• Published 27th Jan 2015
  • 4,459 Views, 832 Comments

Bloom Filter - ferret



When the most unexpected fate befalls Apple Bloom, she thinks her life is over, but what she has found is something far greater than herself, an ancient secret that will shake the world in days to come.

  • ...
24
 832
 4,459

PreviousChapters Next
Announcements

Twilight and the CMC were just finishing up negotiations. Having worked out their differences, and a sort of arrangement, the three ponies and a girl descended to the ground floor. Twilight came down behind them, stopping short as they stopped short, as they came upon a surreally picturesque scene.

Cheerilee could be seen sitting peacefully on her belly, a pony in the living room. Just a little (for planet Earth) deep magenta hued pony, with bright pink hair, seated there with her hooves tucked against her like they belonged there. Flanking Cheerilee were a half dozen little fillies, and one colt, some trying to get her attention and vying to talk to her animatedly, others just laying against her and looking at her curiously. Everypony was clustering close around her, like the librarian were an anchor in the storm.

Twilight looked at the scene with a fondness in her chest, but also an aching worry. There was something important about this, that Twilight was missing. She just knew there was. It was an obvious reaction among a bunch of foals, lost and scared because of their transformation. Why would a librarian be the first pony who wasn’t transforming into a foal? And what did this situation remind her of?

Without answers, it was a moot point, and Sweetie Belle went right forward to join Cheerilee, speaking to the other foals, and continuing to try and reassure them about the situation. Apple Bloom only hesitated a moment, before trotting after.

Twilight should have told them everything she knew about everything right then and there, but... it couldn’t hurt to get a quick presentation together, right? Plus, she wanted to cross bases with Sunset, before committing to anything. Plus, she really didn’t want to disrupt such an adorable scene. So Twilight Sparkle just silently excused herself, and made her way to put her boots on again.

With everyone quite engaged in Cheerilee’s new transformation, not many were paying much attention to the quiet, mousy purple girl in the corner. As Twilight headed out, only one other girl known as Applejack stared after her suspiciously. But Twilight herself didn’t even notice, just heading blithely out the door to prepare for more lectures.

On her way out, Twilight spotted a pony... two ponies in fact, one being Scootaloo, and the other was a rather befuddled looking filly with shocking green hair and a bright red coat of fur. Quite bold colors for a pony, or a human for that matter, the filly wasn’t walking, but was being carried in the arms of a pale green police officer with even paler blue hair. Scootaloo was trotting alongside the pair, assuring the filly that everything’s going to be okay now, but Twilight wondered.

Yet another filly, it was making Twilight wonder if this transformation somehow was sexist. The gender ratio wasn’t that skewed, even in ponies. One colt, and one adult, both on the same day, as if to mock Twilight’s attempts to find any underlying pattern in all this. Would there be more colts? Twilight knew many of the counterparts to humans in this world were stallions, or colts, so it had to happen eventually, right? Would there be more adults than just Cheerilee?

There was a new pony showing up every other day now. As Sunset had calculated, the rate was accelerating, and there’s only one class of function that applies, when the rate is proportional to the acceleration. The exponential. With a lot of thoughts on her mind, Twilight returned to the trailer that she and Sunset had “borrowed” for their equipment and boarding, to once again try to make sense of things.

Meanwhile back in the farm house, Cheerilee was a pony, sitting there on a hardwood floor in a beautiful farm house, surrounded by other littler ponies. The others seemed to find some strange comfort in her physical presence. Not so strange, when she took some time to think about it. Cheerilee was an adult pony, and they were all foals, simple as that. Cheerilee felt unusually calm; she felt she should have been more terrified of her transformation than she was, but had one big advantage:

Cheerilee had seen it happen before, in Scootaloo, and her friends. She had at least run across this transformation, and had some familiarity with the idea. She knew what was going on when she transformed. But these other ponies, they could have been caught completely off guard, and had no idea what was happening to them. They were just a bunch of frightened children, who had their whole world taken out from under them without warning. A bunch of frightened foals who, of course, gravitated toward the one adult in their life.

Cheerilee didn’t feel like she was ready for that kind of responsibility, but what else could she do?

In particular, she could look up pleadingly at the orange teen approaching her, who had been so helpful in all this, both in word and deed.

“You bein’ like this answers a lotta questions,” Applejack told Cheerilee as she approached, glancing unhappily at the door Twilight walked out of, before turning back to regard the librarian, “But it sure asks a whole lot more questions than it answers. Twilight, she... well ah mean—I didn’t wanna say nothin’, but... that pony lady, the one who knows all about us as ponies from another world...”

Applejack folded her arms, glowering darkly at the wall separating her from Twilight Sparkle, saying, “Ah’m startin’ to think she ain’t been givin’ us the whole story.”

They remained silent for a moment, before Cheerilee collected her wits enough to utter in astonishment, “Dishu shay another worl’?!”

“Good grief lady!” Apple Bloom piped up at her side, “You really been outta the loop!”

Applejack glanced down at Apple Bloom, laying up against the uncoordinated little pony, that Cheerilee found herself being, and looked back to Cheerilee. With a look of tired resignation, Applejack said, “Ah can tell you the basic idea, though only Sunset Shimmer and Twilight Sparkle have all the details about their trip. But from what I hear, it all started in the magical land of Equestria...”


Cheerilee just wanted things to be simple again! She just wanted to have her daughter and her job to deal with, and none of these crazy... other things to worry about. Being a pony, she could handle. Being the temporary surrogate mother to a bunch of frightened foals, fine. But another world? There was another Cheerilee just like her, except this one had always been a pony? There were portals to other universes? She’d had to come to terms with at least some sort of unexplainable phenomenon with how Scootaloo started flying of all things, but that was a lot less obviously... magical than magic mirrors and fantasy kingdoms populated entirely by ponies.

Cheerilee wished she didn’t have to know about this. Her whole life, everything that she remembered up until the beginning of this school year was... gone? It had all happened untold ages past, and she’d just been dealing with her daughter and her job exactly the same way, year after year, in a time loop? She just... felt so ephemeral, and old, as if yesterday was a million years ago. It certainly seemed like it was the case.

Scootaloo and her friends had managed to separate the other foals from Cheerilee, enough to give the poor librarian-gone-pony some space. She smiled at them all accomodatingly, trying to keep herself together, but it was just so overwhelming. Cheerilee wasn’t ready for crazy adventures like this! She... could understand why everyone had kept her out of the loop all this time.

Sighing and lifting her head up, Cheerilee managed a standing position again. If you called standing on your arms, standing. She lifted one hoof after another, and just as Scootaloo had expressed, Cheerilee had a hard time thinking of her front ones as two arms. They were already starting to feel more like two of four legs.

But unlike Scootaloo, Cheerilee had nothing to replace her hands with. She felt... simplified by that. When it came time to reach out and grab something, Cheerilee would just have to stand there, being a pony. Or use her mouth, perhaps. That seemed to work for the others. But it still felt worrying, that she didn’t have any... way to grasp anything, anymore.

“You doing alright, mom?” Scootaloo asked, drawing Cheerilee’s ear that way, before drawing her eyes. Cheerilee turned and looked at her daughter, feeling so dull and just wiped out, there beside a little filly, her young winged daughter who in her brazen confidence seemed somehow larger than life.

“Jus’ a little s–uh—” Cheerilee closed her eyes and dipped her head again. “Shcared...” she admitted with frustration in her chest. “I jush dunnho howtha take hall thish.”

“I dunno either,” Scootaloo said shaking her little pony head, which wasn’t so little now that Cheerilee was downsized at least closer to Scootaloo’s level. “But I um, just wanted to, uh...” Scootaloo prevaricated, lifting a hoof and scraping it on the wood of the floorboards with such an adorable insecurity it was a crime not to hug her. Cheerilee was a hardened criminal in that respect though, and gave her daughter her personal space for now, gently prompting Scootaloo,

“Shpill it.”

“I just—!” Scootaloo looked up at Cheerilee with a pleading expression on her face. “I just wanted you to know that it’s okay if you’re not a pegasus,” Scootaloo said, sidling up to Cheerilee. “I don’t care if you’re just a regular pony, and if we’re not really related. You’re still my mom, and you’re always gonna be. A-and I’m sorry I got upset that you didn’t have um, wings.”

Closing her eyes, Scootaloo just slightly nuzzled Cheerilee’s elbow. Which was taking the place of her shoulders nowadays, it seemed. Scootaloo pulled back, and was gonna trot away and be all embarassed over nothing, so Cheerilee gave her something to be embarassed about, saying, “C’mere, giddo,” and pulling Scootaloo into a hug. It was hard to figure out how to rear up on two legs, but by sliding her side to the ground, it gave Cheerilee the freedom to stretch out her forelegs, and pull her bewinged daughter against her.

Scootaloo didn’t protest too much, and Cheerilee really needed to have someone with her right now.

Until today, it seemed so silly and... trivial, frankly! Turning into a pony. Until today, all Cheerilee had to think of was how her Scootaloo had blossomed for lack of a better word into her new role. Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom, and now the adorable Noi who was so astonished at her own adorability. They were themselves, and they were ponies, and that was that. There were no world shaking dilemmas to worry about, and no catastrophes shattering the deeply held tenents that we all rely on, such the assumption that what we remember happening a year ago, happened a year ago. Just something very strange that happened to three girls, and how to deal with it.

But it came out of Applejack’s own mouth, like it was the honest truth. Cheerilee had the impression that poor Applejack could be fooled at times, but for her to speak with such conviction, it would take more than a simple ruse to convince the level headed girl of something so outlandish. Magical kingdoms across mystical portals. Time turning in on itself, the lot of them repeating year after year without awareness of doing so. Even the impossible seemed perfectly sensible, given the astonishing impossibility of what Cheerilee saw here and now. Every time she craned her neck around at an unimaginable angle, to look with disbelief down at the dusky cerise animal who was laying there in her stead, Cheerilee found herself less able to deny Applejack’s tale, and more worried about what it might mean for all of them.


It was a full two days before Apple Bloom remembered about the dog, to her great embarassment. How do you forget a talking dog? Suddenly finding out that you were a little kid sure seemed to do the trick! Apple Bloom had just been chasing Scootaloo outside, when she saw in the window of the pony girls’ trailer, a medium sized purple dog glaring at her accusingly.

“Oh magawsh!” the pink bowed filly skidded to a halt, and ran wide eyed up to the trailer, rearing up to peer at the dog staring at her from the window. She started to say, “Ah dunno if y’can hear me, but—” and the dog opened the window. Of course the dog opened the window.

“Apple Bloom, what gives?” he growled, very clearly irritated. “You promised you would talk to her! I’ve been stuck in here ever since we brought this stupid trailer to your farm!”

“Ah’m so sorry, uh... puppy... dog...” Apple Bloom tried to apologize, trailing off into vagueness as she had no idea how you were supposed to address a talking dog.

“Spike,” he sighed. “My name is Spike.”

“Oh, because of the collar, right!” Apple Bloom said, giving it an appreciative glance.

“No, because of the magic spike that hatched me,” Spike said, rolling his eyes grumpily. “Now, how about telling all your little pony friends that I’m not gonna bite them, so I can get out of this thing. I’m going stir crazy, I tell you!”

“Apple Bloom, who are you talking to?” came Scootaloo’s voice as she trotted up to the trailer. “Why did you—is that a dog?

“No, it’s a fire breathing dragon,” Apple Bloom said ironically. “Of course it’s a dog!”

“Is he... tame?” Scootaloo said a little nervously.

“Ah dunno,” Apple Bloom said, turning up to the dog saying, “Mister Spike, are you tame?”

“It’s just Spike,” he replied, “And yes I am perfectly tame.”

“Oh ha ha, Ap—” Scootaloo started, then her eyes bugged out as she stared at Spike, saying, “We really can communicate with animals?”

“No, whu...” Apple Bloom put a hoof to her forehead, saying, “Spike is a magic talking dog. Even humans can talk with him.”

She faltered, glancing up at Spike and saying, “Even humans can talk with you, right?”

“Yeah, right,” Spike said with a sigh. “Twilight thinks it’s because I have an Equestrian mind... wave thingy. Other dogs can’t talk, and I sure haven’t met any other dragons.”

“That is so awesome!” Scootaloo said with big, limpid eyes, rearing up to look closer. “Can all dogs from Equestria talk?”

“I’m not—” Spike started, just as the other pony they were playing with, by name of Peachy Pie ran up, shouting,

“Hey where did you girls—Is that a dog?!”

“Ah’m gonna talk to Twilight right now,” Apple Bloom said to her in answer, “This ain’t something ah wanna tell absolutely everyone one at a time.”

“O...kay,” Peachy said looking with unease as the red and yellow filly went trotting off in search of the purple princess. She reared up onto the side of the trailer, holding out a hoof cautiously and saying, “Nice doggy, good doggy. You sure are a cutie, huh sweetie puppy? Are you a good doggie? Who’s a good puppy? Who’s a doopie shoopie wooby poo?”

Spike closed the window.


Apple Bloom found Twilight doing some measuring thing with her chart in the main living room. She gallopped into the house, and paused, scooting back outside to scuff off her hooves on the mat. Then she charged into the house and ran up to the purple girl, shouting assertively,

“When were you gonna tell us about the talking dog!”

“Talking?” Twilight said, turning an oddly pale shade of lilac. “Oh, no no, Spike’s just a normal, everyday, average—”

“Everyone already knows he’s a talking dog,” Apple Bloom said, somewhere between sullen and smug. “Ah heard him talking and so did a bunch of other people. Why cain’t you let him outta your trailer, if he’s a talking dog, who ain’t gonna bite no pony?” Apple Bloom neglected to mention that “a bunch” was one, maybe two other people, but she figured she owed it to the dog to ham it up a bit.

“I um... it doesn’t bother you?” Twilight said, all big eyed and mystified.

“Of course it doesn’t—you know what bothers me?” Apple Bloom said angrily, “Is you locking something like that up, so you can keep it a secret! And not telling me mah true age, and not telling all sorts of stuff. Why do ya keep doing this? Aren’t we your friends?”

Apple Bloom looked down at her hoof at that, and corrected herself slightly saying, “Ah mean—aren’t we people who got the right to know what’s going on in our lives?”

“I just...” Twilight sighed, putting down her presentation thingy she was working on, facing Apple Bloom levelly and pleading, “Haven’t you had enough disruption already? I didn’t want to throw another wrench in, just as you’d managed to achieve a good, orderly routine again. What does Spike have to do with your lives, anyway?”

“He... he doesn’t?” Apple Bloom said, bow drooping unconfidently. “But ah mean, he’s all cooped up in there. It ain’t us,” she realized, perking again, “It’s him! It ain’t fair to him to be stuck in that little trailer. It ain’t right to do that to an animal, even a talking one who used to be a dragon!”

“He’s not an animal, he’s a...” Twilight frowned looking supremely conflicted. “He usually has the whole run of the... it’s just a temporary... oh Celestia, I’m doing it again.”

Apple Bloom blinked, not sure she wanted to know the answer when she asked, “...doing what?”

“Being a clueless, teenage girl,” Twilight said unappreciatively, “Who can’t even remember to care for her friends because she’s busy freaking out about her own hormones!”

“Uh, okay, that’s... not good?” Apple Bloom offered uneasily.

“It’s fine, Apple Bloom,” Twilight sighed. “I just let it get ahead of me again. Believe it or not I was something of a jackass in college. Poor Spike, he didn’t know what to do with me, and I was too busy to notice him, busy with studying, with hiding from myself with... with being busy! Well, I since learned to treat other ponies with respect and consideration... and I suppose I shouldn’t blame hormones for it, but I do still have my moments... at times.”

At times? Apple Bloom wanted to say, so sarcastically.

“But you’re right, and I will incorporate his um... personhood into my presentation,” Twilight said accedingly, picking up her papers and sorting through them again. “So please, just give me a chance. I might not get it right every time, but I will find a way to do the right thing.”

Apple Bloom nodded. Then she leaned forward, looking at what Twilight was busily scribbling out and rewriting on them. “So when are you—” Apple Bloom started to say, but Twilight interrupted quickly, saying,

“Not now please. I have to completely redo this thing to account for my obligation to Spike.”

Apple Bloom figured she made some progress with Twilight, but she just wasn’t feeling that she did. She sighed in tense frustration, and just trotted off then, leaving the purple girl to do her... thing. Twilight’d come through with her promise, wouldn’t she? But would she do it in a way that nobody was happy with?


“Okay, attention everypony!” Twilight Sparkle announced, standing before a lecture hall that was the Apple Family living room. Rarity and Applejack were in the other room, and Big Macintosh was out in the cow barn. Twilight’s lecture hall seating was merely a single, beat up, old, comfy couch, and her audience were all young foals, save the one somewhat shell shocked librarian who was stuck up on the couch, as she was currently being used as the perch for several of the foals. But that was all fine, since Twilight was ready for them. She turned to the first page of a flippable pad of poster paper she had on an easil to present with.

“I mean, everybody,” Twilight corrected herself deliberately. Again. “The first matter has been brought to my attention by Apple Bloom, and I’m terribly sorry if I alarm anypony in saying this, but my most trusted assistant, and one of my best friends, is a dog right now. Spike came through the portal trying to save me, and ended up getting caught himself, but for whatever reason that I became a human, the same rules didn’t apply to dragons, it seemed. Now, he may be scary, and your lives have seen a lot of turmoil recently, but I promise you he would never do anything to hurt any one of you. That being said, does anybody, or, any pony have any objections to this dog roaming free around the farm, rather than having to be confined to my trailer?”

“Yeah ah have a question!” one crotchety sounding Granny Smith spoke up from across the counter in the kitchen, staring bullets at the purple girl. “How are you so sure your dog is so well behaved? You talk pretty now, but then someone’s gonna spook him, and we’re gonna have a pony with dog bites! Dogs cain’t adjust easy to new routines, don’t ya know? How are we supposed to know if he’s gettin’ antsy?”

“Well, you could try asking me,” came Spike’s whiny voice from over by the front door. Sunset Shimmer was standing there, waving to the crowd with a not very pleased smile on her face, holding a loose leash going to the collar of a small to medium sized purple and green hound of some sort, who Apple Bloom knew as Spike.

“Because I’m not really a dog!” the dog named Spike declared confidently, puffing up his chest, saying, “I’m actually a fire breathing dragon!”

As an afterthought, he added, “And that means I’ll tell you, not bite you, if I need something. I don’t bite humans, and I don’t bite ponies.”

“Iszha’ a thalking dhog?!” somepony screeched, in a high voice.

“Oh my gosh!” Twilight loudly declared, as planned, pointing at the white filly who’d reared up in surprised alarm. “Is that a talking pony?!”

The pony, Cotton Cloudy actually, sank to her haunches rather than clopping down on all fours, looking at Twilight apologetically. Before the filly could say anything, Twilight went on saying,

“Yes, Spike was my assistant in the other world. That means he is not a normal dog by any measure. I know it’s alarming, and strange, but please don’t freak out, panic, or stampede, because I assure you he is nothing less than a kind, capable gentledrake...gentledog. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to accept that Spike is who he is, because I can’t keep him locked up in my trailer just for your benefit.”

“Are you kidding?” Noi spoke up, looking at Spike with big eyes. “That’s amazing! You can really talk?!”

“Yes he—” Twilight started to say, but everyone was looking at Spike now.

“Well, I try not to brag,” Spike said somewhat smugly to the tan filly, putting a paw on his chest.

“She iz fhrom anozher worl’!” one of the new ponies said, struggling to her hooves and staring unabashedly at the odd little dog who was starting to look nervous now.

“Whas’zhe ovver worl’ hlike?” a pink filly asked, toddling over in Spike’s direction.

“Um, bigger,” Spike said thoughtfully, “It has a lot of tall mountains, and deep valleys. And beautiful cities. I grew up in Canterlot, if I do say so myself.”

“Wow,” a number of others were saying, now making their way towards Spike to peer at him with interest, their poorly pronounced questions sounding like one uniform, awestruck babble. Spike tried to back out the door, but he was surrounded, not just by ponies but by humans too. Cloudy’s mom was outright starry eyed, and Piña’s daughter was on one knee, looking at the dog in disbelief. Only Applejack remained unfazed by the revelation, though Rarity merely looked a bit discomfited by the presence of such a strange creature as a talking dog.

From her completely ignored position across the room, Twilight gave Sunset a pleading look, but all Sunset could do is hold his leash, smile sympathetically, and shrug at her. It seemed Twilight was no longer the center of attention. But once the audience had been satisfied with greeting Spike, Twilight found a solution to that. Spike found himself sitting at attention beside Twilight’s presentation, not because he hadn’t heard it all before, but because he was surrounded by a small herd of fascinated and very young ponies, who actually had to listen to what Twilight had to say.

“I know I presented on this subject earlier,” Twilight said, giving a look at a relieved pony Cheerilee resting by herself for once, over there beside the couch. “But in light of Ms. Cheerilee’s transformation, I think I might have some more to say. I’d like to apologize; I haven’t been giving you the whole story, and while I haven’t been trying to deceive any of you, there are some important things I may have neglected to bring up, such as how you have all thus far been transforming into ...foals.

“Foal is a term for a young pony, a child really,” Twilight continued, raising the pointer to her diagram of an adult pony next to a foal. “Foals may vary in age from about 5 to 20 years of age. You are all in a completely normal stage in any pony’s natural life. There is nothing wrong with you, and it’s not at all unusual that you might be so small, or... well, feel younger is the best I could describe it. I’m not here to talk about what you already have experienced though. I’m here to talk about what it means for you all.”

“Until Cheerilee here, I had strong suspicions that you were all transforming into foals,” Twilight said with a frown, flipping to the next page, that had pictures of several of the foals and their measured heights, “But I had no strong reference of scale to back up my feelings. See, no pony has ever been a pony on this side of the mirror, so I had no way to tell what the relative size of a pony would be. I could guess at the head to body ratio, but frankly even adult ponies have a larger head to body ratio than humans, and thicker limbs to boot. But thanks to Cheerilee here—”

Twilight flipped a half cutout page, with just Cheerilee’s profile on it, while indicating the measured difference in height, “I can conclude that you are in fact foals, and she is an example of a larger adult pony.”

“Larger?” Cheerilee spoke up, with an unconsciously offended swish of her tail.

“Oh, um,” Twilight blushed, flipping the cutout back so it only showed the foals on it again, “You—Cheerilee is—my world’s Cheerilee is a very large mare. She’s one of the few mares who can almost look Big Macintosh eye-to-eye. It doesn’t have the stigma you might associate size with in the human world, though. Quite the opposite in fact.”

Holding a hand on her breast, Twilight tried to give them some reference for comparison, saying, “My world’s Fluttershy is also on the taller side of mares, as well as my er... myself, as becoming a princess did increase my size quite a bit. Perhaps due to the princesses, tall, slender mares are considered very, er...”

She realized she was nervously bending her pointer stick.

“This is getting somewhat off topic,” Twilight hastily added, “My point is that you may find yourself acting in ways that you aren’t used to, and that’s probably because you’ve inadvertantly become physiologically younger, in some cases a lot younger than you once were. You didn’t used to be foals, so you might find your behavior changing markedly as a consequence.

“Now this is not any sort of Fountain of Youth,” Twilight stated firmly. “It is not normal for ponies to become younger, and the magic to do so is very difficult, rare to come by, and not without consequences. I don’t know how or why you’re transforming into ponies, and not even my world’s magic is sufficient to explain why you’d be transforming into ones so much younger than your age as a human.”

“Sans Cheerilee you are all now young foals,” Twilight continued, “Physically, I mean. You may find yourself more prone to emotional outbursts. You won’t be as strong, or capable as a fully grown pony, and you may find yourself more...” she searched for a word twirling her hand, “Malleable. Which is to say, have a harder time paying attention, more forgetful or disorganized, but much better at learning new things, or changing your own worldview. The standard stuff you would expect of human children, Equestrian foals are no exception, I’m afraid.”

“Hey!” sounded out Sweetie Belle’s penetrating voice. “Twilight! Um.”

“Yes?” Twilight asked, looking at the little white unicorn gently. “I am mostly here to answer questions, Sweetie Belle, so ask whatever you want and I’ll answer as best as I can.”

“Well, um, it’s... not me, actually. It’s... “ Sweetie looked to her left, where an aqua colored unicorn foal with purple hair sat, looking absolutely terrified, from how stiff she held herself, and how narrow her pupils were.

“Go ahead, Eli,” Sweetie prompted with a nudge to the pony in question.

“An’ um...” Elias’s face rushed to a full on blush, as she said in a whispery voice, “What if you didn’ ushed to be ......”

“Didn’t catch that,” Twilight prompted, holding a hand up to her round ear.

“Whaifuwereaboy” Elias blurted out, then scrunched her eyes shut and turned away.

Twilight blinked, trying to figure out what a pony who could hardly pronounce her words had blurted out rapid fire. What if you were...

“Oh! Right!” Twilight yelped, straightening up stiffly to face the purple and green foal more seriously, among others. “...that,” Twilight said uneasily.

She definitely didn’t want to upset the poor filly, but it was an important point to bring up. “That kind of caught all of us off guard,” Twilight said to little Eli over there, “But if more people are changing, we might have a... bit of a crisis on our hooves. You see, ponies don’t—erm... have as many stallions, as mares. To very briefly summarize the genetics behind it, ponies have two sex chromosomes, and only one who is XYZZ will come out male. XXZW, XYZW, or XXZZ ponies are all fully functionally female.”

“Wha’ thheck isz a chromoshome?” the light pink filly chirped out irritably.

“Well it’s—” Twilight chewed on a lock of her hair, contemplating her audience here.

“It’s really not important,” she said to the ponies at large, trying a laugh to calm the tension. “All I’m trying to say is, only about 25% of the pony population is going to be born a colt. I don’t mean to suggest that this transformation has any genetic basis whatsoever, but if it’s turning you all into ponies, it might be... correcting the gender ratio as well.”

Then out of nowhere, that aqua and purple filly who spoke so shyly before, whinnied out in wide eyed astonishment, “Two shex shromosomesh?! How doesh tha’ even work? How di’it evorlve? Are hyou rela’ed to birbs? Ish that why shome of us have wingsz? Wha’ ‘bout unicornsh? Ca’ we innerbreen? Can we—

“...

“I-inhter...breed,” she repeated, eyes losing their excitement for fear again, as the filly trailed off in a squeak.

Before Twilight could let the awkward silence continue any further, a pudgy little grey colt spoke up, saying, “Why ish Eliash zhe only one, zthen? I’m zhe only bhoy who change’ so far. ‘zzit only going after girlsh or shomesthing?”

“Good question, Truffle!” Twilight told him, with her shoulders slumping in relief. “And the answer is, I have absolutely no idea. Let me elaborate a bit. Um... hold on a sec.”

She charged off then, running out in the snow to her trailer. “Need the map!” she shouted anxiously, pushing her way in and rolling up a big map of the city they had pinned on the wall.

“Can’t you take a picture?” Sunset told her wryly, laying on the bed with absolutely no dog to attend to, “It’ll last... longer,” but Twilight was already running back out again for the farm house.

Wow, were her feet getting cold!

With her toes warming on the floorboards, and spreading the map hastily over her presentation sheets, Twilight said, “I’ve been recording where you all live, to see if there’s a pattern to the occurrence, and as you can see... well, here, here, here, here, it’s all totally randomly distributed!” she pointed at a few red circles indicating where each of them reported living.

“It is a concern of mine, because humans have such a high male to female gender ratio,” Twilight explained, pointing to a group of hastily drawn humans to indicate male and female. “If you become ponies from my world, we might not have a 1:1 gender transferal, which is to say that a lot of colts are going to be becoming mares.” Her eyes rested upon Elias again, and Twilight’s blush deepened, as she stuttered, “B-but until you, Elias, I had thought we had dodged that particular bullet.

“It does seem to be quote, going after, unquote females in preference to males, even considering the sex ratios,” Twilight said suspiciously. “There are 9 ponies who have thus far transformed that we know of, the incidents increasingly spaced closer together. Of those nine, 8 are female and 1 is a colt. Statistically there should be 2 colts, by now, but unfortunately 1 is a very small sample size, statistically speaking.”

Twilight rubbed her forehead, and continued, saying, “I cannot make strong claims about any sex ratios at this point; the sample size is just too small to tell whether it is inordinately biased towards females, or whether it’s just random chance that another colt hasn’t shown up yet, who... stayed a colt. But what I can see a disparity in, and what’s far more odd about this scenario, is... why are you all turning into foals?

Twilight rolled up the map again, flipping through her presentation, to get ahead to the part where it summarized statistical age distribution among ponies: a nice, sensible exponential decay. “Most ponies are adults,” she claimed, “So if it was just random selection, reason has it that 92% of you would be above the foal age. Your gender ratio is off because of the absence of 1 colt, but your age ratio is completely upside down! If there were 8 foals in a random selection of Equestrian ponies, then there should be 92 other adult ponies, here in the room with us.”

Twilight looked at the young assembly sans Cheerilee and said seriously, “That’s the other reason I wasn’t sure you were foals, because there’s just too many of you to be a coincidence! Why only Cheerilee? Why are human adults becoming foals? It simply doesn’t make sense! Except for one even more puzzling observation.

“There is a strange rhyme and reason to you all being foals,” Twilight revealed, turning the next page in her presentation, showing a human overlaid over a pony, next to a simple pony of the same color, with a multitraversal symbol dividing the two (basically a squiggly line). “In my previous presentation, I mentioned that I came from another world, which appears in some way to be adversely affecting your own. In my world, there is a pony very similar to each and every one of you, uncannily so, now that our timeline has caught up to yours. In my old life, I personally came to know many of these ponies. Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, they all have versions of themselves in my world. And in my world, those three are all foals.

“In my world,” Twilight said, tapping the pony side to emphasize, “They are foals, and my version of Ms. Cheerilee here is an adult mare. Just as Ms. Cheerilee remains the only adult mare among the lot of you. I can’t be certain, since I don’t know everypony in my world, but I’m fairly sure for all of you who changed, besides Cheerilee, all of your alternate verse counterparts are of foal age. It’s as if my world is ...leaking over into this one, and regardless of your age here, someone whose counterpart is a foal in the other world, transforms into a foal in this world.

“That’s what’s peculiar about this,” Twilight said, “Is it seems to be targeting you, not necessarily based on whether you were originally female or not, but whether you happen to be a foal, in my world. I can’t think of any reason such an enchantment would specifically choose the ponies who were going to become foals, but here you all are, incontrovertible evidence that it is picking out people whose alternate selves are little colts and fillies.”

“I think I even recall seeing a filly just like yourself in Apple Bloom’s class, Elias,” Twilight offered, looking straight at that filly so traumatized at being a filly. “Not a man, not an adult, but somepony who was born female, and remained a filly her whole life. I recognize a lot of you, in fact, since I’ve been asked at times to give presentations for Cheerilee’s class. But I don’t have as much familiarity with you as she would, as much as I wish I did.”

“My... libhrary shience classz?” Cheerilee spoke up, uncertainly.

“Oh, no in my world, Cheerilee is a schoolteacher,” Twilight informed the mare. “She teaches er... what you would call primary school, on many general subjects.”

“...huh,” Cheerilee said simply, sinking back down on her belly, and staring forward in thought.

“Didn’t you used to be a teacher, Ms. Cheerilee?” Apple Bloom asked the deep plum mare. “I remember your class back in prim’ry school. That was you, weren’t it?”

“No, I... I’ve been a libhrarhian my enhire life, Affle Bhloom,” Cheerilee told her in a mystified tone. “Ith takeshs a very hlong time to buil’ a cahreer in libhrary shience, an’ I shertainly didn’ start off wiff my theaching gredential. I only shtarted teashing libhrary shience recentlr...ly, in fac’.”

Twilight looked at the two neutrally, then her face fell in an absolutely horrifying revelation. “I–I don’t mean to alarm any of you,” Twilight stammered, gripping her pointer more tightly, “But I don’t have any guarantee that your m—”

There was a hammering on the door. “Got two more!” a loud voiced cop said through it.

Heart hammering in her chest, Twilight wisely decided to say to the group, “I need to conduct some tests. I don’t have enough information to draw any conclusions yet. I–I need to consult my notes, so I think this lecture is over. If anypony has any questions, j-just direct them to me individually afterwards.”

The foals just blinked at her uncomprehendingly.

“So, we can go?” Scootaloo piped up.

“Yes,” Twilight said tensely, and the Crusaders at least went galloping off for the front door, no doubt to greet whoever had just been saddled with becoming a pony. The rest seemed content to work on standing up and wandering off more slowly. But though her speech was rather abruptly ended, Twilight wasn’t out of hot water yet.

Something about Apple Bloom’s words had struck a deeply troubling note in Twilight’s mind, and she tried to control her rising level of panic by cleaning up her presentation supplies. She wasn’t exactly... approachable like this, or responsive, so thankfully they mostly left her alone. But what Twilight heard would not leave her alone, and the one thing she couldn’t stop from asking herself.

“Are their minds being transformed?”


Elias Doolots was still trying to wrap his head...her head... its? Still trying to understand the implications behind what that girl Twilight had told them. He... she... Elias supposed he should go with she, as long he was in this temporary form. The notion that it was temporary was alluring, but she honestly didn’t have her hopes up. It would figure that this portal closed itself before it could do any of them any good. If there was a way to change back, it sure wasn’t obvious. And anyway, she wasn’t too... upset about it, anymore?

There was a fuzzy feeling in Elias’s chest, that wasn’t just chest fluff, as she curled around a cup of hot cocoa that she’d been so weirdly happy to receive. It just... it’s chocolate! And sweet! And hot. That’s all it took to make her face light up with delight like a circus sideshow.

Elias thought he had never been more scared when he transformed into a pony, and into a girl, but there was the one time on the playground, when he got accidentally locked out after recess. It was no problem, they let him right in, and chastised him for being where the teachers couldn’t see, but he was so scared at the time, and... it was the same sort of fear.

Her thoughts had been so disorganized and... frankly ditzy. The dreadful amount of concentration she normally had was just shot, and the slightest thing seemed to be able to distract her, or even fascinate her. She spent hours the other day just playing with what it looks like when you draw red lines next to blue ones, and pairing other colors like that, just because it was fun!

And all that, because she’d changed into a girl? No, no none of that had anything to do with it, Eli was coming to realize. She was shyer, but... she was as shy as when she’d been younger. People just seemed so much more important all of a sudden. Elias had never noticed slowly becoming disinterested and numb to them over the years, but now that she thought about it, a lot of the strange, alien behaviors she’d been trying to resist were actually very familiar to her, an Elias from a time lost in the past.

Elias wasn’t sure how much having this... place between her legs was affecting her behavior, but it actually wasn’t as dramatic as she’d feared it to be. She walked on hooves now, and her arms felt like just another set of legs, and that was a more dramatic change than anything. She moved her tail and it felt so natural to do so. It was staggering how much her mind would have had to change to become like that.

She might have been more protective of her backside, and more ashamed of others seeing her, but was that a female instinct, or was it just the reaction of a male turned female? Would you be equally as embarassed as a female turning into a male? Didn’t males have more vulnerable equipment down there? So how could Elias attribute it to her new unasked-for femininity?

Elias only made it through a quarter cup of her hot cocoa, which was good considering that they only gave her a quarter of a cup. But she was eating like a teeny little pony, not specifically a female one. Cradling the still warm mug in her hooves and angling her muzzle in, Elias licked off the chocolate from the bottom of the cup, easily doing so with that crazy tongue she had now. Elias struggled to even consider it a tongue, this strange expanding organ inside her mouth. And here she was, using it like she was born with it. Where in all these changes, had becoming a girl changed her?

She honestly couldn’t think of any change, that wasn’t attributable to something else, either her ponyhood, or her youth, and that made Elias a little less upset about basically going from an outie to an innie. It was still... crazy and weird, but she felt comforted in the others. They hadn’t outright changed sexes, so she assumed all these feelings were normal for them. But now that Elias wasn’t assuming that, she could remember how upset the grey pony was for instance, when he tripped over himself trying to walk and landed in the shoe pile. He stumbled off to hide in the corner crying, and he stayed a boy!

It was an incredible shock to transform into a pony, and into a female one, with a female... thing that she had now. And while it was a shock to find out that Elias had been reduced to childhood too, it still explained so much. Now that she knew what was going on, she... couldn’t say she was all that upset anymore.


Noi could not believe this. She was a little pony child? She wasn’t old anymore? Fucking righteous! And she had twenty years to make up for lost time? Noi couldn’t scamper around the house more eagerly or more giddily than she did now. They had to toss her out because she was freaking hyper after that huge reveal. Noi rolled in the snow, because she could! She pretended to moo at the cows, because she could! This was all stuff she could do now!

She didn’t have to be a big, strong, stoic defender anymore. She headbutted a tree running around and she honestly couldn’t care less. She was a kid again! This was awesome! She could just mess around and play, and there wasn’t anybody to tell her to think of her responsibilities. A life of regrets, and the only thing she really regretted was back on the table. She hooked her hooves over branch and swung on it, just for the heck of it! She had a chance now, a second chance!

And no way in Hell was Noi going to waste it this time.

Author's Note:

Well, this was a long time in coming out. Not for lack of writing though. I honestly should have posted it last week, but just never got around to it and figured I’d just wait until next Friday. I’ve got a pretty huge buffer and, while I’ve had to retcon a bunch of stuff in future chapters, it’s starting to look pretty solid.

Now if only my story wasn’t so darned long.

PreviousChapters Next