• Published 31st Jul 2018
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Unwilling Recruit - Starscribe



Equestria is real, and Jacqueline Kessler has been dragged into its cold war with human authorities. She might not know who's right and wrong, but at least she can keep her little sister safe. And maybe get that cute changeling's number...

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Chapter 6

Unwilling Recruit

Katie caught her on her way back to the room. Jackie had come back in through the laundry, so she hadn’t been completely naked—though the robe she’d stolen didn’t fit, and smelled like it hadn’t yet been washed.

Katie was already awake when she came into their shared dorm, half dressed with the straightener warming in front of the mirror before her. Couldn’t you sleep in like a normal teenager?

Still, it could’ve been worse. Nobody else in the girls’ dorm had noticed her.

“Well look at you,” Katie said, looking up from the mirror and grinning at her. “Looks like you had a night.”

Jackie smiled sheepishly, stumbling over to her dresser, and shuffling around for something to wear. The clouds had probably been enough of a shower, and breakfast would be starting soon.

“Who was it?” Katie asked, going back to her hair as Jackie started scrambling into her second uniform. “Oh, was it that soldier guy who you’re always talking to on the exercise field? Or… no, maybe it was the redhead working in the garden? He looked like he could pull a house with arms like those…”

Jackie felt herself tense as she struggled into her second uniform. It didn’t fit nearly as well as the other one, but she doubted she would ever be seeing that one again. “Katie… we’ve talked about this. It wasn’t any of those guys. I’m not…” She could feel her cheeks getting redder. “I’m not into guys, remember?”

“I know,” Katie muttered. “But I thought…”

“No,” Jackie cut her off. “Don’t say it. We’ll both wish you hadn’t.”

Her sister was silent for another few seconds, apparently considering that. “Alright, Jackie. Fine. I won’t. I hope you had a good night with her, then. Happy?”

“Yes,” Jackie said, slumping sidelong into bed. She couldn’t hold back a yawn, her wings stretching out behind her. How they’d escaped from her shirt, she couldn’t know. But she heard Katie gasp.

“J-Jackie!” She was suddenly on her feet again, pointing. “What the hell did you do? You’ve got…”

“Yeah,” Jackie said. Now she smiled—at least returning with freaky wings on her back was more of a big deal to her sister than the one she’d been sleeping with. Maybe there was hope for Katie after all.

“I guess I just needed the right motivation. Harley almost killed me, the way we went tumbling off the edge, but… it didn’t hurt as much as I was expecting. Growing wings, I mean. I guess I must’ve been listening to all your complaints about feathers, because I don’t have any.”

Now that she was thinking about them, her wings flexed and stretched behind her, extending to their full wingspan. Not nearly enough to lift someone as large and heavy as a person, but that never seemed to matter. If Katie could fly, then there was no reason she wouldn’t be able to.

Katie rested one cold hand on the edge of her wing, running her fingers along its length. Her sister was careful—she had her own wings, after all, and knew how sensitive they could be. “They look so thin. I can practically see through them… do you think it’s weird to have so much skin?”

In answer, Jackie plucked one of Katie’s feathers with a sharp tug. Her sister whined and pulled away, even as Jackie held it up. “Is it weird you have these?”

“I guess… not any weirder than anything else around here. People can break stone and lift cars, people have magical horns, might as well have wings too.”

Jackie slumped backward against the bunk bed—it wasn’t a very large room, and there wasn’t exactly enough room for her to stretch her legs. Her wings kept twitching against her back—if there was one good thing in all of this, it was that her wings would probably necessitate an entirely new uniform. She could replace the one she’d lost off the edge of a cloud.

“So, what even are you?” Katie asked, still staring. “I don’t think you’re a pegasus, not with wings like that. That means you don’t have weather magic… what do you have instead?”

Jackie shrugged. “Does it matter? Magic is stupid—so long as I can fly, that’s all I need. I’ll… start coming to your class from now on.”

The breakfast bell rang through the wall, loud enough that she almost jumped. Was it always that loud? Jackie swore under her breath, snatching a brush from by the mirror and hastily going over her hair a few times. She had half a mind just to go back to bed. She could survive without one day’s classes.

“I don’t see why you assume we would be anything like ponies, Katie. I mean, we have wings, sure, fine. Whatever. But why would that mean the rest of our ‘magic’ would work the same way? They’re aliens. Just because they can make themselves look like us doesn’t mean they are like us.”

Katie set down her straightener, made her way over, and yanked down Jackie’s skirt. She squeaked in protest—an uncomfortably high-pitched sound—scrambling away.

“What the fuck are you—” She trailed off as Katie pointed at her thigh. In the dark of the night, Jackie hadn’t even noticed. Though that might’ve been because she had much more important things to look at.

Jackie had a cutie mark—like a pair of soundwaves colliding with each other, interfering at their peaks and valleys. She reached down, feeling the skin there. The pattern came from fur, not skin at all, raised in a layer like fuzz. As soft as a pony’s coat.

“Jackie, I know you don’t pay attention in class, but maybe you should. Lots of us have pretty much worked it out. The other students, I mean. I think we’re…” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “We’re gaining all the same powers, the same cutie marks… we even sing like them. Lots of us think we’re becoming them. Think about it, Jackie! Since the first day we got here, they’ve been calling us ‘ponies.’ Weird vocal quirk, or maybe they all knew and just couldn’t help it!”

“Alright Alex Jones, that’s enough of the crazy pills for one day.” She turned, yanking on her sister’s arm. “Let’s go get some food.”

“But it would make so much sense!” Katie whined, as they made their way into the dorm. They passed lots of other girls, all roughly the same age. Jackie passed a handful of adorable high-school age looking kids, almost all of which had one of the mutations. Your parents must be pissed. But she hadn’t ever talked to them—it felt too weird.

Katie didn’t keep going with her weird conspiracy theory—not as they ate breakfast, and not as Jackie slept through their morning classes. She managed to sneak away for a nap after the first few hours, though someone found her and dragged her to the quartermaster after they caught sight of her wings.

With a little more sleep, Jackie found her sister’s ideas stuck deeper than she thought. If humans really were developing differently, shouldn’t she have expected even one person to manifest something that wasn’t from the pony show? But she hadn’t seen one—it was always the same few basic templates. So far as she knew, her own bat wings were the weirdest way the pony transformation had occurred, and those still matched to something from the kids’ show.

To her surprise, their dorm supervisor had got wind of her transformation. How word had traveled so far, Jackie didn’t know, but she didn’t really question when she saw the results.

Her new schedule was almost empty—it had her waking after lunch hour, and having only a few classes during the day. Almost all of them had been shifted to after sundown.

“I don’t understand,” Jackie said, staring down at the sheet in disbelief. “The hell is this, Steph? I beg you for a month to get me transferred to some better classes, and now you finally do it?” She flexed her wings—her new top had slits cut for them, which were alright. The cut exposed more of her back than she was comfortable with for casual wear—it would be better with buttons.

“You weren’t a thestral before,” Stephanie said, annoyed. Their dorm supervisor had been here longer than most others—almost two years. “That changes things. Now sleeping in isn’t lazy, it’s biology.”

It’s biology, Jackie thought, remembering Katie’s words earlier and gritting her teeth. “No, it isn’t. I’m the same person I was a month ago, when you wouldn’t give me a schedule like this. Not that being with my sister wasn’t fun, but…”

“Your sister isn’t being reassigned,” Stephanie interrupted, looking up from her desk. She didn’t have an office, so there was no privacy here. They stood at the end of the dormitory, with girls passing in and out from their lunch shift. “You’ll see her at dinner, but that’s the only thing you’ll share with her on this schedule. I can’t really do much about that, though I could give you back your old schedule if this one doesn’t work out for you.”

“This is fine,” Jackie said, tapping the page with one finger. “I was looking forward to going to her flying class, but it’s not the end of the world. I didn’t really get to see her that much at university…” She trailed off. “Why is my class at night?”

“You’re a thestral,” Stephanie said, as though the answer was stupidly obvious. “You’ll do most of your flying at night. Conditions are different, uh…” Stephanie was a unicorn, or at least, she had the horn. She was also annoyed. “Look, don’t take it out on me. Ask your teacher. I’m just the one giving you the schedule.”

Jackie rose from her chair, putting up her hands. “Alright, alright. I’m not going to complain… clothes that fit and not having to get up when the sun is barely up is enough for me.”

Stephanie shrugged, waving her off.

Jackie hesitated as she was about to push the chair back in, resting one hand on the back. “Wait… you’ve been here for ages, haven’t you Steph? Over a year.”

She nodded. “Yeah?”

“So… did you ever… go to their side?”

Stephanie nodded, lowering her voice. “I did. It was a few months ago. I’m not really supposed to talk about it.”

Jackie was conscious of eyes on her back, as several of the other girls watched. They hadn’t come in together—some had been here for months, while others had only arrived a few days ago.

“Can you answer one question?” She didn’t wait for confirmation. “All that stuff about the way they look… is it true? Are they really little…” She made a gesture with both hands. “Little horses?”

Stephanie nodded again, though her face was going red. “Yes. No one has lied to you, Jackie. If they wanted to lie to us, there are much easier ways. If they were going to make up a story, they could’ve picked something simple. Instead of…” She gestured vaguely. “Just go to class, Jackie. They’ll be expecting you.”

Jackie tucked her schedule away and slipped out into the night. She found herself wondering about Stephanie all the way out. Were thousands of people really lying to them? Stephanie had made a good point—if they were going to lie, they’d picked something insane.

But if they aren’t lying, what does that make us? She ran her fingers over the patch on her shoulder, the one with a little bat wing. Not that anyone who saw her would need to see it to know what she was.

Then she got outside, and saw the whole flight-ground was filled with freaks. Harley stood at the front of the group, wearing instructor’s patches on her shoulders.

I could probably get used to this. Jackie’s first ever steady girlfriend proved to be far from her expectations. But then again, if she had wanted a conventional girlfriend, she probably shouldn’t have fallen for a literal emotional parasite.

But Jackie didn’t care what the native “ponies” thought about changelings, or any of their supposed history in the imaginary land of Equestria. They could keep believing what they wanted, and keep teaching whatever propaganda would get their mostly young human allies to help them.

Jackie never felt like Harley was feeding on her during their time together, whatever ponies said about her. Even so, she couldn’t help but feel jealous. From the beginning, Harley had made it clear that their relationship would not be exclusive.

But just knowing she wouldn’t get to be in Harley’s life full time and actually watching her walk around with Apple Cinnamon were two very different things.

“Get your field training,” Harley kept saying. “Then we can be together out there, and I can be with Cinnamon while we’re here. Won’t that be perfect?”

Once I don’t have to see you with a boy, then it will be perfect. Jackie didn’t tell her that, of course. It wouldn’t be right to ask, when she’d already gone into this knowing it wouldn’t be that way. But if she could convince Harley to change her own mind, that would be different.

Jackie attacked her classes with more interest than she ever had before. Not because she cared any more about what they were teaching, but because she would need to pass to go out with Harley.

The question what they really looked like underneath seemed less important in that light. She was safe, Katie was safe, and her relationship with Harley was new and exciting. Jackie could live with that.

For a while.