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1:What?1,128 words
2: Everything1,004 words
3:What's good for the gander is good for the goose1,024 words
4:What is the measure of a man?1,811 words
5:"What a piece of work is man"1,062 words
6:What is love?705 words
7:What is this?680 words

5:"What a piece of work is man"

But Shining HATED shopping, didn't he? "Does this mean I enjoy shopping now?"

Cadence looked surprised, "I kinda hope not. That would mean I would start to not enjoy shopping, and I'm still having fun. I do like being the one carrying things, though. Maybe because I'm getting more upper body strength. Hyah! Huh! Hulk smash!" Cadence karate chopped a pony mannequin, which didn't respond to being karated in any way.

Shining laughed. "Please don't smash the store. Actually, I think the carrying urge an instinct, too. You want to provide for the family; it manifests in you wanting to carry their things, to be the pack's pack-rat. It makes you useful." He paused. "Is that why there's the getting the things to carry, Cady?"

Cadence thought for a moment, "I think it's like harvest. You have to wait until the fruit is ripe, you wait and wait, and then there's a big sale and BAM! It's ready! Pants harvest; it's pants season. Let's harvest some pants! Ooh! And harvest some socks, too!"

They were shopping in Canterlot while waiting for Twilight to finish her report. Likely it was already finished, and they were really waiting on her to triple-check her report. But it was a fun interlude, anyway, especially when Shining had to tell Cadence to stop "socks-bucking" the "harvest" of socks on display.

"What do you do for guy's night out? We should try that, too." Cadence laughed, "before you forget how, or something."

"I never really learned in the first place. Mostly we stayed at home and played Ogres and Oubliettes." He perked up, 'we could do that!"

"Hmm ... maybe."

"But first, I need pickles."

* * *

"Hayburger with extra extra extra extra pickles" Shining ordered.

"Usually you get extra burgers from the food court. Or corndogs. Ooh, maybe I should get a corndog now. Get your boyfriend his corndog!" Cadence playfully jostled Shining Armor. "I'll be Shining Armor today." Dutifully received, she took a cautious bite of her corndog. "Oh wow, this is delicious! Why is this suddenly so delicious? All of a sudden, this is better than pizza!"

"I'm sure Twilight would be able to explain ... speaking of ... " Shining trailed off as a scroll materialized on his horn. Cadence snatched it, having already gulped down her entire corndog, and so had her hooves free.

"It's from Twilight. She says she finished her report, but is too large to send by dragon-fire mail. She's going to take the train up with paper copies." Another scroll appeared and went the same way, "This one's from Auntie Celestia. She wants us and Twilight to meet her at the palace after the train arrives, which .. hmm will be a few hours from now. Which means we have time ..."

Cadence turned back to the Hayburger clerk, both front hooves on the counter "I shall require many corndog. I think ten; ten corndog."

"With extra pickles."

* * *

"Oh yes," Twilight answered. "Guys and girls do taste things slightly differently. The different metabolisms require ... OH NO! I left it out of my report!" the dictionary-sized tomes gliding over suddenly stopped, hung in mid air, caught in Twilight's purple glow, as she fished a quill out of her saddlebags to start writing addenda to them.

Shining stretched out a hoof, standing tippy-toe trying to reach the midair volume closest to him, "I'm sure it's okay. You can simply tell us." He finally grasped it.

Celestia simply teleported her volume into her lap with a flash. She lay back on her throne and perused it. Cadence flew into the air and snatched hers in a twirl that would have made Spitfire proud.

Twilight looked up, and started her presentation as if nothing had happened "As you can see .. both seaponies and hippogriffs lay eggs. Their culture is therefore less gender-aligned for caregiving. NORMALLY male gestation isn't therefore a problem, as the egg would transform along with everything else, and hatch normally. In this case, though, the spell ran into some issues. If you're interested in the technical details, I will discuss those next."

Twilight continued, "The logic pathing entered the spell matrix failsafe, which NORMALLY isn't a problem, and is used when transforming people around clothes, jewelry, or needing to displace nearby objects or oneself in a teleport, so you don't teleport inside of a wall or something. Since Cadence's 'female' pattern could account for pregnancy, and Shining Armor's 'male' pattern could not, when the patterns were then checked for the most optimal placement strategy, these two, and only these two patterns, were swapped during the transform, and slowly for a period after until the swap was complete. This logic pathway allowed for the spell to exit successfully."

Cadence raised one hoof, "Can we have the version for those who DIDN'T go to a school for magically gifted unicorns?"

Twilight's 'lecture mode' stumbled a bit, "If they'd transformed into "land ponies" one at a time, likely the spell would have simply failed to go off, as it wasn't possible for Shining to do safely, and we'd have had to figure out why from there. Since they DID transform together, however, the spell saw a way to complete the transform as it is supposed to; try to "make do" with the 'obvious' solution of swapping their genders around. This way, the spell could finish its job.

Shining asked, "What about the actual pregnancy?"

"If not by now, then soon, it will be if Shiny has always been a girl and Cadence has always been a boy, so the rest of the pregnancy should go fairly normally. Also, Cadence should 'bulk up' as the testosterone takes hold. Sunburst has volunteered to collect more data on both of these points when you return to the Crystal Empire."

Celestia mused, rubbing her cheek with one hoof, "Well, I suspect Sunburst will enjoy studying this in correspondence with Twilight, but I wonder how the rest of the Crystal Empire will react to this news. We should prepare a statement." She smiled down at Twilight, "Preferably one that's shorter than your wonderful report."

Shining interrupted, 'I'm wondering if we can't get some more food first? I'm suddenly really hungry. Can we get the guard to tell the chef to make some food? Preferably something with lots of pickles."

Twilight added hopefully, "Like hayburgers?"

Cadence was next, "And some corndogs. And pizza."

"And cake."

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