Wish Fulfillment (Legacy Version)

by Boopy Doopy

(27) Jailtime

Moberly kept on sniffing and crying and smiling with each dress she tried on. I didn’t tease her like I wanted to, but I did make the occasional comment about how she looked and what I thought might go well with her coat. Shorey tried on a few more as well, somehow escaping crying, but looking just as amazing in each one. I just kept what I had on the whole time, liking how it looked and not wanting anything else.

At one point, Shorey left to go see what else there was, leaving Moberly and I alone together. I took it as my opportunity to try and talk to her.

“You know, it’s okay to feel nice about being yourself,” I started. “Like I said, being a girl is literally the best thing in the whole world.”

She frowned, looking at me through the mirror. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “You know how Shorey said she doesn’t want to talk about it? Well I’m the same way. I don’t want it told, I don’t want it brought up, and I don’t want to be teased.”

“Okay. I’m sorry. You make it super easy to do, but I’ll stop. But also, I wanted to tell you to please stop using ‘he’ to refer to me. I can brush it off easier when it’s an accident, but it feels like you’re doing it on purpose.”

“You make it too easy to tease you like that,” she said sarcastically, making me frown.

“Do you actually not like being a mare then?” I asked. I couldn’t understand why they were acting so frustrated and angry when they were someone they liked being.

“Yes, I like being a mare,” she said, sounding like she was finally relenting. I turned around to face her again, and she continued to look at me through the mirror.

“But that doesn’t mean I want you to tease me,” she finished. “I’m not interested in being made fun of.”

“I wasn’t trying to make fun of you,” I tried to explain. “I just thought that–”

“The first thing you did when I got here was laugh at me!” she said angrily. “If you weren’t trying to make fun of me, then you’re doing a bad job of showing it.”

I had so many comments I wanted to make about why I laughed, although the bottom of the list of reasons was that I was trying to make fun of her. I held those comments back though. It was just gonna start an argument, and an argument wasn’t what I wanted to get into.

She glanced at her hooves before looking at me again through the mirror. “The very first thing you asked about was that. Forgive me if that’s not the first thing I wanna hear about coming to Equestria, or if I don’t like that you bring it up all the time.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.” I did say I wanted to be told if I was being annoying, and I would readily admit that I did indeed talk about it a lot. I’d argue that talking about it didn’t mean I deserved the way Moberly treated me, both in Equestria and on Earth, but didn’t. If it meant putting all of this to bed, I’d take the blame for our relationship.

“I won’t tease you about being a mare, and I’ll try not to complain about dysphoria,” I said. “Was there anything else I’ve been doing that’s bugging you? Because if I can help it, I don’t want to be a bother to anyone.”

She let out a breath, saying, “That’s the main part of it. Just please… don’t. Even if I do like being a mare, don’t.”

“I will not,” I confirmed. “I hope you can call me a mare in return.”

“I… can use they/them,” she offered. “That’s already more than I’ve ever done for someone.”

I let out a breath, but decided to accept it. I wasn’t fond of they/them, but it was better than he/him. It was a starting point anyway.

Eventually Shorey came back, and after a few more dresses being tried on, we got out of there. Before we did though, I let the shop keeper know that I wanted to buy the tan dress later. She said it would be thirty bits, so I knew what I would be buying with next week's pay.

We walked around for a little while before Moberly left and went back home, leaving Shorey and I to head over to the castle to see about how to make a complaint about the two guards we ran into yesterday. We didn’t really know where we were going, although after a while, we stumbled upon a place that advertised itself as the ‘law office’. I assumed that meant the police station.

My assumption was correct, judging from all the armor wearing crystal ponies in this building. It was mostly empty except for them (I almost wondered why everything was so empty until I remembered it was Monday and everyone was probably at school or work) and so we had little trouble in being able to talk to someone.

Before we could though, Shorey stopped me, putting a hoof on my shoulder.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” she said quietly. “We’ve basically already seen them be racist to us. More than once in fact. It’s not smart for us to be doing this.”

“Didn’t you say before we should do this?”

“I said we will, but right now doesn’t feel like the right time. I can’t imagine how this ends well.”

“Well, we’re already here, so I don’t see why we should wait.”

“Because we are in a country that’s openly showed us that they don’t like us,” she said slowly, as if she was speaking to a child. “We were openly told that we couldn’t stay in a homeless shelter because we’re not crystal ponies. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“I know what institutional racism is, Shorey. I experienced it in America for a whole lot of years until I got here. But I also know that I want the streets to be safer when I walk around at night, and ponies should be friendlier than humans.” With that, I made my way up to the counter.

“How can I help you?” a bored looking guardsmare asked, seeming like she wanted to do anything but help us.

“We were wanting to make a report about two ponies we saw?” I started for us. “We think they were trying to pretend to be guards, and they confronted us yesterday and tried to get us to go with them.”

“What did they look like?”

Shorey quickly went over their cutie marks and eye and mane colors, the mare’s face becoming a cross between confused and interested as she explained. She wrote down what we said, and when we were finished, automatically asked, “Can you two come with me?”

She waved a hoof for us to walk behind the counter, leading us both back to a room to sit in. It reminded me of an interrogation room, and gave me the vibe that this wasn’t going to turn out a lot worse than I was expecting. It didn’t help that we were left alone for a good, long time, me eventually speaking up to Shorey.

“Um, you don’t think those two were actually members of whatever police force they have here, do you? Cause this whole thing has me extremely nervous.”

“Well, I told you that this was a bad idea,” she said as she frowned and flicked her mane out of her face with a hoof. “You chose not to listen.”

“You don’t suppose they have a right to remain silent law here, do you?”

As I said it, the door opened again, and sure enough, the exact two guards we saw yesterday walked in, along with the receptionist mare again. They both looked at her and nodded, as though they were identifying us. This whole thing started to make me nervous.

“My men say that you two were breaking curfew laws and trying to engage in prostitution?” she started, looking at us with a slight frown.

“Absolutely not,” I started automatically. “Well, not to prostitution, anyway. I don’t know what the curfew laws are here, but we were not being indecent.”

Shorey gave me a look like we should probably be silent as the mare asked, “Do you two have any form of identification?”

“Um, no.”

“Where are you staying at? Or are you homeless?”

We gave her our information, and then she explained that she wouldn’t be charging us with public indecency. She was however going to charge us with breaking curfew laws since we weren’t Crystal Ponies, which carried a fine of two hundred bits each, and more importantly, illegally residing in the Crystal Empire, which apparently meant deportation to Equestria if we were convicted. I didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing, but almost felt like it would be good.

What was not good was the fact that they had to actually arrest us and take us both to separate holding areas. They put a ring on our horns before leading us off, Shorey sending a look my way that said she was extremely frustrated with me. If no guards were around, I’m sure she would’ve let me know how she told me this would happen.

The guards made a show of inspecting me for weapons before tying a black collar around my neck. It felt extremely humiliating, even more so the fact that I had to be in a prison with stallions. I tried to plead my case, but none of them would have it. In fact, it was a mistake to mention it at all, because a couple of guards had fun at my expense.

“Is that why your voice sounds weird?” one of them asked, talking about the fact that I went out of my way to voice train. “Because you’re trying to sound like a mare?”

“It’s a pretty bad attempt,” the other one said with a mean laugh. “You just sound like a little colt trying to pretend to be a filly. Do you actually think that sounds good?”

“Especially from you. You’re asking to be in the mare’s prison, but you’re almost bigger than we are!”

“Certainly stockier at least.”

There were very few times where I forced myself not to cry, but right then was one of them. Normally I could let comments wash over me without an issue, but people didn’t normally attack my physical attributes. In fact, it might have never happened up until that point. Having specific aspects of my body called out felt different than someone just saying I wasn’t a woman.

“Should I call you princess then, sir?” the first guard asked with a sneer. “Put you in a dress and show you off to stallions?”

I wanted to say something, but didn’t. I was feeling way too dysphoric about my voice after those comments. Out of everything, voice dysphoria for me was the very worst. Instead I put my head down and forced myself not to cry as I walked along with them, my ears staying pressed flat against my head involuntarily.

I did my best to tune the two of them out as I was walked to a cell, getting stares from some of the stallions who were there with me. I was certain it was my lack of a tail that was attracting attention, something that only served to make me feel worse. How I didn’t just flop down into a ball of tears, I didn’t know.

The other prisoners thankfully didn’t say anything as I was shoved into a cell by myself, the guards still laughing at me. Of course, that didn’t last long when the two of them went around telling other ponies, who seemed to find it just as hilarious a concept as these two. It wasn’t long before I was burrowing my head under a blanket trying to drown a cell block full of laughs. I’d never been so humiliated in my entire life.

Because you didn’t listen to Shorey when she said this was a bad idea. You know she’s smarter than you’ll ever be, and you didn’t listen anyway. You had this coming, especially with the way you treat her like the object of your affection.

It was a very rough night, even if the laughing did eventually die down. I felt more dysphoric right then than I had since I’d been in Equestria and couldn’t sleep because of it. I didn’t cry though. There was no way I was going to be crying in front of these ponies. I couldn’t sleep though. The discomfort I felt was intense, and I imagined that everyone here was watching me. It didn’t help seeing one of the guards laugh and shake their head every so often, certainly being told of me by the first two.

How is this real? America isn’t this transphobic! Why is Equestria like this? I wanted to blame Lord Zulu, but didn’t. This felt more like the real world than it did the land of kindness and friendship. No one I’d ever come across in my life acted like this before, at least not to this extent, and it was almost a shock to see. It certainly hurt.

“I have to go to the restroom,” I said quietly, not wanting to be heard but trying to catch the guards attention. He turned my way and I said again, “I have to go to the restroom.”

“There’s a toilet right in your cell,” he replied. “You can use that.”

“I can’t go to the restroom in front of a bunch of men,” I tried to plead. “Do you know what being transgender is?”

“No, and I honestly don’t care,” he said flatly. “Last shift told me you were trying to say you were a mare and wanted to be placed with the mares. Well if that’s the case, you can take your case up with the judge tomorrow and see what she says.”

“Can you at least take me to a private restroom?” I begged. “You can put hoof cuffs on me or something so you can make sure I don’t run off. Please.”

“Nope. There’s a perfectly fine toilet in your cell.” With that, he turned away, picking up a magazine and flipping through it. I put my head against the bedpost and started to cry out of frustration despite my attempts not to.

“God, how is this happening?” How did I go from trying on dresses that morning to sitting here in this cell?

Because you didn’t listen to Shorey. That’s how. But at least hopefully we’d be taken to Equestria since they were making a big deal about us not being Equestrian citizens. Hopefully. With my luck, probably not.

“Can I at least ask who the judge is?” I spoke up again. “Is it Princess Cadance?”

“You’ll find that out tomorrow when you meet them,” he said flatly, turning a page of his magazine and not entertaining me at all. This was going to be a long night.

Comments

[Thranx]

How is this real? America isn’t this transphobic! Why is Equestria like this? I wanted to blame Lord Zulu, but didn’t. This felt more like the real world than it did the land of kindness and friendship. No one I’d ever come across in my life acted like this before, at least not to this extent, and it was almost a shock to see. It certainly hurt.

At least she's getting a reality check now. Better now than later in Equestria. I suspect it's not gonna change, Crystal Empire or not.

Though, there is a chance that Equestria is more tolerant. If we consider the Crystal Ponies, who had just return from 1000 years ago with a transphobic mindset. Maybe Equestrian society has changed to be more liberal in the 1000-years gap?

[Alaborn]

Every character in this story had been hit with the idiot stick.

[silvadel]

11297713

Poison Joke would turn Rally into Bulk Biceps.