house anymore. We’d get grabbed by animal control or something!

“Crap! We gotta stock up on food and stuff!” I said.

“And go out like this? Don’t you think someone will notice?” Olivia asked.

“I got a trench somewhere,” I offered.

“In the final month of spring you’re going to wear something suited for cold, rainy days?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “We have plenty of food to last us through the week… but, then again if we look like those horridly cutesy cartoon horses by then it probably will be a great deal harder to pull off buying more… but if our diets are changing…”

Right… I remembered last night, the meat, as meager portion as they were didn’t appeal as much to me when I was eating it last night, and I couldn’t get enough salad. Right, I knew my animals enough to know horses were herbivores. “Well, horses can eat oats and grains so rice and pasta-related products will probably work. Salad stuff, too, and plenty of sweet snacks!” I suggested, getting a look from my girlfriend on the last one.

Within the next half hour Olivia and I had a grocery list and had gotten into the car looking like we came out of a B-spy flick and were on our way to the nearest convenience store. Needless to say, I felt ridiculous, and this hat was doing a lousy job hiding my new horn without it looking like it was placed too far over.

By the time we’d reached the store (and I can also address that car seats were not meant to handle tails like this), a quick glance in the rear-view mirror made me notice the changes had gotten worse. My teeth were all flat, and my eyes looked larger and more… angled, approaching anime girl territory. Great, I really was going to turn into a bug-eyed horse-thing after all. Shoes had been out of the question and the back where my heel had once been had gone farther up, along with the fur growing along them. Olivia had done her best to hide her anxiety but I could see it clear as day. By now we looked like some kind of satyrs, hopefully if we kept our coats closed it’d be less obvious, considering along the way we seemed to have lost a few inches on our original heights as well.

“Okay, we do this fast and quick, all right?” Olivia asked. “I already feel ridiculous like this.”

“Sure, sure.” I said, trying to take the lead and wobbling a lot more then before. As we got through the sliding doors it was no surprise we were met with a few stares. Almost everyone there looked ready for the summer and here we were looking ridiculously conspicuous in trenchcoats and the first hats we found in our closets; which was a beret for Olivia and a fedora for me.

“Don’t mind us. We’re doing a… cos-play thing, there’s a shoot going on nearby, we’re… on food duty.” I attempted, and either they bought it or just didn’t want to be near the two weirdos that had just entered. As we reached the produce section I felt a smack on my shoulder.

“Keep it under control,” Olivia ordered, and I realized my tail had been flicking about, prompting me to make the no doubt stupid-looking action of pressing my ass against the side of the display in some poorly-conceived attempt to make it stop. A small child stared at us for a moment and I responded with a wave while Olivia found a few choice selections and placed them in the cart, including more apples then I’d ever seen her want.

“Tavi? What’re you doing?” I asked.

“Oh… huh…” my girlfriend replied, noticing her selections before glancing at me. “Did you just call me…?”

Tavi? Wait, did I? Tavi… Octavia? Like that pony’s name? But how did I get that nickname? Usually nicknames didn’t happen till you got used to the full name enough to improvise one, or if the person made it clear when introducing themselves that they preferred a nickname they’d gone by. “Sorry. Look, we should probably hurry like you said.”

“Right. Drinks are next.”

After plenty of stares and people keeping their distance from us, we were soon on our way back to the car again. As I looked over at Olivia I envied my girlfriend for getting to lean on a grocery cart while I still had to wobble and stumble on my own, but then again, I’d hardly be the gentleman if I didn’t let her… even if I was in literal terms no longer one but figuratively it was something I could hold on to. As we started loading the trunk I couldn’t help but feel a little thirsty. Grabbing the six-pack from the cart I carried it towards the front so we could enjoy one on the way home, having settled for the more expensive bottles at the realization neither of us would have fingers to open cans eventually. When Olivia closed the lid and made her way to the passenger side, I tore one bottle loose and opened the top to take a sip.

“HEY! YOU!” a male voice suddenly shouted, causing me to turn, seeing a rather lean-looking man approaching us.

“Ex-CUSE me?” I asked, put off by his rather harsh tone.

“How about some ID for those drinks?” he demanded, pulling something from his neck. Great, one of those undercover cops who look for people buying alcohol.

“Dude, believe me, I’ve gone through a lot of changes lately so I haven’t updated it yet, but look, this isn’t—”

“SHUT UP,” the policeman snapped, cutting me off sharply as two more people began to approach. “I’d be crazy to let people dressed like you go anywhere without some ID.”

“This ISN’T beer, pal!” I snapped back, about to reach into the car to show him the bottle but he promptly yelled at me again.

“GET AWAY FROM THAT CAR!” he shouted, and I suddenly heard a click that made me a great deal more afraid. “Turn around SLOW and take that hat and coat off NOW!”

Seriously, cops these days like their jobs a little too much… I thought to myself, Olivia now looking noticeably scared, too.

“You! In there! Step out right now!” the second cop ordered, Olivia held her hands up and nodded nervously, opening the door and coming out.

Slowly, I took off my hat and shed my coat off, causing all three of our county’s finest to shuffle back a little in shock.

“What kinda freaks are you people?!” the third one asked, getting a look of annoyance from the first one.

“Look, there’s been a huge misunder—” I attempted.

“Did I SAY you could talk, Miss?” the first one asked.

“Officer, we didn’t do anything wrong, we just, we’re going to a dress-up event, we were getting drinks and, if you’d just LOOK, they’re not—”

“Shut UP and get ON THE GROUND!” the first one demanded. “I’ll decide what’s going on here, but you’re both already being placed under arrest for resisting, refusal to show ID, and suspicious activity.”

“EXCUSE ME?!” I shouted indignantly, the second one responding to my outburst by swatting me in the back with a baton.

“VINYL!” Olivia shouted, the first one immediately rushing over and shoving her violently to the ground, causing her to cry out.

If this went on my record, I didn’t care. If I still got caught and faced jailtime for this, I didn’t care. No one, no one treated Olivia like that, badge or no badge as an excuse to do so. “That’s my girlfriend you piece of shit!” I yelled, about to lay whatever hurt I could on him but what happened next surprised… well… everyone I suspect.

The first officer was suddenly hit by a bolt of light-blue energy that seemed to fly out from just above my head, and it sent him rocketing across the parking lot a good thirty feet away, making him drop his gun in the process as he tumbled a few good feet after. Olivia stared at me, her eyes and mouth equally wide in shock as I rushed over and helped her up, turning and glaring at the other two undercover cops as I reached into the car, throwing the bottle at their feet. “There!” I shouted lividly as I pushed Olivia into the car and got in while they just stared at me in disbelief. Honestly, I had no idea what had happened either, but I wanted to get as far away from these people before the shock wore off from them or the guy that was now all the way across the parking lot got back up and armed himself again. Flooring the pedal we sped off before either of them hopefully got a chance to see the plate.

~

“What… in the world… was that?!” Olivia asked, finally regaining her breath as we pulled into our parking lot and got to our apartment door. Our efforts to carry our things had become clumsy to say the least. Our hooves and legs had changed even more on the trip back, and the numbness in our hands had gotten worse to the point it was becoming a challenge to even hold the bags anymore.

“I don’t know!” I said. “I just remembered being really ticked off when that douchebag cop manhandled you like that and just… zap!”

“Well, I remembered when we looked at that pony… Vinyl Scratch… she was a unicorn. Unicorns have magic, maybe you have it now, too?” she asked.

“Magic? Cool!” I said, before noticing her glare. “Well, on that, not on… everything else…” I muttered, looking down at myself. Great, my clothes were even more baggy on me then before, and Olivia clearly wasn’t any better off when I looked at her.

“And then there’s another matter, Vinyl…” she said, opening the door as we carefully went inside.

“Yeah, what?” I asked. “That it just occurred to both of us that not having hands is gonna make cooking harder?”

Olivia facepalmed. “No…” she said. “The part where you assaulted a policeman and we fled the scene!”

“Hey, that asshole was hurting you, and those guys are clearly not cut out for their job if they’re gonna use the Gestapo approach for it!” I protested.

“Does it matter?! They’ll be looking for us!” she replied.

“Well, I don’t think they saw our plate in time, Tavi, and what’re they gonna say? That they saw two half-horse-things one used the Force to throw one of their guys across the parking lot because they decided beating us up over a misunderstanding on their part was a-okay?” I asked. “If I hadn’t stopped ‘em, we’d be going to the hospital before jail!”

Olivia sighed and stared at me. “I am… thankful you stopped him… but this could still cause us trouble.”

“Let ‘em do a search, we don’t look much at all like anyone who exists anymore,” I muttered, staring at my hands and seeing how my fingers looked more nubby, now.

“Even then, our choices on what to do next are rather limited, especially if we end up looking like those characters we saw online,” Olivia replied. “As for the cooking problem, we may want to make dinner while we still can…”

~

Two hours had gone by, and both of us had been on edge, with me occasionally stealing glances out the window in case any police cars appeared but thankfully we didn’t see a single one. Dinner had been rice and salad, a pretty bland choice but clearly my tastes were changing as I found them incredibly satisfying, now. Not all had been good news, though. They were still looking for the ones behind the explosion in Washington, and the changes… god, they were getting way worse, way quicker! I looked over at my girlfriend as she sat there on the couch, downcast and ignoring the news on the TV. Much like me, she now looked less and less human. Her eyes were larger, now, her face had become more muzzle-like, her chest completely flat now and her fingers were now fusing together like mine were. She kept herself facing away from me, I know she didn’t want me to see her that way.

What was gonna happen to us? Whenever this finished… would we ever change back? Was there a way to? It felt like we were just… waiting to die or something! I grit my teeth, not wanting to tear up, I never wanted to tear up especially around her but with this new body and new hormones I had already been a little more emotional then before; my lash out on that cop and my complaints earlier had proven that.

“Hey, Tavi?” I asked.

“Yes, Vinyl?” my girlfriend replied. It was weird, the names we’d known our whole lives were feeling less and less natural, now. I didn’t even wince at being called Vinyl anymore, and she reacted to what I’d called her like she’d been called it her whole life.

“Do… do you… still love me?” I asked, nervously.

“Of course I do! How could you ask me that?!” she demanded, turning indignantly.

“Even if… even if we’re both chicks, now?”

Livvy went silent for a moment, as if the thought was suddenly occurring to her. “I… I hadn’t thought of that… I can still say I love you and mean every word, though,” she insisted. “You’re noisy, crude, messy, and…” her expression softened. “…the kindest, most loving person I’ve ever met. You were willing to get to know me even though I didn’t seem at all like the kind of girl you’d go for… you didn’t treat me like another spoiled rich girl, and… Vin—… Vic I can’t have you see me this way!”

“Hello, earth to Livvy?” I asked. “I got a sex change thrown into my mix! And hey, human or horse-thing, you’re still the prim, prudish, oh-so-refined… but still sweet and caring woman I fell head over heels for, right?” I asked.

“That’s the thing, we’re barely remembering to use eachother’s names, now. What else can change with that?” she asked.

“These characters, it looks like we’re a lot like them already, even the part about when you’d barge in on me when I’m mixing and complain about it being noise,” I replied.

“It IS noise, Vinyl!” Tavi replied indignantly.

“You call that classical stuff music? Try sleeping aid!” I shot back.

“Never seemed to bother you when you came to the concerts,’ she answered smugly.

“You said you’d come to that college rave with me and then backed out because you supposedly got sick.”

“Considering the police broke it up and arrested half the people there, I’d say it was fortunate of me.”

A long pause went between us, and surprisingly… we both started laughing.

“It’s been quite a ride, hasn’t it?” I asked, managing a smile from our gallows humor moment.

“Yes… I suppose it has…” my girlfriend replied, sadness and uncertainty in her tone, neither of which I could blame. There really was no telling what was going to happen next…

As if to answer that, however, a sudden, disembodied laughter caught both our attention, and looking at the TV, I saw that freakish chimera-dragon-thing there, grinning at us.

Immediately my body felt numb all over, the fur that had covered nearly my entire body now rapidly spread to my hands and up my neck, the same clearly happening to Olivia as she shed off her blouse, her fingers now fusing together completely and her nails growing ever-thicker and covering where they’d been. I felt the numbness extend to my face and could see where my nose had been had begun to expand and push out, Olivia struggled, and I could see her shrinking! My clothes felt looser and looser as I tried to frantically take my shirt off before I was swimming in it, and as I reached for my girlfriend, I could see her changing face grow more dizzy-looking and blackness began to overwhelm me as well and a second later, everything faded from me.

Author's Note:

Phew! Another chapter done! Onto the FUN day, the fourth one!

Comments

[Assassin of Equestria]

4649699 Neither did I

[CitrusWishes]

OMGOMOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So goood!!!!!!

[db1894]

What the hell was that? Are you writing some alternate reality where the USA fascist!? Thise weren't cops they were frickin SS mooks!