2G

by Bysen

Gilda x Thorax

Gilda eventually left the restaurant. She did so when the wait staff wasn’t looking and only paid for her own meal. She’d leave that for Gallus to deal with later. She didn’t live here so it wasn’t her problem. Ofcourse leaving meant Gallus wouldn’t be able to find her if he came back looking. But it also meant those three fillies couldn’t find her after that prank she pulled on them inevitably got revealed as just that and they stormed back to confront her. And while seeing the face of the victim of a prank was the best part, she already knew they had fallen for it and was happy enough for her.

The rest of the afternoon, not that there was much left of it, was spent walking around the town. While most of the stuff that wasn’t just a grocery or local farmer's stall was focused on tourist trap crap selling something called ‘mane 6 merch’ and ‘pony swag’ she did find a few stores that didn’t. Gilda wasn’t entirely sure who the mane 6 where but did know it was Rainbow’s friends. Uhh… Rainbow, Fluttershy, Ponk, Twilit Sporkle… Apple and… Trixie? She wasn’t sure about that last one but with how much advertisement there was about her around town she had to be one of them. Why else would there be so much stuff mentioning her? [the joke is trixie put it all up herself]

One of the few stores that wasn’t about them for sure was this place that seemed out of place in a small farm town. The Carousel Boutique. Gilda didn’t exactly have too much of an interest in high fashion and often thought the makers of said fashion had to be high themselves. But 'not much' was still leagues above how much Rainbow opposed it. She could remember the school dance and how much of a fight Rainbow had with her parents about wearing that dress.

Gilda was about to enter the shop when a thought occurred to her. She’d pretty much exhausted the list of things to do in this pondunk town and if she went here now, this late in the evening when she’d have to leave soon anyway that would just be a waste of a thing to do. So the Gilda x Rarity section can wait and I know that seemed like set up for it to happen now but doing this felt organic. It’ll happen, your just getting a little blue balled for now is all if Gilda x Rarity is your thing. And I know the x is usually used in shipping terms but I’m just using it as a general story setting phrase.

With a flap of her wings Gilda took off into the sky, just narrowly missing the door to The Carousel Boutique opening and Fluttershy walking out. “Goodbye Rarity. I’ll see you tomorrow so we can finish the photoshoot.” followed by the door closing and the sound of a single middle aged mare opening a tub of icecream and uncorking tonight's bottle of wine.

The scene was the inside of Rainbow Dash’s cloud house with the front door just slightly off of centre frame. Gilda popped through the floor. Cloud. House. Landing softly aloftly on her feet she took just a few steps and flipped onto the couch heavily. Yet softly. Soft as a cloud one might say. One might be extremely proteinous for saying it but one still might.

Something about the sudden jolt of landing and the new angel *Buurrrrpp* “Ugh… that’s better…” she said before stretching out. “Two more days to fill. What am I going to do?...” she wondered aloud. A wave of tiredness [autocorrect changed that to exhaustion. I know what I meant!] hit her. Today had been a lot of flying around, even if the only written part had been a short conversation. “I could sleep an entire day. But only one. Sure. I’ll do that tomorrow.”

And she shut her eyes.

She almost immediately opened her eyes as the sun decided that from a hundred billion kilometres away… or maybe like three in this universe, it was going to perfectly come through the window and blast her in the eyes. Even closed it made the inside of her eyelids glow red. Thing was, for it to come through that window it had to be “Morning? What the fluff?! Did reality just glitch on me? I don’t feel reste- actually I do. Wow… that’s freaky.”

It had been about six when she’d closed her eyes and the sun said it was about six now too.

Blah blah blah skip
something about sleeping for 12 hours made her too rested to sleep the whole day skip

She’d decided to steal breakfast from Rainbow. But when Gilda looked in the cupboard she only found doritos and mountain dew. Fiery doritos and red alert that is. The casuals stuff. With that she did a light hop and fell through the floor. He wings caught her and she glided down to the average flying height over the town. Her practical joke from yesterday backfired on her. The only place Gilda knew too get something to eat at and she’d semi-skipped the bill.

Blah blah blah

“Would you happen to be Gallus?” Someone said as they approached her. Naturally this irritated her. It was like asking if a mare was named Steve. That was a cock’s name. Didn’t help that she [and Rainbow Dash] got called tomcolts throughout their time in Flight School. She turned around to see… what the tart was that thing?!

It was roughly pony shaped, taller than her, green and had antlers and bug wings. Her brief confusing gave way to “Do I LOOK like a Gallus?” she growled. The thing backed up slightly and did a very pony gesture of raising one bent… hoof? Up to its chest. Why did it have a single wing for a tail… ‘what even are you?’ She thought “What even are you?”

“I’m awfully sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. My name is Thorax. Uh, King, Thorax. I’m a changeling. I’m sorry to have bothered you. I’ll just be off now. Good day.” he turned and began to leave.

“What? You’re not a changeling. They’re… not…” she motioned at all of the him. A thought caught her mind. A changeling asking for Gallus. “I know Gallus. Why are you after him? That Oculus hen, uh…. Mare. Ladybug? Her. She in some sorta forbidden love thing with him?”

“Well. Yes actually. I take it you know about his… ‘attraction’ to her?” he looked around and hesitantly said, trying to keep private matters private. “Though, it’s Ocellus.”

“Yeah. Chick seemed head over paws for her. Don’t tell me it’s just some kinda changeling trick. Because if it is… called it!” she said, leaning back into her seat. She hadn’t even realised her food had arrived and was already on the table. It totally hadn’t been spit in by an annoyed waiter who didn’t understand that gryphons didn’t understand the concept of tipping beyond the minimum payment for a servous. Like countries that don’t just pay a bare minimum minimum wage.

Thorax sighed heavily. “It is.” he admitted. Gilda let out a chuckle at first but then immediately got hit in the feels by how much that would have to suck for Gallus. “But… it shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be affec- I shouldn’t be telling you this. Not without Gallus consent. I should be getting to the school grounds to speak with Twilight.”

‘A changeling wanting consent. There’s a first.’ Gilda thought to herself. “It’s cool. I’m Gallus’ uh… liaisons. Like you are for… O...celery.” she lied, though rather convincingly. She knew enough about Granpa Gruff having to come here every few months for some chick, that she now knew to be Gallus, guardian.

“No you’re not.”

“Worth a shot.”

“How do you know Gallus anyway?”

“I thought you had to get to the school to speak with Twilight.”

“You’re very confusing with whether you want this conversation to end or keep going.”

Gilda shrugged. “Eh. I’m just going with the flow. I met him yesterday. Never spoke to him before that. Didn’t even realise I hadn’t seen him in Gryphonstone lately until then. He came up to me, hit on me a little, and I made him realise he had the hots for the changeling. Also, rumor is Sandbar has the hots for him. But I didn’t tell you that.”

“Yes you di- oh, right.” he started and stopped. Thorax then sighed once more. “I’m putting off talking to Twilight because I don’t know the answer to her question. I should, but I just don’t.”

“Well… neither does she.” Gilda replied. “What’s the question anyway?”

“Do you know what changelings and gryphons produce when they breed?”

Gilda thought about it and let out a descending whistle. “Well if I had to guess… *description of this picture*”

“No, that wasn’t the question I don’t know the answer to. I know that answer to that… and trust me, it’s not… that.” he flinched at the thought. “It’s something… feral and… sad. Deformed creatures that would be called… well, ‘creatures’.” that answered Gilda’s question about it being some forbidden love thing. “What Twilight asked was ‘Can changeling pheraddiction affect gryphons?’ and I don’t know. It shouldn’t. Changelings evolved alone side ponies so we’re only really meant to breed with them.”

Something came to Gilda’s mind. Well, something other than that it should be ‘Changelings evolved alone side ponies parasitically’. If a gryphon and a pony made a hippogryph, then what did a hippogryph and a gryphon make? Maybe a ‘gryphon’ that still had some leftover traits from the pony. “Like being blue…”

Author's Note:

Author’s note: As if there wasn’t enough of those in the chapter itself.
And this chapter is where the idea of naming chapters <name> x <name> came from.

I like the idea that ponies are like humans in pathfinder lore when it comes to breeding. In that that can produce offspring with any other humanoid race. Although the offspring of the more exotic ones are usually infertile themselves.
From my previous stories that this is all inspired by World’s End I established that a hippogryph is infertile.

Omfg it took me 2 hours to write this from the blah blah blah skip
Actually, that’s not too bad really. No where near my writing speed for… what was that called? My first story. Happy Anniversary Sug. I was cranking that out. Like, 5k+ chapters every 3 days. Then again, I had a plan for that story. I mean, I have a plan for this one but I also had bullet points that easily linked together. Hell, I only came up with Gilda talking to Thorax the night before writing it… at about 1am laying in bed.